Allergy free cashew based ice cream

It would seem in the nick of time that we noticed that almost every aspect of my life is food related, including the scents in our home, what with all that lamb and candles, sugo, choux and pho testing and what not. In fact, not only do our cushions, upholstery and hair reek of lunch, it would appear that even the pores of my very body is food-scented.. Mango bodywash, Parsley Seed toner (which makes me smell more like an anti-mosquito spray than parsley but nevermind), Cocoa Butter, Mint Tea body creams and Ginger & Lime hand cream. I had hoped that in sleep we would escape from food but the basil and mint candle is a dead give away.

If only our need for food were satisfied by scents of smell, then I would be a very successful walking talking food-smell vending machine. That or if anyone needs anti-mosquito spray, you know where to go...

In that scented vein, I'm bent on making something which does not require any heat less it releases more smells. My cashew based ice cream is all blend and no heat... And it's dairy, egg and gluten free too.

Recipe:

Soak one cup cashews in one cup water overnight. Blend cashews and water with 1/3 cup maple syrup, 1/4 cut coconut oil, 1 tbsp vanilla extract and salt to taste. Blend as well as your machine allows and chill then freeze, stirring every 30 minutes after first 2 hours.

Cholesterol free...?

I have always counted myself lucky despite my intolerances as I am allowed to eat unlimited amounts of vegetables, seafood and meat. A recent blood test has come back with an agenda to deprive me of my (only) sense of food-fortuity, as it would appear - or given the fact based nature of a blood test, state - that my cholesterol levels are way off the chart. As my cholesterol levels a couple years back was below the normal range, my dear doctor has told me, without batting those long eye lashes one bit, that I must cut down on red meat and shellfish. He did say that should I really want and need red meat, he would allow really gamey red meat - not grouse, more ostrich... Nope, no eyelash movement whatsoever.

Back in the real world, I am righteously indignant over this whole meat&shellfish-fracas. And since a friend insisted that being hungry often keeps cholesterol levels down, I now have the following options: ostrich vs hunger. 

Such delightful options puts me at real risk of reconsidering myself lucky. While I ponder that - Korean 100% green bean vermicelli with peas and pancetta (pork is white meat, I insist!):

Allergy free brownie

When first told of my intolerances, my biggest preoccupation was that of dessert (and of a butterless life). Swearing off rice and wheat etc. is all in a day's work but dessert, biscuits, pastry, and all things sweet are the French on one's toast, the salt on all chips, the coco before the pop.

It is my very nature to obsess with finding replacements and I started with something easy (and not too dear to my heart for fear of total and utter failure): brownies. This recipe I "converted" from la barefoot and call it beginners luck at that time but it worked rather well. Note however that this recipe falls strictly into the cakey-brownie camp, for fear of over promising on gooeyness and chewiness...

Melt 450gm allergy free dark chocolate in a Bain Marie over low heat. Off the heat stir in170gm trex (vegetable shortening). In a separate bowl, mix 45gm potato flour with 150ml water and add in 3 tbsp of instant coffee granules, 2 tbsp vanilla extract and 150gm sugar. Add the melted chocolate to this mixture and let cool completely. Combine 150gm allergy-free flour with 1tbsp baking powder and some salt. When cooled, lightly mix the two and if desired, toss about 30gm of allergy free choc chips in AF flour and add that in too. Bake in a 12x18inch pan in oven preheated to 180degrees for 25 minutes. 

Allergy free corn ice cream

It's one of those days where everything I touch turns to dust (recipe testing choux and forgot to turn oven down again and in another recipe, and unforgivably rookie mistake of using baking soda instead of powder...) - high hopes then for my corn ice cream. Sweet and salty, corn ice cream could be considered the marmite of the dessert world and would more likely appeal to those who are familiar with oriental desserts - think sweet salty red bean paste mochi etc. It is after all, the preserve of south-east Asian childhood dreamers of the orient kind and therefore an apt follow-post to my recent excursions to ippudo and cay tre.

The verdict: the Italian half is not crazy about turning vegetables into dessert (not even carrot cake) and especially not ice cream... But, nothing beats the novelty of corn ice cream, and whilst we shouldn't like it, we do. Shhh.

The recipe:

Heat one cup almond milk with 2tbps cornflour dissolved in a touch of water. Stir on low heat until thick. Add in 1/3 cup sugar and a dash of salt. Stir until dissolved. Off the heat add in 160gm sweet corn purée* and blend together with a stick blender. Chill then freeze, stirring every 30 minutes. 

*If very lazy, blitz sweet corn and do not bother to sieve as bits of translucent corn "skin" could convey maximum authencity especially when stuck between ones teeth - charming. 

Sugar and allergy free chocolate sorbet

It's never a good time to go on a sugar detox, as it turns us (or is it me only?) into epicly terrible beings, and especially in January when sugar is so crucial in one's fortification against the battle of holiday blues and the return-to-work tedium. But sugar detox is unavoidable, and perhaps even encouraged, as it forces us to face our existential questions and when better to be a sugar-free grinch than against the back drop of wintry blues and greys?

So I have decided to challenge myself with a sugar free chocolate sorbet; I think it would be too harsh to forbid both sugar and chocolate, won't you agree?

This is our own recipe (http://duckandthyme.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/chocolate-sorbet-dream.html), with the sugar replaced with 5 tablespoons of granulated sweetener. Leave out the Patron too, if you can.

Recoining the allergy freetarian

Rather belatedly I googled the word "freetarian" and to my chagrin it has already been claimed, TWICE! By two different cults! First, by a political cult (and we won't delve into that here) and second, it is apparently interchangeable with "freegan" (which means people who like free, in the you-don't-need-to-pay-for-it sense, food!).

Oh the folly of impulse...back to allergy-freetarian then...

Food intolerances - Allergy Freetarian and proudly so

I was having a lovely chat with a dear friend recently and she asked me a question which got me terribly excited and concerned. It was a rather simple question - what is the term for people like you? My immediate answer was: "friends", bearing in mind that I just had 9 over for lunch of which 4 had special dietary requirements. I also postured "intolerant people" (rather apt for me) and "the troublesome ones" (referring to myself again of course...). But, what is the globally accepted term? Surely, we are not awaiting for the term to be coined - or are we?

Whilst the phenomenon which is food intolerance has been around for decades now, it is still a relatively new and "trendy" area and is now occasionally, but surely unacceptably, referred to as a "white whine". Rather personally, I object (surprise surprise) to the gentrification of the issue (yes you, gwyn) - for most of us, food intolerances are neither choice nor want and much as we would like to trivialise it (and I speak from personal experience with coeliacs (who have gluten intolerance) and the other types), we are bound up like chickens in purgatory, by the very ropes which are our health and sanity. No longer are we only intolerant to gluten or dairy but more commonly a combination of things, with different permutations for every individual. No longer are we vegetarian, vegan, fruitarian, but we are, and proudly so, "allergy free-tarians" - we are not only gluten free, dairy free, egg free, but we are also yeast free, rice free, soya free, fill-in-space free.

So, there! To ease myself into allergy freetarianism and to help me embrace rather than trivialise my intolerances, I'm taking up my other half's suggestion that I carry a freetarian card. And it's scented...Eat my heart out - something I'm not intolerant to, for a change.