Tired of rice and spuds

I've been looking for a few carb alternatives of late, as rice for lunch and dinner, main and dessert can get a bit tedious and spuds are traditional but unexciting. Quinoa is a good alternative for pepping up lunchtime salads at work, polenta left to set provides a reasonably interesting texture to go with cooked chicken and veg, but the allure of amaranth, for all its super-grain properties, was absent. Cooking it in stock or water like quinoa only led to a gummy porridge which was less than pleasant. I've now tried it toasted, like mini-popcorn. As a breakfast cereal, with milk, it still didn't appeal, but I have higher hopes for it mixed into a salad, as I do with quinoa.

To toast the amaranth, get a wide, flat-bottomed pan with a lid and heat it until its as hot as you can get it. Tip in a tablespoon or so of amaranth seeds and get the, preferably glass, lid on. Give the pan a shake. Within a few seconds the tiny grains should have begun to pop and within a few seconds more they should all have popped. Tip them out into a bowl, return the pan to the heat and repeat until you have the desired quantity.

With regard to quinoa, here are a few links with recipes that sound like they'll be worth trying:

• Gluten-free Goddess: How to cook quinoa
• The Mindful Foodie

For polenta, a good stock or sprinkling of chipotle chilli powder helps liven it up during cooking, then either serve it as an alternative to mash or leave it to set. Onec set it can then be sliced and grilled or used as a faux pastry on a casserole. The cold alternative, forced upon me, is to use it as a carb accompaniment to the packed lunch of the day. Some other recipes include:

• Limes & Lycopene: Polenta with greens, chickpeas and tahini sauce

Gluten-free suppliers

If I'm going to list prescription suppliers then I may as well list non-prescription suppliers of gluten-free foods too.

• Tilquhillie Fine Foods - very good for GF porrige oats
• Green's Gluten-Free Beers - an excellent variety of GF beers of all sorts of strengths. I was a frequent orderer at first but I think my taste for beer, and tolerance of alcohol in general, has taken a nosedive.
• Mrs Crimbles - some very tasty sweet treats on here, such as the Bakewell slices and the macaroons and they have now produced a loaf that isn't far off the Genius standard. Many of their products are stocked in supermarkets.
• Genius Gluten-Free - Yes, a loaf that cuts, tastes and keeps like a "real" loaf. I possibly over-indulged when it first came out but if it becomes available on prescription then I'll definitely be ordering it.
• Debbie & Andrews Harrogate sausages - a great sausage, plain and simple. Look out for them in Morrisons.
• tbc

I'm on the lookout for GF haggis (a butcher in Portobello, Edinburgh does one I believe) and GF black pudding.

Prescription lists

Here are the various prescription lists for the various gluten-free food providers:

• Coeliac UK Prescribable Product List
• Free-from list of all prescribable foods
• Orgran prescription list
• Juvela prescription list
• Dietary Specials prescription list
• Livwell prescription list

Spicy Dipping Sauce

This is a Paul and Jeanne Rankin recipe from their little Hot and Spicy book. Sharon made it to go with some chilli chicken puffs but I used the leftover sauce as an impromptu stir-fry sauce with some chicken and it was spot on.
Ingredients
1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
1 tbsp sugar
1 1/2 to 3 tbsp chilli sauce
2 tsp finely chopped garlic
1 tsp white pepper
3 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
100ml fresh orange juice
1/2 tsp salt
3 spring onions, finely sliced
Method

1. Place all the ingredients in a bowl and whisk with a fork.
2. It's then ready to use as a dipping sauce but if you are using it for a stir-fry then cook your veg and meat over a high heat before adding the sauce and letting it coat the ingredients and reduce for a minute or two.

It's a hot sauce, quite peppery, so regulate the heat by adjusting the amount of white pepper and chilli sauce. The latter may depend on your brand of sweet chilli sauce. I prefer Blue Dragon as it is gluten-free. Worcestershire sauce may not make it into the strict gluten-free category (check the ingredients) but I've never had any problems with it.

If you make up too much then it'll keep for a week in the fridge in a screw-top jar. Just make sure, from a gluten-free perspective, that nobody has been dipping battered or pastry-encrusted nibbles in there!

Cost: Cheap
Preparation time: 5 mins
Ease of cooking: As easy as it gets
Taste: 8/10

That bloated feeling

Since the New Year I've definitely felt a change for the worse. The bloated, bagged-up feeling that I used to have before being diagnosed seems to have made a return. The two main changes to diet I can think of are:

1. I'm now eating loaves made with the Juvela fibre mix - could the gluten-free wheat starch (within the Codex limit) be a cause?
2. I've almost cut out sweets and chocolate since before Christmas - not deliberately, it's just happened. I feel as though I'm eating less fruit too.

You'd think this second point would be a benefit, but perhaps not so. I found an interesting piece on the causes of "bloating" today which actually described what bloating was (and wasn't) and presented a good few sides to the argument of what causes it. Many articles go on to promote some kind of colonic cleansing treatment when I'm just wanting to know the facts or the research that has been undertaken.

Anyway, the article above noted that "There are a number of reflexes that help to control the intestine. Glucose (a type of sugar) entering the small bowel tends to speed up transport along the small intestine, whereas fat in the small intestine slows it down." So maybe the obvious change to the Juvela fibre mix is not the cause and I should revert to having chocolate bars now and again.

This is where it's frustrating, from a scientific viewpoint, trying to figure out whether or not changes to diet have an effect on me. The time it takes for food to have an effect, being uncertain as to whether you feel better or worse over periods of time and the impact of other factors (viruses and other foods predominantly) make it difficult to draw any conclusions. There is no quantitative indicator (like weight) that you can turn to and say, "that measured 6.7 last week and now it's up to 10.3 so that pie supper evidently didn't do me any good."

As it happened, later in the afternoon I decided to have a chocolate bar. An hour later, having had stomach grumbles all day, I felt better and less "bagged-up." Coincidence? Placebo? Who can tell? Maybe I need to make sure my diet still has high-carbohydrate, low-fat food in the mix.

Gluten-Free Fish and Chips

Sharon had left early to go through to Kilmalcolm, the boys were bored and annoying each other (and me) and I had to ccok fish for the tea. I really fancied fish and chips, one of my favourite meals of pre-coeliac diagnosis days, did a quick search on the Internet and came up trumps with this recipe for a battered fish that really did the business. It's great when the Internet can be used for such a quick positive outcome!

The crux of the recipe is the batter:

Dry Ingredients
3/4 cup Doves Farm GF plain white flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1 tsp Xanthan Gum

Wet Ingredients
2 tbsp vinegar (I used rice vinegar)
1 egg
1 cup water or Gluten Free Beer (I used water)

Method

1. Mix the dry ingredients in one bowl.


2. Whisk the wet ingredients in another bowl then combine the wet ingredients with the dry to make a thick batter.


3. Heat about 2cm vegetable oil in a deep pan (clear the area round about, just in case things get out of hand!) or use a deep fat fryer if you have one (ours was binned a few years ago) until it is hot but not smoking. I tend to go for trial and error myself, although it should probably be 180°C.


4. Cut the skinned, filleted, firm white fish of your choice across into pieces about 3cm wide and dip them in the batter, ensuring they are well coated. You should probably dredge them in seasoned GF flour before they go in the batter but I didn't and it worked fine for me. You could add some chopped herbs or maybe mustard seeds or curry powder to the flour for an Asian variation.


5. Fry 2 or 3 pieces at a time. The batter holds together superbly and the fish pieces should float in the oil. The reason fish fried in this way is reasonably healthy as well as tasty is that the fish is protected and effectively steamed inside the batter. You could always discard the batter if you're calorie conscious. Yeah! Right!


6. Turn the fish over after a couple of minutes to get an even crispness to the batter. About 2-3 minutes should be sufficient cooking time in total, depending on the thickness of the fish. I use a cook's eye (remember that I'm no professional!) so once the batter is a nice golden-brown shade the fish will probably be done.


7. Remove the fish with a slotted spoon and place in a basket or sieve lined with paper towels to soak up excess oil.


8. Serve it up with chips and peas and tomato sauce and vinegar and salt but sadly no triangles of pan bread smeared with butter, unless you can stand the sight of your dinner companions tucking into this essential accompaniment to the "fish tea."

The boys really enjoyed this one too with Finn asking for it every time Mammy goes out to work early!

Cost: 8/10 (depending on the fish of course)
Preparation time: 8/10 (the batter is very straightforward)
Ease of cooking: 6/10 (you'll probably have to cook the fish in batches and keep a keen eye on the pan of oil)
Taste: 9/10

Pork Belly and Aubergine in a Tamarind Curry

Sharon and the boys are in Ireland this week so I've been fending for myself. I'm no stranger to doing that but Sharon had taken all the good curry cookbooks with her so I had to trawl the web to find a variation on the Sri Lankan pork belly and tamarind curry that she recently cooked from the fabulous Australian Women's Weekly New Curries cookbook. I found something that was close and amended it to suit my circumstances.

The recipe recorded here is typical of my cooking: approximate measures of ingredients that should work together and occasionally do! This is about enough to serve 2 people. The original recipe I found suggested cooking potatoes in with it instead of aubergine and serving it on a bed of raw cabbage which could be an interesting exercise in texture and taste, but I've gone more for the traditional "serve it with rice" approach.

Pork belly isn't something you want to be eating too often as it is very fatty, but the upside of that is wonderfully moist pork meat when it is braised or roasted with the fatty rind helping to baste the meat throughout cooking. A favourite of ours is Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall's roasted pork belly with caramelised apple and I've just spotted a recipe for braised pork belly with baby squid that has set my stomach rumbling.

Ingredients
400g pork belly (trim the fat a little if you must)
1 tbsp red Thai curry paste (Mae Ploy is my favourite)
2 garlic cloves, chopped
1 onion, not too finely chopped
1 "thumb" of ginger, peeled and sliced into matchsticks
1 tbsp oil
1 tbsp palm sugar (or light brown sugar)
1 tbsp nam pla (Thai fish sauce)
1 medium aubergine, in 2cm dice
2 tbsp tamari soy sauce (tamari is the gluten-free version)
1 tbsp tamarind concentrate
Method

1. Chop the pork belly into 2cm cubes and marinate in a bowl with the soy sauce for 20 minutes.


2. Dissolve the tamarind paste in a mug of boiling water.


3. In a large pan that you can cover, heat the oil, adding the garlic and ginger and curry paste as it is heating. Stir them around for a minute or so, taking care not to burn the garlic, then add the palm sugar.


4. Add the pork and stir fry for about 2-3 mins until it takes some colour then add the fish sauce.


5. Add the onion, aubergine and the mug of tamarind water. Bring to a simmer and cook uncovered for abbout 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.


6. Top up the curry with some boiling water at this stage if it looks too dry. You want a sauce of reasonable consistency, not too runny and not too dry.


7. Cover the pan and continue cooking for another 15-20 minutes until the pork is meltingly tender and the aubergine has no bite left.


8. Serve with boiled rice

Cost: 8/10 (pork belly is an economical cut)
Preparation time: 8/10
Ease of cooking: 7/10
Taste: 9/10

Warbecks Restaurant

As I mentioned in a previous post, the bane of my life when eating out is the double header of having to ask the "is it gluten-free" question and then having to decide whether or not I trust the answer.

We ate at Warbecks in Falkland, Fife, the other night and it made a pleasant change for the chef to seek me out and explain their approach to storing, preparing, cooking and serving the gluten-free dishes on their menu. The rigour that they apply made it easy to trust the answer. Dishes on the menu are marked with an asterisk if they are GF and a double asterisk if a GF version can be made. They won't serve chips unless you tell them that you are OK with stuff cooked in the same oil as, say, a battered fish, preferring to use separate pans and oil to cook saute potatoes. GF shortbread is cut in a different shape so as not to get mixed up with the regular stuff. The soup of the day, minestrone, was available with GF spaghetti in it. There was quite a choice of meringues on the dessert menu and a GF cloutie dumpling and sticky toffee pudding.

In the end I had a fried brie and redcurrant jelly starter (the brie was not crumbed, alas) and a breaded hadddock fillet with saute potatoes and vegetables. This came with a rich, creamy and rounded tartare sauce. There were also steaks on the menu and a salad table with GF dressings available.

The food itself was good and homely, the kind of tasty meal you would cook for yourself. No fancy presentation or complicated techniques or flavours, just plain, wholesome, well-cooked food. When you have coeliac disease, simple food is often the best when you are eating out. The portions were a good size and the prices economical, certainly by Edinburgh standards. It was pleasing to have a choice of GF dishes rather than experience the familiar feeling of "there's one thing on here that I can eat - maybe" and the chef's eagerness to explain everything was a very welcome change.

If you are coeliac and driving through Fife, you should consider a stop off at Warbecks in Falkland.

If you are cooking for me

When eating out or eating unlabelled food there are two aspects to establishing whether or not the food is safe for a coeliac to eat. One aspect is to ask the question "is this gluten-free?" of the server. The other, trickier, aspect is whether or not you trust the answer, especially when it is "yes".

People generally don't know what gluten-free (GF) means, so here is a quick guide to the obvious and less obvious things that contain gluten. The intention is to send a link to this entry to people who are fortunate enough to be in the position of cooking for me!

In the UK, food labelling is now a lot better than it was and streets ahead of many other countries when it comes to listing known allergens so if you are in doubt look at the label on every ingredient!

First, the primary sources of gluten: grains and flours of:

• wheat
• barley
• oats
  
• rye

Second, typical staples containing or based on the above: bread and rolls, breakfast cereals, pastry, pizza, pasta, batter, flour tortillas, pitta breads, naan breads, couscous, egg noodles, cakes, biscuits, beer, lager and most grain-based spirits.

Third, anything which uses any of the above as a coating, flavouring, preservative, binding agent, thickener or bulking agent in its list of ingredients: stock cubes, soy sauce, rice wine, malt vinegar, some vegetable oils.

Things to look out for: barley malt extract, modified wheat starch, processed foods containing soy sauce, bags of grated cheese that have flour in them, potatoes coated in flour to give them added crisp when roasting or frying, sausages or burgers containing rusk, roux-based sauces, flavourings used on crisps or tortilla chips, some baking powders and cross-contamination.

Cross-contamination can either be from the methods used to produce or store the food before it hits the shelves or it can be when you are preparing the food yourself. Warnings about the former typically appear on the food packaging. The latter is up to you: be wary of crumbs or other gluten-containing foods being transferred via butter-knives or other utensils, chopping boards, work surfaces, toasters, oven trays, grill racks or from your hands. This is a serious challenge in our household where three small boys aren't fussy about how they distribute their mucky, gluten-stained paws! One of the less obvious sources of cross-contamination is the frying of chips, say, in oil that has previously been used to cook something in batter.

So what can I eat: the list above may seem long, but it is far shorter than the things I can eat. Fresh fuit and vegetables; meat and fish; butter, milk, cheese, cream; beans (check if they are in a sauce) and other dried pulses (maybe not some soup mixes); rice and quinoa; flours made solely from corn (maize), rice, potatoes, chickpea (gram or besan), sorghum (or a GF mix of these); anything baked using these flours alone; pasta or noodles made using only the above flours; cornmeal (maizemeal or polenta); plain crisps or tortilla chips; all herbs and most spices and curry pastes (check mixes); Kallo organic stock cubes; cider, wine and GF beers.

If you are struggling to find some of these things then most big UK supermarkets have a well-marked "Free-From" section these days (unlike France...) in which you'll find GF staples and some tasty treats. Just watch they aren't in that section because they are wheat, nut or dairy-free: you still have to make sure they are gluten-free.

Essentially, if a meal is prepared from fresh produce and follows the guidance above then I should be fine. If it is a processed, pre-packed meal or a take-away then the likelihood is I can't eat it.

That'll do for now. I look forward to the next GF meal you cook for me!

Do you keep a cow?

We seem to be approaching something of a milk crisis in our house. Every second day breakfast can be a fraught affair as the last drops of milk are shared out between the cereal bowls. Why do we never have enough milk in?

You cannot underestimate the milk consumption of three growing boys and two adults. So many were the plastic cartons I was depositing at the dump one day last summer that an old woman gave me a glance and enquired, "Do you keep a cow?".

We really need to find out if we can get milk delivered to avert these morning crises. I hark back to the days of the milkman coasting through the streets of Glenburn in a wheezy electric milk float, taking away the empties (provided you had remembered to leave them out the night before - "are the milk bottles out?") and replacing them with one or two pints of fresh, creamy, silver-foil capped milk in its distinctive glass bottles. Of an evening there would be a knock at the door as someone came to collect the weekly "milk money". In this supermarket day and electronic age these regular visitors have long gone: no more insurance man or Spot the Ball man or pools collector.

I was fascinated as a boy to once find a Ladybird book that described the whole system for the colour coding of milk-bottle tops. We only ever got the silver ones so the notion of green and gold or red and silver were incredibly exotic. These are the sorts of things that should excite you as a child. I remember carefully prising tops off and flattening them for threading on to red string for Christmas decorations or to scare birds off a row of seeds.

The green and blue plastic caps we have now, aside from being impossible to recycle, are only fit for the children's "glueings" at nursery, which just delays their progress to the bin.

Being the one to get the "cream off the milk" was a bonus. Today's homogenized cartons deny the thrill of seeing the thick plug of cream in the neck of the bottle and the richness of it engulfing your cereal. It would probably be too rich for my taste these days. I can remember plucking bottles from snowy doorsteps and having to dig into a frozen plug of cream with a teaspoon handle to liberate the milk below. Similarly, I also recall the queasy realisation that a bird had pecked through the foil, now recognised as a cause of the spread of campylobacter.

So, it's off to the shops again to buy more 2, 4 and 6-pint cartons in the knowledge that they will be gone before we realise it. Maybe we should buy a cow?

Fish with Green Papaya Salad

When I was young, salad was never an attractive proposition. In our household it featured a few lettuce leaves and some tomatoes. That was the extent of it, undressed and usually as an accompaniment to cold chicken. I can even remember the first time I tasted cucumber, on sandwiches, in the back room of the hut at Meikelriggs, home of Ferguslie Cricket Club, where we had been invited to sit down to tea with Archie Russell, one of the club patrons and a friend of my Uncle James and my dad. On a hot Saturday afternoon the cucumber tasted so fresh and it had a crunch: this was unusual!

Fortunately salads have moved on with the advent of so much more fresh produce available to consumers in the last thirty years. Yet it can be easy to fall into the lettuce/leaves, peppers, tomatoes and cucumber (Sharon excepted) routine instead of giving salads more thought. I've never been overly keen on strong raw flavours, and generally still baulk at raw onion and garlic, but when your taste buds are jaded then something like a Thai salad is just the job to enliven them.

Papaya is now available in greengrocers and supermarkets although I'm not sure how you can tell if the flesh is going to be ripe and orange or unripe and green when you open it, other than by pressing the papaya and hoping for the best. If you can't get green papaya then use a Granny Smith's apple, as its tartness is equally fresh. The dressing for this salad is lively! If you are scared off by the quantities, just cut down on the garlic and Tabasco and cayenne pepper, but be prepared to accept that the robust flavours are what makes this salad special.

I first came across this recipe for Mahi-Mahi with Green Papaya Salad in November when searching for something to do with papaya. As luck would have it, I had also bought Jerusalem artichokes and basil leaves and beansprouts too, so I tried this salad with another white fish, mahi-mahi generally being in short supply here in Scotland. It was a real winter warmer! Jerusalem artichokes are like knobbly potatoes and make wonderful creamy soups but I was surprised by their fresh crunchy texture when raw. Nothing like spuds!

Note: a mandoline makes the fine slicing and julienning so much easier, unless you're a wizard with a sharp knife. Also, the Pampered Chef serrated peeler is very useful for peeling the papaya with little waste.

To marinate the fish (tuna or swordfish steaks or a firm white fish):
Juice of 1 1/2 lemons
2 tbsp green Thai curry paste
1 lb (450g) pound fish fillets
To make the dressing:
4-6 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 tbsps fish sauce
Juice of 1/2 lemon
1 tbsp pure maple syrup
1/2 tsp Tabasco sauce
To make the salad:
1 medium green papaya, peeled, julienned (or 1 Granny Smith apple)
1/2 small red onion, thinly sliced
3/4 cup fresh bean sprouts
about 4 Jerusalem artichokes, peeled and julienned, or water chestnuts
1/2 cup fresh basil leaves, finely chopped
1 tbsp groundnut oil
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
To finish:
Toasted pumpkin seeds or finely chopped peanuts

1. Preheat a grill or griddle pan.


2. Stir together the lemon juice and the curry paste. Add the fish and set aside.


3. Whisk together the dressing ingredients in a large bowl. Set aside.


4. Mix the papaya, onion, sprouts, artichokes, basil, groundnut oil, and cayenne in a large bowl. Set aside.


5. Remove fish from the marinade and transfer to the grill. Grill for 4 minutes; turn and grill 4 minutes longer, or until the fish is thoroughly cooked. Transfer to a cutting board and slice into thin strips.


6. Combine the fish with the salad and toss lightly. Drizzle the dressing over the top and sprinkle with the pumpkin seeds or nuts. Divide into four bowls and serve immediately.

Cost: 6/10
Preparation time: 6/10 (can be a bit fiddly getting everything chopped up)
Ease of cooking: 10/10 (none!)
Taste: 9/10

Thai Fish Cakes

Seeing as Sharon trailed this recipe I may as well put it up. I can remember the first time I saw Rick Stein make these on TV and saying he reckoned they would become one of his most popular recipes. I immediately tracked down the recipe!

Tod nam pla as these small, moreish fish cakes are known, are often absent from the menus of Thai restaurants or, more frustratingly, written down but scored out or not available! I think they're just keeping them to themselves. I have no idea how authentic Rick's recipe is, but it's an easy one to put together provided you have a food processor and a sharp knife or mandoline.

We're fortunate here in Edinburgh to have a number of good Asian stores, the biggest and best being Pat's Chinese supermarket down Leith Walk. It's far better value buying a big tub of Mae Ploy red curry paste; a large bottle of Squid brand fish sauce; cylinders of the hard palm sugar that you need to saw through: all these are things which hang around our fridge and cupboards just waiting to be used. I may do an entry on what we have in our cupboards because it means you're only ever a couple of fresh ingredients away from cooking up something tasty.

The recipe is here so I don't need to write it down. Coley is a flaky fish, not unlike cod or haddock. Coley is a rare enough find (we recently got some from Caledonian Connisseurs, sourced from Kerachers of Perth) so use cod if you restrict your shopping to supermarkets. I tried replacing the green beans with asparagus but it didn't taste quite as nice. The dipping sauce makes the dish, the sweetness and crunch of the vegetables balancing the slightly spongy texture of the fish cakes.

While we normally serve these as a starter, usually with a token salad (every mouthful of salad being just a filler until the next mouthful of fish cake) they could make a main course or splendid summer lunch with something like the robust green papaya salad that I recently discovered.

Cost: 7/10
Preparation time: 5/10 (one for the weekend)
Ease of cooking: 9/10
Taste: 9/10

Whats for tea, Muuuuuuhm?

The usual war cry from Finn! Sitting here thinking about what to cook the boys for lunch today when I get them home. With Ian's coeliac disease and Sean's ongoing problems, I think I am more aware of the amount of wheat in the boys diet, cereals, sandwiches, rolls, pasta, etc. So I am trying to avoid sandwiches (again) for lunch.

More importantly, I am very excited about dinner tonight! Ian is making thai fish cakes for tea and this is one of his best ever recipes, so am really really really looking forward to it!!

What would you like for dinner?

"Something tasty!" is the glib answer in our household.

Does the world need another food blog? Probably not. This is really an extension of our family site, TartanShamrock, and an attempt to digitise the little black book that indexes and contains recipes we've tried and tested over the last few years.

Increasingly I am finding the Internet is a more convenient source for locating new and interesting recipes rather than standing on the chair in our kitchen to select a cookbook or tatty article from the library arrayed along the top of the wall units. While enjoying the hours spent atop that chair, perusing old favourites and fruitlessly searching for new recipes that may combine that day's Ready Steady Cook selection of ingredients, I recognise the benefits of using technology to assist in compiling the weekly menu. It's less dangerous for a start.

So, are there any governing principles to this food blog? No, not really. It's not exclusively about Scottish and Irish food because we aren't particularly traditional in that regard. I must get Sharon to write down her Irish Stew recipe, however. If we can find any ingredients locally, we'll try them. This blog will likely reference all manner of world cuisines without claiming to be an authority on any of them. If we cook something, possibly amending it to suit our locale or capability or taste, then the main requirement is that it is something tasty.

There are some constraints imposed upon us. Restricted diet is one. Location is another. I can't eat gluten so I'm principally interested in gluten-free recipes or recipes that can be adapted to use gluten-free products. Increasingly we favour locally sourced ingredients over air-freighted organic ingredients. This can be a challenge in Scotland, which frequently exports some of its best produce. We also believe in cheaper cuts of meat, slow-cooked, and seafood that hasn't been fished to the point of extinction.

The other constraint is that we have three young children and we believe in trying to sit down to eat the same meal as a family. Many of the recipes likely to feature in this blog will be for the nights when Mum and Dad eat after the boys are in bed, but we will also report on successes with our junior taste testers.