Fruit Jelly and Fruit Mousse

Another gelatin recipe we've been having quite a bit lately is real fruit jelly. To get a consistency more like commercial jelly, you can use fruit juice, but we've been using the whole fruit.

• 2 cups blueberries
• 1 cup black currants
• 1 1/2 cups room temp water
• 3 Tbs gelatin
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• small amount of natural sweetener of your choice

If your berries are frozen, get them out a couple of hours beforehand to defrost. 

Put the water in a medium sized pan and sprinkle the gelatin over the top. While it softens, zizz everything else together in a blender or food processor.

Gently heat the water and gelatin until the gelatin is completely dissolved. Add about half to the blender and zizz. Then add the rest and zizz well.

Pour into 4 or 5 dishes and put in the fridge to set. You can put it all in one bowl, but it;s then very tempting to just have another mouthful and another and so on!

Mousse

To convert the recipe to a mousse, replace the water with 1 cup raw milk or cream and 1/2 cup yoghurt or yoghurt cream. Sprinkle the gelatin on the milk or cream and add the yoghurt to the blender separately.

You can make all sorts of different flavours of mousse or jelly just by changing the fruit around. Strawberry & banana is also nice.

The version in the photo is Berry Mousse with another layer on top of Yoghurt mixed with fermented cream and raspberries. And a little gelatin in that layer too.

Marinated fish in coconut cream

Usually I serve this in a bowl. But at the moment, my thoughts are on Xmas and I can just see a platter full of kebabs, with the white of the fish alternating with red and green veges. If Xmas Day is hot (but with it having dropped to 12C in Wellington today, who can be sure it will be?), fish kebabs would be a light and refreshing alternative to a roast. They could even be tossed on the BBQ for a minute on each side. Here's my regular recipe, plus thoughts on kebabs.

• ½ cup lemon juice (3-5 lemons approx)
• 1 tsp sea salt
• 500g (1/2 lb) firm white fish (see note below for good types of fish)
• approx 100ml (1/2 cup) coconut cream
• slice of red onion, chopped up finely
• about ¼ telegraph cucumber, chopped up small
• handful of cherry tomatoes, halved
• mesclun or other lettucy type greens

Start preparation 24 hours before you want to serve. Mix the lemon juice and the salt together in a medium sized bowl. Cut the fish into chunks that are roughly 2 cm (just under 1 inch) a side, and mix together well. Press the fish down, so that the juice covers it. If the lemon juice doesn’t cover the fish, add a little extra. Marinate in the fridge for 24 hours, stirring occasionally.

Drain the fish well, put into a clean bowl and stir in the coconut cream. I don’t measure it; I just slosh in enough so that the fish has a nice coating. Chop up the salad veges and stir them in. 

The amounts given are approximate and will depend on your taste and how you are going to serve it. If you are serving it as a main meal, you’ll want to add more vegetables than if it’s an entrée. You can vary the vegetables as well, eg by using spring onions or capsicum.

Kebabs

Leave the fish to sit in the coconut cream for an hour or two. Then thread onto skewers, alternating pieces of fish with your choice of raw salad vegetables – e.g. cherry tomatoes, cucumber, red onion, capsicum, radish or baby turnips. Cold, cooked roast vegetables such as pumpkin could also be interesting.

Xmas kebabs

For the red veges: cherry tomatoes, capsicum or red onion

For the green: cucumber (or zucchini if going on the barbie), celery, green capsicum

What fish should I use?

Good fish to use: terakihi, kawahai (with the brown meat cut off), cod, mullet, halibut, skipjack or albacore tuna

Fish to avoid: Gurnard, bluefin or yellowfin tuna

If in doubt, ask the fish seller for a recommendation 

Beetroot dip

I love baby beetroot, and we got some picked fresh from my sister's garden last week. I turned them into a beetroot dip which we served with fish for dinner.

• Baby beetroot (5 of them made a dip that served 2 of us for 2 dinners)
• Cultured cream, homemade yoghurt or yoghurt "cheese" (ie after dripping out the whey). For a dairy free option, homemade mayo would probably work fine.
• A little himalayan or celtic sea salt

You can add extra flavourings, though I didn't this time. Some possibilities (choose one only!):

• Horseradish cream is a classic addition (check for non-GAPS ingredients)
• I've used PureWasabi by Coppersfolly as a horseradish substitute before
• Lemon juice, ground cumin, ground coriander seed, crushed garlic
• Or just the lemon juice and cumin

Trim the beetroot, leaving about a 1cm of stalk and tail. Wash well, but leave the skins on. Put into a pan and cover with cold water and a little sea salt. Simmer till they can be pierced with a skewer, approx 45-60 minutes, depending on size. Drain off the water and cover them with cold water, till they're cold enough to handle. Slice off the two ends, and you'll be able to slip the skins right off.

Put into food processor with a couple of tablespoons of the sour cream or yoghurt, and zizz. Add more sour cream till it comes to a good consistency, and seasonings to taste. (Sorry, I didn't measure anything). I didn't even take a photo, the one above is pinched from another site. But it's there so you can get a rough idea of what the colour and consistency will look like.

This would  make a lovely Xmas dinner starter, with a bowl of guacamole and maybe a third bowl of chicken liver pate. Make some biscotti from starch free bread, or cut up some vege sticks or chunks to go with it.

Dukkah

Ok, this probably isn't an authentic dukkah recipe. I didn't even look on the net to see what usually goes into it. I just grabbed a few things I had in the cupboard. I think these were the quantities:

• About a cup or so of nuts: tamari roasted almonds and cashews, pistachios
• About a tsp ground cumin seed
• About a tsp of curry powder

Zizz in mini food processor till it resembles bread crumbs. Keep in a jar in the cupboard, and use to spice up your sauerkraut salad.

To make it fully GAPs or WAPF, it would be better to use your own "crispy" nuts. You might then need to add a little sea salt.

Sauerkraut Salad

Some people love sauerkraut. And some people just don't like it at all, but know it's good for them. When you're first introducing a tiny bit of kraut into your diet, you can usually hide it in something, but once you're up to 2-3 tablespoons, it's harder to hide. One way you can make it more interesting is to vary what goes into your sauerkraut - carrots, red cabbage instead of green, some beetroot.

We've recently been enjoying sauerkraut salad. This would be good if you're still easing into GAPS, or later on, when you're digesting raw vegetables well. It's not suitable for the early stages of GAPS Intro.

This is enough for two people:

• About 4-5 Tbs sauerkraut
• A carrot
• Or an apple
• Or 1/2 a beetroot
• A little red onion, finely chopped (optional, if you can digest it)
• 1-2 Tbs extra virgin olive oil
• 1-2 Tbs chopped nuts and seeds or homemade dukkah

Grate the carrot, apple and/or beetroot. Or roughly chop them, then zizz in a mini food processor till in small chunks. Mix everything except the nuts and seeds together, then stir those through.

This particular salad looks very carroty, as the original sauerkraut also had carrot in it.

For Xmas, I'd use zizzed beetroot and apple, and some chunkier pieces of almond. Maybe serve it on a lettuce leaf  such as baby cos.

Christmas Morning Muffins

I love Nigella Lawson's recipes, even though most of them are full of white flour and sugar and other things we don't want to have on a WAPF diet, let alone GAPS! I love her passion for food and her ideas. This morning her recipe for Xmas Morning Muffins arrived in my Inbox, and I could immediately see how to make them GAPSy. My recipe is a variation of Bruce Fife's Honey Blueberry Coconut Flour muffins.


For those who can't have coconut, see the almond flour version I tried later in the week.

• 1/2 cup sifted coconut flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon or mixed spice
• 1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
• 6 eggs
• 4 Tbs (50gm, 2oz) butter or coconut oil, melted
• 4 Tbs honey
• 4 Tbs juice from an orange
• Grated zest of the orange
• 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt
• 1 cup frozen cranberries

Grease a 12 pan muffin tray with Dr Fife's magic oil, or line with baking paper. Sift the coconut flour, baking soda and spices into a bowl and mix thoroughly. Blend together eggs, butter or oil, orange juice, honey, salt and zest.  Mix the two together until there are no lumps.  Stir in cranberries. Pour batter into muffin pans.  Bake at 400 degrees F (205C) for about 16-18 minutes.  Makes 12. (If you want to make less bigger muffins, adjust cooking time accordingly.)

Note that there is a small amount of baking soda, which is technically not GAPS legal. For most people, that small amount shouldn't cause a problem, and I think the texture would really suffer if you left it out. Use your own judgement, or talk to your GAPS practitioner about it.


For my first trial, I used just the mixed spice (in place of the original cinnamon and nutmeg). Ian thought it was spicy enough, but I didn't, so next time I'll add the 1/4 tsp nutmeg as well.


They came out a nice consistency, both warm and cold, and didn't need a spread. But they would be extra good with ghee, sour cream, or yoghurt cheese. Or maybe even sour cream or yoghurt cheese mixed with some lemon juice and honey.


Next day PS: We just had one each out of the fridge for morning tea. Ian had his plain and I cut mine open and spread with coconut ghee. Both ways were great.

White Christmas slice

We recently discovered dried strawberries. Not the sugar coated, preservative laden things you might have seen in the supermarket, but ones where strawberries are the only ingredients. I found them in Hardy's Health food shop. They're so sweet, it's hard to believe there's no added sugar. Anyway, I got thinking about how they would be a good substitute for glaced cherries in some Christmas recipes, and had a hazy memory of something called White Chrismas.

When I googled it, it turned out to be a rice bubble slice with glace cherries, Kremelta, and dessicated coconut and of course lots of icing sugar. So today I've been playing with versions of creamed coconut slice, and here's what we've got so far.

Version 1 used creamed coconut, coconut oil, vanilla essence, dried strawberries and sultanas. I didn't add extra sweetener. It tasted ok, but nothing special, just an everyday slice. For version 2, I used cocoa butter instead of the coconut oil. I added some mixed spice, and replaced some of the strawberries with dried pawpaw (cos I didn't have enough strawberries). It was much more Christmassy.

If you wanted extra sweetness, you could add a little honey. If you wanted some rice bubble like crunch, you could add some chopped nuts.

So here's the final recipe - well, as final as these things get. I'll probably tweak it again next time I make it. But we've got a lot of slice to eat before the next trial!

• 250ml (1/2 jar) creamed coconut
• 50g coconut oil -OR- cocoa (cacao) butter
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• 1-2 tsp honey (optional)

• 50g dried strawberries (or other red dried fruit of your choice)
• 50g apricots, pawpaw or pineapple
• 50g sultanas or raisins
• 50g almonds, cashews or macadamias (optional)

First, get your jar of creamed coconut softening in a bowl of hot water. (If you've got a jar already prepared, you won't need to do this). Next, line a plastic container that's about 15x20cm, or 12x25, or similar, with baking paper. Prepare your fruit: stir through the raisins and sultanas and remove any stalks; chop the rest into small pieces with kitchen scissors or a sharp knife. (note: choose fruits that are free of sweeteners and sulphites)

If you're using nuts, chop them up. (Best nuts for flavour, texture and digestibility are ones that have been made into "crispy" nuts, but raw or roasted unsalted will also do).

When the creamed coconut is soft enough to get out of the jar, scrape it all into a food processor and zizz till smooth. You might need to jab any big bits with a knife to break them up a bit more, and zizz again. When it's smooth, pour half back into the jar for another batch later on, or for adding to soups or stews.

If you're using cocoa butter, grate that and add. Or just spoon in the right amount of coconut oil. Add the other flavourings and zizz till it's all mixed together and smooth. Add the chopped fruit and nuts and pulse just enough to mix them in, but not mush them.

Pour into the container and mix around a bit to make sure the fruit and nuts are evenly dsitributed. Refrigerate for an hour or so, till hard. Lift the baking paper and contents onto a chopping board, and use a large knife to cut into small pieces, 1-1.5 cm wide. Gather up the corners of the paper, and you'll be able to stuff the whole lot back into the container, put the lid on and back into the fridge.

If you want to make them look pretty, spoon the mixture into mini muffin patty pans that have been stuffed into mini muffin trays. Or use foil thingies that are designed for truffles.

Chocolate Spread

I'm very excited that the stock of our new product - creamed coconut - has arrived today! One of the first things I did was whip up a nutella type chocolate spread for people to sample, but free of dairy, sugar and even nuts!

• 250gm (1/2 a 500ml jar) of creamed coconut
• 125gm coconut oil 
• 2 Tablespoons raw cocoa powder (it doesn't have to be raw, but raw tastes better)
• 2 Tablespoons honey (or your favourite sweetener)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla essence

Zizz it all together in a food processor till smooth and pour into a jar. Eat as you would any chocolate spread, or just off the spoon.

Chocolate & fudge recipes

Holidays like Easter or Valentines Day can be a challenge for those on restricted diets. Here are some ideas for chocolate replacements. And the links at the bottom have some non food ideas.


Most people on gluten or starch free diets will be able to tolerate cocoa butter, as its fully fat. You need to melt it before using in these recipes. The easiest way is to chop it up finely, then put it in a bowl on top of a pan of gently simmering water. If you want to maintain its raw status, melt it a small bowl inside a larger bowl of hot tap water. Keep replacing the hot water, until it’s completely melted, which will take a lot longer.

Another whole food that’s good for making fudge like confections is creamed coconut (or coconut butter). It’s very solid to start with, but softens up when gently heated, which can also be done over a pan of simmering water.

Coconut oil is also used in some of these recipes. You can place your whole jar of oil in a container of hot water, or measure out what you need and melt it in a pan.

Try different combinations of these, flavoured with vanilla essence, dried fruit, citrus fruits, spices or raw cocoa powder. Although GAPS doesn’t allow cocoa or carob, some people find they can tolerate them if they're far enough into healing, so use your discretion.

I prefer a little honey as the sweetener. When using honey, it doesn’t mix well with the oils and often separates out. So for the recipes that use a lot of fat, let the mixture cool in the fridge, still in the mixer, taking out and beating from time to time, till it’s almost set. THEN add the honey and process again. Or try your own favourite sweetener instead.

Pour into a flat tray lined with baking paper, mark into squares, then refrigerate till set. Or roll into small balls to make truffles. The oilier mixtures can also be poured into chocolate moulds. In the picture below I've used Easter egg, star and heart shaped moulds.

Store in the fridge. The ones that are mostly creamed coconut might need to sit at room temp for a few minutes before serving, but the ones that are higher in cocoa butter or coconut oil will melt if left out too long.

WHITE CHOCOLATE with nuts

·         2 cups raw or crispy (ie. soaked then dehydrated) macadamias or cashews

·         75g cocoa butter, melted

·         25g coconut oil, melted

·         2 Tbs honey

·         1 tsp vanilla

Zizz up the nuts in a food processor. Melt the cocoa butter and coconut oil. Add to the food processor, along with the vanilla, and combine well. Put the food processor into the fridge until nearly set. Take out a couple of times and give it another zizz, then back into the fridge.

Once it’s thick but not completely set, add the honey and zizz well. Spoon into chocolate moulds or into a flat tray lined with baking paper. Or roll into small balls to make truffles.
 
Variation: & 2-3 Tbs raw cocoa powder

Try these other combinations using the same basic method, or make up your own.

COCONUT WHITE CHOCOLATE 

·         100g creamed coconut, softened

·         100g cocoa butter, melted

·         1 tsp vanilla

·         2 tsp honey

Variation: & 2-3 Tbs raw cocoa powder (pictured)

COCONUT ORANGE FUDGE

·         1 cup creamed coconut, softened

·         1 teaspoon coconut oil, melted

·         1-2 tablespoons honey

·         1-2 Tbs grated orange rind

·         Optional: orange oil
 
Variation: 
Replace the orange oil and rind with 1 tsp vanilla and a splash of almond or other essence. 
Mix in a handful or nuts and/or raisins before forming into truffles.
 

COCONUT FRUIT FUDGE

·         200g creamed coconut 
·         1-2 teaspoons coconut oil
·         a little honey added at the end if needed

·         some chopped dried fruit, eg:

o        4 fresh dates – or –

o        4-6 dried apricots

COCONUT CHOCOLATE FUDGE

·         200g creamed coconut 

·         1 Tbs raw cocoa powder

·         1 Tbs carob or extra cocoa

·         1-2 tsp natural sweetener of your choice

Variation: & 2-3 Tbs raw cocoa powder


OR for something completely different, this chocolate substitute recipe that Shelley sent me:
Mix together pureed dates, pecan butter and a little honey


For more Easter ideas, see this post and this post on Baden's GAPS Guide. There are also some great ideas on Pecanbread.com