I have been eating Pork Floss (Bak Hu) all my life since I was a kid. It’s very versatile and goes with almost everything! I ate it with bread, porridge, soup, anything and everything. And it is easily bought in Singapore – we have at least 4 or 5 Bak Kwa chain stores that sell it.
But, for 宝贝, being a kid who is allergic to wheat, she has never tasted it in all her life. Because, the sauce that goes into making it is not gluten free. If you have food allergies or a mom of one, you will totally understand how I feel.
As someone who has failed home economics in school, I can’t make over complicated dishes and neither do I have the patience to. So if I can make this, anyone can!
I attempted different recipes and finally got it right on the third try! My first attempt resulted in a block like meatloaf that resembled spam. (Ya, maybe I can try to recreate gluten free spam when I’m free. lol). The 2nd time, it was kind of overcooked to almost being burnt. You get the picture…
I like this recipe, because it makes use of the meat from the soup bones. The spare ribs that were used for cooking soup usually have very soft and tender meat. I fish them out from the soup and shred the meat from the bones and keep them in the fridge so that I can use them for making pork floss. I always love the idea of reuse, upcycling etc. And it’s fuss free because I use the breadmaker to make it. Yes, you have heard it right… BREADMAKER.
So here goes!
Ingredients for Gluten Free Pork Floss
– 300g meat (I use the shredded meat from spare ribs used in soup)
– 4 Tbsp sugar
– 2 Tbsp fish sauce
– 1 Tbsp gluten free light soy sauce
– 1 Tbsp water
Easy Peasy Method
1. Put everything into the breadmaker. Choose the Jam function. At the beginning of the cycle, use a spatula to push the meat in from the sides of the container so that they get mixed in nicely.
2. For my breadmaker, I need about 1 and a half cycles. After 1 cycle, I restarted a 2nd cycle for 50 mins. My full Jam cycle runs for 1h 25 mins. This timing varies for different brands of breadmaker. Like all kinds of cooking, for the first time, use the taste and sight tests between intervals to see if it’s done. It should look crispy and flaky and taste like the commercial ones.
I came across this recipe on the internet quite a while back. I saved it, meaning to try it out but forgot all about it until recently. The original recipe was heavy on sugar!! One would develop serious diabetes just looking at the amount of sugar in it. So I reduced the amount of sugar by 50% and found it still too sweet for my liking. I further reduce the sugar amount so that I don’t get hyperactive kids after they consume it…. The flatbread got a thumbs up from the kids. Then again, they love anything with even a tinge of sugar in it, with the exception of honey meatballs (they prefer savoury ones).
Feel free to reduce the amount of sugar even further, to your liking.
Ingredients for Gluten Free Sourdough Cinnamon Sugar Flatbread
1st bake
– 1/2-1tbsp veg oil or butter (for brushing on the sheet or tray)
Congratulations! If you are on this page, it means that your gluten free sourdough starter has started bubbling! Now it’s time to use your discards to make some yummy sourdough bakes!
This is the easiest discard recipe and I use it all the time. Usually I use it to make sourdough crumpets which my girl absolutely loves! They can be eaten on their own or with jam. The family loves the garlic version. (The picture is a garlic crumpet). If you have muffin rings, you can use them to make muffins. I have used them as pizza bases as well.
2. Heat up your pan. Add baking soda into the batter and whisk it in lightly to make sure that it has been thoroughly mixed in.
3. Pour 1/2 tbsp oil onto the hot pan and spread it to coat the pan. Ladle the batter onto the pan. I use the tablespoon (1-2 tbsp). You can make a few crumpets depending on the size of your pan.
4. Cook for a few mins until you see the top is set (you will see some bubbles on top).
5. Flip crumpets to lightly brown on the other side.
6. Cool the cooked crumpets on the rack. Or… if you can’t wait, like my girl, you can eat them when they are hot… If you don’t want to eat them immediately, you can freeze them in a single layer on a silicon mat in the freezer. Store them in a box when they have been frozen. You can toast them straight from the freezer next time.
*For garlic crumpets, you can combine with the garlic butter here. Or just mix minced garlic with butter, spread them on top of the crumpets and toast them in the oven.
Happy baking! All suggestions and questions are welcome. Just write them in the comments.
All sourdough breads start life…. from a sourdough starter. Hehe. Ok, that was lame. Anyway, before you can bake a loaf of sourdough bread, you need the starter. The starter replaces the commercial yeast found in the normal bread. It is full of bacteria that do all the work in the bread for you and it is natural.
Creating a sourdough starter isn’t easy. Starting one that is gluten free is even more difficult. If you are leading a gluten free lifestyle, you will know that gluten free flours cost a lot more than the normal wheat flour out there, especially during the covid 19 lockdown period. They are even harder to find than gold! (exaggeration…)
I went through a lot of trial and error and trawled through lots of literature (online or in print, there are a lot of information on normal sourdough but very little on gluten free ones! So frustrating!) before I finally have a successful gluten free sourdough starter (which I named Scooby Dough) that doubles every time it is fed. By then, I have already used up sacks of various gluten free flours, literally, to create it.
Create a gluten free flour mix
I created a gluten free flour mix because I wanted my starter to be easily adaptable to any sourdough recipe and also imbued with various kinds of bacteria present in the different flours. You don’t have to do this. You can have a pure brown rice starter or a buckwheat starter or just a mix of 2 flours. The gluten free flours you can use are as follows : brown rice flour, buckwheat flour, sorghum flour, teff flour, millet flour. The most common starters are made of 50/50 brown rice/buckwheat. If you are allergic to any of these flours, just leave them out when creating the starter.
Setting up the gluten free sourdough starter
You will need :
– a sterilised clean glass jar or bowl with a cover
– weighing scale
– gluten free flour mix
– room temperature water (I have a filtration system at home, so I am using filtered water)
Day 1
In the morning, weigh out 20g gf flour mix, 20g water. Mix them thoroughly in a small bowl. The texture should be yoghurt like. Carefully, transfer the mix into the sterilised glass jar. Cover it loosely without screwing the cap. Leave it in a cool corner without direct sunlight.
In the evening, weigh out 20g gf flour mix, 20g water. Add them to the mix in the jar and mix them thoroughly. The proportion is always 1:1:1 – starter : flour : water. Put a rubber band around the level of your mix, so that you can tell if the starter has increased in volume and the amount of increase.
Day 2
Morning : Weigh out 20g starter, 40g flour, 40g water. Put the rest of the starter into a glass jar or container and keep it in the fridge. For the first few days, the bacteria has not been activated so it is not advisable to make anything with them yet. Wash the glass jar so that there aren’t any remnants in the jar which may cause mould to form. Mix everything in a bowl and transfer into the clean jar.
Evening :Weigh out 40g flour, 40g water and add them into the mix in the jar. Mix thoroughly.
Repeat the steps until your starter starts to bubble. This usually takes about 7-14 days. Once your starter starts to bubble, you can start using the discards in your fridge to make sourdough discard bakes.
Continue with the steps until your starter doubles in volume after 1 feeding. That means it is now ready for baking. Congratulations! You can give your pet starter a name (it is alive after all!) and start baking with it.
Q: What if it still doesn’t rise after 7-14 days?
A: Normally, it should. If it doesn’t, try replacing water with a fermented liquid such as yeast water, kombucha, ginger bug, whey. Another way is to add 5g of sugar every feed.
Meet my pet starter, Scooby Dough!
Here is a picture of my pet starter Scooby Dough! Look at all his beautiful bubbles! If you find it too tedious and expensive (gluten free flours aren’t cheap) to create your own starter, you can buy an offspring of Scooby Dough here! You can use it to bake immediately. It is a very versatile starter and you can also change it to a starter of your own liking because it has been infused with a variety of gluten free flours.
Hibernating Sourdough Starter in Fridge
If you find that you don’t bake every day and the sourdough starter can be a very hungry pet, just pop it into your fridge after your last bake. It will go into hibernation mode. Just be sure to take it out once a week and feed it once. Let it double in volume then put it back in the fridge.
Plan ahead for your bakes. Take the starter out of the fridge 1 day in advance and feed it once in the morning to reactivate it. If it doesn’t double after that feed, you will need to feed it again in the evening. Once it doubles, it’s ready for a bake.
I have been intrigued with fermented food ever since I came across it on my quest to cure 宝贝’s eczema. I have even brought love for fermented food further by founding Craft & Culture with Winnie, so that we can reach out to more people out there who loves it but have no time or passion to make them.
Here are some of the books that got me started on fermentation.
Sandor Katz is the Father of Fermentation. His books details the science behind fermentation and various kinds of fermented food. It’s not a pretty book though because it is wordy and doesn’t have many pictures to follow. But it is very detailed and is a wealth of information.
I must really thank Juan (Check out her instagram @juanspantry for more recipes) for this wonderful gluten free Raspberry Almond cake recipe. Anyone who is on a gluten free diet will totally understand how difficult it is to find a tasty and yet gluten free cake! What’s more, it’s super easy to bake! This is especially important to me because I am such a dunce in the kitchen!
Ingredients for Raspberry Almond Cake (Gluten Free)
2 1/2 cups frozen raspberries, thawed
6 eggs
1 cup sugar
2 cups almond meal (or ground almonds)
Method for Raspberry Almond Cake (Gluten Free)
Preheat oven to 160 deg C. Grease a 16cm or 22 cn round springform cake tin. Line base and side with baking paper.
Place 2 cups of raspberries in a bowl and mash them with a fork.
Using a mixer, beat eggs and sugar on high speed for 8-10 mins or until thick and glossy. Gently fold in raspberries and almond meals. ALTERNATE the two until everything is combined.
Pour the mix into a prepared tin. Bake for 60 mins or until it is golden and firm. Cool it in the tin for 10 minutes.
Transfer to a wire rack for cooling. Decorate the top with the remaining raspberries. Serve.
Check out the centre of the cake. It’s moist and pink. The crust is a little crisped. Thumbs up from my kids. I am, henceforth, given the permission to bake this cake again. :p
I have been dying to make fresh basil pesto sauce every since I got my first rooted cutting from one of the nice members on the FB Urban Farming group.
I have been trying to propagate them through cuttings ever since I received it. Right now, I have 3 little basil plants and they need a trim. Their leaves are getting messy. Snip Snip snip!
I love the rich taste of this fresh basil pesto sauce. It is especially easy to do and all you need is just throw everything into a food processor. How much more idiot proof can it get??
Ingredients for Fresh Basil Pesto Sauce:
2 cups fresh basil leaves
1/3 cup nuts (usually pine nuts or walnuts are used, I used macademia because I only have those right now and can’t go out to buy others as it’s the covid19 circuit break now)
3 cloves of garlic, minced
1/3 cup of freshly grated Parmesean cheese (If you don’t have this at home, you can use Romano or Parmesean-Reggiano)
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Method:
Put the basil leaves and nuts into a food processor and pulse them until they are fine.
Add garlic and cheese to the mixture. Pulse.
Add olive oil. Pulse until mixture becomes a paste.
Stir in salt and ground black pepper to the paste. To taste.
Fresh Basil Leaves from my plants in the yard. How much more organic can it get!? :)
Texture of pesto mixture before adding salt and black pepper
You can add it to your pasta. Just lightly toss them on a warm pan. It also tastes very good on toasted bread and crackers. Or if you think your food is too bland and needs an extra oomph!
The biggest headache I face in the gluten free journey is that there are so few ready made food in the supermarket that cater to this group of people. Something that is so readily available like the seaweed chicken is a luxury for my child. The only way is… to make it myself.
There are many recipes online but the problem is, not all taste nice, even though the pictures look yummilicious. The other hurdle is, they are usually not made of gluten free ingredients. When some ingredients are replaced, they simply do not taste the same. After some trial and error and tweaking, I finally have one that is… gluten free AND yummy. (Well, that’s according to my children and hubby whose views may be heavily biased.)
You can try it out and see if it works for you. I hate frying in the wok as I certainly hate cleaning the cupboards, the stove, the floor, well, EVERYTHING. So this is an air fryer recipe.
Gluten Free Seaweed Chicken Recipe (Air Fryer)
Ingredients :
500g Chicken Thigh (with skin removed. I usually make crispy chicken skin which the kids love!)
3tsp gluten free soy sauce (I used the kikkoman one)
3tsp sugar vinegar mixture (1tsp sugar to 1tbsp vinegar)
1/2 tsp salt (to taste)
2tbsp gluten free self raising flour
2tbsp potato starch
3 sheets of seaweed
Method :
Cut the chicken thigh into rectangular pieces.
Marinade the chicken thigh pieces with the soy sauce, sugar vinegar mixture and salt. Let it marinade for at least 45 mins or more.
Cut the seaweed into rectangular strips that are big enough to go round the chicken pieces.
Mix the self raising flour and potato starch in a separate bowl.
Mix the chicken pieces into the flour-starch mixture and make sure that all pieces are evenly coated. Dust off extra flour from the chicken pieces.
Wrap each chicken piece with a piece of seaweed and place them neatly in the air fryer. You can choose to use the basket but I find it too tiring to wash the chicken bits off the mesh… so I use the grill basket. line them up so that they don’t overlap.
Set the temperature to 180 deg C for 15 mins.
And Ta.. da…!! Gluten free seaweed chicken and NO OIL SPLATTERS!!
Ever since I bought the Joyoung Soy Milk Maker about 1.5 years ago, I’ve been meaning to write about it. But it kind of got back logged. ? Then forgotten.
I bought it from Taobao at a fraction of what I would have paid in SG. The only difference is in the plug. Fortunately, I discovered that it can use the same plug as my rice cooker! So voila! Just plug it in!! Less hassle!! ??
I’ve been using it to make almond milk recipe for the kiddos. Just dump all the ingredients into it. Press a button. Wait for it to beep. Filter. Drink!
It’s the same thing for the Soy Milk. I bought organic soya beans from cold storage. It doesn’t say non GMO on the packaging though. Just can’t find one that says non GMO. If anyone knows where to find it, let me know.
Soy Milk Recipe
1 cup soya beans
4 cups water
3 pandan leaves (shredded)
8 dates (I use medjool dates)
1. Soak soybeans in 2-3 cups of water overnight.
2. Discard water and rinse soybeans.
3. Remove skins to your best effort. I rub them between my fingers.
4. Add all ingredients to Joyoung. Press button. Read a book. ?
5. When the machine beeps, filter it with a sieve or coffee sock.
6. Add honey or other sweeteners to taste. Or simply drink it straight up!
Oh great!! I ran out of gluten free pancake mix and the brand I usually use was out of stock on Iherb! After discovering Iherb I simply refused buy the gluten free or organic stuff from local shops anymore! It’s about 30% cheaper on Iherb, including shipping fees! I think I’ll write about Iherb when I’m free!
Anyway, I remembered vaguely that my cousin posted a link in our whatsapp group on some healthy easy-to-do recipes.
Ok… Time to test the pancake recipe. I was pretty skeptical about it because it only had 2 ingredients. Ya… Only 2… And you can find them in everybody’s home. Well… Almost! Maybe 90% of the people have them at home.
Easy peasy. Just egg and banana!!! Huh!! Do I hear you say “huh?!” My reaction exactly when I saw the recipe.
Aiya.. Even if 宝贝 doesn’t want to eat it, I will. I love bananas!
So the proportion is 1 banana (the big one. I use 2 small ones sometimes) : 1 egg
Mash up the banana. Add the egg. Beat them together. Drop a dollop of the mixture on a pan. Make sure your pan is not too hot. The banana burns easily. Once it solidifies, flip it over.
Ta-da!! Here they are!! Not scoring high in the looks department but they certainly were yummy!!
These were the 2nd batch of my 1st attempt. The 1st batch ended up in my tummy. Too ugly to be seen! It took a few tries to get them reasonably decent looking. ?
But hey! They are gluten free, yummy and easy to make if I run out of breakfast food to serve up.
Have fun!
*Enter TFZ557 at Iherb.com to get $5 off your first purchase!*
1 July 2018
Finally got around to updating the recipe. The batter was too soft with just 2 ingredients and I had a hard time flipping them. I tweaked it a little by adding some coconut flour.
