Another Saturday and another outing for the bistro menu. For one party there were two guests on wheat free and gluten free diets. As the idea of choosing two starters was to swap them with their partners half way through, both the red onion tarts and the blinis for the smoked trout were made with wheat free flour (see below) and I made some wheat free walnut, raisin and rosemary bread rolls too. In all the best gluten free baking I have done so far.
Even if you are not on a gluten free diet this pastry is really worth making - with the potato in it crisps up and the rice flour adds a great flavour too. It's quite like parmesan shortbread. Next time I make it I'm going to add parmesan too. It's not for the faint hearted though - it can be quite breakable. But the good thing about it is because there is no gluten content it doen't really shrink when cooking, so you can cut it out to the size of your baking tin, and any holes you patch up will stay patched up as it cooks.
I remember the first time I used this recipe and didn't use the xanthan gum - I had a few kitchen nightmares that day. You really need the xanthan gum for this to help it glue together.
There's more about the St. Agnes tart in a previous post.
Unlike normal bread this is quite a moist mix (500g of flour to 420ml water) so it is mixed in the electric mixer rather than by hand kneading.
A third rice flour, a third tapioca flour and a third potato flour for these and a couple of teaspoons of xanthan gum (which replaces the effect of the gluten), 7g intant dried yeast and 1 tsp salt, sugar and baking powder.
I mixed in the walnuts, raisins and rosemary after this and left it to prove before rolling out. To roll out you need to flour your hands really well with rice flour as the dough is very soft. Remember to use rice flour as well to sprinkle on the tray to stop them sticking - easy to use normal flour out of habit, and then you have to start again.
They came out really smooth which is amazing for gluten free bread and tasting great with all those ingredients. If you are going to keep them they start to go hard even if kept in an airproof container so you just need to 'refresh' them in the oven, microwave or by toasting them before eating them.
I used the same rice/ tapioca/ potato flour mix in place of normal flour in my blinis recipe and added a couple of teaspoons of xanthan gum as well. Again, the different tastes of the flours was really good.
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Even if you are not on a gluten free diet this pastry is really worth making - with the potato in it crisps up and the rice flour adds a great flavour too. It's quite like parmesan shortbread. Next time I make it I'm going to add parmesan too. It's not for the faint hearted though - it can be quite breakable. But the good thing about it is because there is no gluten content it doen't really shrink when cooking, so you can cut it out to the size of your baking tin, and any holes you patch up will stay patched up as it cooks.I remember the first time I used this recipe and didn't use the xanthan gum - I had a few kitchen nightmares that day. You really need the xanthan gum for this to help it glue together.
There's more about the St. Agnes tart in a previous post.
Unlike normal bread this is quite a moist mix (500g of flour to 420ml water) so it is mixed in the electric mixer rather than by hand kneading.
A third rice flour, a third tapioca flour and a third potato flour for these and a couple of teaspoons of xanthan gum (which replaces the effect of the gluten), 7g intant dried yeast and 1 tsp salt, sugar and baking powder.
I mixed in the walnuts, raisins and rosemary after this and left it to prove before rolling out. To roll out you need to flour your hands really well with rice flour as the dough is very soft. Remember to use rice flour as well to sprinkle on the tray to stop them sticking - easy to use normal flour out of habit, and then you have to start again.
They came out really smooth which is amazing for gluten free bread and tasting great with all those ingredients. If you are going to keep them they start to go hard even if kept in an airproof container so you just need to 'refresh' them in the oven, microwave or by toasting them before eating them.
I used the same rice/ tapioca/ potato flour mix in place of normal flour in my blinis recipe and added a couple of teaspoons of xanthan gum as well. Again, the different tastes of the flours was really good.
You can see more about this on a 
Pot roasted for 6 hours - like the 
Cut on the mandolin. Bound with mayonnaise and vinaigrette a bit like coleslaw, but with turnips. Salted over night and then drained the turnips take on a new character - you could just mix them with olive oil and lemon and use them like celariac.
I took the cherries raw and whole, and pitted them when I got there. Dropped in a little thickened sugar syrup with a good amount of cherry brandy and cooked for just a couple of minutes till soft (but you don't want them to puree!). I left them to cool naturally while we served the rest of them meal so they could remain at room temperature. 
Smoked chicken and orange salad with orange dressing
Donnington trout fillets in cider and apple sauce with baked cannellini beans, runner beans, broad beans and mangetout
The fillets are cooked skin side up (you need to scale them for this) so you can eat the crispy skin with a ladle of cider on the tray as well which poaches them from underneath.
After the success of the 
Pearl barley risotto with wild nettles, roasted purple sprouting broccoli, artichokes and nettle pesto
Exactly the same as this one pictured a couple of months ago.
There is more on the turkish delight 
So engrossed in picking nettles this (yesterday) morning that I forgot about picking up some rosewater to make turkish delight. Rosewater is not something you can find anywhere. The health food shop has it, but when I was in picking up some more xanthan gum and tapioca flour last week I forgot. And the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that. Anyone would think I was busy. 
You just have to think laterally. And in this case - on a stick. I baked potatoes in the oven and refrigerated them overnight so they 'set' then cut them into pieces. The fish was salmon (skin on), cod and tuna marinated in hoi sin. Skewering the potatoes through the skin meant they held together. As they cook the salmon skin and the potatoes crisp up.
After the first Saturday night of the year I then had 10 days before the next block of busy weeks. 10 days to catch up with all those other things - updating the website (refreshing all the links, adding new photos, adding new pages - like a weddings page - and deleting old ones, adding a site map which helps the search engines etc etc), catching up with all the correspondance that had built up, and looking at new menu ideas for the rest of the year (re-structuring the breakfast menu, adding a spring menu, new summer dishes, re-designing and re-pricing the barbecue menu etc).
Perfect for 8 - 12 guests, there is even a grand piano if you want music while you dine. 
The owner, Kim, said they had recently had a jazz pianist to accompany a dinner party for friends and it made for a great atmosphere because unlike in traditional restaurants, here you have the freedom of being the only party there - so it really is your evening.
