Gluten free canapé bases - smoked salmon on polenta croutes with courgette carpaccio

"Wow - There! That has to be it!"

As wow houses go the 134 Hotel in Stroud does it rather well. Talk about standing out on the street! It's one of those places you know you're going to fall in love with before you've even entered the front door. 

 The principle hen of the hen party we were cooking for was on a strict gluten and wheat free regime, so the menu had been designed around this. Polenta makes a great gluten free alternative to pasta (polenta instead of lasagne sheets?) or bread (think polenta pizza base). On this occasion we used it as a canapé base.
You can buy ready made polenta in the supermarket - shaped like bricks. Tastes like them too! So, as the Tewkesbury shops don't sell raw polenta (well health food shop would., but no time to get there) we had to pick some up in Stroud and cook it at the house as soon as we got there.

Polenta, veg stock, salt, butter, parmesan, thyme, garlic - that's all you need. Keep the stock to a minimum and you make a set-able polenta in 7 minutes. Lay out on a tray and flatten it to the right thickness and it just needed about 10 minutes in the fridge to cool before cutting- can't get fresher than that!

Tikka chicken on mini poppadums (poppadums are also gluten free - made with chickpea flour)
Lady Grey smoked chicken on sweet potato scones (had also made a gluten free version of those)
Smoked salmon on polenta croutes with courgette carpaccio

Related posts

Other canapés we have served
Canapé cookery classes

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Parmesan shortbread

Fancy a biscuit?

Made as Friday was becoming Saturday, these parmesan shortbreads were the base for a beef, rocket and horseradish canapé last night.

The good thing about the shortbread recipe rather than a pâte sablée is when you re-roll the scraps with the pâte sablée if you have too much air in it, it makes huge air bubbles when you cook them - so you end up with a mountain effect, no good for putting canapés on top. With the shortbread that just doesn't seem to happen.

Canapés. What a useful book. This is where these come from:

60g Plain flour (although I'll try ½ wheat flour and ½ rice flour next time).
salt
Cayenne pepper
45g cold butter
60g parmesan cheese, grated

You can pulse these in the food proccessor, or as I prefer, mix them by hand. Once you have a smooth dough, roll it out to 5mm thickness and stamp them out with a cutter - canape size is a 3.5cm cutter. Shapes would be good too. Place them on baking mats on baking trays 2 cm apart, and refrigerate for 30 minutes (this holds the shape when the go in the oven rather than spreading). Bake at 180 oC for 7 - 8 minutes.

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