The flourless chocolate cake is second only to the orange and almond cake as a GF baking standard. Here’s my version, not too sweet, but with powerful chocolate flavour.

Ingredients:
1/3 cocoa
1/3 cup water
150g unsalted butter
150g good dark chocolate
1 cup brown sugar
1 1/4 cups hazelnut meal
4 eggs, separated

Preheat oven to 150C.

Combine cocoa, water, butter and chocolate in small saucepan and heat gently until everything’s melted and combined smoothly. Remove from heat, stir in sugar, hazelnut meal and and yolks. Pour into a bowl and leave to cool. Beat egg whites until fluffy then fold into chocolate mixture in two or more batches.

Bake in oven in lined springform tin for about an hour. It might still be a bit moist in the middle but should appear cooked and have a cracked surface. Leave to cool before removing from pan.

Can be served with some kind of dairy product and/or strawberries. Enjoy.

Ingredients:
1 onion, chopped (I prefer red)
2 garlic cloves, chopped up
1 bunch of kale
2 cups diced fresh pineapple
1/2 cup peanut butter
couple of chilis or tbsp tabasco sauce
1/2 cup chopped fresh coriander
salt to taste

Crushed peanuts and spring onions as a garnish.

Saute onion, garlic and chilis (if using) in oil until lightly browned. Remove stems from kale and cut up finely or shred. Add pineapple to onions, then add kale and cook until tender. If it seems to dry out, just add some water (but you know that already, don’t you). Kale can be pretty tough and need a good blasting, so it’s good to taste it and check. Add peanut butter and tabasco (if using), and coriander. Salt to taste. Serve with rice and garnishes and enjoy!

Ingredients:
500g firmish tofu
1/3 cup orange or mandarin juice
tsp or so orange or mandarin zest
2-3 tbsp lemon or lime juice
2 tbsp tamari or other wheat-free soy sauce
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp shao xing wine
2 star anise, broken up
few slices of fresh ginger

Slice tofu into 1cm slices, and combine with all other ingredients in a plastic container. You can cook it immediately, but marinating overnight makes it much, much better. When you’re ready to cook, just empty the container into a flattish baking dish (I use a china quiche dish) and bake at 180C for 45 minutes to an hour, or until most of the marinade has evaporated and the tofu is browned on the exposed corners. Serve with rice and something green.

On reflection, this could probably be baked with slices of orange, and could probably also be cooked on the stove. Enjoy!

Ingredients:
250ml marscapone cream cheese
250ml cream
2-3 tbsp leatherwood honey (or your favourite/local honey)
2 eggs
1 dessert spoon maize cornflour
1 tsp vanilla essence or contents of a vanilla pod

Whisk all ingredients together. Warm in a small saucepan, stirring carefully, until it just starts to thicken. Take off the stove and allow to cool. (You can sit the saucepan in a sink of cold water if you need to hurry this part). At this point you can taste it and see if you’ve added enough honey, and also to increase the anticipation. Then refrigerate until cold, then churn in your icecream machine. This was the first time I’ve used one of these, and i just eyeballed it until it looked pretty thick, which was about 30 minutes. Then transfer to a container and keep in the freezer until 10 minutes before serving.
Enjoy!

Ingredients:
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tbsp urad dhal (optional)
1 tbsp whole coriander seeds
1 dried chilli, seeds removed and shredded (or more chillis as you like)
1 large eggplant, diced in 2cm cubes
salt to taste
12 curry leaves (actually I forgot to put these in, so I guess they are optional)
1tsp tamarind pulp or juice of half a lemon (also forgot to put this is – I’m not daft, I was just distracted by the three other things I was making at the same time).

Heat the oil in a large frying pan. Fry chilli, lentils and coriander seeds until fragrant and browned, 2-3 minutes (be careful not to burn them). Add eggplant and curry leaves, and fry until all the oil is absorbed. Then add about a quarter cup of water and cover for a bit. Cook until the eggplant is soft and mushy. You’ll need to stir it around a bit, and may need to add water again if it looks like it’s catching. If using tamarind, dissolve it in the water before adding. If using lemon juice, just add it at the end.
Add salt to taste and serve. Enjoy!

Kale is a delicious vegetable which you don’t really see much in supermarkets for some reason. I get mine from Food Connect or the Northey St City Farm markets, but it’s also pretty easy to grow and quite hardy. This salad was one of those random things I just threw together and it happened to be really nice – good mayonnaise always helps.

Makes two large serves – if taking to a  picnic or barbecue I’d double it.

Ingredients:
500g smallish potatoes, of a waxy type
5 leaves of kale
1 dessert spoon macadamia oil
1 dsp mayonnaise
1 dsp plain yoghurt
1 tsp tahini
1 tsp lemon juice
½ tsp salt
1 dsp sesame seeds, white or black

Wash the potatoes and boil them whole in salted water until they’re easily impaled with a fork, 20-40 mins depending on size. Meanwhile, shred the kale roughly and steam until it changes colour to a dark green and is tender. Toast sesame seeds in a dry pan until just golden – be careful not to burn.  If you use black ones you’ll just have to use your nose to tell when they’re ready, or throw in some white ones to act as markers.

Combine all other ingredients. I usually have a bit of a problem getting my tahini to dissolve into a salad dressing, probably because it’s been in the cupboard a while and has separated out. If your tahini looks a bit sticky, you can do as I did and leave it out here and toss it directly through the chopped warm potatoes – the heat seems to soften it up.

When potatoes are cooked, drain them and when they’re cool enough, dice into potato-salad-sized pieces. You can peel them if you want to but I generally wouldn’t because the potato skin adds flavour and is apparently nutritious. Combine with kale and dressing, and most of the sesame seeds, leaving a few for artistic sprinkling on top.

I can think of endless variations for this salad – macadamia butter instead of tahini, toasted macadamia pieces, sesame oil and a tiny bit of tamari, fried cubes of soft tofu, toasted almonds, almond butter, lemon zest, a little bit of shredded preserved lemon, &c. Enjoy!

This recipe is from one of my favourite cookbooks, The Complete Asian Cookbook by Charmaine Solomon. I have to admit that in my family we always call this dish carrot halva, but in the book it is gajjar (carrot) kheer and the halva is something else. Just as I was typing this up I remembered I still have some in the fridge. Yum!

Ingredients:
250g carrot, grated or finely chopped
1 litre full-cream milk
1/2 cup raw or caster sugar
2 tbsp almond meal (optional)
9 cardamon pods

Bring the milk to the boil and add the carrot. Simmer on a low heat, uncovered or partially covered, for around three hours. At some point along the line, maybe after a couple of hours, add the other ingredients. When the pudding is done, both the carrot and the milk should have undergone a transformation. The carrot doesn’t taste like carrot, and is kind of caramelised, but without being browned at all. The milk has boiled off and has become almost granular. As it’s getting towards the end, you’ll need to stir it more frequently to keep it from catching on the bottom.

You can blend it before eating, to give a puree texture, and if you’ve only chopped the carrots you might want to do this, but if I’ve grated them I tend not to. It’s nice warm, but I’d also eat it chilled for a more icecreamy feel. You could dress it up with a few pistachios or blanched almonds in each serve, but I personally have never felt the need for this. I just serve it up in small quantities and eat with a teaspoon, to savour every bit.

But halloumi is much nicer – chewy, salty, flavoursome. Mine was a little too salty, but I just took it out of its brine and soaked it in plain water in the fridge for a few hours and that leached enough salt out. It can also leach out in the curry if it’s cooked for a bit, so it’s good to remember not to add salt.

This is another one adapted from Raghavan Iyer’s book. It makes use of a homemade spice mix which might seem troublesome but is really what makes it a cut above the rest. It’s the only part that’s not so quick, but once you’ve made it you can keep it and use it for other recipes.

Serves about four.

Ingredients:
250g halloumi (pre-soak your halloumi in plain water for a few hours or overnight if very salty)
2 tbsp vegetable oil
1 tsp cummin seeds
250g finely chopped spring onions, including green tops (about 1 bunch)
250g nice ripe tomatoes
2 tbsp chopped fresh coriander
1/4 tsp ground tumeric
2 fresh chillies
1 tsp Balti masala 

Balti masala spice mix:
2 tsp fennel seeds
2 tsp coriander seeds
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp mustard seeds
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 tsp cardamon seeds
1/2 tsp nigella/kalonji seeds
3 bay leaves
2 cinnamon sticks
2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

Heat a frying pan over medium-high heat and fry the spices for 1-2 minutes. Pay a lot of attention and be very careful not to burn them. The mustard seeds should start popping, the fennel should get brown-tinged and the coriander and cumin should get even browner. They should also smell overwhelmingly fantastic. I fried mine one at a time, so I could grind them separately in a mortar and pestle, which is easier because of the different sizes and hardnesses of the spices. Toasted spices, I found, are much easier to grind, and grinding the toasted cinnamon sticks and bay leaves is pretty fun. If you have a spice grinder or appropriate blender/food processor, you can use that. In any case, Raghavan recommends letting the spices cool before you grind them.

Making the curry

Slice the halloumi and fry in a little oil on medium-high heat until browned on both sides. Or you can cook it under the griller. Then slice into bite-sized pieces.

Combine all ingredients except oil and cumin in a bowl. Then heat oil in a wok or large frying pan, and fry the cumin seeds for 10 seconds, before chucking in everything else. Stir fry over a moderate heat until the spring onion greens have all collapsed and everything is well-combined. Then serve!

Serves six to eight, probably best served as part of a meal with a vegetable curry or something because it’s quite rich.

Ingredients:
2 cups raw unsalted cashews
400g tin coconut milk (or slightly smaller tin coconut cream)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp tumeric
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
12 curry leaves
6 cardamon pods
6 cloves
1 cinnamon stick

Bring cashews to the boil in a saucepan of hot water, then take the pan off the stove and leave to soak for two or more hours.

Drain the cashews then combine all ingredients in the saucepan. Bring the the boil and cook on a medium heat for 30-40 minutes.

I have a general preference for not telling people what I’m making for dinner, and not telling them what all the ingredients are before they’ve eaten it and told me it was delicious. Then I feel clever when I explain that cocoa, millet and buckwheat groats are what makes it so good.

This recipe satisfies my penchant for Americana food. It’s adapted from “Pierce St Vegetarian Chili” from Heidi Swanson’s blog 101 Cookbooks, but of course my version is gluten-free, and has some other variations which are mostly the result of the ingredients I had on hand.

This recipe makes great leftovers. It’s carby enough to be eaten on it’s own, but not so carby that you can’t eat it wrapped up in some corn tortillas baked with cheese on top. Yum.

There’s so many elements to this recipe it’s hard for me to say what’s essential to its success. There’s certainly lots of room for experimentation, but I would suggest using only grains and pulses that are likely to hold their shape. If you’re concerned they might go mushy, you can toast them or lightly fry in oil before you add them to the pot and this is supposed to keep them whole.

Serves at least six.

Ingredients:
2 tbsp olive or vegetable oil
1 onion, finely slicesd
5 cloves garlic, sliced
1 tbsp grated ginger
3 dried chillies, finely chopped, with seeds
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp cocoa
1 tsp ground up cumin seeds
2/3 cup puy lentils
1/3 cup yellow split peas
1/4 cup brown rice
1/4 cup polenta (not instant)
1/4 cup buckwheat groats
1/4 cup millet
400g tin chopped tomatoes
2 nice ripe tomatoes
dessert spoon molasses 
stock or water
1 1/2 cups cooked pinto beans (or 1 tin)
salt, to taste (quite a lot)

To serve:
Any of sour cream, yoghurt, feta, labna, olive oil or other fancy oil, chopped coriander, squeeze of lime or lemon juice

Fry onions, garlic and ginger in oil in a stockpot – at least 10 minutes. You can put this on and then get all the other ingredients out of the cupboard (assuming you’re not going to be arranging a tableau for a photo). Add chilli, paprika, cocoa and cumin, and stir. You can then add the lentils and grains, or you can pre-fry them in a little oil, or in a dry pan, just for a couple of minutes beforehand. Once you’ve fully combined the lentils and grains with the onions and spices, add the tinned and fresh tomatoes, the molasses and stock or water to cover.

That’s pretty much it. Now you just cook it on a low-medium heat, essentially indefinitely, but at least for 40 minutes. Stir occasionally and add extra water if it’s getting too thick. Ten or 20 minutes before you’re ready to serve it, add the beans and begin checking for salt. Pulses and grains always require a lot of salt, so it can take quite a while to get the salt right and it’s pretty important. Pulses without enough salt = super bland. If you’ve used tinned beans or bought stock, it will probably already have salt, but you’ll still need to add more. This is also the time to raise the heat and boil off some water if you’ve added too much. It’s supposed to be wet, but not a soup.

Add whatever optional extras you have, and enjoy!