Laze-agne

What is it about lasagne that's so darn good!? Personally, it's the fact that - when cooking for two - one dish means dinner's in the bag for a few nights to come. And everyone deserves the occasional evening in front of the TV with a ready-meal.

For the Filling

1x 250g box of g-free lasagne sheets (I used Casalare)

550g beef mince

1 onion chopped

2 cloves of garlic chopped

2 tins of chopped tomatoes

2 tblsp g-free tomato paste

1 small bag of frozen chopped spinach

2 carrots peeled and sliced

2 celery sticks peeled and sliced

A glug of good olive oil

Salt and pepper to taste

A small bunch of fresh oregano

A small bunch of fresh basil

Sautée the onion and garlic in the olive oil until translucent, then add the mince. Once this is browned, add the tomatoes, plus one tin of water, the carrots, celery and tomato paste. Season and leave to simmer for 40 minutes, adding the oregano leaves and some of the basil right at the end. In a separate pan sautée the spinach with a little salt and pepper, making sure you get rid of any excess water.

For the Sauce

50g flour (I use Dove's all-purpose flour. You can use a mix of rice flour and corn starch instead)

2½ tblsp olive oil (use butter if you can have dairy)

500ml milk (use soya or rice milk if you need to)

A dash of nutmeg

1 bay leaf

Heat the oil and add the flour, stirring it into a roux. Once the roux is glossy and pulls away from the pan take it off the heat. Warning: if you add the milk directly to this it will quickly cook into a doughy mess. Let it cool slightly, then add the milk, whisking continuously. Add the bay leaf and nutmeg and stir over a low heat until you have a glossy sauce that coats the back of a spoon. Remove the bay leaf.

Preheat the oven to 190C. Put a third of your mince mixture in the bottom of your lasagne dish. Cover with pasta sheets. Tip: Hold your hand over each sheet for about 10 seconds, as they tend to curl when they touch the hot sauce. Spoon a layer of spinach on top, then a third of the bechamel sauce. Repeat with the mince, pasta sheets, spinach and bechamel. With your last layer you won't put spinach on top of the pasts, just the bechamel sauce. Top with tomato slices and fresh basil leaves and bake covered for 20 minutes. Uncover and bake for a further 30 minutes until the top is golden. Dig in.

Christmassy deliciousness

Yes, I've started my Christmas baking already! I don't think I've been this excited about Christmas since I was six and still believed it really was Father Christmas who was eating the mince pies we left next to the fireplace. That's probably because it's our first one as Mr and Mrs. It will also be the first one I've had with my family in five years, and Nicks (that would be Nicky, not Saint Nick) will be jetting over from SA just before Christmas to see the sights of Muscat. So we'll have a full house and I can't wait.

One of my favourite memories of this time of year is the heavy Christmas cake tin my grandparents would lug from Zimbabwe down to Durban every Christmas. We'd eat that cake every day for tea for the month of December, well into January, and getting to the last slice was heartbreaking as it meant it was all over for another year. As you can gather, I'm a fruitcake fan. But not everyone is, and you'll always have someone who picks out all the cherries or the peel. So this year, I've decided to make a fruit cake that, I think, is a little more grown up. The sort of cake you sip with an espresso while catching up - Italy's panforte.

This cake is naturally dairy- and egg-free, easily gluten-free. It's traditionally made with almonds and figs and honey, but you can use whatever nuts and fruit you want, and I thought I may as well make use of what the Middle East has in abundance... dates and date syrup. Date syrup, for those who don't know, is dark, rich and treacle-like, so is perfect if you don't want things too sweet.

Panforte from the East

1½ cups nuts (I used ½ pecan nuts, ¼ pine nuts, ¾ walnuts)

½ cup mixed peel

½ cup chopped dates

¼ cup chopped dried apricot

¼ cup currants

½ cup gluten-free flour (I used half white rice flour and half corn starch)

1½ tsp cinnamon

¼ tsp ground nutmeg

2 tblsp pure cocoa powder

¼ tsp salt

¾ cup date syrup (use honey if you don't have this)

170g sugar (if you're allergic to cane sugar used fruit sugar)

Preheat your over to 180C and line an 8-inch cake tin with a round of baking paper, greased and gusted with a little g-free flour. Coarsely chop the nuts and mix them with the dried fruit, cinnamon, nutmeg and flour in a large bowl. In a saucepan, heat the date syrup, sugar, salt and cocoa powder until the sugar and cocoa has dissolved and the sauce starts to get a little foamy on top. You don't want it to boil. Pour it over the fruit and nut mixture and stir it in quickly making sure everything is coated. Then pour it into the cake tin and press it down firmly. Bake for about 25 minutes. You don't want to let the sugars burn.

Wait for it to cool and slice with a sharp serrated knife. If you've never had panforte before, don't expect light fluffiness. The ones I've had before should have "do not eat it you have denture" warnings, but, made with date syrup, it isn't quite so toffee like. This is firm and chewy with a moist fruity, dark chocolatey centre. I might have to make another one.

Fresh From The Farm

Last weekend, we spent the day at a friend's family farm near Barka, a town not far from Muscat. It was a perfect day out in the open, surrounded by date palms, fruit trees, herbs, vegetables, playing kids and friends.

I ended up with bunches of fresh mint and rocket, thanks to the lovely Jacquie. Most of the mint has gone into a coconut, lime and mint attempt at ice cream. The rocket went into today's lunch.

One of the first things I cooked when Gav and I found out that gluten was out, was a sort of fried onion and mushroom, rice, tun, herbs concoction. It changes every time I make it, depending on what's in the fridge... peppers, salmon, chilli, you name it. Hence the reason Gav and I call it 'Rice Surprise'. So while Gav was away this weekend, I had the house to myself, DVDs to watch and a 15-minute meal was in order.

Wild Rice Surprise

1 cup brown basmati, red camargue and wild rice (this is a Waitrose mix)

1 tin pink salmon (use fresh if you have the time)

1 spring onion sliced

½ red chilli sliced

Fresh rocket leaves

Sheep's milk feta (this is one form of dairy I'm not allergic to)

Sliced lime

Boil the rice until cooked, then rinse under cold water. Once cool, stir in the chilli and rocket. Flake in the salmon and top with crumbled feta, spring onion and a dash of lime juice. Eeezy!

Muscat - a brief introduction

I've had friends and family waiting for pictures of Muscat for months, and I'm pleased to say that I'm finally getting on top of things. I have an archive of so many to choose from and have so many more I want to take I never know where to start, but I think the logical place is with the trip Gav and I took out here last November (my goodness, that's exactly a year ago!) to decide if it was somewhere we could see ourselves living. Admittedly, we lapped up the luxurious side of things a bit with a stay at The Chedi, but the idea of living in a city with a great outdoors (and year-round blue skies, it seems) that isn't hidden by glass towers was what had us convinced.

I love the symmetry of Omani design. You'll see it in everything, right down to the rows of date palms.

Al Fahal Island in the distance.

Two Can Pecan Ice Cream

I remember the first time Gav made me dessert. It was a surprise and he vanished into the kitchen leaving me to wait for the masterpiece he was going to create. A bit of banging and crashing later, he emerged with two bowls of ice cream covered with grated dark chocolate and After Eight chocolates as garnish. We decided that that there was nothing left for him to do but open Gav's Parlour of Incredible Ice Cream Ideas.

Now that dairy is out for a while, we just have to be more creative, so having licked the last tub of mango ice cream clean, I asked him what our next concoction should be...

Coconut and cinnamon? Coconut and cinnamon and pecan nuts!! Yes, pecan nuts. And maple syrup? YES, maple syrup!!

Pecan & Maple Dairy Free Ice Cream

Note: this recipe only makes enough for two. I would imagine that you can easily double things up to make more.

1 tin coconut milk or cream (depending on how rich you want it)

1 tsp vanilla

¼ tsp cinnamon

1 cup pecan nuts

¼ cup 100% pure maple syrup

3 tblsp 100% pure maple syrup

3 tsp corn starch

¼ tsp xanthan gum*

Mix 2 teaspoons of the corn starch with a little coconut milk/cream and then pour this into a saucepan. Add the rest of the coconut milk/cream to the saucepan, along with the cinnamon and ¼ cup of maple syrup and stir over a medium heat to make a custard. Add a little more corn starch if you'd like to thicken it more. Once this is ready, leave it to cool and then pour into a freezer-safe container and freeze for an hour. While it's freezing, heat the 3 tablespoons of maple syrup in a small saucepan with the remaining teaspoon of corn starch, so it becomes a little thicker and put aside to cool. Remove the ice cream from the freezer and give it a whiz in the blender. Return to the freezer and keep doing this until it become firm and creamy in the blender. Then stir in the pecan nuts and smooth the mixture out in an ice cream container. Use a skewer to made a few holes in the ice cream and pour the maple syrup into these, then give it a bit of a swirl.

* xanthan gum is used in a lot of gluten-free recipes. It increases the viscosity of liquids and acts as a stabliser. Most shop-bought ice cream contains guar gum, however, a lot of people with digestive problems react to this.

When this freezes again it goes very hard, so leave it out for a few minutes before demolishing.

... for Ice Cream!

Features 2008

Moreish Minestrone

I have this habit of making enough soup to feed an army. Last year, it was lentil soup and I should have probably stopped to ponder the "1 bag of lentils" part of the ingredients (what size bag, I don't know), but - being the impatient cook that I am - I threw in the bag I had and the result filled our freezer for months. Since then, we've discovered Gav's allergic to those too (I promise it wasn't my fault), so mom's famous recipe is sadly off the menu.

This November, I've somehow made a maxi version of minestrone by adding rice to the recipe I had in an old book of mine by Carla Capalbo, Italian: The best of Italy in 200 Traditional Recipes. Most minestrones have pasta added, but using brown round soup rice makes a heartier, more filling version.

Ingredients

1½ litres g-free stock

Olive oil

2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped

1 onion, chopped

1 leek, finely sliced

2 carrots, diced

2 potatoes, diced

1 large courgette/zucchini, diced

3 buffalo tomatoes, skinned and chopped

1 tin cannellini beans, drained and rinsed

1 bay leaf

2 tsp dried thyme

1 cup brown round soup rice

Salt and pepper to taste

Sautée the garlic, onions, leeks, carrots, potato, zucchini, thyme and bay leaf and rice in a little olive oil for about 5 minutes. I add the rice now, in the same way you would a risotto, so it starts absorbing the flavours from the start. Add the tomatoes, beans and 1 litre of the stock and bring to the boil, then leave to simmer for an hour. Keep an eye on it to see how much the rice swells up. Add more stock if it's looking too thick. It's healthiness in a pot and you can freeze some for those nights when you can't be asked to cook.

Features 2007