Tortilla Wrap

Ok, this is not quite a recipe for little picky eaters. It is obviously that my kids are growing up and they start to eat much more diversified. Which is a good thing, but they still have a lot of issues to improve about their diet. So, why did I invent this homemade recipe? For 2 reasons:

1. to use the always remaining leftovers of all kind of steak, roasted meat and so on.

2. and to camouflage some kind of meat that is very healthy but the kids don't want to eat (venison, hunting meat like rabbit).

My mother helps me and she usually cooks the venison for us, by keeping it for days in marinade in order to change the taste, baking it in oven for hours to tenderize it. But my kids still don't want to eat it. So, i came with this amazing idea, to add some sauces over to change the taste and the smell, and to wrap it with salad in tortilla.

First, to trick them, I added also some baked potatoes in the wrap, and then replace them with baked sweet potatoes. But now I don't add sweet potatoes all the time, and that makes the wrap more light and healthy.

So, this is the way to make it: cut the meat into small pieces and cook it for a few minutes in a pan with some olive oil.

I add over 2 sauces: a little of Thai Sweet and Hot Chilli Sauce and Rich Hoisin Sauce.  In the third jar there is homemade hot peppers jam, which I sometimes use instead of the Sweet and Hot Chilli Sauce.

 

For this recipe I use a gluten free tortilla.

Steps:
1. I warm the tortilla for a minute in a hot pan. 

2. Then add some sweet mustard. 

3 - 4. Add some grated carrot, the meat and the salad, and wrap it!

For my eldest son, I add a little of Sweet and Hot Chilli Sauce over, because he likes spicy food.

You can use corn tortilla (picture below) instead of the gluten free one, or any kind of tortilla you prefer, even a gluten version one, if you don't have gluten intolerance.

Doughnuts

Not any doughnuts, but gluten and dairy free ones. What about that? If you have gluten and dairy intolerance, try my recipe. If you don't, try the same recipe and replace what is written with purple in parenthesis. 

- 1 cup almond milk (1 cup whole caw milk)

- 2 eggs

- 2 and 1/2 cups all purpose gluten free flour (3 cups wheat flour)

- 1/2 teaspoon yeast

- 1 teaspoon cane sugar

- 1 teaspoon of olive oil

- finally grated zest from half of lemon

- 300 grams (10 oz) xylitol

Warm the milk at 35-40 degrees Celsius (or let's say at the temperature of your skin). Dissolve the yeast in one tablespoon of milk and add the sugar. Then pour after the rest of the milk. Beat with a folk the eggs, pout over the milk. Add the olive oil and the grated zest. Add the whole gluten free flour and stir. 

Keep this dough in a warm place for 30 minutes. 

Take with your hand or with a tablespoon small pieces of dough, and fry them in hot oil in an enameled cast iron pan.

Powder with your favorite sweetener.  I used xylitol. 

Apple Strudel - Sugar Free

Coconut Cream Recipe

Due to Victor's dairy intolerance, and mine also, I use a lot of coconut (milk, flakes or cream) to substitute the dairy products. These can replace the taste, flavor and texture of cow's milk, cream or whipped cream made by real milk. If we are talking about gluten free dishes, coconut is also helpful, because can replace very well the consistency of dough.  

So, this is the reason I have all the time in my kitchen blended coconut, made like a cream, from coconut pulp and water. To get this coconut cream, first you have to open the coconut. Here you have how you can do this at home.

After you have cracked the coconut, remove all the pulp from the shell, helping by a knife like in the picture above. I suggest you to wash the pieces of coconut pulp before putting them in the blender, because they can have tiny pieces of coconut shell. Then you just put the coconut in a blender with water (for one coconut add 2 glasses of water) and blended it until you get a smooth cream.

I keep the coconut cream in glass jars and freeze it immediately after I prepare it. You can keep it in the fridge, but no more that a few days, because otherwise it will get rotten.

So, this coconut cream can replace sour cream, whipped cream or Mascarpone cheese in many recipes. Or you can eat it just like this. It's a perfect meal for a baby, starting with age of 6 months. For babies I suggest you give it to them, only fresh, not freezed.  

Oven Baked Catfish with Tomato and Onion

One, two, three, four, five

Once I caught a fish alive!

Six, seven, eight, nine, ten

Then I threw him... 

Into my mom's kitchen!

You know, if your kids are not crazy about fish dishes, you should start going for fishing together. If they catch the fish, they will be more tempted to eat the meal. 

In the pictures above, we were for fishing in the Delta of Danube. My son loves fishing and my both kids love to eat fish, for the simple reason that this was a kind of meat they eat since they were born. So, we came home and cooked the fish caught by him.

Caught or not by you, I highly recommend you to have for this recipe 2 small fresh catfishes, not frozen. The taste is better. Other ingredients: 5 tomatoes and 3 onions, 1 teaspoon of Himalayan salt without iodine, 1 teaspoon black pepper, 100 grams (3.5 oz) extra virgin olive oil. 

Cut the fish small pieces as you like. Cut tomatoes and onions small pieces and put all the ingredients in a tray and then it in the oven, at 170 deegres Celsius, for 30 minutes - 45 minutes, depending of the oven you have. At least twice in this time, flip the pieces of fish, to get a nice color on both sides. 

Scrambled Eggs

There are hundreds recipes of scrambled eggs. I prefer this one, because this is the one that my kids love it. What else could it be in it? Potatoes, of course! The potato omelette is a Spanish recipe.

So, you have to boil (or steam, or cook in the oven) one medium potato. Cut it small pieces like in the picture below. Chop also a good quality ham and one small red onion.  

Put all of them in a frying pan with a table spoon of lard or duck fat, and keep on fire for a minute. Beat some organic eggs in a bowl. I usually put 2 eggs for an adult person, and 1 egg for a child. 

Add the scrambled eggs over the mixture in the frying pan and stir with a wood spoon. I don't add salt, because the ham is usually salted.

Coconut Pancakes

I'm telling you, I make this recipe almost every week. It's a very easy one. First, you have to crack a coconut. You can see how to do it at home, quickly and easy, in "Tips and Tricks", just click here. Drink the inside water if you like it, before cut the flesh into small pieces. 

If you don't, just pour it in your blender together with the pieces of coconut flesh, and mix it together with some free range eggs and gluten free flour, until you get a cream like texture. Even if you add the coconut water into the blender or not, add also at least one glass of water. Otherwise the mixture will be too thick. I usually put 4 or 5 eggs for a one coconut, depending of the size of the eggs. And one big full tablespoon of gluten free flour, for each egg. 

So, the ingredients are:

- the pulp of one coconut

- 2 glasses of water

- 4 or 5 free range eggs

- 4 tablespoons of gluten free flour

Here you have the recipe for coconut cream, if you want to make it separately, and use it already made, for the pancakes.

This is how the pancakes look like.

You can eat them like you can see my suggestions in the first collage picture: home made chocolate cream and fresh strawberries; if it's winter time you can serve it with frozen blueberries and fresh mango. Fresh berries of course, if it's summer time. Or just with organic honey.

From all of them, my favorite is the one from the picture below: frozen blueberries, fresh tangerine, organic honey and cinnamon. It's so delicious that you will fell it like a piece of heaven!

Homemade Ice Cream Recipe

Here we have: honey, canned coconut cream, one well ripe avocado and some bananas.

Stir them well together. Add some frozen raspberries and continue to stir.

Try to use glass recipients for freezing the ice cream, just to avoid the phthalates from plastic to get into your ice cream.

If you want to serve it into a nice glass bowl, you can add frozen raspberry on top.

Chocolate Cake - gluten free and dairy free

I just didn't know how to name this cake. The real name of it, that one gave by my mother, is Hokus Pokus. So, let it be just Chocolate Cake for now... 

And the ingredients for dough are (in the pictures below, in a different order that the one written by me for the ingredients list):

- 250 grams gluten free all purpose flour

- 100 grams powder xylitol (or another sweetener)

- 30 grams coconut oil (in the up - left corner)

- 2 free range eggs

- 100 grams coconut milk

- 2 tablespoons of organic honey

- 1 teaspoon aluminium free baking powder 

Combine all the ingredients by stirring them. Pout the mixture in a glass tray grassed with coconut oil. Bake the cake in a preheated over, at 170 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes. 

Remove the cake from the tray. Try not to cracke it...

Cut the cake small pieces like this... and let it cool. Until then, we will prepare the chocolate icing.

The ingredients for chocolate icing are:

- 150 grams coconut oil

- 130 powder xylitol (or another sweetener)

- 40 grams cocoa powder

- 10 tablespoon coconut milk

- 300 grams grind walnuts for decorating

Mix all the ingredients (of course without nuts) for the chocolate icing.

Take a piece of cake with a folk and dip in in the chocolate icing. Waite a few seconds to drop all surplus icing.

And then garnish it with grind walnuts.

Someone could prefer coconut flakes instead of nuts, so you  can garnish the pieces of cake with coconut flakes. I suggest you to grate fresh coconut for this.

Pumpkin Pie

Boo! :) Today is Holloween, so I made last night two different pumpkin pies: a healthy one gluten free and sugar free, and another one with gluten and cane sugar. Actually my pumpkin was a squash... because yesterday afternoon I was in harry and this is what I got from the edge of market. 

The healthy and delicious ingredients I used for the gluten free pumpkin pie recipe are :

- 2 cups of grated pumpkin

- 1 cup walnuts soaked before (time for soaking 4 hours)

- coconut oil (or ghee butter)

- rice papers (you can find them in small Asian groceries, but also in big stores)

For the recipe with gluten and cane sugar, you can see the cane sugar in the picture above. You can use also another sweetener, like xylitol. Instead of rice papers, I used normal pie sheets from wheat flour. 

First step for this recipe: grind the walnuts in a food processor.

Allow the grated pumpkin to drain in a colander or a big strainer. As you can see in the picture below, it remains a lot of juice and you don't want it in your pie, because it will make the pie wet, instead of crispy. 

Put the drained pumpkin in a bowl and add in the grind nuts. Of course, If you and a sweet taste, you can add in cane sugar or xylitol. I forgot to take a picture also with this step because of my neighbors noise who I think were practicing last night the Halloween Boo all over their house...

Now the most difficult step: moisture the rice paper in a recipient with water. One minute each rice paper. Take care handling the wet rice paper, they are very fragile... 

Put one tablespoon of filling in each wet paper rice, grease all over with a brush dipped in melt coconut oil or ghee butter. Here I made a mix of coconut oil and ghee butter, because my coconut oil was finished just yesterday and I added ghee to get the required quantity for my pie.

Wrap the rice paper with the greatest skill you have... Every time I use rice paper, I fill like I am making handicraft... 

Finally place them in a greased glass tray, add in the tray the remaining oil if you have one, and put the tray in a preheated oven, at 160 degrees Celsius, for 20 minutes.

Tip: add 3 - 4 tablespoons with water over the pie, because the rice papers need more moisture.

And this is the pie! The trouble with rice papers, is that the pie will never be very good looking. But the taste and flavor of pumpkin - nuts - coconut oil mix is absolutely divine, so it worth the bother.

And for those who are not going gluten free, you can put the same pumpkin filling in wheat flour sheets, wrap them the same way and bake the pie the same as the gluten free one.