Tuesday 13 May 2008

GF sausages

I’ve tried quite a few gluten-free sausages in my time, so I thought it might be useful if I posted about where I’ve got good ones from…

The Ginger Pig is a GREAT butcher which has a good selection of (marked) gluten-free sausages. They do a really interesting range, including things like Jamaican Jerk and Lamb Merguez as well as more traditional ones, like Pork and Apple.

I know their Traditional ones aren’t gluten-free, and there are a few others that aren’t, but the butchers are always really helpful and know exactly what’s in their meat so will always help you out – plus there’s a big blackboard with which ones are GF… they don’t always have all of the different ones in, but there’s usually a good choice.

We’ve been going to the one in Marylebone for ages, but there’s a good one in Borough Market too. There’s also one in Hackney but haven’t been to that one.

Also in Marylebone is The Natural Kitchen. They do good chicken sausages that are gluten-free. I don’t like the texture so much if I eat them as sausages, but they’re really good for chopping up and using in rice/pasta dishes etc if you don’t feel like pork. They do two different ones – chicken, coriander and something and a mustard-y one.

Quite a few of Marks and Spencer’s sausages are gluten-free too – and not just the more expensive ones…! Some of their cheaper ones are too as, hooray, they use rice starch instead of wheat and rusk to bulk out the ones with less meat content…

Not all of them are though, so make sure you read the label carefully… they have a good labelling system though which clearly points out if things contain wheat/gluten etc.

Waitrose also have some gluten-free ones – they are actually called ‘gluten-free’ as part of the name – their others have wheat.

Seeing as how BBQ season is upon us, I hope this is useful!

Monday 12 May 2008

Quick and easy salad


Despite working practically IN Borough Market, it's a little expensive to be buying lunch there every day (plus it's only fully open on Thursday-Saturday) so I made a salad this morning to bring in for lunch.

It was REALLY simple, took about 5 mins and was pretty darn tasty - so I thought I'd share.

It consisted of:

2 small carrots - peeled and chopped
Some rocket
Some tinned mung beans
Some cherry tomatoes (chopped in half)
A few (raw) fine beans - chopped
Some chopped beetroot (I bought it fresh and cooked it for 3 hours yesterday, but some of the prepackaged stuff isn't in horribly glutenous malt vinegar - I think Sainsbury's organic stuff is OK and M&S also do baby beetroot that aren't in vinegar)
Some M&S Arbroath hot smoked salmon flakes

Literally mixed all the veg and mung beans together, dressed with olive oil, balsamic vinegar and salt and then when it got to lunchtime, added the salmon.

Enjoy!

Corn spaghetti

I tried it - it was good.

I recommend it.

Sainsbury's Free From corn spaghetti.

Seriously, if you can have corn, I really think theirs is the most normal-pasta-like pasta available.