EACH WEEK, WE ask a home cook about the dishes they’ve been whipping up of late – from simple suppers to lavish lunches.
This week, Westmeath-based speech and language therapist Danielle McConnell shared some of her favourite recent dishes with us.
Danielle, who follows a gluten free diet, posts her meals and gluten free finds on Instagram, where she has amassed thousands of followers for her efforts.
1. My homemade gluten free cupcakes: These cupcakes were filled with my DIY lemon curd and topped with meringue. Not a bake you’d whip up in a half an hour but definitely worth the extra effort. When my family said, “They don’t taste gluten free,” I knew I’d done well with these!
2. A hearty meat and barley stew: When I first started making gluten free food, ‘hearty’ and ‘comforting’ were not words I’d use to describe my meals. My dad always made stew for us when we were in school and I always crave it during the miserable winter weather. It was impossible to find a stew recipe that didn’t involve some form of wheat or barley so, I had to come up with my own. Good quality stock cubes and corn flour are my staples for making a rich gluten free stew.
3. Three-ingredient honeycomb: This is probably one of the easiest things to make but it looks so impressive. It requires just simple ingredients and a little bit of patience. Eat it as chunks of honeycomb or use it as decoration on cakes or cupcakes.
4. My midweek creamy pasta bake: I make tomato pasta bake at least once every two weeks. Gluten free pasta can be quite grim, but this bake makes it taste great. A jar of passata, a tub of light cream cheese, cooked pasta, chicken and some chopped spinach and that’s it done. This is a regular feature in my work lunches as it freezes and reheats so well.
5. An unlikely burger-binder: A lot of shop-bought burgers can contain gluten so I just make my own. When I make homemade burgers, I use honey to bind the ingredients rather than egg. The honey gives the meat a little bit of a sweet taste which works really well with the smoked paprika and garlic in the burger.
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