It is constantly surprising how many things contain wheat, barley or rye. There are obvious things that you cut out straight away—bread, pasta, beer, cakes and pastries—unless they’re specifically marked “gluten free”. But there are a host of less obvious things as well, turning you into an expert in reading food contents labels. Things to check carefully on a gluten-free diet include:

• chocolate and lollies
• cereals
• biscuits and crackers
• French fries—these can be coated with flour before deep frying
• gravy mixtures
• processed meats and sausages
• salad dressings
• sauces, including soy sauce, Worcestershire sauce, Hoisin sauce
• seasoning mixes, including rice and noodle flavourings
• seasoned snack foods, such as potato and corn chips
• soups and stocks
• spreads, such as Vegemite, peanut butter, Anchovette paste
• yoghurts—some of the flavoured ones are thickened with gluten.

To anyone attempting a gluten-free diet, making the change seems daunting—“what am I going to eat?” being the primary concern. Our diets are often so loaded with breads and cereals that you can’t have any more, it can be a real challenge to find alternatives. There are plenty of delicious things that you can eat, it’s just about making sure you eat enough to fill you up.

Gluten-free fillers

Our favourite gluten-free fillers are:

• chickpeas, lentils, beans (kidney, cannellini, butter, fava, black)
• quinoa, buckwheat, polenta
• seeds, nuts
• corn, rice, potatoes
• eggs
• plus a host of other fresh fruits, vegetables, meats and fish.

Gluten-free substitutes

If you’re really struggling to fill up, here are some of the things that we’ve substituted into our meals to make them gluten free.

Tasty gluten-free meals

Gluten free doesn’t mean flavour free! We make some delicious gluten-free meals. Once you learn what you can and can’t eat it makes it much easier to adapt your recipes to suit. Check out some of our regular dishes:

Soups

• Zucchini, potato and feta soup
• Dhal
• Chestnut soup
• Pumpkin soup

Salads

• Witlof, apple and walnut salad
• Quinoa tabouli
• Asparagus and pea salad
• Orange and fennel salad
• Coleslaw
• Caramelised pear & fennel salad with gorgonzola

Mains

• Herbed rissoles
• Coconut chicken curry with banana chutney
• Pasta with cauliflower, peas, mint and quinoa
• Coconut, chicken and banana curry
• Thyme and lemon lamb with zucchini and chickpea
• Lamb and haloumi skewers
• Beef tacos
• Fish with charred Mediterranean vegetables
• Tuna with bean salad

I love this zucchini, potato and feta soup but I have to admit the first recipe I tried wasn’t that inspiring—basically throw everything in the pot and simmer. Instead, here I’ve taken the basic ingredients and changed the cooking process to get as much flavour out of them as possible.

This is just brilliant for lunch and freezes really well. It’s got a really fresh, leafy flavour from all the herbs, with tangy flavour from the yoghurt and feta.

Ingredients

2 tbs olive oil
1 onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
1 tbs thyme, roughly chopped
1L chicken stock (I use Massel because it’s meat, gluten and lactose free), plus ½ cup water
3 potatoes, peeled and cut into 1.5cm cubes, and rinsed
4 large zucchini, cut into 1cm slices
½ cup flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
½ cup basil, roughly chopped
¼ cup natural yoghurt
100g feta, crumbled
Freshly ground salt and pepper, to taste

Method

Heat the olive oil in a large saucepan. With the lid slightly ajar, sweat the onions on low heat for five minutes. Add the garlic and thyme, stir and cook for one minute.

Turn the heat up to medium and add the potato cubes. Cover and allow to cook for around eight minutes, stirring frequently so they don’t burn or stick. You want to get the potatoes a little golden and flaky on the outside.

Add the zucchini and cook for two minutes. Add the stock and water, and bring to the boil. Reduce the heat and simmer with the lid off till the potato is cooked through and soft.

Stir in the parsley, basil and yoghurt. With a stick blender (or you could use a food processor), blend the soup mixture until smooth. Season with salt and pepper. Add the crumbled feta and stir through.

Serve immediately. Alternatively, allow the soup to cool in the saucepan and dish into freezer containers.

Makes approximately six serves.

To pack the soup full of flavour, it’s really important to cook the shallots and mint slowly on a low heat. All the crunch should be gone from the shallots. They should be soft and golden, and starting to pull apart into threads. It’s also important to go light on salt in the soup itself. Remember, you’ll be adding prosciutto at the end, which is quite salty. You want a creamy soup with just a hint of sweetness, crunchy croutons and salty, crisp prosciutto for a perfectly balanced dish.

Ingredients:

½ loaf of stale ciabatta
Olive oil
1 large handful of fresh mint, leaves picked and chopped
12 slices of thin prosciutto
1 bunch of spring onions, ends trimmed and finely chopped
2 tbs butter
500g frozen peas
500ml chicken stock
500ml chicken consommé
½ cup thickened cream
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Method:

Break the bread into irregular 2–3cm pieces. Put these into a roasting tray and drizzle with a little olive oil; toss to coat. Cover the bread with the prosciutto slices and place under a hot grill until the bread and prosciutto are crunchy and golden, around 5 minutes.

Meanwhile, slowly fry the spring onions and mint in the butter for until soft. Turn up the heat, add frozen peas and the chicken stock and consommé. Bring to the boil then lower the heat and simmer uncovered until slightly reduced. The key is to reduce the stock up to the point where the peas are still lovely and green, not green–grey, as this will end up the overall colour of your soup. With a stick blender (or in the food processor), puree the soup until it is smooth.

Add the cream and simmer gently until reduced, approximately 15–20 minutes. Season to taste.

Ladle the soup into bowls and sprinkle with bread, prosciutto and mint leaves (serves 4–6).

Chestnuts are amazing. Their flavour is rich and ever so slightly sweet, and the smell of them roasting takes me back to New York in winter.

A few fast facts…chestnuts:

• have about one-third of the calories of other nuts
• are low in cholesterol
• have very little fat or oil
• contain vitamin C
• have a similar texture to firm baked potato.

It’s only been the last few years that I’ve noticed them available in my local green grocer, starting in mid to late April and throughout the winter months. When buying them fresh, it’s best to look for shiny, dark brown shells and the nuts should be firm and feel heavy for their size.

My favourite thing to do with chestnuts is make soup. I know that a soup made from nuts probably sounds quite strange but it’s absolutely delicious! I stumbled across a lovely recipe in Maggie’s Harvest by Maggie Beer. Since then, I’ve made the soup quite a few times but varied it to suit my tastes.

This soup is a dinner party winner but beware, it takes quite a while to prepare the chestnuts ready to go into the soup—double peeling is required to remove the outside shell and then papery skin.

Ingredients

1 onion, finely chopped
1 small clove garlic, finely chopped (optional)
2 sticks celery, diced
500g blanched chestnuts
2 fresh bay leaves
2 tbs olive oil
1.25 L chicken stock
freshly ground black pepper
sea salt
½–¾ cup double cream

To prepare the chestnuts:

Carefully make a slit in the brown shell with a sharp knife and remove it, trying not to cut the nut inside. The nuts will have a light brown papery skin. Place the chestnuts in a saucepan of cold water—just enough to cover the nuts—and bring the water to the boil. Remove the saucepan from the heat as soon as it starts to boil.

Remove the chestnuts one at a time and peel away the second, papery skin. Now the chestnuts are ready to use.

To make the soup:

Gently sweat the onion and garlic in a covered soup pan for a couple of minutes. Set aside the lid and add the celery, chestnuts and bay leaf, and sauté on a medium heat until the celery is soft.

Add the stock and allow to simmer until the chestnuts are very soft and some of the liquid has reduced, approximately 45 minutes.

Remove the bay leaves and puree the mixture. Season to your liking with salt and pepper. Add the cream and heat through on a low setting.

This soup can be eaten straight away or, when cooled to room temperature, divided into meal-sized portions and frozen.

The seasons are changing and there’s just a hint of a chill in the air. Soup weather…

In my parents’ house, Sunday nights in winter meant soup and crusty bread, and it’s still something that I crave in the cooler months.

This soup uses the delicious, but hard to cut, Queensland blue pumpkin. If you can’t get that variety, then Jap or butternut also work well. While you can make this by simmering the pumpkin and potato chunks in the stock to cook them, I prefer to roast them first to bring out the sweetness.

Ingredients

1 tbs olive oil
2 tbs butter
1 onion, finely chopped
2–3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
750 g pumpkin, cut into chunks
250g potato, cut into chunks
1.25 L (5 cups) chicken stock
250 ml (1 cup) cream

Method

Roast the chunks of pumpkin and potato until slightly softened (approximately 40 minutes in a moderate oven).

Gently sauté the onion and garlic in the oil and butter until soft and transparent, but do not allow to colour. Add the pumpkin and potato and stir to coat the outsides.

Add stock and bring to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer until the liquid has reduced and the vegetables are really soft.

Using a stick blender or food processor, blend the vegetables and cooking liquid until completely smooth. Add the cream, mix through and heat gently until heated through.

Season the soup with salt and pepper to taste. Serve with lightly toasted crusty bread.

This also freezes well and it was only last weekend that I made a big batch and froze it in individual portions. Now we can have soup whenever we feel like it.

The days are getting shorter, the light is paler and there’s a definite chill in the air. Winter is coming and that means perfect weather for soup.

Proper, hearty (and healthy) soup made from fresh vegetables and simmered gently on the stove top, filling the house with a gorgeous aroma that makes you salivate the minute you walk through the door. Mmmmm, so good you can hardly wait to eat it with a few slices of crusty bread.

We make a lot of soup in winter but the all-time favourite would have to be minestrone. It’s a delicious way to dish up a big serve of vegetables. The leftovers are even better the next day and it also keeps well in the freezer.

We can’t take full credit for it. It’s based on a Jamie Oliver recipe but, over time, we’ve adjusted the quantities to suit our taste.

1 tbs olive oil
6 slices rindless shortcut bacon, chopped
1 Spanish onion, finely chopped
2 carrots, peeled and chopped
2 sticks celery, chopped
1 bulb fennel, chopped
3 cloves garlic, finely chopped
½ a bunch basil, leaves and green stalks chopped
800g canned Roma tomatoes
175ml red wine
2 zucchinis, chopped
3 to 4 leaves silverbeet, roughly chopped stalks and all
400g canned cannellini beans, drained and rinsed thoroughly
500ml chicken stock
2 handfuls of short pasta
Parmesan cheese to serve

Heat olive oil in a large saucepan and add the chopped bacon. Fry gently for a minute then add onion, carrots, celery, fennel, garlic and basil. On a very low heat and with the lid slightly ajar, allow the bacon and vegetables to sweat for around 20 minutes until soft. The heat should be low enough that nothing browns.

Add the zucchini, tomatoes and wine, and simmer gently until it thickens slightly. Add the silverbeet, chicken stock, cannellini beans and pasta. Simmer until the pasta is cooked.

When ready, season with salt and pepper and sprinkle freshly grated Parmesan cheese on top.