Food Revolution Day Dinner Party: PART 1

I decided to get involved with Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution Day on Saturday, 19 May 2012. Basically, it entails cooking with fresh, unprocessed ingredients. As a gluten-free and corn-free person, cooking withe fresh ingredients isn't a very big leap. The closest most gluties get to using processed food is a packet of gluten-free dried pasta. The Food Revolution is also about education: educating people and their families about the rewards of eating real food.


I'm not exactly rolling in the dough yet, though, so I couldn't host a Food Revolution event. But I could host a small dinner party for my husband, sister and her fiancé and educate them about Jamie's revolution. And, of course, I can blog about it and share it with all of you! Since they are already foodies, it wasn't a very difficult task to involve them in the preparation and cooking. If you are passionate about real food, and also want to host a dinner party at some point in time - get everyone involved! Kids too! Make it a collaborative effort. You could even make it a game or competition. That way, you get everybody involved in the satisfaction of creating beautiful, flavourful dishes, without all the processed stuff. Besides the health benefits, the greatest reward for me personally is in the taste. For more information about Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, go here.

The cooks and photographers:

As this blog post is turning out to be very long, I will be publishing this in three parts; this post which includes one recipe (the starter), and then two more in this week – mains and dessert. In addition to that I will also be blogging in the next week about homemade stocks and gluten-free porridge.

Okay, it’s time to get to the good stuff! I dished up a South African style non-vegetarian menu - I hope you enjoy it. If you are vegetarian, or you don't do liver, read on for alternatives. There are also two vegetarian side dishes and a mouth-watering desert.

Menu

To start: Mini gluten-free vetkoek filled with snoek pâté from our local organic market.

Main course: Lamb's liver served on a bed of savoury buckwheat finished off with a red wine reduction, beetroot salad made my special homemade yoghurt mayonaise dressing and custard peas.

Desert: Gluten-free Cream Apple Tart ("Roomappeltert") made from fresh apples and masala tea.

Tip: When hosting a dinner party, it is advisable to do some things the night or morning before the guests come. For example, for my dinner party I made the desert, cooked the beetroot, made the tart apples and vetkoek batter before hand.

Recipe #1:

Mini GF vetkoek and snoek pâté

Vetkoek

Pronounced "fet" like pet and "cook", vetkoek is directly translated from Afrikaans to English as "fat cake", but it's really a kind of bready fritter which can be eaten with any kind of filling. A definite South African favourite is vetkoek and curry mince. I translated and adapted this vetkoek recipe from boerekos.com. If you are living in the Cape Town area, you can order the GF vetkoek or batter from my home bakery, Michelle's Gluten Free Goodies by sending me a message or posting it on the wall. I do gluten-free platters and baked goods too.

This is what you'll need:

2 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour mix

2 t gluten-free baking powder

Pinch of salt

2 T sugar (or 1 T fructose)

2 Eggs

2 Cups boiling water

Vegetable oil for frying

This is how you do it:

Step 1

Place the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl and mix well. Beat the eggs in another medium mixing bowl. Add the boiling water into the egg mixture and beat immediately. Mix the egg mixture with the flour mixture and combine well. It will look like mash potatoes and have a thick consistency. If you're not a glutie and you want to make this recipe with normal flour and baking powder, only use one cup of boiling water, and note that the consistency will be slightly runnier.

Step 2

Heat the oil in a non-stick pan on medium heat. Fry the batter, a teaspoon at a time, until golden brown. Then turn over and repeat until both sides are golden brown. For the dinner party I made mini bite-size vetkoek to make it more aesthetically-pleasing. And of course, great finger food for the hungry cooks! Normally, vetkoeks are a bit larger, so you can place a tablespoon at a time if you prefer. Larger vetkoek requires a longer cooking time.

Step 3

Drain well before putting the filling on.

Step 4

Cut open and spread. The snoek pâté I used is from the fish guys in the corner who make the delicious tuna biltong, at The Neighbourgoods Market in Woodstock. You can use any filling you want, as I said before, and if you're not a "fish" person or you're vegetarian, here are a few other options: most cheese goes very well with vetkoek so you could do your favourite cream cheese, cucumber and cottage cheese, cheese and apricot jam or syrup (another South African favourite), alternatively; vegetable curry, lentil pâté, or chicken mayo, boerewors, biltong or curry mince if you're a carnivore.

The result - we polished this plate off in about ten minutes or less.