Potato Masala filling for Masala Dosas

If you love a masala dosa, then here is how to make the delicious potato masala filling!

One of my absolute favourite Southern Indian foods is a masala dosa: A crispy pancake made from a fermented rice and lentil batter, with a delicious spiced potato filling, traditionally served with sambar (a light soupy dal made with lentils, spices, tomato and vegetables) and a creamy coconut chutney. There are many regional variations, and I've made my potato filling from traditional ingredients based on the flavours of the dosas from Southern Indian restaurants along the 'Golden Mile' in my home town of Leicester where some of the best authentic Indian food in the UK can be found.

It really is the kind of dish which has so many flavours and textures, and is so tasty that it wouldn't even enter your head that you were eating vegan food, or missing your meat and dairy! Making the potato filling and the sambar isn't at all difficult or time consuming, so if you love a dosa it's well worth having a go, and you can buy ready made dosa batter from Asian grocers if you find the idea of making that yourself daunting, and just fry the pancakes at home.

Makes enough potato masala for approximately 16 medium-sized dosas, or 8 large dosas if you have a large dosa pan! (i.e. serves 8 people one portion each - or in my case serves 4 and freeze the rest for another time!)

One Minute Banana, Date and Buckwheat Loaf (includes Thermomix instructions)

A deliciously moist and filling fruit loaf, perfect with a mug of tea, or in packed lunches for a wheat free, gluten free refined sugar free treat.

So, recently I've been trying to come up with filling yet healthy savoury and sweet snacks that I can make, bake and freeze in portions to add to my childrens' lunchboxes to sustain them throughout the day at school. Of course, that's not to say that this isn't also a great treat for grown-ups too... (It is, it is!!)

I'm not the world's biggest fan of bananas or dates on their own, but this was really tasty with the addition of a couple of spices - and also, most people would be hard pressed to guess that it wasn't made from wheat (there's no reason you can't substitute wheat flour, or spelt if you're not cooking gluten free and you want to, you may just need to slightly adjust the amount of liquid added. If cooking gluten free, ensure your buckwheat flour is certified gluten free).

Having an abundance of dried fruit in the cupboards, and several bags of buckwheat flour (which I'd put into a cheese and vegetable quiche/flan-type thing that had turned out nicely the day before - recipe to follow, of course), when I noticed three bananas starting to go a bit freckly, I decided to wing it, and see if I could actually bring them all together in cakey unity - and as luck would have it, it turns out I could so I'm sharing the recipe with you too! (And also so I can make it again - or even better, give the recipe to someone else not a million miles away to make, when we run out!).

So, without further ado, the recipe. If you're using a normal food processor, just blitz all the ingredients (except for the raisins) together until combined with the dates being relatively finely chopped, and then fold in the raisins by hand until evenly distributed throughout the mix. It will probably just take a bit longer than 30 seconds to combine and chop everything for the first stage.

Makes 12-16 slices (I cut each slice into two halves for lunchboxes, to give 24+ portions - I might even work out the calories later to see how it lies in the land of treats!)

Easy Pea, Ham (or Feta) and Lettuce Soup (includes Thermomix method)

A twist on classic flavours, with a variety of textures in this delicious soup

I like to use petit pois in this, because I prefer their more tender texture and sweeter flavour, and to make life easy, you can use bought ham (or chicken/vegetable) stock if you like, and pre-shredded / pulled ham, which is also easily available. Otherwise, sear then gently simmer a ham hock in a couple of litres of water for a couple of hours, with a carrot, leek, celery stalk and a few fresh herbs (parsley. thyme, bay) plus some peppercorns and skim off any scum and strain. Then you can shred the meat from the hock to add to the soup.

For vegetarians, use vegetable stock, and substitute crumbled feta cheese and a handful of chopped fresh mint for the ham (as per the ingredients list) for an equally delicious soup.

Serves eight, 121 calories per serving - one of those soups which is delicious in any season!

Harry's Ultimate Vegetarian Sausage Rolls - Nut Free, Gluten Free and Wheat Free (includes Thermomix method)

Delicious, tasty, meat-free sausage rolls - with all the flavourings of traditional English sausages (with options for regional variations!) and none of the pork - which have even fooled some meat eaters!

Named after my son, as I made them for his birthday! From 55 calories per party-size roll. If you or your children (or fellow grown-ups!) love sausage rolls and you want to make them meat-free without doing the usual claggy cheese and onion filling (that becomes rather rubbery and unpleasant once cool); or you haven't been able to eat sausage rolls for years, because you can't eat wheat, or gluten; or you haven't found a decent vegetarian filling you can make, because you're allergic to nuts and other options have seemed bland or mushy...

...or even if you're none of those things, but fancy making some lovely, healthier, home-made sausage rolls without any of the additives or chemicals in bought ones and you prefer to know exactly what you're eating - then these are for you and yours!!

You might, just *might* even find that you prefer these to regular sausage rolls (well, you certainly won't be chewing on any suspect gristly bits, which my son hates)!

I was initially inspired to have a play with textures and flavours for a vegetarian filling by Cyndi O' Meara's vegetarian sausage rolls recipe (which I confess I haven't ever made) but I liked her idea of using oats as a base, with feta cheese as one of the protein and flavour elements. After that, I wanted to make it nut free, and wheat free, and use traditional English pork sausage flavourings in a mixture which I was able wrap in pastry, so it was all experimentation from thereon in, with seeds and spices and herbs and other aromatics and family members being given suspicious blobs of cooked mixture every now and then until the flavour and texture was right!

This quantity makes around 24 sausage rolls (about 4cm long each before cooking, if you're measuring!) with a generous ratio of filling to pastry compared with shop bought - if you use a 500g pack of bought pastry (or double my easy puff pastry recipe) you could easily stretch this to 36 plus rolls (double these quantities if you're cutting them like the mini sausage rolls you get at parties - I like to make mine more generously!).

Calorie wise, if you're counting (now come one, who eats sausage rolls on a day they're counting calories - but it's good to have an idea if you can't resist sneaking one and just need to know!) - they're 55 calories each for half-size mini party rolls, or 110 calories per my larger 4cm rolls, as in the photographs (if you make with my pastry, adjust calories accordingly if buying the pastry - my calories are split down per ingredient, so it should be pretty easy to add it all up, then divide by the number of sausage rolls you make. With this recipe, it's 2,641 for the total quantity of filling, pastry and egg wash - just divide it by how many rolls you make). [Calories in square brackets]

Easy Gluten Free Puff Pastry - (Method for Thermomix or Vitamix or food processor)

There's absolutely no need to dread making pastry (you're not alone, I have for many years!), you just need a fail-safe recipe and you can whip up a batch in minutes, and it's deceptively easy too!

This makes a fantastically light and flaky, (rough) puff pastry, perfect for sausage rolls, pie lids, savoury or sweet tarts or tartlets etc. and you would never even guess it was gluten free. It will rise even more when it's not wrapped around fillings, too!

          

I’m not sure whether a normal food processor will cope with the ice cubes and frozen butter for the pastry (see the paragraph below in italics if you want to have a go with a normal food processor), you will need something high-powered that can cope with frozen food specifically (e.g. Thermomix, Vitamix or similar etc.). 

If you don't have a high-powered food processor, you could make it using super-chilled butter, and iced water instead of ice cubes (add ice-cubes to 65ml of water, and drain off the iced water and measure again when you're ready to use it), but you will need to tweak the technique a little to suit you and your machine.

And if you like the look of these delicious meat-free, gluten free, nut free sausage rolls, click here for the recipe!