Ask a Chef reveals the secrets of those superb dishes you ate in cafes and restaurants and wanted to try yourself.
Taste Nature's spinach, onion and kalamata olive gluten-free muffins
Makes 9 jumbo muffins
Ingredients
¼ cup olive oil
3 red onions, sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 cup pitted kalamata olives
2 tsp dried basil
2½ cups gluten-free flour mix (we use Taste Nature)
35g gluten-free raising agent
10g baking soda
½ tsp ground white pepper
3 eggs (we use Biogro certified)
⅓ cup apple puree
1 tsp vegetable stock powder (we use Rapunzel)
200g grated cheese (includes 50g for topping)
3 cups chopped spinach
Method
Preheat oven to 200degC.
Heat the olive oil in a large pan, add the sliced onion and crushed garlic and saute until translucent. Add chopped olives and basil, mix and cook gently for about five minutes. Set aside to cool. Sift dry ingredients into a large bowl.
Cream eggs, apple puree and stock powder together using a stick mixer. Combine egg mix and dry ingredients with 150g of the cheese, the chopped spinach and cooled olive mix. Fold together. The mix should be quite dry with all the flour mixed in. Add a little milk if required to combine the ingredients.
Spoon the mix into nine lightly oiled jumbo muffin tins until they are just doming over the top edge. Sprinkle the remaining cheese over.
Bake at 200degC for 16 minutes. Rotate the tins and bake for another 5-10 minutes until a skewer inserted into the middle of one comes away clean.
• Requested by Vanetta Rosenberg.
This recipe comes from Taste Nature in High St, Dunedin.
If you have enjoyed a dish in an Otago cafe or restaurant and would like the recipe, write to Ask a Chef, Features, Otago Daily Times, PO Box 181, Dunedin, fax 474-7422, or email odt.features@odt.co.nz, including your name, address and a daytime telephone number, and we will request it.
