Politicised Flapjacks

With a parental state visit occurring last week, we were prepping hard to pretend that we live like human beings. We did the hoovering, watered the houseplants, wiped and/or dusted all surfaces, and the plants on the balcony were either replaced or pruned to within an inch of their lives. The flat was sparkling but I wasn’t finished- what about food? My dad’s a coeliac, which means he can’t eat wheat. Now here’s where I get political: the government has decided to stop funding the special bread that my dad and countless others get on prescription from the pharmacy.

Gluten-Free Scottish Oatcakes

Since moving back home I feel this blog has taken on a theme; that of cooking meals my dad likes! I don’t have a problem with that; I’ve lost weight since moving, so clearly the meals I was making for myself in York –or should I say the endless stream of Pringles and blue cheese- weren’t doing me any favours. Living in the middle of nowhere means that a 2 mile round-trip walk, usually in the rain, separates me from indulging too much. Something anti-indulgence to me now is soup- it's the one thing in our house that never goes amiss and I make a lot of it. I’ve mentioned in a previous post that my Dad simply doesn’t eat lunch if there’s no soup. But I haven’t mentioned that he goes crazy for oatcakes- must be a Scottish thing! When I moved back, we had a hot July of oatcakes with goat’s cheese, made from a great little Midlothian recipe in The Scottish Cookery Book by Elizabeth Craig. I used coarse oatmeal bought randomly from the Baxter’s Soup Factory Shop somewhere on the Borders but when it ran out, any subsequent oatcakes I made had the texture of dust. Glutafin, who make the gluten-free flour we use, changed their white four mix recipe around the same time and now I have problems with lots of my baking. As a result, I’m turning to substitutions to help stabilise things and for this recipe, gram flour, with its nutty flavour worked as well as I’d hoped. Obviously if you’re on the oats-count-as-gluten side of the fence these aren’t for you, but non-allergy sufferers are free to use plain flour instead.

Granola Bars

Normally the granola bar is seen as the boring cousin of the flapjack. Dry and often tasteless, I’ll be the first to admit that I’d side with the flapjack if it was pitted against the granola bar in a fight. This may have something to do with a lust for golden syrup that’s rarely sated but the fact that so many granola bars are dry and hard, rather than moist and soft is always a turn off for me. Last week however, I made the mistake of buying an unsatisfactory coconut and after having shoved a quarter of it in a spicy chicken pulao rice dish, I still had three quarters of the soft-fleshy thing left. Always one to rise to a challenge, I went in search of recipes that could tempt me and lo, the granola bar won.