Gluten Free Christmas Stuffing

Hi, Jess again.

Firstly, apologies for the lack of blogging recently. Since the beginning of December, a truly horrific amount of food and wine has been consumed, leaving me very little time to do anything other than eat and drink (and pass out at 8pm). Oh, aside from working, having exams and assignments and travelling up and down the country for interviews. All of which I have definitely not been hungover for.

So anyway, my flat had a christmas dinner this week. I'm not going to patronise you with instructions of how to cook a christmas dinner, we all do it differently. We had seasoned roast chicken and potatoes and roasted the carrots and parsnips in agave nectar - amazing. And all gluten free. But my biggest issue with roast dinners is stuffing, I love the stuff but obviously it's not gluten free. So this year I decided I would make it myself, rather than cheat with one of the gluten free packet mixes (which I'm sure are nice, but I can't blog about a packet mix). The following recipe is adapted from the dietary specials website, and uses their gluten free brown ciabatta rolls (fellow gluten free people will understand that these are the best). It makes 8-10 stuffing balls so perfect for 3-5 people.

100g gluten free bread/2 gluten free brown ciabatta rolls
1 onion, chopped
1 apple, chopped
50g ready to eat apricots, chopped
2 tbsp cranberry sauce
10-15g butter, melted
50ml (or more or less, whatever you need) orange or cranberry juice
Sprinkling of nuts (I used pine kernels)
Mixed herbs to season

Crumble the bread/rolls until they resemble breadcrumbs. Chop the onion and apple, and fry until soft and slightly browned. Add the butter, onion and apple to the breadcrumbs and mix. Add the apricots, cranberry sauce, nuts and seasoning, followed by the fruit juice. Mix together, ensuring everything is evenly spread and you have the right consistency. Use the amount of juice you need, I didn't really measure it out, I just added what looked right (wine's fault, sorry). Use the herbs you want to use - I didn't want a particularly strong taste so went for mixed herbs but some fresh sage or parsley would go nicely too. Roll the stuffing into small balls, place on a baking tray and bake at 180C for about 15-20 minutes or until golden.

This recipe is so easy and goes really well with christmas dinner. The different fruits make it quite sweet, which makes a nice addition when you roast the veggies in agave or honey. You can substitute different juice or nuts depending on your tastes, but less us know how it goes and what you change when you make it!

Christmas dinner, served on a plastic plate, student style.

The most important part of any meal.