Dairy free broccoli soup with goats cheese

Broccoli Soup with Goats Cheese Ingredients:
Serves 4

• 50g/2oz Dairy Free Spread (I use Pure it seems to be being good for cooking)
• 1 large onion, finely chopped
• 900g/2lb broccoli, chopped (seperate the florets and stalks)
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1 litre/1 3/4 yeast free vegetable or chicken stock (I use boullion stocks)
• 600ml/1 pint of soya milk (you could also use rice milk)
• 100g/4oz medium soft goats cheese chopped

1. Melt the dairy free spread in a saucepan and add the onions, brocolli stalks and and nutmeg, fry for 5 minutes until soft.
2. Add the brocolli florets, stock and milk then cover and simmer gently under the brocolli stalks are soft.
3. Using hand blender or stand alone blender puree the soup.
4. Add seasoning to the soup to taste.
5. Ladle the soup into the required number of dishes, just before serving crumble some goats chees into each bowl and hey presto your Broccoli Soup with Goats Cheese is ready to serve.

If you wanted to make this soup for freezing don’t add the goats cheese until you reheat the soup and serve.

Just a note for anyone thinking if this recipe is dairy free why does it have goats cheese, goats cheese has a different fat makeup to cows cheese or milk, somepeople that are intolerant to cows dairy find they can have goats dairy products, it is usually lactose that people react to, this is not contained in goats milk.

Enjoy your Broccoli Soup with Goats Cheese!!!

By chance I managed to spot it in the cheese fridge at Tesco and I bought it with some crackers to try it out and even my dairy eating friends said how nice it tasted.

Pure dairy free soft cheese ingredients:

Water, vegetable oil, dried glucose syrup, soya protein, sugar, emulsifying salt(trisodium citrate). calcium phospate, inulin, salt, stabilisers(locust bean gum, guar gum, carageenan), vegetable mono – and diglycerides, preservative(potassium sorbate), natural flavouring.

Oh yes I can definitely feel some experimenting coming along with the dairy free cheese spread maybe even a dairy free Tiramisu coming along in the pipelines, make sure you keep a look out for these.

Dairy fee lasagne

Dairy free lasagne ingredients:

For the meat filling:

• 1 large onion chopped into small chunks
• 1 clove of garlic finely chopped
• 1 tube of tomato puree
• 1/2 pint of boiling water
• 450g beef mince (this can be substituted with quorn mince for veggies)
• Handful of chopped fresh basil (optional to taste)
• Salt and pepper to season

For the white sauce:

• 570ml soya milk (or goats milk)
• 50g plain flour
• 50g dairy free spread

NB.Pure do both a sunflower or soya spread I have also found a very nice olive spread that is dairy free which is Tesco’s own make from their Finest range if you can’t have either of the above

1 packet of Wholewheat pasta sheets (again you could also try egg pasta sheets or spinach pasta sheets its totally personal taste)

Dairy free lasagne recipe:

1.Preheat your oven at 190c.
2.Heat a little oil in a large frying pan on a medium heat, once hot enough add the chopped onions and garlic and keep stirring until they are just turning tender.
3.Add the mince to the onions and garlic and keep stirring this until the mince meat is cooked through.
4.Now add the tomato purée, boiling water and fresh basil(optional) stir until all the tomato purée is stirred in evenly, add salt and pepper to season then reduce to a lower heat and leave stirring occasionally whilst making the white sauce.
5.Now in a separate pan on a medium heat pour in the soya milk and the dairy free spread, next add the flour through a sieve whilst stirring.
6.Keep stirring the white sauce slowly until it starts to thicken once thickened remove from the heat.
7.For the fun bit, putting the lasagne together start off by putting a layer of pasta across the bottom of a baking dish, where needed break off pieces of sheet to fill in gaps until the bottom is totally covered.
8.Next spoon a layer of mince meat across the pasta ensure all the pasta is covered.
9.Add another layer of pasta on top of the mince meat.
10.Cover the pasta with a layer of white sauce again totally covering the pasta.
11.Add another layer of mince meat then pasta then white sauce and your lasagne is now ready to bake.
12.Put your lasagne on a middle tray of the oven at 190c and bake for 35-45 minutes until the top of the lasagne has started to go light brown.

If you are looking to cram a few of your 5 day in to you could also add any of the following to the mince meat: Mushrooms, Courgettes, Peppers.

There you have it my version of a Dairy Free lasagne - done!

It is a dairy free parmesan cheese and unlike other dairy free cheese attempts it doesn’t have any nasties in it. When I got home I opened it and tried some and yes it smells, tastes and looks exactly like the real thing well done Life Free From!!

dairy free parmesan cheese

Parmesan cheese Ingredients: Soya Flour (Non GM) 72%, Non Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils 17%, Rock Salt, Flavouring, Antioxidant: Vitamin E

Parmesan is mainly used in pesto, risottos, pastas and salads so I will start experimenting, look out of my future recipes containing this new little chestnut – Dairy free parmesan cheese.

So what are Nori Wraps?

Sushi Nori or Nori wraps are made purely of dried seaweed they are fine sheets that are used to wrap the ingredients for sushi rolls. I managed to get hold of some Sushi Nori made by Yutaka from the special foods section in Tesco but you can also get these in any Asian food store.

Nori Wraps

Making Nori Wraps

To make the basics of a Nori wraps you will need a packet of Sushi Nori and a bag of Japanese short grained rice also known as Japonica rice (don’t use American rice as this doesn’t have the same sticky consistency needed) again you can get the rice from any Asian food shop and you may also be able to get it from a supemarket. The standard way of making the sushi rice is with rice vinegar but this is optional as I wouldn’t recomend putting this in for anyone who can’t have yeast as it is fermented.

To complete your wrap now comes the exciting part you need to choose you filling!!! Some ideas include ham, roast chicken, roast beef, salami, crab, crab sticks, prawns, tuna, Smoked salmon, avocado, green or red pepper, cucumber, carrot, asparagus, cheese but there is no reason why you couldn’t put other stuff in.

My Nori Wraps

To make your wrap simply boil some rice and add a tiny bit of rice vinegar, if desired, then lay out your seaweed sheet and spread a layer of rice over the top leaving one end of seaweed uncovered by about 1cm, place your chosen filling in a line down the rice a little off centre and simply roll the wrap towards your line of filling and the end of the wrap you left uncovered by the rice when you come to the end then moisten the seaweed you left uncovered and stick you wrap together, cut you wrap into 6 pieces and voila you have a new interesting lunch box filler.

Don’t forget that as Nori Wraps are simply seaweed they are packed with great nutrients so enjoy and be healthy you can’t go wrong!!