ChufaNetherlands

Nut-free spice

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Notenvrij spijs

Many Sinterklaas recipes are based on spice, normally made from almonds. Another name for chufas is almonds, so they are already similar. There are also similarities in terms of taste and the result is delicious!

The nice thing about chufa flour is the sweetness that the flour already has by itself. As a result, only a little extra sweetness is needed. Some substantiation in the recipe:

  • oil goes with the paste because chufa contains less fat than regular almonds, about 25 grams instead of 60 grams. A little fat is nice, though. We use our chufa oil because of its neutral flavour and because it does not oxidise when heated.
  • If you don't want to use egg, it can be well replaced by about a tablespoon of water or a combination of some water and some extra oil.
  • the lemon can quickly become overpowering but it really gives the spice flavour.
  • As regards colour, we use the lightest possible cream honey as a sweetener. The whiter the sweetener, the better the light colour of the sponge remains.

Ingredients:

  • 100 g chufa flour extra fine
  • zest of half an organic lemon
  • 1 teaspoon lemon juice
  • 25 grams of chufa oil
  • 25 g clear honey
  • 25 grams of water
  • yolk of 1 egg or water

Preparation:

Mix all ingredients for the paste, except the egg, in a food processor until fine. Store this in the fridge until use. Before using, add the egg yolk or water to make the paste more creamy.

Paleo Gluten-free Kruidmoppen (or gingerbread/peppernuts)

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A spice mop is the same as a spice nut but bigger.

Peppernuts are actually those delicious, block-shaped treats but most people call everything peppernuts.

Ingredients:

Dry ingredients:

  • 150 g chufa flour extra fine
  • 50 g arrowroot
  • 50g coconut blossom sugar (they can be made with less sugar but this will make them less crunchy)
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • pinch of fine Himalayan salt or fine Celtic sea salt
  • 2 tablespoons of biscuit spices

Wet ingredients:

  • 100 g (cold) butter, ghee or coconut oil
  • 2 tablespoons milk, coconut milk, horchata or water
  • 1 tablespoon chufa oil, olive oil will also do the trick (this makes it easy to spin small balls and makes them crispier)

Preparation

  1. Add all the dry ingredients together and blend in the food processor.
  2. Add the butter, ghee or coconut oil along with the (coconut) milk and oil and mix again. Not too long, the dough should preferably remain cold.
  3. The spice mops turn out best when you let the dough rest overnight in the fridge.
  4. Make big balls of the dough and flatten them slightly.
  5. Place them on a baking tray lined with baking paper and bake for 25 minutes at 160 degrees.
  6. They only get crunchy later.

Black Pete went out cycling, then his tyre snapped.
Then he had to walk, with the bike attached to his hand.
He came into a village, and said to the blacksmith:
'I believe in my back tyre, there's a tiger nut!

Orange-cinnamon cake

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Sinaasappel-kaneelcake

A delicious cake with an original use of orange, tasty Ceylon cinnamon and little added sugar.

Put 2 oranges whole in a pan with water and boil for 2 hours. Then let them cool down. You can do this in advance, they will keep fine for several days in the fridge.

Make the wet mixture

Ingredients:
- 2 (organic) cooked oranges
- 2 medjool dates
- 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
- 50 ghee (melted)
- 3 eggs

In a food processor, grind the whole oranges along with the dates and apple cider vinegar into a fine mixture. It takes quite a while, rather a minute than 10 seconds. Add melted ghee (I think coconut oil can also be added but we haven't tried it yet) and the eggs and blend again until smooth.

Make the dry mixture

Ingredients:
- 100 g chufa flour extra fine
- 3 tsp ground cinnamon (we use Ceylon cinnamon)
- 25 g arrowroot
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- pinch of salt

Mix all ingredients together.

Make the cake

Add the wet mixture to the dry mixture and mix into a batter. Put the batter in a cake tin lined with baking paper and bake the cake for 45 minutes at 170 degrees.

Delicious with a cup of black tea!

Chufas or tiger nuts and celiac disease

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We recently had an interesting email contact with a lady with celiac disease about whether chufas would be suitable for people with celiac disease. First a recap:

  • wheat allergy is getting an allergic reaction to wheat, other grains can be eaten though
  • glutensitivity you can have if you are tested for wheat allergy or celiac disease, it is not detectable but you still suffer from gluten
  • celiac disease (or gluten intolerance), being unable to tolerate gluten at all

The latter was fodder for something I didn't know. I thought, chufas are gluten-free and therefore suitable for people with celiac disease. Through the lady of mail contact, I found out that there is a limit up to when a product can be called gluten-free. That limit is 20 ppm, or 20 milligrams per kilo. This 20 milligrams is a safe standard for most celiacs, but can still cause problems for a few who are extremely sensitive.

Every step in the production process can pose a risk ...

So her question was, how are the chufas harvested, transported, packaged and shipped? Easy to find out, however, it is not, and ultimately it does not guarantee that the chufa 100% is gluten-free.

Because from a given, a gluten-free product the chufa, you come to process, namely a controlled certification system. Our supplier is certified gluten-free, we ourselves are not as this costs a lot of money but we do work gluten-free.

However, if a certificate does not comply (because of the 20 ppm limit which is still too high for extremely sensitive celiacs), you actually come down to randomness, chance and luck. Luck if the driver of the tractor or employee in Spain does not eat a wheat sandwich or the farmer in Africa (Niger) happens not to have some wheat at home. Even though we gain insight into this randomness and chance, it suggests security which is probably not there.

A 100% waterproof system

I pointed her to the one system which does make 100% foolproof - the body! Whether it was an option to eat one chufa. She ended up eating a handful of chufa with fortunately a good outcome. No trouble at first. To be sure, she had to test more often and for longer.

Again, for most people with coeuliakia, 'gluten-free' is enough!

For more information, see The Dutch Celiac Association NCV.

Carbohydrates in chufas

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Koolhydraten in chufa of tijgernoten

When you look for the amount of carbohydrates on the packaging of chufas, you may think that chufa is rich in carbohydrates. We are sometimes told that too, what a sugary product chufa is. However, a caveat is in order:

Fibres!

If you look at the carbohydrate content on a package, that includes fibre these days. In the case of our chufa products, the content is:

  • Chufas and Chufa meal
    61.70 grams of carbohydrates of which 15.50 grams of fibre
  • Chufa meal Fine
    64.50 grams of carbohydrates of which 16.30 grams of fibre
  • Chufa flour Extra Fine
    61.30 grams of carbohydrates of which 13.00 grams of fibre
  • Peeled Chufas
    61.70g of carbohydrates of which 11.20g of fibre

Fibre is a carbohydrate that is not absorbed in the small intestine. Fibre provides 2 kcal per gram, other carbohydrates 4 kcal per gram. So the high carbohydrate content can be insidious if you don't look at the fibre content at the same time.

(most fibre is made absorbable in your large intestine, but there is also a portion that remains unabsorbable, the non-fermentable fibre and these give no kcal at all)

Dates, plantain and sweet potato

What about other carbohydrate-rich foods commonly eaten?

A difference can clearly be seen in the fibre content. Apart from the fact that fibre gives less kcal per gram, there is actually another property of fibre that is much more important:

Fibre makes you feel 'full'!

The satiety effect of fibre

A few glasses of apple juice is doable, eating a few apples whole is not easy. Eating fibre is a natural way of limiting your intake of food to the amount needed to nourish your body. This amount now becomes a 'portion'.

How many carbohydrates does a serving contain?

How many carbs are you really getting? As a portion, we calculated with a bowl of peeled chufas (50 grams), 2 Medjool dates, a sweet potato (easily 250 grams) and with a bit of plantain chips (200 grams).

Now the picture changes considerably... where the fibre content is about the same, the chufa suddenly turns out not to be such a crazy choice if you want to watch your sugars and carbohydrates.

If you consume the chufa in the form of horchata and make it yourself, consider doing something else with the fibre like baking a biscuit.

Sources nutritional values:
Nutritional value from our supplier, Google and fatsecret.co.uk