Equipment

Alice’s Excellent Gluten Free Pancakes or Waffles with Wild Blueberries

1 · Apr 19, 2012 · 2 Comments

Alice's Excellent Pancakes and Waffles gfzing dot com 2012 — Pancakes and Waffles - gluten free from gfzing dot com

In October of 2005 I shared excellent pancake and waffle recipe with you all. Buy some frozen blueberries and real dark maple syrup before you read any further. In 2012 it is updated to include information about our favorite waffle iron – we have no commercial affiliation with Nordic Ware by the way, we just like their stove-top waffle iron better than any of the electric models we have tried over the years..

This recipe works with buttermilk as well – for the pancakes. It makes the best waffles if you stick with almond milk as the liquid.

Mix in bowl:
1 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup potato starch flour
1/4 cup tapioca flour
1/4 cup cornstarch
1 Tablespoon GF baking powder
1 Tablespoon sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt

In another bowl:
1 1/2 cups almond milk
3 eggs
4 Tablespoons vegetable oil

Stir the two mixtures together. Heat a non-stick pan on medium, add
butter or margarine. When pan is hot, pour batter to form pancakes (1/2
cup makes a beautiful big pancake), sprinkle with frozen blueberries.
Wait until the bubbles that form in the pancake start turning into holes
(if you don’t wait long enough the pancake will be hard to turn) but not
so long that the pancake burns, then flip. When other side is cooked,
transfer to plate and serve with real maple syrup – use the Grade B syrup which has the most flavor…

To use this recipe for waffles, use only 2 eggs and add another
tablespoon of oil. Omit the blueberries. Waffles take 4-6 minutes to cook.

Update in 2012 For best waffle results, try a Nordic Ware stovetop waffle iron – the belgian waffle type – and brush it lightly with vegetable oil before heating. You have to practice with these waffle irons a few times to get it right. On our stove you heat it on medium high for three minutes, then flip it and heat the other side for 3 minutes. Then, you open it, pour in one and a half cups of batter, close it and cook for 1 minute, then flip and cook for 2 minutes. That makes the perfect waffle in the photograph.

If you are serving food to gluten-free friends, check carefully with the manufacturers, or on the reputable internet-based gluten free food lists, to make sure that all ingredients are gluten free. Or, ask your friends which brands are safe for them to eat.

Mortar and Pestle

0 · Jan 30, 2011 · 1 Comment

For serious gourmet gluten-free cooking, you will want a good mortar and pestle.

What is a mortar and pestle? It is an antique tool, found in many cultures around the world, for grinding or smashing food in to a paste. It performs the function of a modern food processor, but uses arm power instead of electricity. Using a mortar and pestle is good exercise and provides a platform for meditation. You don’t need to pay to use the gym or go to a meditation class if you use a mortar and pestle regularly.

Mexican mortar & pestle arrangements (molcajete) are made of volcanic stone – both the mortar and the pestle have rough surfaces. Thai people often use a ceramic mortar with a wooden pestle. The mortar and pestle we use is made of granite – both the mortar and the pestle – and because it is made of rock, it is very heavy.

Don’t bother buying the beautiful little 1/2 cup mortar & pestle sets that are sold in health food stores – they may cost less than $15 and look beautiful, but they hold less than half a cup and are not really functional for cooking. Even grinding a handful of peppercorns in one of these little toys is an annoying exercise in futility. As you poke around with the tiny pestle, the peppercorns will leap out of the bowl, scatter over the counter and on to the floor, leaving you with nothing but frustration, having had no exercise, in a state of distress, with no more ground pepper than you started with.

Grinding spices with a hefty mortar and pestle, however, is a satisfying experience. The aroma of the pepper teases your nose with the sensations of cooking yet to come. Your arms become stronger. Your mind fills up, not with memories of work left undone, bills yet to be paid, or annoying conversations from your place of work, but with spiciness, fine memories, the act of grinding the pepper, and the promise of a good meal.

The minimum size for a functional mortar and pestle would be about 3 cups (total width at the top = 7″ with a 6″ bowl width), or 5 cups if you want to make Thai green papaya salad.

Triumph Dining, Cards and Book

0 · May 26, 2008 · Leave a Comment

Triumph Dining sent a copy of their Essential Gluten-Free Restaurant Guide, and a set of their Dining Cards, to Gf-Zing! for review. We have tested the book in two states so far, and we have used the cards extensively in American, Thai, Indian and other restaurants and can say that the cards provide an easy way to communicate the gluten-free dietary restriction to restaurant staff. We consider these the restaurant guide and the cards to be true “workhorses” of our gluten-free collection.

The dining cards are useful both with the manager and with the waitstaff. A second less obvious use is that by reading the English translation on the back of each card the diner can find out what the risky items are in each ethnic cuisine, and this proves useful in grocery stores as well. These cards are useful and convenient, and we rely on them heavily. The only difficulties we have had are 1) sometimes the staff will interpret gluten-free to mean ‘spice-free’ and we have to assure them that indeed we like spices and flavors, just no wheat, barley or rye and 2) for the Chinese card sometimes the staff cannot read the characters for barley or rye and has difficulty interpreting the card. Our only other wish is that Triumph dining will produce a Korean and a Portuguese or Brazilian Portuguese card!

The Essential Guide to Gluten Free Dining is a very useful book as well. We take it with us when traveling, and we even learned about some new opportunities right in our own back yard. The bright orange cover makes it easy to unearth on the coffee table or in the car. We like this guide, even though we were initially skeptical – we have the internet, right? so, why do we need a book? Well, when you have left your wireless connectivity behind, and you’re on the interstate and hungry, it is just great to be able to leaf through and find tons of restaurants that are not too far away, with phone numbers and menu hints, and sometimes the name of the owner. This book is a welcome addition to our gluten-free library!

Triumph Dining Cards

0 · Nov 6, 2005 · Leave a Comment

The Triumph Dining Cards, which are available in 6 languages, have become indispensible to us when we go out to dinner. The translations, in Thai, Mexican Spanish etc. have caused many waiters and maitre-d’s to pay attention to the provision of gluten free food to our table.

Without these cards we used to be greeted with that frosty smile that says “I am clueless about gluten and don’t want to learn, today or any other day. I am turning off my brain now.” We used to hear things like “well, you can’t eat pasta, but would you eat semolina?” Or, “I have a cousin who doesn’t eat gluten…,” and then along comes the salad with croutons on top, followed by an uncomfortable request to return without bread in the salad etc.

Using the Triumph Dining Cards, we can hand the card to the waiter and be assured that someone will understand and try to help us find gluten free food on the menu. For some reason these well-written, professionally designed restaurant cards for the gluten free engage the waitstaff in the problem and inspire them to read labels and to research the recipes.

Tip well, and return happily!

A Gf-Zing! recommended product!

Favorite Rice Cooker

1 · Sep 24, 2005 ·

The GF community eats a lot of rice, and we’re pretty fussy about how it is cooked! After we got over the initial gluten-free shock of realizing how much rice we would be about to consume, we didn’t mind spending more money on a newer and better rice cooker than the cheap one we had purchased in 1990. That old one was a standard no-frills rice cooker with an aluminum insert. It cooked rice, but the rice was never quite right, and the bottom rice was always a little browned…..but it was fine for us when we could choose to eat rice! Now that we have to eat rice a lot, we have become real rice snobs!

Enter the Zojirushi rice cookers. We figured that if the thing is made by people who eat a lot of rice, it will probably be good.

The Zojirushi fuzzy-logic rice cookers make the GF life-style a breeze! Jasmine rice gets a good soaking and comes out perfect every time. Brown rice comes out cooked just right, not like a bowl of tiny stones. The interesting setting “porridge” seems to be for a type of porridge unfamiliar in the west, perhaps a congee style of porridge.

A few pointers: There are a couple of different measuring devices that come with the Zojirushi rice cookers – one is green, and one is clear. It is important to follow the advice in the cooking manual and use the clear one for standard white rice. Also, when the cooker says it makes “5 cups” that refers to the number of their little measuring cups of dry rice. So if you fill the clear cup 3 times with dry jasmine rice, and fill the water up to the line on the cooking pot that says 3 for white rice, then you will get “3 servings” of cooked rice a the end of about an hour. This is the correct serving size for people who eat lots of rice, but will be more than the right amount for people who typically don’t eat rice as a staple food.

It takes a little longer to make rice in one of these rice cookers – the typical elapsed time before the rice is done for dinner is about an hour for most white rices. Brown rice takes longer. Stove top rice cooking takes less than a half hour for white rice, but that is because there is no soaking cycle. The Zojirushi adds a soaking cycle, which is why the rice is so delicious! We usually put the rice on to cook before starting to make the rest of the dinner, that is unless there is pie for dessert. If there is going to be pie for dessert, we start that first, pop it in the oven, then put on the rice and get going on the vegies and other good things!

It is important not to try to cook rice in coconut milk in one of these rice cookers because a lava flow of coconut milk comes spewing out the steam vent and flows down the sides of the rice cooker onto the counter top. Likewise, it is important not to add raisins and things like that which would clog up the steam vents. Stick to cooking rice, that is the best thing, and put the add-ins in separately.

It is possible to cook quick-cooking gluten free rice mixes in a rice cooker. It takes a little longer than on the stove-top, but the rice comes out nice. We used the “quick cooking” setting.

See more information at this posting: Basmati Rice in the Zojirushi Fuzzy Logic Rice Cooker