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Homemade Garam Masala

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Garam masala is an Indian spice mixture used in many dishes and often added at the very end of the cooking of a dish. It can be 100% gluten free if made correctly.  Like curry powder, garam masala usually seems to be made from a standard list of spices, the amounts of each spice customized according to taste.

Interestingly, if you do a Google search for “homemade garam masala” there are only a million hits – that’s twice as many hits as for “homemade ketchup” or “homemade mayonnaise” but not as many hits as for “homemade mustard”.  What is going on with that mustard?  Are beer drinkers interested in mustard at the season of the Oktoberfest?

Back to the topic at hand.  We compared recipes for Garam Masala from two authors: Julie Sahni and Madhur Jaffrey.  Both have written wonderful cookbooks which are excellent and frequently consulted resources – these authors were instrumental in bringing the world of interesting, largely gluten free, Indian cooking to the North American audience.

For a generic Garam Masala (there are other more specialized types of garam masala as well) these authors offer varying formulas, using the following spices.  The weights in parentheses are just there to give you an idea of the ratio of amounts that could be used – we have measured here the weights for one of the Jaffrey recipes:

Cardamom Seed (25 pods – see the picture below for a couple of pods next to the seeds from 25 pods)

Black Peppercorn (2  1/8 ounces or 62 grams)

Whole Cumin Seed (1 1/4 ounces or 36 grams)

Whole Coriander Seed (1/2 ounce or 15 grams)

Cinnamon Stick (3, 3 inch sticks)

Whole Cloves (4 to 6 cloves)

To give you an idea of what this amount of spice looks like, here is the full amount:

Gfzing.com Garam Masala spice picture 3
Garam Masala spices before grinding. Clockwise from top left: Cinnamon and Cloves, Cardamom, Cumin (in cener), Black Pepper, Coriander.

Sahni generally recommends toasting the spices in a dry skillet for 10 minutes, stirring all the while, then cooling and grinding to a powder.  Jaffrey’s instructions generally omit the toasting process and go right to the grinding. Jaffrey sometimes omits the coriander and adds nutmeg.

By volume, Jaffrey’s recipe from Indian Cooking uses 3 times as much black peppercorn as Sahni’s recipe from Classic Indian Cooking.  Other proportions are very similar in both recipes.

Why buy stale old spice mixtures ready-made when you can easily make your own pungent gluten free garam masala using whole spices, toasted (or not) and ground up?

Homemade Thai Red Curry Paste

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One reader asked if we had looked at recipes for making homemade Thai curry paste.  Well, we have.  We used the following useful sources :

Seductions of Rice by Jeffrey Alford & Naomi Duguid 1998

Saveur Magazine

Thai in Minutes by Vatcharin Bhumichitr 2004

Thai Cuisine with Jasmine Rice from Eastland Food Corporation

Thai Culinary Art by Srisomboon Bhandhukravi 1993

Terrific Pacific Cookbook by Anya von Bremzen & John Welchman 1995

Thai Red Curry Paste recipes use a basic list of ingredients, and all the recipes seem to include chilies, coriander, cumin, peppercorn, garlic, lemongrass, galangal, a fishy element like shrimp paste or fish sauce, and salt.  Most also include shallots, kaffir lime leaf or zest, and either cilantro leaf or root. A few add nutmeg, paprika, or cardamom.

Dry chilies are usually seeded and soaked. Dry spices are generally toasted in a skillet before grinding. Garlic and shallot are peeled and chopped before making in to a paste. The bottom 3 inches of lemon grass stalk is cut off, the toughest leaves removed, and the whole piece is then smashed with the flat side of a cleaver before the lemon grass is minced.

Shrimp paste or fish sauce must be investigated for gluten free status before using. Shrimp paste is a dry product that is dry roasted before use.

Ultimately, all the ingredients are ground to a homogeneous paste.

Based on the following table, you can see that Thai Red Curry paste is made using a fairly standardized set of ingredients, easily customized by the home cook to make a “signature” gluten free blend.

Thai Red Curry Paste Comparisons from gfzing.com
Thai Red Curry Paste Comparisons from gfzing.com

Make sure that all of your ingredients are gluten free!

Making Your Own Homemade Curry Powder

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Homemade Curry Powder
Homemade Curry Powder

It is as easy to make homemade gluten free curry powder as it is to grind coffee!

With a little trial and error you can create your own signature gluten free curry powder!  We use a 30 year old coffee grinder to make ours from whole spices.  Once you make your own, you won’t be able to go back to using store-bought curry powder. Also, your friends will want your recipe.

The Spices:

Make sure that whatever spices you add to your curry powder are gluten free. And, the fresher the spices, the better the flavor.

The Coffee Grinder:

Some recipes will advise you to buy a separate coffee grinder for making spice mixtures like curry powder, but we use one coffee grinder for everything – we have been doing it for decades. After using the coffee grinder for grinding spices, you can clean the coffee grinder using a toothbrush to loosen up ground spices and wipe the grinder clean.  If your coffee grinder is white plastic, the turmeric may turn the plastic yellow, but when you then revert to grinding coffee in the grinder the flavor of your coffee will not be altered.

What amounts to use?

At gfzing.com, we have analyzed a few recipes for homemade curry powder and provide the following table of formulas from some of our favorite cookbooks.  Note that the biggest variation occurs with the turmeric and the pepper.  Turmeric has a surprisingly strong taste, so experiment with it a little to decide how much to use.

Our favorite curry powder recipe comes from Robin Reilly’s excellent book Gluten-Free Baking. We add a whole dried cayenne pepper to her mixture because we like our curry powder spicy. Robin Reilly uses a combination of roasted coriander seed, fenugreek seed, cumin seed, black mustard seed, cardamom seed, cinnamon stick, with added ground turmeric, ground mace, nutmeg, and cloves.  We add a whole dried cayenne pepper to her recipe, then grind it in two batches in the 30 year old coffee grinder.  After grinding the two batches, we mix the stuff together thoroughly and store it in a half pint Mason jar.

Another similar curry powder formula is to be found in Better Than Store-Bought by Witty and Colchie, originally published in 1979.  This is a unique cookbook which shows how to make a large variety of items from scratch.

A third example of homemade curry powder lives in another excellent do-it-yourself cookbook called Gifts of Food, by Susan Costner, published by Consumer Reports in 1984. Again, the list of spices is pretty much the same – varying amounts are used.

In this table, we compare these 3 recipes, demonstrating that indeed, the list of spices is pretty much the same but the amounts differ.  Fiddle with these spices and develop your own signature gluten free curry powder! Package it up nicely, and give it as a gift!

Homemade Curry Powder comparisons
Homemade Curry Powder - comparisons from Gfzing.com

Try the curry powder in these recipes:

Chicken Sticky Rice

Curried Cream of Root Vegetable Soup

Curried Tofu Meatballs

Creamy Lentil Soup with Curry and Chipotles

Rich Lamb and Cornish Game Hen Curry

Pineapple Fried Rice

Feeding a Gluten Free Toddler

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A reader writes asking for gluten free suggestions for their 18 month old, a somewhat picky eater who is currently on a Gluten- and Dairy-Free diet.

Answer:

Well, first of all, it is important to consultant with your child’s doctor, and ask about seeing a nutritionist.  The gluten free diet can be tricky, and it is not always easy to balance the diet, especially in terms of vitamins.  There is a new book: Real Life with Celiac Disease: Troubleshooting and Thriving Gluten Free by Dennis and Lefler, which can point you in the right direction and help with finding resources.

Consider the possibility of using “naturally mushy” foods such as banana, avocado, cooked sweet potato etc.  These foods have a lot of curb appeal for the under 5 set.  Of course, you have to choose those foods that work for you and your family.

You can also make a very nice breakfast “smoothy” in the blender, from frozen orange juice, frozen strawberries, banana, honey, and gluten-free yogurt or gluten-free non-dairy yogurt – it is the basic concept of this smoothy that is important – you should adjust the ingredients to suit your child’s tastes and needs.

For a “sandwich” try making musubi – see the instructions here, and use fillings and accompaniments that your child can eat.

Most importantly, make sure that the diet you are feeding your toddler is nutritionally appropriate for a growing child. Consult your doctor, and ask him/her for a recommendation for a nutritionist as well.

Gluten Free “Slowed Down” Pumpkin Muffin

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This is a story about “slowed down food.”

We have combined the fat-free muffin with the slow food movement, to make the Slowed Down Pumpkin Muffin. The reason that these pumpkin muffins can be called “slowed down” food is because they are meant to be made with canned pumpkin and jarred applesauce, but we had neither one in the cupboard.  So, the instructions here show how you can make them using local squash and an apple, and it also takes more time to make them!  The muffins still use processed sugar, so they are not consistent with full-bore “slow food” cooking.

We won’t pretend that these muffins, which have no oil in them, are non-fat because once you have slathered your pumpkin muffin with butter, all that “no fat” stuff goes out the window!  We also make these gluten free, doubling the flavorings to combat the black hole, flavor-neutralizing quality of gluten free cooking.  Note: Some people who eat gluten free avoid bean flours such as chickpea flour, so check with your gluten free friend before using this recipe.

How to prepare the squash (pumpkin) and apple:

Find a winter squash (pumpkin, butternut, buttercup, acorn – whatever), and a baking apple.  For a baking apple, you could choose a nice big Cortland, or a Northern Spy.  In this case, we used a butternut squash (long-necked pale orange squash) and a Northern Spy apple.

Cut off a chunk of winter squash, about 12 ounces should do it.  Poke several holes in the apple with a fork.  Microwave the squash and the apple on the setting you use for baking potatoes, until they are cooked through. Cool them so that you can peel them without burning yourself.

Peel the cooked squash and apple and remove and discard the apple core and its seeds and the peelings.  Mash the cooked squash and apple separately.  You need 1/3 cup of each.  If by chance you have too much of one, and not enough of the other, simply use enough of each to yield a combined total of 2/3 cup mashed material.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

Soak 1/2 cup raisins in boiling water while you mix the batter:

Mix dry ingredients in a large bowl:

1 1/2 cups plus 1 Tablespoon Gifts of Nature gluten free All Purpose Flour Blend (INGREDIENTS: Brown rice flour, potato starch flour, white rice flour, chick pea flour, sweet rice flour, tapioca flour, xantham gum)

1 1/2 cups sugar

1/2 teaspoon each: baking powder, baking soda, salt

1 teaspoon each: ground cinnamon, grated nutmeg, ground cloves

Mix the wet ingredients in another large bowl:

Mix the 2/3 cup cooked squash and apple with:

2 eggs

Stir the wet ingredients and dry ingredients together using a fork. This will be an interesting task – at first it will appear that there is not enough liquid, but as you mix the batter it will quickly become the consistency of a proper muffin batter.

Drain the almost-forgotten raisins (throw out the water, save the raisins.)  Add the raisins to the muffin batter. Stir well.

Line 12 muffin cups with paper muffin liners.  Fill each muffin liner to the top. You may be used to filling muffin liners 2/3 full, but in this case you can fill them right to the top.  Use up all the batter for the 12 muffins. Distribute the raisins evenly, to make sure each muffin has its fair share of raisins.

Bake for 30-35 minutes until the tops are dry and the muffins seem done.  You can poke them with a toothpick – toothpick should come out dry. Take cooked muffins out of the oven – the tops of these muffins have a chewy, caramelized quality and the muffins taste great with butter.  Technically, you should allow these muffins to cool before eating.

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free!

Chicken Sticky Rice

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This recipe makes a very nice comfort-food for the gluten free community.

Wash 1 cup of sweet brown rice (this is also called brown sticky rice), put it in a Zojirushi rice cooker, and add 1 1/4 cups of water.  Close the rice-cooker and set the menu to the sweet rice setting and turn it on.  It will cook in about an hour.

While the rice is cooking, in a non-stick pan put 1 teaspoon peanut oil, and stir-fry 1 shallot, peeled and diced, and 1 clove garlic, peeled and minced, for 2 minutes.  Then add 1 teaspoon strong gluten-free curry powder, 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon sugar.  Stir-fry for 1 minutes.  Next, add 2 boneless chicken thighs, diced.  Stir-fry until cooked through.

When the sticky rice is done, add it to the chicken mixture and stir together with a wooden spoon.  Transfer it to a greased oven-proof casserole dish and bake, covered, for 15 minutes at 350, or make 6-8 tinfoil squares about 10 inches square, put 1/2-3/4 cup of the mixture on each square and make in to a log, then wrap the tinfoil around the rice mixture. Bake the logs at 350 for 15 minutes.  These packets can be kept in the refrigerator and reheated as needed.  They will keep a few days under refrigeration.

The dish is tasty and satisfying!

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free!

Toad of Toad Hall – musings on stocking the pantry

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“`All complete!’ said the Toad triumphantly, pulling open a locker. `You see–biscuits, potted lobster, sardines–everything you can possibly want. Soda-water here–baccy there–letter- paper, bacon, jam, cards and dominoes–you’ll find,’ he continued, as they descended the steps again, `you’ll find that nothing what ever has been forgotten, when we make our start this afternoon.'”  from Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame.

Toad really knew how to pack a picnic for his vacation.  Although his pantry is short on the fruits and vegetables, his supplies were not considered  perishable; all were preserved to some extent without refrigeration.  He is packing an off-the-grid picnic back in the day, before electricity, before ziploc bags, back when smoking tobacco was a staple, and people played social games like cards and dominoes before turning in at sundown, with only the dim light of candles and oil lamps.

Are you interested in recreating Toad’s food locker, perhaps without the tobacco?  You will need some good crackers, sardines, potted lobster,  jam and some cheese (which Toad forgot to add to his locker.)  All these things are possible in the gluten free world.

Some fine cracker choices might include Glutano Crisp Bread – a long lightweight rectangular cracker that will stand up to some heavy spreading (tartiner is the French word for spreading things on bread) , Mary’s Gone Crackers with Black Pepper – small round peppery crackers that go well with spreads, Real Foods Multigrain Corn Thins – a circular Australian product about the size of a rice cake only thinner and more flavorful, perfect for making a lightweight open faced sandwich, and perhaps Blue Diamond Nut Thins® Pecan Crackers – these very crisp crackers are salty and crunchy, perfect with cheese.

If you take the British word “biscuits” to mean cookies, then you might stock up on the Almond Horn Cookies product made by Aleia, or Glutino’s Lemon Flavored Wafers, or Vanilla Wafers – Chocolate coated.

For the jam, try making your own strawberry jam, and add a few exotic flavorings to the mix.  If you are new to canning and preserving, the best instructions are available in the Ball Blue Book of Preserving – we have multiple versions of this standard cookbook, and the recipes vary from year to year depending on what is in fashion.  The most recent edition includes an excellent recipe for strawberry-lemon marmalade, requiring the addition of a small amount of minced lemon rind.  You might also add some lavender, cayenne pepper or cardamom to strawberry jam – we have tried all these flavors which work very well with strawberry.

Sardines or herring can be had for small money – the Bar Harbor brand of All Natural Smoked Wild Kippers (herring) are excellent, and at less than $2.50 for 6.7 ounces, they are a bargain and will feed 2 people for lunch.  A couple of slices of Udi’s wholegrain bread, toasted until brown and spread liberally with lightly salted butter, some of these smoked kippers, and a strong cup of Irish tea, and you are set for lunch.

Potted lobster is another matter, somewhat more complicated.  First of all, back in the days before refrigeration people used to “preserve” meats (including shellfish, pigeons, beef etc.) by cooking them and putting the meat in to a wide-mouthed ceramic container called a pot, then covering the top with a layer of melted butter.  They believed that protecting the food from fresh air made it safe to eat.  Oops!  They were wrong about that. Obviously, covering meat with a layer of butter is not an effective method of preserving food, so if you make your own potted lobster according to the old ways, you must refrigerate it and serve it soon.  Many recipes for potted shrimp are available on the internet, and a few for potted lobster although this is less common.  Be careful to treat this product with care, and refrigerate it.

Needless to say, the dominoes and playing cards do not carry any edible risk to the gluten free community.  The letter paper is for writing letters, although today we might write an email. If you want to engage in a congenial correspondence about Toad’s pantry, you can send an email by clicking here: Send email about stocking Toad’s pantry.

It is relatively simple to recreate the Toad’s larder with modern, and gluten-free, ingredients.

Curried Cream of Root Vegetable Soup – gluten free

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This tasty soup has plenty of flavor and lots of fiber.  It will fill you up on a cold, rainy day!

In a large soup pot, melt

1 Tablespoon Ghee or butter

Add these ingredients in order as you prepare them, stirring when you add a new item:

1 onion, peeled and sliced

1 leek, slit the long way, cleaned and sliced

3 cloves garlic, peeled and chunked

1 inch piece of fresh ginger, peeled and minced

1 parsnip, peeled, cored and chunked

2 large carrots, peeled and chunked

1 sweet potato or yam, peeled and sliced

Stir fry until the onions are golden, then add:

2 Tablespoons of homemade curry powder (Rebecca Reilly’s recipe is good)

Stir fry until fragrant, then add:

1 quart of gluten free vegetable stock (for vegetarians) or gluten free chicken stock

1 Tablespoon guava or currant jelly

Simmer for 20 minutes until carrots and parsnip are cooked through.

Using an immersion blender, and taking great care to follow the instructions so you don’t get burned by hot soup, thoroughly blend the soup, adding up to one cup of hot water if needed.  You may add heavy cream to reduce the intensity of the flavors or make the soup in to a richer creation, but it is also ready to eat as it is.

To make this soup for a vegan, use vegetable oil instead of ghee/butter, use vegetable stock, and do not add any cream.

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free!

Plantain empanadas (empanadas de platano)

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Plantains are  large, very sturdy-looking banana-like fruits one sees in the grocery store produce section.  They can be cooked when yellowish (called green) or when totally black (sweet).  Gf-Zing! finds plantains to be a wonderful, wonderful gluten free starch.

Empanadas are similar to a turnover, either baked or fried.  The dough can be made from flours or from plantains, using one plantain to make two empanadas.

The easiest way to make plantain empanadas is to buy some yellow-green plantains and a piece of mozzarella cheese, then follow the simple directions on this excellent video: http://how2heroes.com/videos/international/plantain-empanadas from the great Mexican restaurant Tu y Yo.  If your plantains are too green, you will have to wait a few days for them to ripen somewhat.  Plantains sweeten and soften as they darken.

The video demonstration shows the plantains being boiled for one hour. If you are pressed for time, instead of boiling the plantains you can use the microwave.  Wash the plantains, then cut off the ends of the plantains. Make a slit in the skin all the way down one side, the long way.  Wrap each plantain in a paper towel and put them in the microwave on the rotating platter, in one layer.  Cook the plantains on the same setting your microwave suggests for “baked potato.”  When cooked, the plantains will be extremely hot. When they are done, use a potholder to place them on the counter and wait until they cool a bit, then unwrap, peel and proceed with mashing (using a potato masher if you don’t have a molcajete), stuffing and frying as demonstrated in the video by the chef from Tu y Yo.

Roasted Vegetable Soup

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This recipe from Gf-Zing! is perfect for a cold fall day when eggplants and tomatoes are still plentiful at the local farmers’ market.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

On a large cookie sheet with a rim, place

1 eggplant, halved the long way, cut side up
3 medium to large tomatoes, stem end removed
1 onion, peeled and halved
6 cloves of garlic, peeled

Brush all the vegetables with olive oil. Roast for 45 minutes.

Scoop the eggplant flesh in to a large pot. Discard the eggplant skin. Add the rest of the roasted vegetables,  4 cups of gluten free chicken or vegetarian stock, and 1 teaspoon of dried thyme.

Bring to a boil, lower the heat and simmer the vegetable and stock mixture for 45 minutes.

Puree the soup using an immersion blender or by transferring the soup to a food processor or blender.

Season to taste with salt, black pepper, and a small amount of sugar if needed.

Serve the soup with crumbled goat cheese or cheddar to sprinkle on top.

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free.

Baked Brisket – gluten free

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This is an easy way to cook a beef brisket – no fuss no muss, and no gluten.

For a 2 1/2-3 pound brisket of beef

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Quarter 2 peeled spanish onions and place them on the bottom of a dutch oven. Put the brisket on top of the onions, fat side up.

Sprinkle with 1 envelope of gluten-free onion soup mix *, then mix the following and pour on top:

1 cup gluten free tomato ketchup
1 cup water
1/4 cup brown sugar

Cover the dutch oven and bake for 3+ hours, until done. The meat should be very tender. You can then cool and chill the dish, and then remove the fat. After removing the accumulated fat, you can slice the meat, return it to the dish, heat and serve.

* To make a substitute for a package of onion soup mix, follow the copycat instructions available on the internet. For example, Food.com has 2 such recipes: http://www.food.com/recipe/copycat-liptons-onion-soup-mix-24952 and http://www.food.com/recipe/copycat-lipton-onion-soup-mix-153788. Make sure to verify that the beef bouillon you use in making the copycat version is gluten free.

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free.

Baked Chicken with Pineapple

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This easy recipe for chicken thighs can be accomplished in a toaster oven, or any other oven. You can also cook the recipe on a grill, but that is not necessary. Any toaster oven will do.

For 4 chicken thighs, to serve 2 people:

Using a sharp knife, slash 4 chicken thighs (bone-in, skin on) through the skin – 2 slashes per thigh. This will allow the spice flavors to penetrate the meat.

Mix the following rub:
1 clove chopped garlic
1 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon powdered ginger
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
1/2 teaspoon dry sage
1/2 teaspoon dry marjoram
1 Tablespoon gluten free soy sauce
1 Tablespoon olive oil

Smear the spice mixture on the 4 chicken thighs. Transfer to a foil lined baking pan (small one that will fit your oven), and bake at 350-375 degrees for 1/2 hour.

Add, 1/4 of a fresh pineapple, peeled, cored and sliced. Raise the heat in the oven to 450-475 degrees and bake an additional 10 minutes. Serve with gluten free buttermilk biscuits and chianti (Italian dry red wine.)

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free.

Chocolate Sweet Potato Cake

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This excellent  flourless chocolate cake is a variation of a recipe that is most often attributed to Marcy Goldman’s  A Treasury of Jewish Holiday Baking.  The glaze suggested here is not from the original recipe.

The quality of the finished cake is entirely dependent on the quality of the chocolate that is chosen – take great care to choose an excellent chocolate.

Cake ingredients

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
1/3 cup plus 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
6 large eggs, separated
1 1/2 cups cooked and mashed sweet potatoes, baked fresh and peeled – 2 or so
1 teaspoon vanilla
10 ounces good-quality gluten free semi-sweet chocolate chips, melted and cooled
1/4 teaspoon salt

Chocolate Glaze ingredients


1/4 cup water, 2 Tablespoons sugar, 1 Tablespoon corn syrup

4 ounces bittersweet gluten free chocolate, broken up

1 Tablespoon butter

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a 9-inch springform pan with baking parchment.  To line the pan, first trace the bottom of the pan on a sheet of parchment paper, making a circle, then cut out the circle.  Next, measure the height of the pan, and cut a strip of parchment paper that is that wide by 14 and a half inches long. Grease the pan, then line with the parchments paper, putting the circle on the bottom and the strip on the side.  If you like, you can line the bottom and then clamp on the sides, trapping the circle of paper with the sides.

Cake batter instructions:


In a food processor, cream the butter with the 1/3 cup sugar until light. Blend in the egg yolks until light, then the mashed sweet potatoes, vanilla, and cooled chocolate. Mix until smooth.

In a large bowl, use clean beaters to whip the egg whites gently until they are a bit foamy.  You can use a hand-crank-style manual rotary egg beater to do this – it is easy, and great exercise! Then add in the salt and whip harder to make meringue, sprinkling in the last two tablespoons of sugar to form stiff and shiny (but not dry) peaks. With this amount of sugar, you could also dump all the sugar in at once – it won’t make much difference.

Fold the cooled sweet potato/chocolate mixture into the egg whites gradually, keeping the mixture light and airy – don’t beat it now or you will lose all the air you have beaten in to the egg whites. The air trapped in the egg whites is what is going to make the cake rise in the oven.

Spoon the batter into the prepared pan, shake the pan briefly to settle it, and bake  at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes (that is what the first version of this recipe said, but that was not correct – it took over 70 minutes).  Depending on your oven, you will need to check the cake starting at 40 minutes, but leave yourself an extra half hour in case the baking takes longer.  When the cake rises high and looks dry, and slightly cracked on top, it is done cooking – if it doesn’t look like this, give it more time. The middle should be soft but firm – a toothpick tests almost dry.  The cake will have risen really high, but it will fall as it cools.  Don’t worry about it though.

Cool in the pan for 20 minutes, then place the cake (in its pan) on a wire rack.  Refrigerate completely to cool – overnight seems reasonable. At this point, the cake can be removed from the pan and frozen for up to a month (haven’t tried that). Even if serving it the same day, chill the cake for two hours before finishing it with the glaze.   This is a dense cake which holds the heat.

Glaze instructions:

In a pot, mix water, sugar and corn syrup and bring to a boil to dissolve the sugar.  Off the heat add the chocolate (bittersweet is best).  Stir until completely melted, then stir in the butter which will make it shinier.

Remove the cake from the pan, leaving the top side up.  Do not try to flip it over. Put the cake on a serving plate. There will be a slight indentation where the cake has fallen in the middle. The final cake will have shrunk down from its lofty height that it was in the oven – maybe it will be 2 inches high. Pour the glaze into the indentation of the cake and, using a spatula, even out the glaze and urge it along to ooze attractively over the edges in places.

The cake is excellent served with whipped cream, and it seems like it would be pretty good if you used bittersweet instead of semisweet in the cake part too as well as the icing.

Make sure ALL your ingredients are gluten free.  If you are making this for a gluten free friend, take care that there is no stray wheat flour in your sugar canister, transferred there during previous baking adventures.

Steamer Clams with Instant Polenta or Cornmeal

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If you can get your hands on a few dozen steamer clams from Maine, and 3 gallons of sea water, and a package of gluten free instant polenta – the kind that cooks in 3 minutes because it is really “pre-cooked,” then you can make a really special treat.

If you are buying the clams, insist that the fishmonger provide live clams – do not accept any clams that are open and will not close. Scrub the clams, discarding any that are dead.  Pour the cold, fresh sea water in a large pot, sprinkle with about 1/4 pound of instant polenta and stir.  Add the live clams – they must be completely covered with the sea water.  Let sit for about 8 hours.  You will notice that as they are left undisturbed the clams will extend their neck-like parts and start spitting out sand and grit, replacing the sand and grit in their stomachs with instant polenta!  That means that when you cook them they will have an automatic polenta stuffing.

For a lesser clam, such as the Mahogany clam, you will notice that the apparatus the clam extends is not long and thin but more triangular.  The polenta (corn meal) treatment is absolutely essential for the Mahogany clam, in our opinion, as it causes the Mahogany clam to purge itself of sand.  Scrub the Mahogany clams really well, and steam for about 5 minutes.  Discard the clams that do not open.

Steam the clams using a very small amount of tap water in the bottom of a large covered pot.  Heat them on high until they are fully cooked – 10 to 20 minutes.  They should all be opened up.  Serve with melted butter with a little fresh garlic grated in to it for flavor.

 

Note: If no seawater is available, you can use cold tap water (no chlorine!) with added Kosher salt (no iodine).  You add enough salt to bring the specific gravity to 1.021 or thereabouts, then add the instant polenta.  To measure the specific gravity, a hydrometer is required.  In the absense of a hydrometer, you could add about 1/2 cup Kosher salt to 1 1/2 gallons of cold water.

 

To make an excellent Sauce with Clams: heat

3 Tablespoons of olive oil in a large pan, add

one chopped onion

3 cloves chopped garlic

Stir for a minute, then add about

a dozen cleaned, prepared clams.  Let cook for a minute, then add

1/2 cup New England Hard Cider

1/2 cup chopped fresh flat Italian parsley

1 dried cayenne pepper – chopped

6 shreds of saffron

the juice of a quarter of a lemon

Stir and cover.  Cook for 5 minutes until the clams open.  Add

2 Tablespoons butter

Serve on top of cooked gluten free pasta, or, with gluten free bread sticks or gluten free rolls to sop up the sauce.

Susie’s Cheesecake

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Sue Carnase, of the Bronx, New York, made the best cheesecake ever.  It was tested many times in double-blind taste tests and it always came out at the top of the rankings. Here is her recipe, in her own words, with a slight modification that will make the recipe gluten free.

“In a large bowl cream together 1 pound each of cream cheese, softened, and ricotta and one cup sugar and beat in 4 large eggs at room temperatures, one at a time, beating well after each addition.  Add 1/2 stick (2 ounces) butter melted and cooled, 3 tablespoons each of gluten free flour mix* and cornstarch, and 2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla and 1 teaspoon fresh lemon rind, beat mixture well until well combined.  Fold in 2 cups sour cream, pour batter in ungreased 9 inch springform pan and bake the cake in the middle of a preheated moderately slow oven (325) for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

The cake will be soft in the center.  TURN OFF THE HEAT (DO NOT OPEN THE OVEN DOOR.) Let the cake stand in the oven for 2 hours.  Let the cake cool completely in the pan on a rack and chill it loosely covered for at least 4 hours.  Remove the sides of pan and transfer cake to a plate.  You can freeze it at this point.  Remove from the freezer the day before use and refrigerate.

HINTS: Cheesecakes often crack while baking and some rise high and later fall, but these are not matters of concern.  Cheesecakes do not take kindly to sudden changes in temperature.  SO DO NOT OPEN OVEN DOOR DURING THE BAKING.

I find it much easier to cream the cheeses by putting them through the Cuisinart.”

*original recipe called for wheat flour

Further notes from GF-Zing!: The batter will fill most of the pan and during the baking the cake will rise to the very top of the pan or higher.  Do NOT use a smaller pan than called for in the recipe.  Full fat ricotta makes a nice cake.  We use Friendship brand sour cream because its only ingredients are milk, cream and enzymes. We line the bottom of the spring form pan with parchment paper to make transferring the cake to a plate a little easier.

Shopping List for Susie’s Cheesecake:

1 pound cream cheese

1 pound ricotta

Sugar

4 large eggs

Butter

GF Flour

Cornstarch

Vanilla

Sour Cream

1 lemon

Corn and Bacon Risotto

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This gluten free risotto is delicious, using fresh corn, New England apple-smoked bacon and New England Hard Cider.

4 strips of apple wood smoked bacon, chopped and cooked in a pan or the microwave
5 cups homemade chicken stock (gluten free)
1/4-1/2 cup New England hard apple cider (like a dry white wine)
4 TB olive oil
2 TB butter
2 large shallots, minced
1 small onion, minced
1 1/2 cups Arborio rice
Kernels from 2 ears of fresh corn
2 inch slice of a log of fresh goat cheese (even better, from a log of marinated fresh goat cheese)
1/3 cup freshly grated parmesan cheese
salt
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper

Heat the chicken stock in a glass measure in the microwave until the temperature of hot coffee.

In a large non-stick skillet (12 inches is good), melt the butter with the olive oil. Add the shallots and onions and cook while stirring, until browned slightly.  Add the rice and stir to coat with oil.  Cook until it becomes slightly more opaque.  Deglaze the pan with the cider.  Add the stock about 1/3 cup at a time, stirring all the while over a low heat, for 10 minutes.  When 10 minutes is up, you will still have stock left.

Add the corn and bacon to the rice mixture and continue adding the stock a little bit at a time and stirring, until all the stock is used up (about 10 more minutes).  If the rice is cooked al dente, you are done; if not, add some more stock and cook further.

When the rice is al dente, add the goat cheese and the parmesan cheese and stir to completely mix.  You may add chooped parsley, salt and the pepper to taste at this point.  Serve immediately, with New England Hard Cider to drink.

Make sure that all your ingredients are gluten free!

© Gf-Zing! | Alice DeLuca

Microwave Chicken Wings

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We acquired a new microwave oven and have been playing around with it – a new way to save energy resources while cooking.

For 1.5-2 pounds of chicken wings, mix the following sauce in a large bowl:

1/4 cup gluten free orange marmalade

1 tablespoon honey

1 clove of garlic, minced

1/4 cup gluten free soy sauce

1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lime juice (about 1/2 of a lime)

black pepper

Remove the wing tips from the wings, and cut each wing in to two pieces at the joint. Mix the sauce with the chicken wings.  Place the wings and sauce in a glass pie plate (in a single layer) and cover loosely with plastic wrap.  Microwave for 10 minutes. Remove plastic wrap and microwave for 5-10 more minutes, until cooked through.  Preheat a broiler and broil the wings for 4-5 minutes to crisp up the skin.

If your microwave has an automatic sensor, follow the instructions for cooking chicken parts, remove the plastic wrap half way through the cooking time.  When the wings are done, broil as above.

Use all gluten-free ingredients!

Curried Tofu meatballs

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These gluten free “meatballs” from Gf-Zing! have the texture of gnocchi.  The cream-based curry sauce is delicious with sweet potato fries.

Mix the following with your hands:

1 block (1 pound) firm tofu

1 egg

1 cup minced scallion (both the white and green)

2 tablespoons chopped parsley

2 tablespoons potato starch (katakuriko)

6-8 tablespoons sweet brown rice flour – this is like mochiko or sweet rice flour (also called glutinous rice flour even though it does not contain gluten) – it is made from sweet brown rice

1 tablespoon oil

1 tablespoon curry powder (make your own using Rebecca Reilly’s recipe from Gluten Free Baking)

1 teaspoon ground ginger

1/2 teaspoon salt

Mix all these ingredients and as you mix you will notice that the liquid is taken up by the flours.  Add sweet brown rice flour as needed to reach a consistency where “meatballs” can be formed.  Make walnut sized balls.

Fry the balls in 1 tablespoon of oil in a large non-stick frying pan over medium heat until they are golden. Remove the balls to a plate.  To the oil remaining in the pan, add

2 tablespoons curry powder and fry briefly.  Add

1 1/2 cups of New England hard cider (this is like white wine – it is not sweet).

Reduce the wine to 1/3 cup.  Add the tofu balls back to the pan and add

1 cup heavy cream or coconut milk

2 cups gluten free chicken stock

Bring to a boil, cover and simmer for 20 minutes.  The sauce will thicken as the balls absorb the stock.  Check from time to time and stir.

When cooked, serve with sweet potato fries.

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free!.

Sweet Potato Fries

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Serve these awesome baked fries with any dish that has a curry sauce.

For every 2 pounds of sweet potatoes, place the following in a large bowl:

2 teaspoons of Kosher salt (or 1 teaspoon of table salt)

1 teaspoon ground cumin

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper (or to taste)

2-4 TB olive oil

Cut peeled sweet potato in to french fry size – make 1/2 inch slices crosswise, then cut each slice in to 1/2 inch slices.  Mix these fries with the oil and spices to distribute evenly.  Place the spiced fries on a foil lined baking sheet in a single layer.  Do not use a silpat mat because the baking temperature exceeds the tolerance of silpat.

Preheat oven to 500 degrees F.  Bake the fries on the top shelf for 15 minutes, stir, then bake an additional 5 minutes.  Do not worry if some fries are slightly blackened.  The flavor will be awesome.

Serve with any dish that has a rich curry sauce, or as an accompaniment to meat dishes.

Preserving Fresh Ginger

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It is easy to keep fresh ginger available at all times.  Get some really nice looking fresh ginger, peel it, cut it in chunks, and put the chunks in a nice jar that can be closed tightly.  Pour in some vodka to cover the ginger completely.  This ginger will keep for a very long time and you can take it out of the vodka as needed, chop it up and use it in curries or stir-fries.

Rich Lamb and Cornish Game Hen Curry

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Try this excellent curry – you won’t be sorry!

Fry one onion, chopped, in 2 Tablespoons of oil until browned.  Add 2 lamb shanks and brown them as well. De-glaze the pan with 1 cup of New England Hard Cider.

In to a pressure cooker, put:

1 can of coconut milk

2 Tablespoons of gluten free thai red curry paste

1 stalk of lemon grass, the white part at the root end only, chopped

2 Tablespoons of fresh ginger, chopped

Add the lamb shank mixture to the coconut milk mixture. Close the pressure cooker and bring up the pressure.  Pressure cook for 10 minutes, then let the pressure drop on its own.  Lamb shanks take a long time to cook. This pressure-cooking step will give the lamb a head start, ensuring that eventually the lamb gets nice and tender.

Carefully transfer the hot lamb shanks in their curry sauce in to a casserole that has a lid.  To this mixture, add

1 Cornish Game Hen

1 mango, peeled seeded and cut in to chunks (an under-ripe mango is perfect for this purpose.)

Braise the dish, covered, in a 350 degree oven for 2 hours, until the lamb is tender.  Skim off any fat that has accumulated.  Season with salt if needed.

Serve with Jasmine rice topped with plenty of fresh chopped cilantro, and fresh ground sea salt.

Note: If you don’t have a pressure cooker, you can cook everything except the game hen and mango for 1-1 1/2 hours and then add the game hen and mango and bake for an additional hour and a half.

Homemade Hot Cocoa Mix

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Hot cocoa mix from GfZing! is easy to make at home.  Here’s how to make an instant cocoa mix that will spice up your breakfast. Make sure that each individual component of the mixture is gluten free – the cocoa, the spices etc.

In a jar that holds 750 ml, place:

  • 3/4 cup sugar (or the equivalent sweetening amount of a gluten free sugar substitute)
  • 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/2 teaspoon instant espresso
  • 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional to add spiciness – you can grind up one dried cayenne pepper and add that)
  • 1/4 cup finely ground skinned almonds (optional – this adds a gritty texture)
  • 3.2 ounces of nonfat powdered dry milk (the amount to make one quart)

Shake this mixture up until it is completely homogeneous.

Use 3-4 Tablespoons of the mixture with 1 mug of hot water to make your cocoa.

Blueberry Pie sweetened with Maple Syrup

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You can make a fine blueberry pie using dark maple syrup as a sweetener instead of granulated sugar.  This pie is refreshingly fruity and not as sweet as the more common sugar-sweetened pie.

Here are the general rules:

for 5-6 cups of Maine wild blueberries, add the following in a large bowl:

1 cup of pure maple syrup

2 Tablespoons of cornstarch

3 Tablespoons of flavorless tapioca starch (Authentic Foods offers a tapioca starch) or 1/4 cup instant granulated tapioca.  If you use instant granulated tapioca, let the whole mixture sit for 15 minutes before constructing the pie.

1/8 teaspoon salt

3-4 Tablespoons of fresh lemon juice to offset the maple syrup

1/4 teaspoon of ground cinnamon

Use a 2-crust recipe for pie crust, and use a 9 or 10 inch glass pie dish. If you use a larger pie dish, the pie will have less depth, and if you use a smaller pie dish then the pie will be more “heaped up.”  Line the pie dish with 1 piece of crust pastry, fill with the blueberry mixture, top with the second crust. Sprinkle the top crust with 1/4 cup of granulated sugar.

Bake in preheated 375 degree oven for 1 hour.  If the blueberries are frozen, the pie may need a few extra minutes.  Cool the pie on a rack before cutting.

Use all gluten-free ingredients!