Summer

Sesame-Crusted Tofu with Quick Microwave Curried Carrot Soup

0 · May 14, 2012 · 1 Comment

Curried Carrot Soup with Sesame Crusted Tofu - Alice DeLuca 2012 digimarc — Curried Carrot Soup with Sesame Crusted Tofu in a blue Heathware bowl

The inspiration for this dish from www.gfzing.com was a trip to the Garden Grille in Providence, Rhode Island. They make truly delish vegetarian food, much of which they will also prepare gluten free. This is recipe is NOT one of theirs, it is just inspired by their cooking. I did not have a chance to try their sesame-crusted tofu, unfortunately.

The soup here is done in the microwave oven, for quick, efficient dinner preparation.

It is easily adapted for vegetarians and vegans – just omit the fish sauce and adjust the salt.

For the Soup:

5 ounces peeled Spanish onion, diced

1/2 ounce (2 cloves) garlic, peeled and diced

1 TB olive oil

3 ounces red bell pepper, diced

3 carrots (about 6 ounces), peeled and chunked

3/4 cup rich coconut milk

1 cup water

2-3 teaspoons gluten free fish sauce (omit for vegetarians)

2 teaspoons gluten free Thai Red Curry paste

1 TB currant jelly

salt to taste (1/4-1/2 teaspoon)

To Fry the Tofu:

1 package of extra-firm tofu, drained and slice the short way in to four slices, then cut the other way to make 8 squares about 3/4 inch thick.

1 teaspoon homemade curry powder (see recipe on this site)

2 TB black sesame seeds

2 TB peanut oil

1 teaspoon sesame oil

To make the soup:

In a 1 1/2-2 quart microwavable casserole dish (such as Corningware), place the chopped onions, chopped garlic and 1 TB of oil. Cover and microwave on high for 5 minutes. Allow to cool for a few minutes before removing the cover (to avoid steam burns).

To the cooked onions and garlic in the casserole dish add the rest of the soup ingredients from the red bell pepper through the currant jelly. Cover and microwave until the carrots are tender, about 10 minutes. Allow to rest a few minutes before you remove the cover, to avoid steam burns.

Use a stick or immersion blender to puree the soup. Season with just a little bit of salt to taste. Adjust the sweetness. Set aside.

For the Tofu:

Mix the curry powder and sesame seeds and pat the mixture on to one side of each of the squares of tofu. Heat the oil and sesame oil in a large, heavy frying pan. When hot, add the tofu squares, seed side up. Fry over medium heat, undisturbed for 4 minutes. Salt the tofu squares. Use a spatula to turn the tofu squares and fry the other side undisturbed for 3 minutes. Salt the other side. The frying will crisp the tofu, rendering it golden brown.

Remove the fried tofu from the pan.

To Serve:

Reheat the soup briefly and serve 2 squares of fried tofu, seed side up, on each serving of the hot soup.

Curried Carrot Soup with Sesame Crusted Tofu in a Heathware bowl - Alice DeLuca 2012 digimarc — Curried Carrot Soup with Sesame Crusted Tofu in a white Heathware bowl

Serve with lime wedges, and a salad made from chopped arugula, fresh mint, orange juice, olive oil, gluten-free mustard, salt and pepper.

A Sausage Walks in to a Bar…

1 · May 3, 2012 · Leave a Comment

By Alice DeLuca

A story for carnivores

Assador - Alice DeLuca 2012 digimarc — Assador - for roasting sausages

This whole adventure started with a search for the perfect sausage to use in a recipe for pork with clams, which led to a little ceramic pig, and ended up with a truly excellent party. This cute little piece of specialty cookware, which looks like footwear for some impossible outer-space monster, is in fact designed for brazing sausages over flaming, hi-octane Portuguese liquor. As we learned the purpose and the method for using this device, we became completely distracted from our original mission and found ourselves planning a sausage-roast.

Linguica roasting - Alice DeLuca 2012 digimarc — Linguiça roasting over flaming aguardente

First, we had to obtain the little pig dishes from Portugal – that was easy and took only a few weeks. As soon as the dishes arrived we set about making home-smoked sausages and invited some guests to come over and roast them with us – RSVPs were instantaneous and none declined the invitation.

The sausages that are required – linguiça or chourico – are not easily found freshly made in the grocery store; the smoked sausages you do find are often laminated in plastic, oozing a creepy slime when opened, delivering a texture of rubber bands with what seem like bits of potato thrown in – the bits are the fat but for some reason completely unlike the fat in a homemade sausage. If these laminated sausages are the only smoked sausage you have ever known, then you must find some real, home-smoked sausages, or make your own. With pork shoulder and a few other ingredients, a good old-fashioned meat grinder, and some type of smoker, you can have a plate of these sausages to set fire to with your friends.

Linguica on Heathware plate - Alice DeLuca 2012 digimarc — Vermillion Linguica looks stunning on blue Heathware plates!

People have been making sausages and brazing them since the dawn of time. You can follow the accurate but brief instructions provided in the Ancient Roman De Re Coquinaria of Apicius (published by Walter M. Hill, 1936). Here, the proper color of smoked sausages is described perfectly – vermillion – a nearly forgotten word and color that deserves to make a comeback. Vermillion is the color of notoriously poisonous cinnabar, which is a substance with an interesting history of its own. Take a look at cinnabar on dolomite and you will see that the Romans have described the color of smoked sausage precisely in the recipe for Cirellos isiciatos, Round Sausage.

“Fill the casings with the best material [forcemeat]. Shape the sausage in to small circles, smoke. When they have taken on vermillion color, fry them lightly.”

The Recipe

To make linguiça, we chose “the best material” – a simple formulation with garlic, paprika and sweet rosé wine because pork is so often excellent with sweet, fruity flavors. Sausages of this type sometimes include oregano and vinegar, but this recipe “LINGUICA PORTUGUESA A’LA ANA“ is more delicious than those, perhaps because of the sweet rosé. The sausage ingredients are posted here with permission from AnaCatarina Louro Ferreira Alves, who generously provides the recipe to the world on her blog: http://anydaysoiree.com/

5 lbs. ground pork butt
3 Tb. paprika (not smoked)
2 Tb. fine minced garlic
3 Tb. salt
1 cup sweet rosé wine
1 tsp. sugar
1 Tb. black pepper

A sliced lemon for soaking the hog casings

Apple wood for smoking

Hog Casings – for stuffing – about 2 or 3 feet of casing per pound of meat

Concerning the Meat and its Preparation

Start out a day or two before you want to eat the sausage, to complete the marinating phase.

In an agrarian economy, the seasonal time for making sausage was in the fall when a hog was slaughtered; everyone hurrying to preserve the large quantities of meat for the long winter. Smoked sausage was a hedge against starvation. In the modern, refrigerated world, sausage can be made year-round and is a reason for a party! When making sausage at home, be careful to use safe food-handling techniques, clean equipment and clean hands at all times. Note that the Latin root of the word “botulism” is the word for sausage – botulus. That is not a coincidence. Study the conditions under which food pathogens can replicate and then avoid those conditions.

To obtain several pounds of ground pork for sausage, purchase a “pork shoulder” weighing over 9 pounds. Very carefully remove the skin from the pork shoulder (not used in the sausage), slice the meat from the bone with a boning knife, and cut the meat in to large chunks. The foundation of the pork shoulder is a complex articulated joint, so extreme care must be exercised when wielding the boning knife. How do orthopedic surgeons ever actually manage a functioning joint replacement?

Save the bone to cook with dried beans.

After cutting the meat from the bone, modern cooks might be tempted to eliminate and discard all the fat, but the fat and connective tissue are the keys to great flavor. Remove the fat and you surely will create disappointing, dry sausage like the last bit of an overcooked turkey breast that’s been loitering on the platter way too long after the Thanksgiving dinner. To make a good sausage, fat is required.

Marinating

Weigh the boned meat and season it with proportional amounts of the paprika, fresh garlic, salt, Portuguese rosé wine, sugar and pepper called for in the recipe. We had 6 pounds of meat, so we increased the seasonings proportionally.

Stir together the spices and wine, then mix in the chunks of meat – and commune with the ancestors who were marinating meat for millennia. Judging from 18^th century engravings, the ancestors seemed to have had cats, chickens and dogs running around under the table during the sausage-making process, not the ideal situation for food preparation. Perhaps it is wise to banish the cats, dogs and chickens to the yard, before proceeding.

Unlike ancient peoples, we refrigerate the marinating meat and keep it cold during the remainder of the 1-2 day process.

Grinding

After marinating the meat under refrigeration, grind or chop it in to small pieces. There are many different types of grinding devices available. Whichever method you use, your goal is to produce small bits but not a paste – one of the principle differences between a sausage and a lowly hot dog is the consistency.

The mechanism of the old-fashioned meat grinder is an Archimedes screw. Archimedes of Syracuse, c. 287 BC – c. 212 BC, is credited with the invention of the screw conveyor which has been used since antiquity to move water uphill from one place to another. In a meat grinder, the screw is carrying the meat from one place to another (from the hopper to the blade.)

We use a Magimix food processor for chopping meat, working with a small amount of the meat at a time (maybe a half pound) and using the “pulse” feature – intermittent chopping – as noted in the directions that came with the machine. This works very well. Many older-model food processors would grind the meat too finely.

If you have an old fashioned meat grinder, use the blade and the coarsest disk. Again, a great opportunity for living the life of the ancestors presents itself. The sinews can clog up the disk, requiring frequent cleaning, We use our old-fashioned grinder mostly for stuffing the sausage casings. The grinder clamps to the table and can be easily removed, cleaned and stored.

Another style of meat grinder is screwed permanently to the table. We can’t see how this would be practical unless you grind things every day or perhaps enjoy the aesthetic and conversation-piece value of the thing – “Let us show you our newly renovated kitchen with built-in meat grinder….”

The other meat grinder that makes no sense is the kind that suctions to a smooth surface. This seems impractical because of the amount of force required to grind meat, and because suction devices usually cease to function correctly despite being adhered to a glass-smooth surface. How many times has the suctioned soap dish fallen in the shower, or the GPS device toppled in to the automobile?

One way or another, chop the marinated meat in to small bits, then chill it while you prepare the casings.

Linguica chopped and seasoned -Alice DeLuca 2012 digimarc — Marinated meat, chopped and ready for stuffing

Preparing the Casings

The next step will be preparation of the hog casings. For unknown reasons, hog casings, if you are lucky enough to find any, are usually on the top right hand corner of the supermarket shelf that houses ham and pork products. In a plastic tub or sometimes a plastic bag, the “casings,” which are really cleaned intestines, are packed in salt. Years ago, hog casings had a distinctive funky odor but recently purchased hog casings have had no odor whatsoever. We were surprised to find that packages of hog casings come from all over the world – it is interesting to read the label on the package.

Soak the hog casings (3 feet for every pound of meat) in warm water with a sliced lemon for 30 minutes to soften and desalinate the casings, then run water through them to ensure they are clean (discard the lemon slices).

Soaking Hog Casings - Alice DeLuca 2012 digimarc — Sausage casings soaking with aromatic lemon slices

As the water runs through, marvel at the structure and strength of this wonderful material.

Cleaning Sausage Casings - Alice DeLuca 2012 digimarc — Rinsing the sausage casings

One of the many remarkable things about sausage casings, or intestines in general, is how terrifically strong they are. They have been used for millennia as string and thread, and as strings for musical instruments. The 120 foot intestine of a cow is formed in to harp strings and then, under enormous tension the strings are plucked to produce musical notes; Gut is used by surgeons to sew up wounds, and by tennis players to string their rackets so they can slam balls in to the ground at upwards of 70 mph.

Stuffing

Archimedes Screw - sausage grinder - Alice DeLuca 2012 digimarc — An Archimedes screw moves meat through a grinder

It is much easier and more fun to stuff sausage with two people working than all by yourself.

Use a meat grinder to stuff the sausages. You need 3 feet of hog casing per pound of sausage, allowing for a little extra at each end of the sausage. Remove the blade and grinder disk and attach a sausage stuffing funnel. Slide a length of hog casing on to the funnel. Now put the seasoned sausage meat through the grinder, turning the handle slowly and steadily with one hand and easing the meat in to the casings with your other hand. The meat goes in to the hopper and comes out in to the casing. When the casing is nearly full (with 6 inches of empty casing remaining) remove the sausage from the funnel and start on the next sausage. Don’t complicate your life by trying to tie knots in this sausage. Just set the filled sausages aside to chill in the refrigerator until it is time to smoke them.

Linguica stuffing - Alice DeLuca 2012 digimarc — The sausage stuffing funnel is efficient!

Smoking

Part of the reward for making your own smoked sausage is aromatic. The scent of smoked sausage would tame the wild wolf and bring him to your doorstep; it would make the wolf volunteer to be the captive family dog if only he could have some of this delicious meat.[i] (As expected, both our tame dog and cat became increasingly animated while the sausage was smoking, and eventually they were invited to retire indoors.)

Follow the instructions on a smoker, and use apple wood for the smoke. Check the internal temperature of the smoker to insure that it is hot enough to do the job safely. We used a Primo ceramic grill to smoke the sausage, paying careful and regular attention to adjusting the vents, and maintaining a higher temperature than recommended in the original recipe – just below 200° F. We chose to smoke the sausage until the internal temperature of the sausage was 170° F, which took approximately 3 hours. We recommend that any home cook do their own research to determine a safe process. The FDA provides some guidance on this. When completely smoked, the color of the sausages will be a deep red vermillion. The sausages are not preserved by this smoking – they are merely cooked through. From this point on, they should be preserved like any other meat – in cold storage for a few days or in the freezer for a longer period of time.

Do the homemade sausages look dry to you? That is the miraculous thing about real smoked sausage – although the exterior of the sausage is dry, the interior is just right – juicy and delicious. As a reward for your labor, taste a few slices before you put them away to chill.

Setting Things on Fire

Roasting sausages over flaming cheap brandy is a social form of cooking, an adventure to be shared with brave and hearty friends who enjoy hazardous adventure and are willing to take responsibility for their own actions. Perhaps you could have your guests agree to a “Safe Sausage Disclaimer”:

“I recognize that consuming homemade sausage is fraught with danger and I am willing to fully assume all the risk and untold horrors so I may experience real food.”

We used a little parade of two “assadors” to roast our sausages. For fuel, we used inexpensive aguardente, lighting the flame under the sausages with foot-long matches and keeping a fire extinguisher available nearby. (Incidentally, we are intrigued to learn more about the high-walled linguiceira shown at the Borderless Cooking blog. It appears immune to the windy conditions that prevailed during our party.)

Place the assador on a heat-proof surface, preferably in a location that is not windy. Pour a pool of aguardente in to the assador. Using a long match, set the aguardente ablaze without setting anything else on fire. Cut off pieces of sausage to fit the assador and place them on the racks over the flames. As the sausage cooks, some of the fat melts in to the cooking device and fuels the alcohol-based fire, and as this happens the flame goes from blue to yellow and the sound of sizzling fills the air. The blue flame from burning alcohol is cooler than the ensuing yellow flame from the burning fat. The cooking process speeds up as the flame turns yellow and gets hotter. Turn the sausages carefully with tongs, and make sure to cook them until they are blackened. Remove them from the flames too soon and the interior will be dry and hard. Keep cooking the smoked sausages until they are crisped up on the outside, and the fat is melting on the inside. One of our assadors acquired a small crack during the roasting party, so again, take precautions and take good care.

Video:

Linguica roasting over aguardente

We poured a rosé with the linguiça, to match the flavoring component of the sausage. A dry, hard cider and beer were also fine accompaniments, along with a Colombian bean dish, a selection of cheeses including the outstanding Winnimere cheese from Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont, and a fine green salad supplied by some excellent cooks among the company at the table. We ate, as the Hawaiians say, until we were tired.

Notes for further study: There are other versions of this type of sausage brazing grill – This one uses skewers, for example. This one shows a much deeper, sturdier cooker which we are interested in acquiring, in case anyone knows where to get one. Here is a video recipe that shows grilled linguiça as a garnish for a small soup.

[i] Read: The Cat That Walked by Himself, by Rudyard Kipling: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2781/2781-h/2781-h.htm#2H_4_0011

Baked Gluten Free Chicken Burgers

0 · Jan 11, 2012 · Leave a Comment

Read a Southeast Asian cookbook and you will likely come across a recipe for meatballs including baking powder. Baking powder is an oddball ingredient for those of familiar with western meatballs, so I thought I had better give it a try.

I made two attempts. The first, using a recipe from A Vietnamese Kitchen by Ha Roda, and the second using a chicken burger recipe from one of my very favorite new cookbooks, Poulet – More Than 50 Remarkable Meals that Exalt the Honest Chicken, by Cree LeFavour. The recipes in this book are easily adaptable for the gluten free community.

Based on experimenting with a modified version of Cree LeFavour’s Phuket Beach Cart Sandwiches, I am recommending the baking powder addition to meatballs and burgers for those of us who use low fat meats and poultry to make burgers. The result is juicy and interesting! (I always grind meat or poultry when making balls and burgers; using good quality meat to start out with yields a tastier ground product, and you know for sure what went in to the bowl).

My instructions to grind your own spices may seem silly until you catch a scent of the amazing, lemony coriander blasting out of the mortar as you grind. It is worth the tiny moment of your time and the little bit of muscle that is required, just to have this aromatherapy experience.

Grind in a mortar and pestle:

1 teaspoon whole coriander seeds – Pow!

Put the ground seeds in a food processor and add:

2 pounds of boneless chicken thighs
1/2 or 1 dry cayenne pepper (LeFavour uses 2 or 3 habanero chilies but even 1 was too spicy for us)
1/3 cup gluten free fish sauce – check the label
1 Tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon – (grind some cinnamon stick in a mortar and pestle – such a sweet smell!)

Zap all these ingredients together in the food processor until smooth. Shape 4 patties using wet hands.

This amount of mixture will yield four absolutely enormous burgers, each one almost 2 inches thick after baking. I found it practical to make the four giant patties, put them on a parchment lined baking sheet and bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. Check the interior temperature so it reaches 175 degrees in at least 2 places, then when the burgers are cooked through slice each one horizontally in half to yield 8 burgers.

LeFavour recommends serving the burgers on buns with fresh cilantro leaves (instead of lettuce) and a sambal mayonnaise, with a side of carrot and mung bean salad.

I used buns made from Pao de Quejo Brazilian Cheese bread dough (Chebe makes a gluten free mix that works well for these buns, each package yielding 4 buns that are 4-5 inches in diameter), fresh cilantro, and a sauce made from equal parts of mayonnaise and gluten free Thai sweet chile sauce with a very small amount of gluten free chile paste with garlic. Serve with a side of gluten free coleslaw.

LeFavour toasts the hamburger buns she uses, but instead we used the Pao de Quejo right out of the oven, split horizontally.

This is a delicious, juicy burger experience from a highly recommended cookbook – Poulet by Cree LeFavour!

Sealed With A Quiche

0 · Dec 28, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Including a food trend prediction for 2012…

By Alice DeLuca

When first married, I received lots of advice on how to stay married which is of course so much more complicated than “getting” married. For example, Sally told me that both a happy marriage and a career had been possible for her because she created and froze 4 quiches at a time. I immediately pictured 4 quiches in the deepfreeze, carefully labeled for rotation of the stock so as to avoid freezer-burn and waste. The quiches would keep.

Sally said she could just run home, pop a frozen quiche in the oven, and make a salad and – presto – dinner was on the table. That was the clue to a happy marriage for a woman who began her career in the late 1960s and lived through the advent of non-stick cookware and the 1970s food processor revolution. She soldiered on with frozen pie shells to make all things possible.[i] Sally’s husband enjoyed both a fabulous career and his hot meals without ever giving a thought to the benefits of compulsive quiche stockpiling. Sally did remain married and retained her career right through to retirement, so perhaps the quiche did the trick and the best wedding present for the new couple today would be a sturdy porcelain pie plate.

American quiche from the 1980s bears little resemblance to the quiches that graced the window of every charcuterie in Paris in the 1970s. The French Quiche Lorraine was a tart made with poitrine fumée, diced in to tiny delicious fatty cubes, just a hint of smoke barely held in suspension by a creamy egg custard. The total thickness of the quiche was just a matter of a few centimeters. The crust was buttery and flaky.

American artisanal quiche of the 1970s and 80s was really more of a pie, and a close relative of the casserole. Its deep-dish heart and soul was convenient sustenance with no hint of subtlety, yet it was delicious in its own right. Almost anything that could be considered main-course fare was served up in a quiche. It seemed like every restaurant served quiche[ii] and salad, and there were whole restaurants in the West that were entirely devoted to pie of all types and served up quiche in quarters. A quarter of a quiche was a serving. Up until at least the 1990s, it was still possible to waltz in to a Frontier Pies in Wyoming and buy a hearty slab of quiche for a quick dinner. Pioneer Pies was another such restaurant. In the early 2000s these pie-themed restaurants fell on hard times, but now that we are hearing that “pie is the new cupcake” perhaps these wonderful pie restaurants will make a comeback? They have a web presence again, although their menus show pie only as an afterthought, but we can perhaps hope and dream.

If you want to stock-pile frozen American downhome quiches as a hedge against late meetings and bad traffic, there is no better place to start looking for recipes than the cookbooks put out by local women’s groups during the height of the quiche rush[iii]. I use a deep dish 9-inch Pyrex pie plate, recalling however that as a marriage-saving device my friend used frozen pie shells. (Why not compromise and stockpile your own frozen pie shells?) The general rule that I follow is based on the Colorado Cache Cookbook:

For the custard that holds things together in the 9 inch Pyrex plate, beat together:

4 large chicken eggs

1 ½ cups of cream or other milk-based products

Seasoning such as salt and pepper, dried marjoram, fresh parsley, chives, a grating of nutmeg etc.

The flavoring and savory ingredients are up to the artisan. As a thoroughly mundane but delicious example of the filling, you could prepare the following ingredients and sprinkle them evenly in to an unbaked gluten-free pastry shell.

Hickory-smoked bacon fried until crisp (omit for vegetarian)

Spanish onions fried in butter until golden

½ pound of Gruyere or other hard cheese loitering in the refrigerator, coarsely grated to yield 2 cups

Pour the beaten custard over all of these and bake at 400 degrees F for 40 minutes, more or less, until a knife inserted in the center comes out barely clean. Serve warm. Or, freeze for later to save your marriage.

Other savory filling choices might be spinach and feta, ratatouille, wild mushroom with thyme (vegetarian), duck and preserved lemon (for meat-eaters), boneless Buffalo wings and gluten free blue cheese (for meat-eaters), five onion varieties (onion, garlic, shallot, leek, and scallion). The choices for savory fillings are certainly not limited to the tastes of the 1970s. Latin American, Cambodian, Thai, what sorts of quiche innovations await us now?

An American quiche renaissance is predicted – you heard it here first – and this will come as a great relief to the increasing number of people keeping “home flocks” of hens and consequently holding a surplus of eggs. The future of so many fledgling marriages and careers could depend upon a happy wedding of eggs and cheese.

[i] “Food Timeline: History Notes-pie & Pastry.” Food Timeline: Food History & Vintage Recipes. Web. 28 Dec. 2011. <http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodpies.html>.

David, Elizabeth, and Juliet Renny. French Provincial Cooking. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984. Print.

[ii] Kalter, Suzy. “Jaye Tishman’s Business Is Serving Quiche to the Stars, and That’s Not Just Pie in the Sky: People.com.” People.com: The #1 Celebrity Site for Breaking News, Celebrity Pictures and Star Style. 30 Nov. 1981. Web. 28 Dec. 2011. http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20080809,00.html.

“When it comes to quiche, John Travolta prefers chicken-and-corn, Barbra Streisand orders broccoli-and-mushroom and Suzanne Pleshette likes Roquefort. So confides Jaye Tishman, 43, proprietor-chef of Ms. Tish’s Quiche Co. in Los Angeles, whose clientele reads like the Bel Air phone book. Her egg-and-cheese pies, which come in more than 100 varieties (from apple to zucchini), have themselves become celebrities of a sort. “Ms. Tish’s quiche boggles the senses,” raves food critic Merrill Shindler of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. “It’s as close to perfect as I could want.”…”

[iii] Colorado Cache Cookbook. Denver, CO: Junior League of Denver, 1978. Print.

Gillies, Linda, Anita Muller, and Pamela Patterson. A Culinary Collection; Recipes from Members of the Board of Trustees and Staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1973. Print. (including a recipe for lettuce and bacon quiche)

Quiche – gluten free!

Spicy Sticky Cherry Blueberry Sauce for Ribs

1 · Jun 27, 2011 · 1 Comment

This nicely balanced 100% gluten free spicy, sweet and sour sauce from gfzing.com will go perfectly with barbecued ribs.

The ingredients are ideal for late June and early July:

First, in a non-stick pan, caramelize

1/4 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vegetable oil
1/3 teaspoon salt

To caramelize, cook the mixture over low heat, stirring all the while, until the sugar clumps together in little lumps and then gradually melts in to a brown pool.

Add:

1 clove garlic, peeled and minced
1 dried cayenne pepper, chopped (about 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes)

Cook for just a few seconds, then

Carefully deglaze the pan with

6 TB high-quality red wine vinegar (homemade is best)

There may be some spattering when you add the vinegar, so step back a bit and use a long-handled spoon to stir!

Stir constantly and when the sugar mass is nearly dissolved, add

1 cup halved, pitted fresh bing cherries
1/2 cup whole fresh blueberries

Raise the heat to medium and cook to thicken a bit, about 4 minutes.

Last, refresh the sauce with

2 cloves of garlic, peeled and minced

Stir briefly and set aside.

Serve with barbecued ribs, duck or chicken. In the winter, serve a similar sauce, using other fruits in season, for a roast dinner.

Armenian Dessert Cake with Syrup – gluten free

0 · Jun 22, 2011 · Leave a Comment

This outstanding dessert is a seriously sweet, robust cinnamon-clove flavored cake soaked until wet with a honey-lemon syrup. The cake tastes like baklava, and is served cold, with whipped cream if desired.

Originally, this dessert is made with Cream of Wheat. Gfzing.com has adapted it to be gluten free, replacing the Cream of Wheat with Cream of Rice and cornmeal. The recipe is from Rose Baboian’s Armenian-American Cook Book, published in 1964. The book seems to have its own Facebook page now, and is available for sale here: http://www.stvartanbookstore.com/browseproducts/Armenian-American-Cookbook–hc.html. Similar recipes for cereal cakes abound around the internet, with Greek, Lebanese etc. variations.

Make this cake by hand, for aerobic exercise.

If you are making this in a wheatavore kitchen, bring in your own sugar or make sure that their sugar does not have remnants of wheat flour from wheatavore cooks using the same measuring cup for flour and then for sugar.

Grease and 8×8 pan or 9×9 pan well, using the wrapper from your butter.

Preheat oven to 350.

Cream together:

10 TB salted butter
3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves

Add and stir to incorporate:

1/2 cup dry uncooked Cream of Rice cereal
1/2 cup cornmeal
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 cup finely chopped walnuts
3/4 cup shredded coconut

Add and stir to incorporate:

1/4 cup milk

Add one at a time and stir til well mixed:

3 eggs (large)

Pour in to the greased pan and spread out to distribute evenly. Bake at 350 degrees, 45 minutes for 8×8 pan, 35 minutes for 9×9. A knife inserted in the cake should come out clean. Take the cake from the oven, hold it ten inches above the counter and drop the pan straight down on the counter to settle the cake. The cake should be top side up, still in the pan – you are just settling it, not removing it from the pan.

Make a syrup of

1 cup white sugar
1 cup water

Bring to a boil, then add

1 Tablespoon honey
1 soup spoon of fresh lemon juice

Pour the hot syrup evenly over the cake. Cover the pan and let sit until room temperature, then chill until cold. Cut into squares. The syrup will settle to the bottom of the cake, leaving that part sort of “juicy.”

Use all gluten-free ingredients!

Sangria with strawberries

0 · Jun 8, 2011 · 1 Comment

It is nearly 100 degrees outside, and humid, so what better use of some dry red table wine than a tasty cold sangria to drink with a leisurely dinner of potato salad? The cinnamon in this recipe lends a certain richness and depth to an otherwise light-hearted drink.

We followed along with and embellished upon the ideas expressed at the interesting Spanish website La Receta de La Felicidad that lists Webos Fritos among its ancestors. These folks add salt and pepper to their sangria – brilliant! We added lime and triple sec.

Combine and chill:

1 liter (1 wine bottle) of red wine – sangiovese is a dry red

1 fresh lime, washed carefully and finely sliced (peel and all)

12 ounces of fresh strawberries, washed carefully and sliced

3 TB of gluten free orange liqueur (a gluten free triple sec) or 3 TB sugar

1/2 – 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon black pepper (depending on how spicy you like)

1 pinch of salt

1 Tablespoon vanilla (we make our own by soaking split vanilla beans in potato vodka for months and months)

Mix together fruit and wine and chill completely (about 2-4 hours). Add the spices and vanilla. Serve in wine glasses with plenty of the berry slices in each glass. The limes are there for flavor – you don’t necessarily eat the slices of lime.

We would have taken a photo of the glass of sangria, but all that was left was the fruit! Eat the fruit with a spoon.

According to the new food pyramid (which is now a plate), the combination of a potato salad made with grated carrots and hard-boiled eggs, and a glass of this sangria with fruit, would satisfy most of the requirements except for the mysterious “dairy” circle. That dairy circle could be taken care of with a simple slice of manchego cheese. And done! – a balanced meal.

Gluten Free Reuben Sandwich

0 · Jun 1, 2011 · 1 Comment

A craving for a gluten free Reuben Sandwich (Grill) sent me to the local supermarket in search of corned beef, sauerkraut, swiss cheese, dressing and gluten free “rye bread” since I have not made some. Well, of course disappointment awaited, since they carry no gluten free corned beef at the store. How is it possible to put wheat in corned beef? It’s meat, right? Sliced meat. Of gluten free rye bread, there was none.

A few compromises later, and I had a decent sandwich that had much in common with a Reuben sandwich. The following is a very good sandwich in its own right, and the directions show how to obtain the melted cheese and hot interior of a fine sandwich, despite the remarkable insulating qualities of gluten free bread.

Ingredients:

2 slices Rudi’s gluten free Cinnamon Raisin Bread

2 teaspoons butter

2 thin slices baby swiss cheese

2 thin slices gluten free deli barbecue chicken (check the label on the Dietz & Watson brand which at this writing was labeled gluten free)

Sauerkraut (check the status on refrigerated Ba-Tampte New Kraut which at this writing was labeled with these ingredients: Cabbage, Water, Vinegar, Salt, Sugar, Less Than 1/10 of 1% Benzoate of Soda, Sodium Bisulfite).

1 TB gluten free Thousand Island dressing (check the status of the Wishbone brand which at this writing was labeled gluten free.)

Melt the butter in a frying pan on medium low heat. Put the two slices of bread in the melted butter to coat one side of each slice. Turn off the heat and set the bread aside.

Drain 2 TB of the sauerkraut, place it in a microwavable glass dish and microwave for about 1 minute until hot. Set aside.

Put one slice of buttered bread, butter side down, in the pan. Coat the top side of that slice with Thousand Island dressing. Lay the 2 slices of cheese and the 2 slices of chicken on top. Cover with the other slice of bread, butter side up.

Turn the heat to medium low, and cover the pan. The goal here is to brown the bread without burning the raisins. Fry the sandwich for about 1 minute (check to make sure the bread toasts but doesn’t burn). When the bread on the bottom is brown, flip the sandwich and cook for 1 minute (covered) on the other side. When both sides are toasted, transfer the sandwich to a microwavable plate.

Open the sandwich and add the pre-heated sauerkraut. Close the sandwich.

Microwave the sandwich for 1 minutes until the cheese melts. (Adding the microwave step is the key to melting the cheese when using gluten free bread). Slice the sandwich in two pieces and serve!

Make sure that all your ingredients are gluten free!

Vegetarian Maple Baked Beans

0 · May 31, 2011 · 3 Comments

These gluten free, simple baked beans are sweetened with maple syrup and maple sugar and have minimal ingredients. They bake for a long time while your slow-cooked meat is cooking on the grill. Despite the small quantity of pepper they are surprisingly spicy.

Note: you add the salt to dried beans at the end of the cooking, so the beans will not toughen.

12 ounces dried flageolet beans (soaked overnight or pressure cooked for 2 minutes and allowed to sit until the pressure reduces naturally, or boiled for 2 minutes and allowed to sit for 1 hour.)

Drain the soaked beans and put them in an ovenproof casserole with a lid. We use a Corningware casserole that hold 2.5 liters or quarts.

Add to the drained beans:

2 Tablespoons ghee (clarified browned butter)

1/3 cup dark maple syrup

1/3 cup maple sugar

1/2 teaspoon black pepper (less if you don’t like spicy food)

1 large onion, peeled and diced

1 1/2 teaspoons French’s mustard (verify that this product is gluten free at the time of purchase)

2 Tablespoons of gluten free chili powder

4 cups boiling water

Cover and bake at 350 for 2 hours, remove the cover and continue to bake until the liquid has reduced to a thick sauce – another 2 hours or more is not unusual. Stir occasionally.

When the beans are done, add 1 Tablespoon of table salt and stir thoroughly.

Gluten Free Sourdough Banana Bread

0 · Apr 19, 2011 · 4 Comments

This delicious, intensely-flavored banana bread is baked with brown rice flour sourdough, cinnamon and brown sugar. It stands up to a good buttering!

Here is a real, honest picture of this bread, highlighting the banana elements.

First, make a gluten free sourdough starter according to this recipe http://www.gfzing.com/2011/gluten-free-sourdough-starter-and-pancakes/. Then, the night before you want to make banana bread, make a brown rice flour Overnight Sponge using 1 cup of brown rice flour and 1 cup of water, added to your starter.

Next day:

Preheat oven to 350 F degrees

Line a 9×5 loaf pan with parchment paper – use one large piece of paper and fold at the corners so that no part of the inside of the pan is showing

Ingredients:

1 cup gluten free sourdough Overnight Sponge (return the rest of the sponge, covered, to the refrigerator – that will be the “starter” for the next project)

1/2 cup white sugar

1 cup dark brown sugar

1/2 cup melted butter

2 eggs, beaten

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup mashed banana (about 2 bananas)

1 teaspoon gluten free ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda dissolved in 1 teaspoon water

1 1/2 cups finely ground brown rice flour mixed with 1 teaspoon xantham gum

Mix all ingredients up through the cinnamon, then add the baking soda mixture, then the rice flour mixture. Stir thoroughly – the mixture will stiffen as you stir. You can add raisins if desired. Spoon mixture in to lined pan and bake 1 hour at 350.

When the bread is done, remove the pan from the oven, lift the pan up about 10 inches above the counter and drop the pan straight down – that’s right – drop the pan on the counter top, bottom side down of course. This action will prevent the bread from falling. Cool ten minutes in the pan, then lift up the parchment paper to remove the bread from the pan to cool the rest of the way.

Gourmet Gluten Free Brownies

0 · Mar 18, 2011 · Leave a Comment

A gourmet gluten free brownie that is just like the best wheat brownie you ever had.

Use the absolute best quality gluten free chocolate you can obtain. It is worth doing the website and company research to find the richest, darkest gluten free chocolate that is available.

For the brownies:

Melt the following in a small pot, then set aside to cool briefly:

1 1/2 sticks (12 ounces) unsalted butter
7 ounces bittersweet gluten free chocolate
3 ounces gluten free unsweetened chocolate

Place the following in a large bowl:

1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla or 1/2 teaspoon of Authentic Foods gluten free powdered vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 eggs

Beat the sugar/egg mixture with a spoon, then stir in the melted chocolate/butter mixture.

In a small bowl, combine

1 cup Authentic Foods GF traditional flour blend
1/2 teaspoon xantham gum

Mix the GF flour mixture in to the chocolate batter. Stir just to combine well.

Stir in:

1 cup walnut pieces, sized according to your preference.

Line a 9 x 13″ pan with parchment paper leaving quite a bit up paper going up the sides (so that you can grab the paper later and pull the whole brownie unit out of the pan. Pour and spread the batter in to the paper-lined pan and ease the batter out to the edges and corners of the pan. Bake at 350 F degrees for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool completely before frosting. Don’t remove the brownies from the pan yet – frost first!

Frosting:

Melt in a microwavable glass dish:

6 ounces unsalted butter
4 Tablespoons milk (can be non-fat milk if you want)

Add:

4 Tablespoons (1/4 Cup) best quality gluten free cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 2/3 cups gluten free confectioner’s sugar

Stir together with a kitchen spoon until completely smooth. Because the butter is melted, the frosting can still be a bit loose or runny when you spread it, because the frosting will stiffen up later, as the butter cools and hardens. Spread the frosting on the brownies, then transfer the pan to the refrigerator to chill until firm.

To remove brownies from pan, just grab the edges of the parchment paper and lift. Transfer the paper of brownies to a cutting board and proceed to cut them.

Cut the brownies with a sharp knife. To make clean cuts, occasionally run the knife blade under hot water then wipe dry with a clean towel. Using a heated, clean knife will ensure a clean cut with no crumbs.

Make sure to use all gluten-free ingredients. If you are using a wheatavore kitchen, ensure that the sugar container is not contaminated with flour by wheatavore cooking adventures.

Potato Salad with Eggs and Carrots

0 · Mar 17, 2011 · Leave a Comment

A tasty gluten free potato salad with hard-boiled eggs, carrots and onion. The cooking is done in the microwave to cut down on the heat in the kitchen.

This is based on the potato salad shown at this webpage: http://www.sachikocooking.com/english/en0106prt.htm, altered to use less mayonnaise and much less sugar.

3 red bliss potatoes – if they are about the size of a tennis ball, the three potatoes together will weigh about a pound.
3 large carrots, grated on the large holes of a box grater
1 cup very thinly sliced onion
1/2 teaspoon table salt
2 eggs
1/4 cup coarsely chopped flat-leaf parsley

Sauce:

1/4 cup gluten free mayonnaise
1 teaspoon gluten free ballpark mustard
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/2-1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon fresh lime juice

Mix the shredded carrots, sliced onion and salt thoroughly and set aside. Let this rest while you do all the other preparation, so that the salt can draw water out of these veggies.

Clean the potatoes, pierce each one and remove the eyes, microwave them using the potato setting on your microwave. Set aside to cool, then peel and chop.

“Hard-boil” the eggs in the microwave, adding 1 teaspoon water per egg. We use a device called a “Micro Egg” for cooking eggs in the microwave. With this device, it took slightly longer than 1 minute at 100 power to cook the two eggs in one Micro Egg. Set the eggs aside to cool, then dice.

Squeeze the water out of the salted carrot/onion mixture by putting these salted veggies in a kitchen towel and squeezing firmly.

Put the squeezed carrots and onion in a bowl. Add the chopped cooked potatoes, diced eggs, parsley. Mix the sauce ingredients in a separate bowl, then fold the sauce in to the carrot-onion-potato-egg-parsley. Adjust the flavors, chill and serve.

Salmon with Curry Dry Rub and Dressed Vegetables

0 · Feb 25, 2011 · Leave a Comment

This outstanding gluten free recipe is revised from one which appeared in Bon Appetit magazine nearly a decade ago. There are 3 components: the rice, the vegetables and dressing, and the salmon.

Prepare the Rice first:

Fry 1 Tablespoon homemade ghee or butter, then add:

1 cup rinsed basmati or long grain rice

Stir fry for a minute or so, so that all the grains of rice are coated with the ghee or butter

Add:

1 cup water
2/3 cup coconut milk
3/4 teaspoon salt

Bring to a boil, turn down the heat, cover and cook until the rice is done. Season with pepper. Set aside, covered, to stay warm.

Prepare the vegetables :

Fry the following aromatics in 1 Tablespoon toasted sesame oil for one minute:

2 teaspoons minced fresh ginger
1 clove garlic, minced

Add sliced vegetables and stir fry for just a couple of minutes, then set aside:

1 red bell pepper, sliced
Sliced shitake mushrooms, stems removed
1 bunch of bok choy, sliced
Other options include carrots, scallions, celery, spinach, baby spinach, watercress, zucchini, bean sprouts with the ends removed etc.

Set the vegetables aside.

Make the dressing for the vegetables:

6 Tablespoons rice vinegar or homemade cider vinegar
3 Tablespoons gluten free soy sauce
2 Tablespoons toasted sesame oil
2-4 Tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro
1 Tablespoon minced fresh ginger
1 teaspoon sugar

Set the dressing aside.

Prepare the serving plates: You will need 4-6 dinner plates ready to go.

Prepare the fish:

Choose very fresh salmon fillets, with the evenest possible thickness for uniform cooking. Instructions assume that there is a “skin” side, but if there is no skin side just proceed anyway.

Make a dry rub of one teaspoon of each of the following spices:

gluten free chili powder
gluten free curry powder (make your own – that’s the best way)
gluten free ground cumin
gluten free ground coriander
gluten free mustard powder (difficult to find – if you can’t find gluten free, leave this out)
salt
sugar

Sprinkle each of 4-6 6-ounce salmon fillets (the flesh side of the fish, not the skin side) with a teaspoon or more of the spice mixture. If you want to do something ahead, you could set the spiced fish aside, wrapped, in the refrigerator for 2-3 hours at this point, but we don’t bother – we proceed immediately with the cooking:

Heat a Tablespoon of vegetable oil in a non-stick pan over medium-high heat. For 6 fillets, you might need 2 pans. When hot, add the salmon filets, skin side down, and fry for 3-4 minutes. Flip the fish, spice side down now, and finish the cooking – another 3-4 minutes on this side. The fish should flake easily when done.

To Serve:

On each plate, arrange a serving of rice, a serving of vegetables, and a piece of salmon. Drizzle the vegetables with a little of the dressing (a tablespoon or so).

Can be served with a rose wine, a dry red wine such as Tohu Pinot Noir from New Zealand, or a New England Hard Cider. The dish is surprisingly well paired with a dry pinot noir, just for the record.

Gluten Free Deep Dish Pizza

0 · Jan 7, 2011 · Leave a Comment

We were addicted to the deep dish pizza made by Edwardo’s on the South Side of Chicago in the 1980s, and after leaving that part of the country we went to great lengths to learn how to make deep dish pizza at home. We even purchased an enormous specialized pan purposed for making stuffed pizzas. Fast forward a few decades and sadly a gluten free deep dish pizza seemed like an impossible dream. But continue on, dear reader, because you can have a reasonable deep-dish pizza, gluten free, if you have a cast iron or Le Creuset skillet available to you. The crust will be little chewy, somewhat denser than an ideal crust, but flavorful because of the potato flour in the dough. It will have unique characteristics which make it worth eating, even though it is gf.

Crust:

Cut a 12″ diameter circle of parchment paper to line a 10 inch heavy cast iron skillet (ours is the enameled Le Creuset designed for use in a hot oven – some of the Le Creuset skillets are not meant for very hot ovens, so make sure yours is – the enamel on the inside of the pan should be black). A flat circle must be creased a few times to line a 3 dimensional pan, so flatten the paper against the bottom of the pan, and pleate and crease it up the sides to make it “fit”. Make one recipe of the pizza base dough from Darina Allen and Rosemary Kearney’s Healthy Gluten-Free Cooking. This is a rice flour, potato flour and tapioca flour dough that contains dried milk and an egg as well – but no bean flour. Note that the recipe calls for potato flour, not potato starch. Weigh the ingredients using a kitchen scale because the book is written using Irish measurement units. I encourage you to purchase the cookbooks mentioned in my articles, to support the work of fellow recipe writers in the hope that they will produce more useful books for us!

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. When the oven is hot, roll out the dough between two sheets of waxed paper dusted with sweet rice flour (mochiko), and line the pan with the dough (the entire recipe’s worth of dough). Prick the dough all over with a fork and bake it (unfilled) for 10 minutes, remove the very heavy pan from the oven using two hands and oven mitts to grab the handle and edge of the pan. Set the hot pan aside and prepare the filling. I always leave an oven mitt on the handle to remind me that the handle of the pan is hot, hot, hot! That handle is 400 degrees, and you don’t want to grab it without an oven mitt!

Filling:

1/2 pound of mushrooms

1/2 pound gluten free italian sausage – spicy is nice – omit for vegetarians

1 large spanish onion, sliced (don’t use “sweet onions” as they don’t brown nicely)

1-2 bell peppers, sliced

6 cloves garlic, minced

Fry the mushrooms in olive oil for 4 minutes without stirring. Remove the mushrooms from pan and set aside. Season with salt and pepper.

To the same pan, add the gluten free sausage, onions, peppers and garlic and fry for 10-12 minutes until cooked through.

Mix the sausage mixture with the mushrooms and add a 1/2 pound of full-fat mozzarella, hand grated, a half cup of canned diced tomatoes (fresh if you have them), 1/2 cup of chopped basil or 1-2 Tablespoons of gluten free homemade pesto sauce. Test the filling to see if it needs additional salt and pepper.

Spread the filling in the prepared pre-baked crust, Sprinkle with another 1/2 pound of grated mozzarella, sprinkle with grated parmesan cheese, raise the temperature of the oven to 450 and bake the pizza for 30-35 minutes. Remove the very very hot pan from the oven using oven mitts. Serve immediately or cool slightly first.

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free!

The filling is based on one in the October 2005 issue of Cuisine at Home. Ham and pepperoni have been eliminated, and the option of using prepared pesto in place of basil is added. You can tinker infinitely with the ingredients in the filling. Use what you have available – spinach, other types of cheese, omit the peppers and double the onions, whatever you like!

Plantain empanadas (empanadas de platano)

0 · Sep 20, 2010 · Leave a Comment

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.

Baked Chicken with Pineapple

0 · Sep 12, 2010 · Leave a Comment

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.

Steamer Clams with Instant Polenta or Cornmeal

0 · Aug 9, 2010 · Leave a Comment

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

0 · Jul 5, 2010 · Leave a Comment

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

0 · Jun 22, 2010 · Leave a Comment

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!

Microwave Chicken Wings

1 · Jun 12, 2010 · Leave a Comment

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

1 · Jun 9, 2010 · 1 Comment

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

0 · Jun 9, 2010 · Leave a Comment

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.

White Chocolate and Strawberry Dessert

0 · Jun 11, 2009 · Leave a Comment

For this dessert, you need fresh local strawberries, high quality white chocolate (gluten free) in a bar form, and gluten free orange liqueur.

Find a bowl that will hold 3 cups exactly when filled to the top with water. This will be serving dish. Set it aside.

Melt a 4-ounce bar of gluten free white chocolate over hot water. Take it off the heat, add 1 Tablespoon sugar, 1 Tablespoon gluten free orange liqueur, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla and 1 ounce of cream cheese. Beat well until mixed.

In a different bowl beat 1/2 cup of heavy cream until stiff. Fold in the white chocolate mixure.

Put enough strawberries (or other berries) in the serving bowl to cover the bottom of the bowl. Spoon the whipped cream/white chocolate mixture on top. Smooth the top and chill the dessert for 3 hourss or overnight. This will serve 3-4 people.

You can triple the mixture, make a crumb crust in a spring-form pan, and triple the amount of berries, put the berries on the crust, add the cream mixture, chill, then cut the dessert like a cake (since it has a crust.)

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free.

Mujaddara – a Lebanese lentil dish

1 · Jun 10, 2009 · Leave a Comment

Inspired by a wonderful Mujaddara from a Lebanese restaurant in Troy, New York, we set out to find out how to make the dish at home. Luckily, we found a good recipe in the interesting Arab Cooking on a Saskatchewan Homestead, by Habeeb Salloum (published by the University of Regina, 2005). The secret to this terrific dish for lentil lovers is the enormous quantity of fried onions. We have found that adding a cup of turnip gratin to the finished dish makes it even better!

Here is the revised recipe:

Wash one cup of regular lentils (the inexpensive kind found in any grocery store), and put them in a pan with 5 cups of water. Bring to a boil, cover and cook over medium heat of 15 minutes, then add 1/4 cup white rice , cover and cook another 20 minutes until both the lentils and the rice are cooked.

Melt 2 Tablespoons of ghee (or butter), but ghee is better, in a frying pan and fry 3 thinly sliced big spanish onions for 10 minutes, stirring, until they are golden brown. (The original recipe called for an alarming 6 Tablespoons of butter for this process.) Do not use vidalia or sweet onions for this – they do not break down or brown in the same way as spanish onions.

Stir the fried onions in to the cooked lentils, then add 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper, 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin, and 1/4 teaspoon hot New Mexico chili powder. If you have an extra cup of turnip gratin, add that as well.

Stir everything well, and serve hot with yogurt (add a clove of grated garlic to make a sauce) and salad.

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free.