Vegetarian

Indian Pudding

1 · Dec 6, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Indian Pudding, one of the finest desserts ever invented, is a naturally gluten-free American dessert over two centuries old. The recipes vary over the years, but the ingredients always include milk, corn meal (the “Indian meal” from which the dessert gets its name), spices and some type of sweetener. Note that once in a while a recipe for Indian Pudding will include a small amount of completely unnecessary wheat flour. At gfzing.com, we have studied the subject at length and have 2 recommended recipes for excellent gluten free Indian Pudding – one sweetened primarily with maple syrup and one made primarily with brown sugar. Our favorite recipes appear near the end of this article, after some historical bits.

Historical Recipes:

In American Cookery, by Amelia Simmons, published in 1796, there are 3 recipes for Indian Pudding. The two baked versions include eggs, which later recipes for the dessert often omit.

No. 1. 3 pints scalded milk, 7 spoons fine Indian meal, stir well
together while hot, let stand till cooled; add 7 eggs, half pound
raisins, 4 ounces butter, spice and sugar, bake one and half hours.
No. 2. 3 pints scalded milk to one pint meal salted; cool, add 2 eggs,
4 ounces butter, sugar or molasses and spice q. f. it will require two
and half hours baking.
No. 3. Salt a pint meal, wet with one quart milk, sweeten and put into
a strong cloth, brass or bell metal vessel, stone or earthern pot,
secure from wet and boil 12 hours.

Table Talk monthly magazine, which billed itself as the “The American Authority Upon All Culinary and Household Topics,” included in its September 1893 issue ten recipes for Indian Pudding (go to page 323 in this document). Some of these recipes omit the eggs, and some use the technique of mixing the hot porridge-like base for the pudding and then pouring an amount of cold milk on top, leaving the cold milk without stirring, then baking the whole dish for from 2 to 8 hours.

Now for how we actually prefer to make Indian Pudding. We like the following 2 recipes, with a preference for the one sweetened primarily with maple syrup which has a more interesting flavor than modern brown sugar. We actually wonder if the antique recipes used a form of brown sugar more similar to jaggery, rapadura or panela – which would have had a more subtle flavor.

	Maple Syrup Cookbook by Ken Haedrich, 1989 (our preferred ingredient list)	Early American Recipes by Eloise Frost, 1953
Whole Milk	5 cups	1 quart (4 cups), scalded + 1 cup cold
Corn Meal	2/3 cup	½ cup
Sugar	1 cup grade A Amber Maple Syrup (or Grade B)	1/3 cup light brown sugar
Molasses	1 TB (we used 2)	1/3 cup
Ground Cinnamon	½ teaspoon	1 teaspoon
Ground Ginger	½ teaspoon	1 teaspoon
Dried Fruit	1 cup raisins or chopped dated (we used raisins)	none
Salt	½ teaspoon	1 teaspoon
Butter	4 tablespoons	3 tablespoons

Both recipes are baked in a well-buttered 9 x13″ baking dish at 300 F; a porcelain, ceramic or Pyrex dish is necessary for the baking; for the clean-up be prepared to soak the cooking and baking dishes before cleaning. The basic cooking method is as follows.

For the maple syrup recipe, in a heavy-bottomed pot, cook the milk over medium heat until it is almost scalded, then whisk in the cornmeal, stirring all the while. Keep whisking for 10 minutes until the porridge is thickened slightly. The porridge will be a very, very pale yellow. Remove from the heat and use a wooden or bamboo spoon to stir in the rest of the ingredients, stirring all the while. Give one last vigorous stir to distribute the raisins evenly and pour it in to the prepared porcelain (or Pyrex or ceramic) dish. Bake for 2 and a half hours. Remove from the oven, let cool for about a half hour and serve with vanilla ice cream or plain cream.

For the brown sugar recipe: Mix the scalded milk, molasses and brown sugar. Whisk in the corn meal, salt, cinnamon and ginger. Cook, stirring constantly, for 5 minutes. Pour in to the prepared baking dish and dot with the butter. Bake 1 hour, then pour the cup of cold milk over the top (do not stir) and cook for 2 more hours. Remove from the oven, let cool for about a half hour and serve with vanilla ice cream or plain cream.

We hope you enjoy this review of Indian Pudding through the ages, from gfzing.com. Indian Pudding is the best dessert ever, and deserves to return to its rightful place as a mainstay of American cooking!

Crustless Custard Apple Pie

1 · Dec 5, 2010 · Leave a Comment

In the mood for pie, but don’t want to roll out a crust? You can use the new gluten free Bisquick to make a pie that creates its own crust. This pie is like a gluten free French Clafoutis, but more economical because it uses cranberries instead of cherries. The large amount of cinnamon and vanilla balances out the deeply flavorless gluten free Bisquick.

Fruit mixture ingredients:

3 large flavorful apples that hold their shape (use types like Northern Spy, Winter Banana and Roxbury Russet – do not use Macintosh) – pared, cored and cut in to pie-type slices

1/2 cup (or more) gluten free dried sweetened cranberries

1 Tablespoon fresh lemon juice

2 Tablespoons gluten free Bisquick (and you will need more later)

Custard Ingredients:

14 ounces fat-free gluten free sweetened condensed milk

1 1/2 cups water

3 large eggs

1/2 cup gluten free Bisquick

4 Tablespoons butter, melted

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg

In a large deep bowl, mix the apples, cranberries and lemon juice and then stir in the 2 tablespoons of gluten free Bisquick to coat the fruit.

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Butter a glass pie plate (10 inches, or marked 25 cm on the bottom), then spread the apple-cranberry mixture evenly in the dish.

In the now-empty bowl, mix the rest of the ingredients: condensed milk, water, eggs, 1/2 cup gluten free Bisquick, butter, vanilla, cinnamon and nutmeg. Use an immersion blender to mix these custard ingredients until smooth – about 3 minutes. Pour this custard mixture over the apples and cranberries in the pie plate. The dish will be very full, so take care not to spill.

Bake for45-50 minutes until the custard is cooked through and the top is browning a little. Remove from the oven, set aside to cool. Serve cool or cold.

There will be a kind of crust that has settled out on the bottom of the pie – the texture of the “crust” will be the texture of a mochi, slightly chewy and quite intriguing.

Be sure to use all gluten free ingredients.

Thanksgiving Recovery Salad

0 · Nov 29, 2010 · Leave a Comment

After three days of recovery from the delicious Thanksgiving feast, we want a GF salad! This one from www.gfzing.com has lots of vegetables and fruits, with a little cheese and nuts.

Thanksgiving Recovery Salad gfzing.com — Thanksgiving Recovery Salad from gfzing.com

A composed salad of the following ingredients fits the bill exactly:

2 Roasted Pears (recipe is below)
1/2 Avocado, peeled, pitted and sliced
1/2 bunch Fennel, sliced or shaved
2 ounces Goat Cheese or gluten free blue cheese, chunked (optional)
2 TB sweetened dried cranberries or raisins (gluten free)
1/3 cup Candied Nuts
6 cups Salad Greens, washed
1 Carrot, grated
1 recipe Tangerine Dressing

Roasted Pears: wash 2 unripe (hard) Bartlett pears, remove the cores and cut them in to 8 pieces, stem-to-blossom end. No need to peel them. In a small bowl, mix 1/4 cup pure Grade B maple syrup (or Grade A Dark Amber) and 1 TB minced fresh ginger (optional). Combine the pear slices with this syrup mixture, then spread the pear slices on a foil or parchment paper-lined baking sheet. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Bake at 500 degrees for 15 minutes. Turn the slices over and bake an additional 5 minutes if desired. You cannot use a silpat lined pan for this process because the oven temperature exceeds the heat tolerance of silpat.

Roasted Pears gfzing.com before baking — Roasted Pears before baking

Avocado: Peel, pit and slice 1 ripe avocado, then mix the slices with the juice of a lemon or tangerine. The citric acid in the fruit juice will keep the avocado from turning brown.

Candied Nuts: Mix walnut meats, pecans or almonds with 2 TB granulated sugar. Place in a small frying pan and fry over medium heat for about 5-10 minutes, stirring constantly, until the sugar melts and begins to caramelize, sticking to the nuts. Remove the nuts from the pan at this point and place on a parchment paper-lined plate to cool. Separate the nuts so they don’t form one big nut mass.

Assemble the salad – Gfzing.com recommends that the greens, fennel, grated carrot, and cranberries or raisins can be tossed with the dressing. On each individual salad plate, gently arrange the avocado slices, pear slices, candied nuts and optional cheese on top of the dressed greens. Don’t try to toss avocado slices with the salad – disaster that way lies!

How to make gluten free beer

0 · Nov 5, 2010 · 8 Comments

At gfzing.com we have tried all the commercially available gluten free beers. Our favorites were those made by Green’s – there are three that are imported in to the U.S., and in our area they generally sell for a mind-boggling $7/bottle. This was the motivating factor behind a successful attempt at home brewing gluten free beer, the techniques of which are outlined here. A reasonable glass of gluten free beer (in the weissbier or weiss beer style), can be made for less than a dollar a bottle after start-up costs. The beer is similar to the St. Peter’s Sorgham Beer from Suffolk England.

The major difference between most fine artisanal beers and gluten free beer is that the ordinary beer is made with malted barley and wheat, and the gluten free beer cannot contain either barley or wheat. Therefore, the gluten free brewer must rely on other malted grains. The ingredients for gluten free beer are available from home brewing shops. The two tricky items to locate are the sorghum syrup, which lately we have had to purchase online from morebeer.com, and the gluten free brewing yeast. The actual link for purchasing the syrup is here.

To make home brewed beer, you should first read some of the fine homebrewing websites and chats on the net, and learn the basic technique. You are going to make a sort of soup called wort, and then ferment this soup with yeast in a large container with an airlock. When it has finished fermenting, it gets bottled with a little “priming sugar” added to each bottle to cause another fermentation in the bottle – this produces the carbonation. An excellent discussion with photos is available at WikiHow.

These instructions are provided here for use by adults of legal brewing age.

Recipe from gfzing.com for about 48 twelve ounce bottles of gluten-free beer requiring 2-3 hours of cooking time and about 7 weeks from starting the process to pouring:

Ingredients:
Malt Base – 6lb Sorghum Extract

Specialty Grain –

1lb Flaked Maize
1/2lb Whole Sorghum (for toasting)
1/2lb gluten free Oats (for toasting) – optional

Specialty Sugar – 1/4lb Belgian Dark Candi Syrup (this is a product that is worth the trouble of obtaining – it can be ordered online)

Hops –

1 oz UK Northern Brewer Leaf hops (bittering)

1oz Cascade hops (aroma)

Yeast- Notthingham Yeast (check for gluten free status on the package)
Other-

1/4 tsp Irish Moss
3/4 oz Coriander Seeds
3/4 oz. Bitter Orange Peel (in the event of a beer emergency, you can use the zest of one fresh orange)
8oz Malto-dextrin (a weird, nearly flavorless material that makes a smooth “mouth-feel”)
15 black peppercorns

Other: Priming sugar (about 1 cup for five gallons) dissolved in a couple of cups of water

Instructions:
Toast Whole Sorghum & gluten free Oats in the oven for 20 minutes @ 375 F.

Grind toasted Sorghum & Oats using a grain mill that is only used for gluten free grains, and then combine these with flaked maize.
Maize, Oats and sorghum go in a muslin bag in one and a half gallons cold well water in a large pot – large enough to hold at least 3 gallons.
Heat to 160F, hold at this temperature for 10 minutes.
Remove grains (the muslin bag full of grain will have swelled considerably) and discard.
Add Sorghum extract & Belgian Dark Candi syrup to the grainy water, stir to dissolve. If you have no Belgian Dark Candi syrup you may be tempted to use molasses. Our advice – don’t use molasses because it will impart a distinctive molasses flavor to the finished beer. If you must substitute for the Dark Candi syrup, try dark brown sugar or panela.
Bring to boil. ALERT: at this point, there are 60 minutes left in the cooking process. All the times listed next to the ingredients below are the total cooking time for that ingredient. When we say “set the timer” that is to indicate the time between steps.

Start proofing yeast in a cup of water – Nottingham yeast (marked gluten free).
While grainy water and sugars boil, add the following for the minutes indicated (this is a standard beer recipe convention, and you have to study on how beer is made so that this series of instructions will make sense):

1 oz. Northern Brewer Hops (60 min)
Set Timer for 45 minutes

When timer goes off, start adding the following ingredients and cook them for the amount of time indicated:

1 ounce Cascade hops (15 minutes)
Set timer for 5min, when timer goes off, add
1/4 tsp Irish Moss (10 minutes)
Set Timer for 5min, when timer goes off, add

1/2 lb. Malto-dextrin mix with cold water first (5 minutes)
3/4 oz coriander seeds (5 minutes)
3/4 oz bitter orange (5 minutes)
15 black peppercorns(5 minutes)

After 5 more minutes, all the cooking is done.

The total cooking time, from the time an ingredient is added to the end of the cooking is show in parentheses next to each ingredient. This is how beer-making recipes are generally written. The instructions about “set the timer for X minutes” are our own addition and show the time between steps. So, the Northern Brewer hops go in, then you wait 45 minutes and add the Cascade Hops, then wait 5 minutes, then add the Irish Moss etc. The last 4 ingredients all go in at once, and they only cook for the last 5 minutes of the boil.

Pour wort through a fine strainer in to 2 gallons of cold water in a sterilized 6 gallon fermenter.

Add cold water to increase to 5 gallons total volume in the fermenter (it helps to mark the fermenter at the five-gallon level so you know when you have added enough water).
Cool to 72 degrees F.
Measure the starting specific gravity and record. It should be around 1.040.
Add the proofed yeast, give a stir, cover the fermenter and add an airlock. This mixture should ferment for two or more weeks. This beer will not bubble as vigorously as a barley or wheat beer – it is a gentle fermentation and does best at around 70 degrees.
After the primary fermentation, rack off the beer in to another vessel, add the dissolved priming sugar, give the mixture a vigorous mixing, and bottle in sterilized bottles. Cap the bottles with new caps (you cannot re-use caps). The beer will be ready to drink in about 3 weeks.

Homemade Spicy Tomato and Sweet Pepper Ketchup

0 · Nov 3, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Making your own custom ketchup is easy-peezy! At gfzing.com, we made a careful study of the available recipes for homemade ketchup, and concluded that the ingredients in most tomato ketchups are pretty much identical. The spicy ketchup variant here is gluten free and can be served with fries, meatloaf, Shepherd’s Pie, hamburgers, hash browns, corned beef hash or any other dish that requires ketchup.

We tasted the typical store-bought ketchup which is very smooth, mostly sweet, with heavy tomato and celery seed notes – sort of like sweetened and thickened V8 juice! We also read Malcolm Gladwell’s interesting discussion of why there are so many mustards and only one ketchup. Afterward reading that, we thought that we would not like a ketchup substitute, but we were wrong. This ketchup is better than bottled ketchup!

Spicy Tomato and Red Pepper Ketchup — Homemade Ketchup has a rich color and complex flavors

We started with a Saveur recipe for homemade ketchup. We replaced half the tomatoes with sweet red peppers, added sweet potato and dates for sweetening and thickening, and switched out their brown sugar with some agave syrup and gluten free fruit jam, to reduce the amount of refined sugar in the recipe. We changed the amount of spices, and upped the hot peppers. The final ketchup has some chutney-like flavors. It has more flavor than bottled ketchup, and far less refined sugar. It provides dynamic tension for your meatloaf!

Ingredients:

14 0unces diced or petite cut canned tomatoes

3 long sweet red peppers, stemmed, seeded and sliced

1 cup water

1/2 of a large red onion, peeled and chopped

1 clove garlic, peeled and sliced

1 dried cayenne pepper, stemmed and sliced

2 Tablespoons agave nectar

1/3 cup cider vinegar (we make our own cider vinegar out of homemade New England apple cider, from local apples)

1/4 teaspoon celery seed

1/4 teaspoon dry mustard

1/4 teaspoon ground allspice

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/8 teaspoon ground cloves

1/8 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

2 Medjool dates, pitted and sliced

1 1/2 ounces of peeled sweet potato, chopped – a piece of sweet potato about the size of an extra-large egg

2 Tablespoons plum jam

How big are the peppers — A dried cayenne pepper on the left, and a sweet red pepper on the right

The Steps:

Homemade Spicy Tomato and Sweet Pepper Ketchup before cooking — The ketchup before the cooking...

First, put all the ingredients in a saucepan and cook over medium heat for about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally, until reduced by half. The material will start to stick to the bottom of the pan. Be careful that it does not burn.

When cooked, cool and then puree the mixture thoroughly in a blender or food processor. Taste, and adjust the salt, sweet, and sour flavors as necessary. That’s it! Serve warm or cold. Store, covered, in the refrigerator. This is not a “preserve” since it has a low sugar content and low salt content. It cannot be kept indefinitely. Make sure all your ingredients, including spices, are gluten free.

Banana Cream Chocolate Pie – gluten free

0 · Oct 24, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Banana Cream Chocolate Pie Close up — Close up of an actual slice of gluten free Banana Cream Chocolate Pie

This delicious pie is based on one from The Best of Cooking Light (2000). We have changed a few things and made it gluten free. As cream pies go, it is relatively light. For those of you who eat pie for breakfast, we maintain that a slice of this pie is nutritionally not very different from a bowl of sugary cereal with milk and sliced bananas. So, by all means, eat pie for breakfast!

It is possible to make this pie and serve it in 4 hours – you have to work quickly and chill at each stage. Chill the pie crust immediately after it is baked, add the chocolate layer and chill, add the bananas and custard and chill again. In winter, we take advantage of a table on a screened-in porch for these chilling stages. The screens on the porch are necessary to keep squirrels out of the pie.

First, you will need a one-crust gluten free pie shell. You can make your own using 1/2 of this recipe: Pie Crust Recipe. Roll out a crust and line a 9 inch Pyrex pie plate.

Prick the crust all over with a fork and pre-bake the pie crust for 10-12 minutes at 450 degrees (for this crust you don’t need to use pie weights or dried beans to keep the crust from collapsing.) In the event of a true pie emergency, you could use a Whole Foods gluten free pie crust from their freezer section.

Gather these ingredients:

For the chocolate part:

1 TB cornstarch
2 TB sugar
2 TB unsweetened gluten free cocoa powder
1/3 cup low-fat milk or gluten free rice milk
2 ounces semi-sweet or bittersweet gluten free chocolate (chopped coarsely)
Dash of salt

For cooking the custard:

2 TB cornstarch
1 cup of low fat milk or gluten free rice milk
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 tsp salt
2 large eggs
1 TB butter

After cooking the custard, mix these in:

2 tsp gluten free vanilla

1/4 cup (2 ounces) gluten free cream cheese (for dairy-free, omit this)

Other:

2 cups sliced ripe bananas (2 bananas)
Whipped cream, lightly sweetened and flavored with vanilla

You are going to layer up some thick chocolate paste which goes in to the baked pie crust first, then sliced bananas on top of the chocolate, then custard. Chill for 2 hours or more, then serve with whipped cream!

For the chocolate part: Mix the cornstarch, sugar, cocoa, milk and salt in a saucepan and cook, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens. Add the chocolate and stir until it melts. Spread this mixture over the bottom of the baked pie crust.

For the custard, get your immersion blender ready at your side in case you need it to correct custard disasters. You basically have two choices. You can mix the custard materials and cook over a boiling water bath, which takes more time and assures a lump-free custard, or you can mix the custard materials in a sturdy pot, cook over low heat, stirring constantly with a whisk, and if the custard curdles or looks at all lumpy give it a good blast with the immersion blender (taking care not to hurt yourself), adding a little heavy cream if necessary to loosen things up. Either way works fine.

After you cook the custard mixture, while the mixture is still hot, stir in the vanilla and the cream cheese and mix thoroughly. If you are making a dairy-free version, leave out the cream cheese.

Slice the bananas and put the slices on the chocolate layer, then spread the finished custard over the bananas. Chill completely, slice and serve with whipped cream. There won’t be a lot of left-overs.

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free!

Homemade Garam Masala

0 · Oct 19, 2010 · Leave a Comment

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?

Making Your Own Homemade Curry Powder

3 · Oct 15, 2010 · 7 Comments

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

Gluten Free “Slowed Down” Pumpkin Muffin

3 · Oct 13, 2010 · 1 Comment

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!

Curried Cream of Root Vegetable Soup – gluten free

0 · Sep 26, 2010 · 1 Comment

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)

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.

Gluten Free Macaroni and Cheese

0 · Sep 15, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Macaroni and cheese lovers, don’t despair. You can have perfectly fine macaroni and cheese without wheat. Use your favorite gluten free recipe, and the BioNaturae organic gluten free macaroni. Take care to read the package and make sure you don’t accidentally purchase the wheat variety.

We have tried a lot of different brands of gluten free pasta. For macaroni and cheese, Bionaturae is the way to go. The product is made of rice, potato and soy. It is quite expensive for pasta, but it is worth the money. We have no affiliation with the company and they haven’t even sent us samples, we just like the product!

For mac and cheese, cook the product slightly less than the package calls for. For example, the package says cook for 11 minutes, so for mac and cheese cook it for 10 minutes. No need to rinse this product. Just follow a gluten free mac and cheese recipe.

Roasted Vegetable Soup

0 · Sep 12, 2010 · Leave a Comment

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.

Carrot Quick Bread

0 · Feb 17, 2008 · Leave a Comment

This is an excellent loaf cake, mostly made of fruits and nuts, with a little gluten free flour to bind it together. It is delicious and has a great texture. We used the white rice flour that you get in asian grocery stores, and the tapioca starch made by Yoki, a brazilian brand (Harina De Mandioca).

1/2 cup butter, melted

2 eggs

1 Tablespoon orange or lime juice

1 cup sweetened shredded coconut (gluten free)
2/3 cup chopped walnuts (break up the walnuts by hand or chop them)
1 cup golden raisins (golden raisins are really better than brown for this bread)
2 1/2 cups coarsely grated carrots

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon grated nutmeg

1 teaspoon powdered ginger
1 cup dark brown sugar
1 1/4 cup flour mix – (mix 2 cups white rice flour, 2/3 cup potato starch, 1/3 cup tapioca starch and 1 teaspoon xantham gum, stir together and use 1 1/4 cups of it, store the rest) – alternatively, use Authentic Foods GF Classical Blend plus 1 teaspoon Xantham Gum.
1 tsp baking soda

1/4 teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9 x 5 loaf pan. Line the bottom with parchment paper.
In a pyrex measuring cup, melt the butter in the microwave. Remove and let cool slightly, then stir in the eggs and orange juice.
In one bowl, mix the spices, gluten free flour, baking soda, salt, brown sugar, shredded coconut and chopped walnuts. Add the raisins and carrots. Stir to make sure everything is evenly mixed up.
Stir the wet ingredients from the pyrex measuring cup in to the dry mixture that contains the fruits. Stir everything until well mixed.
The finished batter will have the consistency of a muffin batter.
Spoon the batter immediately into the prepared loaf pan, smooth the top, and bake for 60-70 minutes or until a tester comes out clean.
Cool in pan for ten minutes, then turn out to cool. Slice with a bread knife.

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free!

Butternut Squash Lasagna

1 · Jan 28, 2008 · Leave a Comment

This is going to seem surprising, but it is possible to make an excellent gluten-free lasagna by replacing the noodles with sliced butternut squash, following a method described in Donna Hay magazine. This lasagna has no tomato ingredients. The sweet squash combines perfectly with the cheeses and fresh basil to make a gourmet main course.
Butternut squash is an elongated winter storage squash. For this recipe, you need one large butternut squash, and you peel it and slice the neck into 1/4 inch thick slices – these will be circular slices.

Ingredients:

1 butternut squash, peeled, and sliced in to 1/4 inch thick slices

1/2 pound large curd cottage cheese

1 pound full-fat ricotta cheese

1 1/2 cups freshly grated parmesan cheese (buy the hunk of cheese and grate it yourself, to be sure there is no gluten)

5 eggs

1/2 pound spinach (if fresh, steam it briefly in the microwave, if frozen, thaw and drain)

1/2 cup chopped fresh basil leaves (or a few tablespoons of frozen pesto sauce)

12 thin slices of pancetta (an Italian ham) chopped coarsely

salt, pepper

full-fat mozzarella – 1/2 pound, grated (grate it yourself)

Oven at 325. Grease a porcelain or ceramic 9 x 13″ pan. Mix the cottage cheese, ricotta, parmesan, eggs, prepared spinach, basil, salt and pepper in a large bowl. Stir well.

Cover the bottom of the prepared pan with half of the slices of squash, sprinkle the squash with half of the chopped pancetta , then distribute half the ricotta mixture. Repeat this layering once. On the very top, sprinkle the mozzarella.

Bake for 50 minutes, until the top is golden and the dish is cooked through.

Make sure all of the ingredients are gluten free!

Collard Greens with Grapefruit

0 · Jan 2, 2006 · Leave a Comment

1/2 a large red onion, peeled and coarsely chopped
4 Tablespoons butter
1 Tablespoon coarsely chopped garlic
1 sprig of fresh tarragon
1 dried cayenne pepper, cut in half
4-6 stalks celery, sliced
1 bunch collard greens (center ribs removed, leaves sliced in 1 inch widths)
2 Tablespoons wheat free soy sauce
2 Tablespoons sherry
1 Tablespoon honey
1 red grapefruit, peeled and divided into sections, white membranes removed
freshly ground pepper
freshly ground salt

Fry the chopped red onion in the butter, in a non-stick skillet set over medium heat, for 10 minutes, stirring frequently, until the onion is browned – it will smell really great! Add the garlic, celery, cayenne pepper and tarragon branch and stir fry for a minute. Add the collard greens and stir fry as they wilt, another couple of minutes. Add the soy sauce, sherry and honey and stir fry as this cooks in to the greens, another 5-7 minutes. Add the grapefruit sections and stir-fry as the grapefruit sections start to fall apart and the greens cook some more – another 10 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Use all gluten-free ingredients!

This recipe is based on one from Hammersley’s Bistro Cooking at Home. The original recipe was for duck, with bitter greens and grapefruit etc. and appeared on page 203.

Plum Pie

0 · Sep 24, 2005 ·

Plum Pie

Filling:
2 pounds ripe Italian prune plums, stoned and cut in quarters (you don’t have to peel these plums)
1/4 cup white sugar
2 tablespoons gluten free orange liquer
1 tablespoon tapioca starch
1 teaspoon of cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 sugar for the top of the pie

uncooked two-crust pie crust

In a large bowl, mix all of the filling ingredients except for the sugar that goes on top.

Make a 2-crust pie crust such as the Dream Pie Crust from Bette Hagman’s cookbook The Gluten-Free Gourmet Makes Dessert. Line a 9″ glass pie plate with a single crust, fill with the plum filling, place the top crust on top. Cut holes in the top to allow steam to escape. Sprinkle with the remaining 1/4 cup of sugar. Bake at 375 degrees for 45 minutes to 1 hour, until done. The juices that are bubbling out of the sides of the pie and through the steam holes should be slightly thickened, and the top should be golden.

You can also make a crostata, placing one crust flat on a parchment lined baking sheet, loading it up with the fruit mixture (not quite to the edges of the dough), roll the edges up to cover some of the filling; sugar on top and bake!

Note: you can obtain tapioca starch at health food stores or Asian food stores.

Serve warm.