gluten free

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.

Leek, Potato and Cauliflower Potage

0 · Jan 26, 2012 · Leave a Comment

This is an easy, vegetarian gluten free soup from the website gfzing.com to serve as a first course or as a main course with an accompaniment of gluten free toast or scones.

It is delicious!

In a large pot, place 3 leeks, cleaned, trimmed and chopped, 5 Red Bliss potatoes, peeled and cut in half, and about a third of a head of cauliflower, cleaned and cut in to flowerets.

Pour in water to cover (6-8 cups), add 2 teaspoons of salt and bring to a boil, turn down to a simmer and cook until the potatoes and cauliflower are tender, about 20 minutes. Add 2 tablespoons of ghee (clarified browned butter) and a 1/2 teaspoon of freshly ground pepper, then puree the soup carefully using an immersion blender stick until it is velvety. If you do not have an immersion blender, use a regular blender or food processor, being careful not to burn yourself with the hot soup.

Note: If you are a wheatavore serving a gluten-free diner, make sure to use plain fresh water to make this soup. Don’t use water that was just used for cooking pasta, for example.

Test the soup for salt and balanced flavors, then serve sprinkled with a little chopped parsley if you have some.

It would be fine to substitute other vegetables for the cauliflower – for example: carrot,s sweet potato, broccoli, peas, spinach etc.

Make sure all the ingredients are gluten free.

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!

Gluten Free Fruitcake

0 · Nov 29, 2011 · Leave a Comment

The Best Laid Plans of Mice[i]….

By Alice DeLuca

The black-and-white “tuxedo” cat who moved in recently is sleeping on the radiator, as an early snowstorm downs trees and power lines outside, and there is no sign of any mouse in the kitchen. At this time of year, just before guests start arriving for holiday meals, hordes of country mice would usually flood the house from every hole that is larger than a dime. They are Old World house-mice and little New World white-footed mice. These tiny half-ounce creatures can run at 8 miles an hour and jump vertically to distances of a foot and a half. The speed and agility explain how the fabulous mouse athletes got in to the chocolate, and also why we have a cat. Quite directly related to the presence of this cat is the very sparse influx of mice for the 2011 holiday season.

These are “The Misses Cheddar,” from a series of costumed mice called “Mice Named After Famous English Cheeses” obtained in Britain in the late 1990s. They are shown alongside an American dime, to demonstrate that a dime-sized hole, through which mice can pass, is very small.

Some mice sing[ii] – a lucky person who lives near mice will have heard this unforgettably sweet song once or twice, and there are scientific references from long ago alerting us to the fact that mice are known to sing. Despite this long-standing human knowledge, the internet abounds today with seemingly authoritative articles stating “It was recently discovered that male mice produce complex, ultrasonic songs” [iii] – but this is not news to anyone who lives around these delicate, small but annoying creatures.

The beautiful soprano warbling song coming from the silverware drawer late at night leaves me with mixed feelings. On the one hand having mice in the kitchen is disagreeable – since they rarely venture more than fifty feet from their established nest, have hundreds of offspring, spread disease and inadvertently cause expensive damage when they nip through electrical wiring and such. I do not blame them as they are just trying to live their lives, but when they nested in the seldom-used oven broiler, the conflagration of the nest caused a smoky incident that brought 3 fire fighters decked out in full turn-out gear to the house. There followed a visit from an extremely well-compensated stove repair technician who nonchalantly advised me to “turn the broiler on at least once a month just to discourage them.” He said he “saw this kind of thing all the time.”

A cascading mouse disaster also led to the expensive replacement of an automatic dishwasher – a mouse nested in the dishwasher insulation; the cat yanked off the bottom panel of the dishwasher to get at the mouse; the plumber who installed the new, replacement dishwasher said there was no point in plugging up the holes in the floor – “they can get in anywhere. It doesn’t matter what you do.”

Even while the mice cost us untold thousands of dollars and un-ending work, the presence of mice who have come in from the cold signals the start of one of the best food seasons of the year. It is a good season for roast pork, chicken and duck, and though many people today have lost touch with its glories, fruitcake.

A really good fruitcake made mostly of fruit, and soaked repeatedly in vast quantities of distilled liquor, is a great treat – very expensive and a required food for the winter season. The creation and production of a fruitcake marks the passing of time in the dark months. To have a fruitcake ready for the Christmas season, it is necessary to start working on the project now.

There follows a recipe for a terrific Fruitcake based on instructions from Darina Allen and Rosemary Kearney in their authentic and down-to-earth cookbook Healthy Gluten-Free Cooking. I have interpreted their instruction to season with “mixed spice” through research on such mixtures curated by the authoritative Elizabeth David, and I have adulterated the cake by completely saturating it with copious quantities of high quality gluten free Irish whisky*. (For the gluten free status of this whisky, see: http://www.jamesonwhiskey.com/Distillery/Meet-the-Distillery-Masters/FAQ.aspx)

1. Prepare an 8 ½” inch round, 3” deep pan, buttered and then lined with parchment. The parchment should stick up at least 1 ½ “ above the top of the pan. We have used one pan that was originally purchased to make cheesecake during the cheesecake mania of the early 1980s and have also used a spring-form pan effectively.

2. Mix up a batch of Mixed Spice (there will be some leftover after you use a teaspoon to make the cake so you can store that in a bottle for other uses). This mixture is based “loosely” on one from Elizabeth David’s English Bread and Yeast Cookery. I say “loosely” because I made a careless error in transcribing it at one time or another, and doubled the ginger. The error has persisted and this is the mixture I use. Again note that this will yield 3 teaspoons of which you will use only 1 :

1 teaspoon ginger
½ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon cloves
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon cinnamon

3. An important and informative note on Whisky: We use the better part of a quart of Jameson’s Irish Whisky for this cake. I would recommend that you use an Irish Whisky that does not have any smokiness to its flavor. Some Irish whisky is “enhanced” by smoked peat and frankly that flavor would do nothing good to this cake.

4. Use a kitchen scale to weigh the ingredients for this recipe.

5. Macerate the Fruit ingredients for an hour or so – the timing is truly irrelevant as this is not science and very little whisky is involved at this point in the recipe:

2 ounces sliced almonds

2 ounces finely ground almonds

12 ounces brown raisins

12 ounces golden raisins

12 ounces dried currants

1 cup (8 ounces) glace cherries (leave whole or cut in half but no smaller than half. I have successfully used dried cherries that have been rehydrated and cooked in a sugar syrup)[iv]

½ cup (4 ounces) candied citron – you can use homemade candied citrus peel instead[v]

Shredded rind of both an orange and a lemon

2 Tablespoons of Jameson’s Irish whisky (Jameson’s is an excellent choice – a whisky that does not have heavy “tobacco” notes – and noted as gluten free on the manufacturer’s website 2011-11-29)

Note: You want a total of 3 pounds of dried fruit, with vine fruits predominating. Candied Pineapple can be added successfully, providing a nice textural nuance. Currants are a required ingredient. Much different from raisins, currants are sugar-packed and have a crystallized texture that cannot be achieved with any substitution.

Raisins and Currants ADeLuca 2011 — Vine Fruits Predominate in a fine fruitcake

6. Preheat oven to 350 F.

7. Mix the Wet ingredients:

Cream 8 ounces of sweet butter, then stir in 8 ounces of brown sugar and beat until “pale and light.” Add 6 eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.

8. Mix the Dry ingredients:

Mix one teaspoon Mixed Spice[vi] with 8 ounces of finely ground almonds, 4 ounces of white rice flour (finely ground rice flour is available in Asian groceries – make sure it is rice flour and not sweet rice flour), 2 teaspoons of xanthan gum[vii], 1 cooking apple shredded (Golden Russet, Baldwin, Yellow Delicious).

9. Mixing and Baking:

Stir the Wet ingredients in to the Dry ingredients, and then add the Fruit ingredients. Do not overbeat. Scoop the very thick mixture in to the parchment-lined pan. Wet your hand and use your hand to smooth the top. Bake the cake for one hour, then reduce the heat to 325 and bake the cake for another 2 hours until a skewer comes out clean. The cake will be very dark. The original recipe calls for more baking, but I have found that it is important to start checking the cake after 2 hours.

10. Soaking:

Remove the pan from the oven and pour 2 ounces additional Irish whiskey over the cake. Let cool in the pan overnight.

11. More Soaking, a critical addition to an excellent recipe: Remove the cooled cake from the pan and remove the parchment. Wrap the cake in cheesecloth, and then soak the cake liberally with an additional ½ cup of Irish whiskey. Wrap the cheesecloth covered cake in an outer layer of tinfoil to completely cover the cake, then store the whiskied-up, tinfoil-covered cake in a tin or other container. Every 1-2 weeks, or whenever you remember, remove the cake from its tinfoil wrapper and soak the cake liberally on all sides with additional Irish whiskey. Restore the foil and put it back in its storage container. Continue soaking the cake every couple of weeks until Christmas.

12. In the original Allen/Kearney cookbook, there are elaborate instructions for adding an almond paste coating that I have never tried. It sounds like a good idea, but since we soak our cake in whiskey we have not felt the need for the almond paste coating.

Our fruitcake will be safe from the mice this year, well-wrapped and now protected by the feline security system. The cat has shown the discouraged mice the door, and they have packed up and moved their residence outside to the car. They continue to be very expensive tenants, however, and I have just received the car repair bill – $99 for removing a mouse nest from the engine.

Mouse Nesting in the car engine - a very expensive problem

The cat brings his own set of problems and expenses, but he is a charming and effective mouse-deterrent. He is good company, and does not eat and contaminate all the stored food, such as the all-important fruitcake – a medieval gourmet treat that marks the coming of the darkest season with the hope of new fruit on the vine the following summer.

[i] Burns, Robert. “To A Mouse. On turning her up in her nest with the plough”, November 1785. Accessed November 29, 2011 http://www.rbwf.org.uk/poems/translations/554.htm.

[ii] Dice, Lee R. 1932.”The Songs of Mice”, Journal of Mammology, Volume 13 Number 3. Accessed October 31, 2011 http://www.jstor.org/pss/1373992.

[iii] Ballenger, L. 1999. “Mus musculus” (On-line), Animal Diversity Web. Accessed October 31, 2011 http://www.animaldiversity.org/site/accounts/information/Mus_musculus.html.

[iv] Witty, Helen, and Elizabeth Schneider Colchie. Better than Store-bought: a Cookbook. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. Print. This book contains extensive instructions on candying a variety of fruits.

[v] Witty, Helen, and Elizabeth Schneider Colchie. Better than Store-bought: a Cookbook. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. Print. This book contains extensive instructions on candying a variety of fruits.

[vi]The following mixture is based on reading David, Elizabeth. English Bread and Yeast Cookery. New York: Viking, 1980. Print. …and several other books.. and then making a transcription error many years ago.

1 teaspoon ginger

½ teaspoon pepper

½ teaspoon cloves

½ teaspoon nutmeg

½ teaspoon cinnamon

[vii] The Xanthan Gum compensates for the lack of gluten in rice flour.

Day of the Un-Dead

0 · Oct 28, 2011 · Leave a Comment

The Day of the Dead and Halloween are nearly upon us and I am frantically digging for recipes that can protect the living against the Un-dead. Books and papers fly as I paw through shelves and piles, seeking something to ward off the Zombies, Vampires and Werewolves that may be lurking outside the door, or that may invade my kitchen at any moment. They all have highly specialized dentition designed to make swift work of the main course – me!

I’m calling on restaurateurs – please, this time of the year, an “amuse bouche” for the living might be just the thing to calm the customer’s nerves. Could chefs please get a little creative, and instead of offering me a puddle of olive oil, or herbed olive oil, or olives in a lake of olive oil with obligatory bread (that I don’t eat anyway), could they provide something that will protect our table from monsters? Let’s get our priorities straight please; safety comes first!

You can’t ward off zombies per se, with garlic or crosses, but you can put something on the table that won’t attract them to your establishment in the first place. How about some complimentary zombie-immune starters along these lines:

Vegetable Pakoras with a little yogurt sauce or a cilantro chutney on the side
Lightly pickled Carrot sticks and Dilly Beans, seasoned with garlic of course
A homemade cheddar-garbanzo bean cracker with a pear chutney
An endive boat with a vegetarian Banh Mi style filling
A black lentil salad with plantain chips
Yucca Fries with a sprinkling of salt and various peppers, and fresh limes

And chefs, if all the customers start moaning after the salad course, don’t assume narcissistically that they are in ecstasy over the fabulous new pâté de foie. Admit it, you were just making the pâté as a cost-recovery measure to use up chicken livers. It’s time to think on your feet – could the moaning coming from the dining room be a sign of zombie behavior spectrum disorder [i]? If so, take appropriate action immediately. If you are a fan of the zombie movie genre, you will know that you cannot necessarily trust anyone at this point, not even your sous-chef. Especially take note of this if you happen to be in Nashville, Tennessee this weekend where the Zombie Buffet 5K will be happening.

For the Vampire problem, everyone already knows to wear a garlic necklace, and frankly a random grouping of bulbs of garlic would fit right in with the giant globular necklace trends this season. Help us out please! Let’s see some velvety aioli, or the Greek skorthalia, or perhaps a beautiful green broccoli-garlic spread for gluten-free crositni or crackers – so easy to make, so garlicky and so green and lively that no zombie or vampire will come near the eater.

Broccoli spread:

· For each ½ pound of broccoli florets, 2 cloves garlic – peeled, 2-3 tablespoons olive oil, salt, pepper
· Bring water to a full rolling boil. Add the broccoli and cook until tender in boiling water, about 5-10 minutes, uncovered. Drain, dry and put into the food processor with the raw garlic. Process until smooth, adding the oil as needed. Season with salt and pepper. Serve at room temperature on gluten-free crostini or crackers.

One caveat about the drinks menu – The brilliant Zombie movie Ahhh! Zombies, a tale told from the perspective of the unfortunate zombies themselves, clearly demonstrates that to keep from attracting zombies you must absolutely avoid brain milkshakes, so there is no need for chefs to develop grizzly new martinis on the brain theme, thank you very mush.

For the werewolves, you need only serve the broccoli appetizer on a silver platter, and your diners’ problems with werewolves will be over. No matter who comes through the front door, the customers will be able to survive until the dessert course.

[i] The Zombie Attack Disaster Preparedness Plan from the University of Florida http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~jybarra/zombieplan.pdf

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.

Gluten Free Miso Soup

0 · Feb 24, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Loaded with vegetables, this simple, easy gluten free soup can be put together in under a half hour. Use other vegetables in place of the ones specified in this recipe – whatever you have available. Cruciferous vegetables (Brassicaceae family) like cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, turnip, watercress etc. or quick-cooking greens like spinach are ideally suited to this type of soup.

Ingredients:

2 Tablespoons toasted sesame oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 Tablespoon fresh ginger, minced

5 scallions, cleaned and minced

2 quarts water

1/2 cup dried sliced shitake mushrooms

1/2 head of cauliflower, in flowerets

1 bunch (1 pound) asparagus, washed, tough end removed, sliced in 1/2 inch slices

1 large yam or sweet potato (about 1 pound), peeled and cubed

8 Tablespoons gluten free miso (we used South River 3-year Hearty Brown Rice Miso – check with the manufacturer’s website for gluten free status)

black pepper

Simply heat the sesame oil, stir fry the garlic, ginger and scallions or onion for 30 seconds, then add the water. Bring to a simmer, then add the dried shitake mushrooms, cauliflower, asparagus and yam or sweet potato. Simmer for 10 minutes until the yams are tender. Stir in the gluten free miso paste, season with pepper and serve hot.

A surprisingly rich and satisfying vegan soup.

Double-check to make sure the miso paste you choose is gluten free.

Oyster Sauce and Hoisin Sauce

0 · Feb 23, 2011 · 2 Comments

Gf-Zing! received a request to find a gluten free Oyster Sauce and Hoisin Sauce in March 2006. We have updated the links for 2011, and we remind our readers that we don’t verify the gluten free status of products.

For Hoisin, you might consider the Premier Japan brand of Wheat-Free Hoisin Sauce. It is not the same texture as wheat-based hoisin sauces, and it is neither as thick nor as dark. See the Edwards & Sons Trading Company website regarding this product. We rely on the manufacturer to state the content. Please be sure to verify that any products you consume are safe for your situation. Gf-Zing! does not verify the gluten free status of products.

http://www.edwardandsons.com/specialdiets_celiac.itml (link updated 2011 Feb 23)

For the Oyster Sauce: You might consider the Lee Kum Kee brand for oyster sauce but NOT for their hoisin sauce (see their website.)

Assuming you don’t want either 5 or 55 gallon drums of oyster sauce, then the Lee Kum Kee’s Choy Sun oyster sauce (yellow label) and the Panda Brand green label are the most likely candidates on their website (they make other kinds too, so it is important to check the bottle at the store.) Things change often in the food world, so you have to keep checking to see if they change their ingredients. Gf-Zing! does not verify the gluten free status of products.

http://us.lkk.com/faq (link updated 2011 Feb 23)

Note: Here at Gf-Zing! we do not verify the gluten-free status of any product. We rely on the manufacturers to declare the status of their products. It is up to the reader to check labels, and to verify that the products they consume are safe for them to use.

A Simple Brown Rice Flour Pie Crust

2 · Feb 18, 2011 · Leave a Comment

If you are trying to make a gluten free pie crust and find yourself with few ingredients, or want to make a gluten free pie crust with a whole grain flour and no xantham gum, try this one. It does contain some cream cheese, so be certain your guests can eat dairy products.

For a one-crust pie:

1 cup finely ground brown rice flour

1/3 cup corn starch

1 Tablespoon sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

8 Tablespoons unsalted cold butter (1 “stick”)

2 Tablespoons gluten free cream cheese (cold)

1 teaspoon fresh lemon or lime juice

1 Tablespoon beaten egg white

Using a food processor, mix the dry ingredients (brown rice flour, cornstarch, sugar, salt and baking powder) just until mixed. Add the butter, cream cheese and lemon juice and mix until the mixture is crumbly. Dribble in the egg white while mixing, just until everything comes together in to a ball. A tiny bit more egg white may be required to get it to come together. Adjust the egg white as necessary.

Roll the dough out between two sheets of wax paper. There is no need to chill before rolling.

To make a pre-baked shell, line a 9-10″ glass pie plate with the rolled out pastry, then bake in a pre-heated 400 degree oven for 10-15 minutes until browned slightly but remove it from the oven if it starts to crack. Unlike wheat crusts, this crust does not need to be filled with pie weights when baking a pre-cooked shell.

Make sure to use all gluten free ingredients, and, if you are cooking for a gluten free friend and you don’t keep a gluten free kitchen, make sure the ingredients are not contaminated with wheat flour from your other cooking adventures.

Homemade Vinegar

0 · Feb 3, 2011 · 1 Comment

Homemade vinegar is easy to make – it kind of makes itself under the right conditions – and we have been making our own for 25 years. The vinegar you buy in the grocery store (white, cider, wine) is sharp tasting and thin in flavor compared to the rich complexity of a homemade vinegar. Make your own vinegar and you will become a fan! Also, with your own homemade vinegar there is no need to read labels looking for gluten-containing items. The test of a delicious vinegar is this: sip up a teaspoon of the vinegar and you should want more! You will not want to waste this homemade vinegar making those baking soda and vinegar volcanoes that are so popular in elementary and middle school classes.

You will need:

Leftover Wine diluted with unchlorinated water
Vinegar culture (a bacterial culture, check with the manufacturer and do NOT use malt vinegar culture)
a wide-mouthed glass or stoneware container
Cheesecloth to keep fruit flies out of the vinegar while allowing air to enter the container
Room temperature (68-96 degrees)
surgical hemostat clamp (a ten dollar item) for easily removing old vinegar mother

If you really get in to making homemade vinegar, you may want to invest in a handy vinegar crock with a spigot, or an oak vinegar barrel. Bear in mind that it is not safe to use homemade vinegar in home canning or pickling, unless you are a talented chemist who can accurately test the acidity of your finished product. For pickling, you need 5% acidity.

Coyote Vinegar Crock gfzing.com square — Gfzing.com uses a vinegar crock with spigot - made by Clay Coyote Gallery

To make Vinegar:

Choose what kind of vinegar you are making: red, white, cider. Dilute leftover wine or hard cider with unchlorinated water, about 2 parts of wine to one part of water. Put about a quart of diluted wine in to a cleaned large mouth jar or bowl, or vinegar crock. We use C-brite to clean the container. Add the starter culture. Stir with a clean spoon; cover the container with cheesecloth secured with a rubber band (keeps out fruit flies while allowing air to enter). Store the crock at the back of the counter in your kitchen, where the vinegar will remain largely in the dark and at 68-96 degrees. In about 4 weeks the first vinegar should be ready to use in salad dressings and sauces. Pour off some of the vinegar, taste it and dilute it with additional water if it tastes too strong, then bottle it in sterilized bottles and cork the bottles.

Now add more diluted wine to your crock – this is called “feeding” your vinegar and let it go. Each time you get ready to bottle some vinegar, taste the finished product to see if it is ready for bottling, and add water if the flavor is too strong. Since this is a trial-and-error, imprecise method for achieving the final product, you will not know the final Ph of the homemade vinegar and cannot use this vinegar to make pickles or preserves that are not refrigerated.

Vinegar Culture:

To make vinegar, you add a starter culture of acetic acid bacteria to an alcohol base (like wine or hard cider). For the starter culture, you can use some vinegar from a friend’s vinegar crock, or you can buy a culture. For gluten free vinegar, do not use malt vinegar culture.

Vinegar Mother:

Vinegar mother is a thick cellulose material created by the vinegar bacteria. People who have never handled vinegar mother call it “slimy” but that is not a good description. The material is strong, thick and fibrous, stretchy, slippery and somewhat leathery – like the covering on a papaya seed, or a sort of fibrous jelly. It can break cleanly in to clumps when you pull on it. The mother accumulates in your crock or barrel, and eventually some of it needs to be removed to make room for more wine. The mother is not necessary to the formation of new vinegar – what you need is the bacteria. So, if you have a friend who makes good vinegar and does not pasteurize it, ask for a sample of their vinegar and you are ready to go.

Vinegar Barrels:

A word about vinegar barrels – the oak vinegar barrel adds a strong oak flavor to a red wine vinegar, and we use one for this purpose. However, the home vinegar maker should be forewarned about a couple of things. 1) The vinegar barrel should be soaked before using, to prevent leaking. 2) Unless the barrel has a large opening at one end, removing old vinegar mother from your vinegar barrel requires two people, because most of these barrels only have small holes through which to remove the mother. One person holds the barrel so that a hole is facing downwards (the largest hole is the air hole at the top) and the other person uses a surgical hemostat clamp to grab bits of the mother and pull them through the hole. This is a messy process.

Vinegar Crock and Barrel from GFZINGdotcom — Gfzing.com uses the Vinegar Crock for cider vinegar and an Oak Vinegar Barrel for red wine vinegar

Bottling:

We bottle the vinegar without pasteurizing it.

Homemade Vinegar and Pickling:

Do not use homemade vinegar for making pickles. Vinegar used in pickling must be of a certain Ph, or you can have spoilage and dangerous bacteria can grow in the pickles.

More Instructions:

Further instructions for making your own vinegar are available here: http://www.claycoyote.com/blog//SunsetMagazine_Vinegar.pdf

Thai Cucumber Salad Dressing

1 · Feb 3, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Salad is the BFF (best friend forever) of seasoned gluten free eaters. Here is another simple, inexpensive gluten free dressing that can be used on many different kinds of fresh vegetable. In this case, we used English cucumbers – those long, long cucumbers that are often sold mysteriously laminated but have the advantage of holding few seeds.

To make attractive edges on the cucumber, increase the fiber in the finished dish, and avoid peeling, we use a fork to deeply score a cucumber from end to end, on all sides. Scoring the cucumber in this way breaks up the peel so the diner does not have to masticate like a herbivore. Then we cut the cucumber in half lengthwise, then sliced it crosswise into moon shapes. If you use a standard American cucumber, after halving it remove the seeds by scooping them out with a spoon.

Put the cucumber slices (or grated carrot, daikon radish or whatever vegetable you want to lightly pickle) in to a glass bowl. A fancy bowl is not required – any glass bowl will do.

Mix up the following dressing, pour it over the cucumber slices, stir and chill:

1/2 cup cider vinegar (homemade is best)
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 water
1 teaspoon salt
1 medium shallot, peeled and minced
1 dried cayenne pepper, minced (or 1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes)
fresh ground black pepper (optional)

You can add more cucumbers to the leftover dressing and serve the same salad again the next day.

A note for the wheat-eater who is serving a gluten free diner: be cautious with the sugar container. Sometimes a tired baker scoops up some flour from the flour container and then uses the same measuring cup to scoop up some sugar. If that’s something you tend to do, use a fresh container of sugar to make this dressing for your gluten free friend.

Mortar and Pestle

0 · Jan 30, 2011 · 1 Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gluten Free German Torte Cake base

1 · Jan 24, 2011 · Leave a Comment

German tortes can have a cake base with a cream filling, and maybe fresh fruit on top. Here is how to make a gluten free German sponge cake (this one is made with almonds and cornstarch) that will work well as the base for a torte with a cream filling.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Line the bottom of a 9 inch spring-form pan with parchment paper, then grease the sides of the pan with butter. Set this prepared pan aside.

You need 3 bowls – like Goldilocks and the Three Bears! One great big bowl, one medium sized bowl, and one little bowl.

You need a kitchen scale to weigh the ingredients. Be sure to zero out the scale each time you measure something.

3 eggs, separated
3 Tablespoons cold water
75 grams Sugar
50 grams Cornstarch
65 grams Almond meal (Bob’s Red Mill makes the one we used)
1/2 teaspoon gluten free baking powder (measurement is for American baking powder. If using German baking powder, use slightly more.)

Beat the egg whites with the cold water in a large bowl until stiff. In the medium sized bowl, beat the egg yolks until light lemon colored and fluffy.

Beat the sugar in to the beaten egg whites, then fold in the beaten yolks.

In a third little bowl (capacity 2 cups), mix the cornstarch, almond meal and baking powder. (The volume of cornstarch and almond meal will be about one cup combined).

Fold the cornstarch/nut mixture in to the egg mixture. The mixture will be light and fluffy.

Carefully distribute the batter in to the prepared spring-form pan.

Bake for 35 minutes at 300 degrees until the cake springs back to the touch. Remove from the oven, slide a knife around the sides to loosen the cake, then remove the sides. Allow the cake to cool completely. Remove the cake from the pan. You can cut it horizontally in to two layers using a bread knife, if you need 2 layers.

Make sure your ingredients are all gluten free!

Gluten Free Lace Cookies

0 · Jan 18, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Lace cookies are quick to make, and require few ingredients. It is just as easy to make them gluten free if you substitute cornstarch for the wheat flour in the recipe.

In a 2-cup Pyrex measuring cup, put the following ingredients – then microwave on the setting you would use for 1 cup of coffee, until the butter melts and the mixture bubbles.

2 Tablespoons butter
1 1/2 Tablespoons corn syrup
2 Tablespoons dark brown sugar

Remove from the microwave, then stir in

2 Tablespoons cornstarch

Deposit the batter in teaspoon-sized circles on parchment paper lined baking sheet. Be sure to leave 3 inches between each cookie, and make only about 6 cookies at a time if you plan to roll them in cylinder or cone shapes because you will have to work quickly.

Bake the cookies 6 minutes, until spread out, brown and bubbly. Watch them carefully to make sure they don’t burn.

Remove the sheet from the oven. If you are going to make cylinders or cone shapes, allow them to cool about 15 seconds and then start working with them. Otherwise, wait about a minute and the parchment paper will be easy to peel right off the cookies! As you can see from the picture, these cookies spread quite a lot. I have included a quarter in the photos so you can compare the size, uncooked and cooked.

and these cookies are delicate like glass. Here are about 7 of them stacked on a Heath Ceramics coffee cup – (cup color is Moonstone.)

Braised Lamb Shanks with pepper and Green Peas

0 · Jan 18, 2011 · Leave a Comment

This rich, delicious dish is based on one for North African-Influenced Lamb Shanks with Couscous by Emeril. We have added more vegetables, and removed all the gluten.

2 1/2 pounds lamb shanks (if these are American hind quarter shanks you will have 2 shanks)
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons ground black pepper
1 teaspoon turmeric

Sprinkle the spices over the shanks and fry them in 3 Tb of olive oil until browned on all sides. Remove the shanks to a large covered casserole that can go in the oven.

In the same pan where you fried the shanks, add:

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 a dried cayenne pepper, minced, or 1/4-1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper, ground

Stir fry the spices for 30 seconds, then add:

1 1/2 cups coarsely chopped spanish onion
2 large carrots, peeled and cut in 1 inch chunks
1 sweet potato, peeled and cut in half

Stir fry the vegetables until the onion is a little bit golden, then add:

1 Tablespoon chopped fresh garlic (about 4 cloves)

Stir fry until the garlic is fragrant only – about 30 seconds. (Emeril’s recipe called for stirring the garlic for 30 minutes, which must be a typo)

Add:

2 cups rose wine
1 cup chopped tomatoes (about 1 large tomato)
4 cups chicken stock – if you are reconstituting this from bouillon mix, make sure the mix is gluten free and use less than is called for on the package – to avoid over-salting)
Juice of one orange
2 strips of orange zest (you can remove the pieces when the braising is complete)

Bring to a boil, then add the vegetable-wine-tomato mixture to the lamb shanks in the other pan. Cover the pan. Place in a 350 degree oven for 2-2 1/2 hours until the meat is falling off the bone. Check occasionally to see if more liquid is required. Remove from the oven, and remove the pieces of orange peel.

Add:

1/2 pound frozen green peas

Cook on top of the stove until the peas are just barely cooked.

Gfzing.com likes to serve with steamed artichokes for dipping up the delicious sauce.

If you want a gluten free substitute for the “couscous” in the original recipe, substitute 1 cup pre-rinsed quinoa and 2 cups water for the couscous. Microwave the quinoa and water, covered, for 8 minutes on high, then add the rest of the seasoning ingredients in Emeril’s recipe and set aside, covered for about 10 minutes until the water is completely absorbed by the quinoa.

Lime and Agave Salad Dressing

0 · Jan 15, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Here is a delicious gluten free dressing of agave nectar and lime juice, based on a “thai-style” dressing that can be found all over the internet. (The standard “thai-style” dressing contains the now evil corn syrup, once sooooo trendy and now hiding shamefully in the back of many American cupboards, waiting to be used in pecan pie.)

We had a bottle of agave nectar sitting on the shelf, and apart from wondering why that agave was not made in to tequila we hadn’t given it another thought. As usual, we are entering the new year with a load of greens on our plates, hoping to reverse the effects of holiday indulgences. The problem with all that salad? It can be boring! The only hope is an arsenal of interesting sauces to “dress” up the greens. Here’s one:

1/4 cup amber agave nectar or other sweetener or your choice
1 1/2 tablespoons gluten free soy sauce (check the label)
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lime juice (about 1/2 of a large lime, or one whole small lime)
1 tablespoon oil (not from olives)
1/2 teaspoon dried basil (or 1 tablespoon snipped fresh basil
1 tablespoon snipped fresh mint leaves
1/4 teaspoon ground chili (cayenne or red pepper)
1 tiny clove of garlic, peeled and grated or minced

Mix all ingredients together and serve with a salad of mixed greens, sliced boneless chicken seasoned and pan-fried, sweet cherry tomatoes, nuts etc.

Chianti goes well with this dressing.

Maple Pumpkin Pie, no dairy, from fresh pumpkin

0 · Jan 14, 2011 · Leave a Comment

small pumpkin pie — Non Dairy, Gluten-Free Pumpkin Pie

This interesting recipe from gfzing.com has no milk, cream, rice milk or any other type of milk, is gluten free and uses fresh rather than canned pumpkin. The type of pumpkin used is the small “pie” or “sugar” pumpkin – they are sold at farm stands for the purpose of making pies. The natural liquid in the freshly cooked pumpkin is sufficient liquid and no added milk products are needed. Do not use canned pumpkin for this recipe.

The pie is quite light, and since the only sweeteners are maple syrup and molasses the pie is not too sweet.

Ingredients:

1 “pie” or “sugar” pumpkin
1/2 cup dark maple syrup
1/4 cup molasses
3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
3/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 unbaked Whole Foods gluten free (gf) pie shell, thawed and cracks repaired

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

Defrost the gluten free pie shell and repair any cracks. Sometimes frozen pie crusts get broken, but you can smush the crust back together along the breaks to make a whole crust.

Next, remove the stem (just break it off) from the pumpkin and stab the pumpkin through the shell to the center in 4 or 5 places with a pairing knife – to let out steam. You don’t need to cut the pumpkin up or remove the seeds before cooking. Set the prepared pumpkin in the microwave oven and cook it as for baked potato (use the setting on the microwave).

Remove the very hot pumpkin from the oven using potholders and let cool completely. Now cut the cooked pumpkin in half, use a large spoon to scoop out and discard the seeds. Then, scoop out the cooked flesh, set it aside for use and finally discard the peel. You should have about 24 ounces cooked pumpkin (weigh the cooked flesh.) You do not need to mash or strain the pumpkin flesh.

In a food processor, combine about 24 ounces ( one and a half pounds) of cooked fresh pumpkin (not canned) with all the rest ingredients except the pie shell. Process until the mixture is completely smooth. Pour most of the pumpkin mixture in to the uncooked pie shell until the pie shell is filled almost to the top. Depending on the size of the pumpkin, there may be a cup or so of extra filling. If so, grease a small oven-proof dish and pour the excess in there.

Put the pie in to a 450 degree oven for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350 and cook for another 45 minutes. Check the pie – if the filling is set, the pie is done. Cool and serve with your favorite pie topping.

For the extra filling, bake that along with the pie but it will be done and ready to take out of the oven well before the pie. You can use this cooked pumpkin pie filling to make a nice pumpkin parfait, layering the cooked chilled filling with your favorite gluten free pie topping (whipped cream if you use it).

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!

Pasta con Alici – gluten free

1 · Dec 20, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Pasta con Alici is pasta with anchovies – for garlic and anchovy lovers only!

Melt 1/4 cup butter and 1/2 cup olive oil in a small pan.

Add:

6 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced paper thin
2 ounces top quality anchovies (the kind that come in a glass jar and taste good), drained, and thoroughly rinsed
freshly ground black pepper

Mix and mash the anchovies in to the oil until completely dissolved but do NOT let the garlic brown.

Serve over 1 pound of gluten free spaghetti – normally you would use angel hair pasta, but there is not currently a gluten free angel hair pasta available, so use the Bionaturae brand of gluten free spaghetti cooked al dente, mix with the sauce, and serve immediately. Do not add any salt as there is residual salt in the anchovies, even after rinsing.

The sauce can be made a few hours before serving.

Gluten Free Feast of the Seven Fishes

3 · Dec 20, 2010 · Leave a Comment

Some Italian-American families celebrate Christmas Eve with a dinner of many fish dishes. This is a wonderful holiday tradition that has evolved, in our family, to honor the many ethnic groups and food preferences of the extended family.

If you have a large guest list and a small table without enough chairs, try hosting a Hawai’ian-style “heavy pupus” (hot and substantial appetizers) Feast of the Seven Fishes. You can make this meal entirely gluten free without bothering any of the guests!

Get together an eclectic play list of music, including some hits from the year and some holiday music. When “Who let the dogs out?” or “The Macarena” were popular, we included them along with the Jingle Bells. It is nice to have variety instead of an endless train of Joy, Joy, Joy, since everyone has challenges as well as happiness during the holidays. It is nice to include some favorite music and foods of people who used to celebrate with you but have passed away, to include them in the party even though they are not corporeally present.

Traditional Dishes:

Baccalà (hot dish)
Baccalà (cold salad)
Mare Salad
Pasta con alici (make with GF spaghetti)

Fusion Feast of the Seven Fishes Dishes:

Crab Cakes
Shrimp Sushi
Mini Lobster Rolls
Filipino Lumpia
Fried Fish
Jonah Crab Claws with Cocktail Sauce
Oysters Rockefeller
Fish Cakes
Codfish with Orange Sauce
Crab Dip with plantain chips
Gravlax
Spanish tapas – Shrimp with garlic
Mare Salad
Fish cakes with Wasabi Ginger Tarter Sauce (must be heavily adapted to gluten free)

Mare Salad (Italian Seafood Salad)

1 · Dec 20, 2010 · Leave a Comment

This is a delicious Italian seafood salad with chickpeas. Divine!

1/2 pound of fresh, small scallops, parboiled for a very short time – just until done – in a 50/50 mixture of white wine and
water – use Cape or bay scallops if you can get them. If using the large sea scallops you will have to slice them in halves or quarters.
1 dozen pitted Kalamata olives, diced
3 stalks celery, diced
15 ounce can of chickpeas, drained, rinsed (peel the tough
skins off, or cook from scratch instead of using canned)
1 medium red onion, diced (be sure not to use too much – the red onions are pretty gigantic in the supermarket these days)
2 Tb. flat italian parsley, diced
2 Tb. olive oil
2 Tablespoons red vinegar
2 Tablespoons white vinegar
salt and pepper

Mix it together and let marinate overnight.

Notes:

You can add 1/2 pound sliced cooked squid. Only parboil the squid for 30 seconds or it will become tough and rubbery.
Do not use any “imitation seafood” or “seafood legs” or any of those fake crab products – they are often made with wheat.

Indian Pudding

0 · 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!