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A Sausage Walks in to a Bar…

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By Alice DeLuca

A story for carnivores

Assador - Alice DeLuca 2012 digimarc
Assador - for roasting sausages

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Recipe

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

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

A sliced lemon for soaking the hog casings

Apple wood for smoking

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

 

Concerning the Meat and its Preparation

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

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

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

Save the bone to cook with dried beans.

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

Marinating

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

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

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

Grinding

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Preparing the Casings

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

Stuffing

 

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

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

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

 

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

Smoking

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

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

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

 

Setting Things on Fire

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

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

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

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

Video:

Linguica roasting over aguardente

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

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

 

 


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

Eating for the End of the World

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This shows Jan 29 2012 in Mayan calendar notation. It was produced by this nifty Mayan calendar date generator: http://www.pauahtun.org/cgi-bin/gregmaya.py

*


 

 

 

I see it’s time to obtain my Mayan calendar refill.  Everyone seems to be preparing for the end of the world, so I searched for a Mayan calendar refill  for the pocket organizer that was going to make me in to a better, more organized and productive person in 1990. A new Mayan calendar, simply starting at December of 2012 instead of ending there, would solve the world-is-ending problem and I could get on to thinking about what to cook.  I did not locate a paper calendar refill but something even better! An enterprising soul has seen this business opportunity, and (incredibly) filed a patent application for a circular wooden version of the ancient Mayan system.  With a purchase of a minimum of 20 wooden calendars, my end-of-the-world problem is solved![i]

Now it’s time to move on to the food. Preparing for the end of the world, any meal might be our last meal, so we should make each one delicious.  Send me your Suggestion for Meals for the End of the World –

your “last meal idea” including a website for a recipe if there is one, and I will post the very best of them in a giant menu of wonderful options. Please  join me in making a time capsule of 2012 eating, (for anyone who still has internet access after the end of the world.)


[i] http://www.mayantimekeeper.com/

*http://www.pauahtun.org/cgi-bin/gregmaya.py

Note: Eating for the End of the World is a play on words using a song by Elvis Costello lyric “Waiting for the End of the World.”

Gluten Free Fruitcake

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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.

Mice Named After Famous English Cheeses - The Misses Cheddar - ADeL

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
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

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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

 

Gourmet Gluten Free Brownies

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Gourmet Gluten Free Brownies from gfzing dot com

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.

A Simple Brown Rice Flour Pie Crust

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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.

Gluten Free Lace Cookies

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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

gluten free lace cookie dough

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.

lace cookie size

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.

lace cookie - 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.)

lace cookies stacked on Heathware cup

Maple Pumpkin Pie, no dairy, from fresh pumpkin

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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).

Pasta con Alici – gluten free

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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

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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:

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)

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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.

Thanksgiving Recovery Salad

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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
Roasted Pears after baking
Roasted Pears after baking gfzing.com

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!

Homemade Poultry Seasoning

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herbs drying gfzing.com

Once again, Gfzing.com cracked the binding on a bunch of cookbooks to find a tasty gluten free poultry seasoning for the Thanksgiving turkey stuffing.  We looked through the usual suspects, those older books that included formulas for standard seasonings and came up empty! Then, on an old bottle marked “poultry seasoning,” we found a typed list, taped to the bottle.  The ingredients are listed below.

The herbs and spices for poultry seasoning are similar in all  formulations, it is just the proportions that change. The sage and thyme should predominate.  Some poultry seasoning recipes include nutmeg, and some include celery seed.

We dried the herbs from our garden, at the end of the fall, by hanging them upside down in the kitchen to dry.  If you don’t have home-dried herbs, you can use bottled herbs.

  • 2 parts dried sage
  • 3/4  part dried rosemary
  • 1 part dried marjoram
  • 1/2 part ground black pepper
  • 1/2 part grated nutmeg
  • 1  1/2 parts dried thyme

These ingredients are listed in “parts” – you can substitute teaspoon or Tablespoon for “part” in the recipe, depending on how much poultry seasoning you want to make.  You can assemble all of these in a large, stone mortar and pestle and grind them quickly to a fluffy powder. It is the sage that adds the fluffiness to this preparation.

Thanksgiving Turkey – why does it seem to take forever to cook?

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Almost a decade ago, we enlisted the kids’ help to keep careful tabs on the temperature of the Thanksgiving turkey as it was roasting. We roasted a 24 pound, unstuffed turkey from a local farm (all natural, no “solutions” injected in to it, and minimally processed) at a constant temperature of “325” F – that is what the oven dial was set to, at any rate. We used a thermometer with a probe connected to a digital display – this type of thermometer allows you to run this experiment while making only one puncture in the turkey.  The turkey started cooking at 40 degrees.

As you can see from this graph, it took about 6 hours to bring the roast from 40 degrees to 175.  The temperature rose quite quickly for the first 4 hours, then the change in temperature slowed down considerably.

turkey roasting graph from gfzing.com
The temperature of a roasting turkey, over time (gfzing.com)

This experiment, and subsequent discussions with scientists, gave us a greater understanding of the Thanksgiving paradox: as the turkey gets closer and closer to being done it never seems to be done. After several hours, as the house fills with the good smell of roast turkey, the recalcitrant turkey sits there with the thermometer showing clearly that it is not yet cooked. We always start to wonder if the oven has gone out or if the oven thermostat has ceased working. We shake the drumstick, we poke the turkey, we open the oven way too many times, putting a hand in to see if it still feels hot etc.  Why do we do this, year after year – with the Thanksgiving turkey, a Christmas roast beef, and any other large piece of roasting meat?

I spoke with a well-known astrophysicist, to try to get some answers. He says people tend to view trends as linear processes, so they will see the temperature rising quickly at the beginning,  assume that this quick trend will continue at the same rate, and feel that the turkey should be done much earlier than it really will be.  He says in fact “the plot above is a solution of a well-known heat diffusion equation* which applies to all cooking processes with the exception of microwaves.” The steepness of the line in the curve is a measure of the heating rate of the turkey.  The heating rate (the change in temperature in a particular time) is proportional to the change in temperature between the turkey and the oven. The temperature of the turkey will approach, but never reach, the temperature of the oven. As the turkey gets warmer, the temperature change in an hour decreases (it goes up, but less quickly).

The astrophysicist, who likes to simplify problems so they can be solved, says you can “view the turkey as a solid,” “assume a spherical turkey” and “assume a non-spherical turkey.”  He then considered the problem of cooking stuffed turkeys vs. unstuffed turkeys, the stuffed turkey being closer to a spherical turkey and the unstuffed turkey having an empty cavity which reduces the thickness of the material to be cooked and effectively reduces the size of the turkey.  The concept of a spherical turkey provoked a lot of laughs, but in the real world, there are no spherical turkeys. Real turkeys have wings and drumsticks.

He provided a helpful reference to The Science of Cooking, by Peter Barham, which notes “… the cooking time is always proportional to the square of the size of the food, rather than its weight.”   You can understand this if you consider that the same weight of turkey, cut in to pieces, will cook in much less time than the same exact turkey cooked whole.

This is why chefs will tell you to cut the turkey up in pieces,  roasting the light meat and dark meat for different amounts of time so that the light meat does not become dry and the dark meat gets more time in the oven.  However, the “dissected turkey” method of cooking the Thanksgiving turkey is impractical for those cooks who want to present a Norman Rockwell turkey (visually appealing whole turkey on a platter) at the table.  The Norman Rockwell turkey requires compromises, and more time than you may think.

*the solution of the heat diffusion equation is an exponential process, if you extrapolate a line from the early cooking temperature data you will expect the turkey to be cooked many hours sooner than when it is actually cooked.

How to Feed a Gluten Free Guest

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A friend asked about what to serve a gluten-free guest at dinner.

We advise that a nice menu for entertaining a gluten-free guest might include

  • A simple salad of lettuce and grated carrots with a dressing made of olive oil and lemon juice, fresh garlic, salt and pepper. Do not use croutons.
  • A lamb, fish or chicken dish made with simple ingredients.  Take great care that if you use stock or soy sauce it is gluten free.  Use whole herbs and spices rather than ground spices.  A simple recipe to try might be a Marinated Grilled Chicken.
  • A rice pilaf such as Nilufer’s Khtichri or plain braised potatoes.
  • Steamed broccoli finished with olive oil, fresh lemon juice, salt and pepper, or alternatively a dish made with fresh or frozen green beans, or carrots
  • For dessert, serve a gluten free sorbet or fresh fruit salad.
  • If you want to serve ice cream, ask the gluten free guest if they eat ice cream (some do not eat dairy products), and use a gluten free product.  Haagen Dazs keeps a gluten free list of their products at this site: http://haagendazs.com/flavor_finder/.  About half way down the page is a check box for “gluten free” – check that box and search the site – this will generate a list of their gluten free products. Always check the manufacturer’s site.

As you can see, the gluten free diet is a very healthy diet!

Banana Cream Chocolate Pie – gluten free

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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!

Susie’s Cheesecake

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

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

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

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

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

*original recipe called for wheat flour

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

Shopping List for Susie’s Cheesecake:

1 pound cream cheese

1 pound ricotta

Sugar

4 large eggs

Butter

GF Flour

Cornstarch

Vanilla

Sour Cream

1 lemon

Gluten Free Turkey Dressing (stuffing)

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A few thoughts on gluten free Thanksgiving dining…the first year, we felt obligated to pursue some type of exact replica of glutenated turkey dressing – and were disappointed by many expensive and wasteful batches of dressing with the consistency of wet kitty litter.  We eventually made something good – but –  the second GF year, a relative made an excellent wild rice and mushroom dressing – better than good. A new pathway for gluten free Thanksgiving dining!  And, with the wild rice being native to North America it seemed very fitting somehow.
To find the recipe for Wild Rice Stuffing with Wild Mushrooms, buy some dried pears and seek the recipe here:

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/recipe_views/views/105886

That dressing turned our minds around, and this year we will consider using a butternut squash risotto, along the lines of the one in the Bistro Cooking at Home by Hamersley.  Hamersley’s butternut squash ristotto is made with maple syrup, rosemary, sherry and sherry wine vinegar, along with cubes of butternut squash. We sometimes use shallots, and sometimes onions and garlic. The flavors are nicely balanced, with plenty of “umami” or fifth taste flavor as well, even if you cut the amount of butter in half.

We heartily recommend using a rice dressing (or stuffing) for the gluten free turkey dinner, and making it in a separate dish rather than stuffing it in to the bird.

Update for 2010: You can also use Against the Grain rolls for making any normal stuffing recipe.  If you like, you can use a mixture of half Udi’s Bread and half Against the Grain Rolls.  Cut the rolls, or the rolls and bread, in to large cubes and toast in the oven for 20 minutes at 325.  The Against the Grain rolls will maintain their structural integrity and stand up to the liquids in the dressing, while the Udi’s bread will disintegrate somewhat.  The combination of the two textures works well together.

Cranberry Orange Walnut Quick Bread

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It is up to the individual to decide whether they can eat oats or not. To eat oats or not is a controversial issue in the gluten free world. Please research the oat issue carefully for yourself, and decide what you want to do in consultation with your healthcare professional. If you are feeding a gluten-free guest, please inquire whether they eat oats or not. You may substitute dried coconut for the oats in this recipe. This recipe was developed by Gf-Zing! , which celebrates flavor in the gluten free world.

2 cups gluten free cookie flour
1 cup rolled quick or old-fashioned gluten free oatmeal, uncooked or oat substitute
3/4 cup sugar
2 teaspoons gluten free baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon Authentic Foods powdered gluten free vanilla
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon xantham gum

3/4 cup orange juice
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 eggs
1/3 cup extra light olive oil
grated zest of one orange
3/4 cup chopped dried cranberries
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Mix the first 8 ingredients in one bowl, and mix the second 7 ingredients in a second bowl. Grease a 9×5 inch loaf pan, line the bottom with parchment paper, and grease again. Flour the pan lightly with mochiko (sweet rice flour).

Combine the contents of both bowls and stir briefly just until thoroughly blended. Spoon the dough in to the prepared pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 1 hour to 1 hour and ten minutes. When a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, the bread is finished.

Remove the pan from the oven and let cool on a rack for one hour. Turn the bread out of the pan and let cool completely before serving.

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free, and investigate the oat issue and the source of the oats and ask your medical professional for their advice regarding this topic before eating oats.

Mongolian Hot Pot, or Meat Fondue in Bouillion

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Get out your old fondue pot, or buy a new one – this is a fun dinner adventure for the gluten free cook! This meal is not suitable for very young or very irresponsible diners, as it involves boiling stock. The recipe was developed by Gf-Zing! , which celebrates flavor in the gluten free world.

Prepare for quick-cooking and place on plates to take to the table, using a separate dish for each meat or fish:

Boneless chicken, sliced in bite-sized chunks for cooking quickly in soup
Rib-eye steak, fat removed and sliced in bite-sized chunks
Shelled, deveined whole shrimp
Sliced green peppers
Quartered mushrooms
Sliced onions
Broccoli flowerets
Cauliflower chunks
Other meats and vegetables of your choice

Prepare the stock by bringing the following ingredients to a boil:

1 quart gluten free chicken stock
2 slices ginger
Several cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
Pepper

Transfer the boiling stock to a fondue pot with a burner underneath to keep the stock hot. Place a pad under the fondue pot to protect the table.

Make several dipping sauces, such as Tartar Sauce, Satay Peanut Sauce, Ginger Green Chile Sauce, Dry Spice Dipping Sauce. Put each sauce in a serving dish with a serving spoon.

Provide each diner with a fondue plate (hard-to-find plates have little indentations for sauce built right in to the plate,) or a regular dinner plate and several small dishes for their sauces, a fondue fork for cooking their meat and vegetables, and a knife and fork for dealing with their cooked food. Warn diners that the stock is hot.

The diner selects meat or vegetables to cook, spears the food with the cooking fork, then plunges the fork into the simmering stock in the fondue pot. When their forkful of food is cooked, they transfer the food to their plate, then use their other fork to dip the food in to their sauces and eat the food. Using a separate cooking fork is the best way to do this process while not sharing winter colds and viruses.

Serve plain jasmine rice on the side.

Use all gluten free ingredients!

Valentine Cookies – raspberry

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Make a recipe of gluten free sugar cookies, and roll and cut 1/4″ thick into valentine heart shapes. Cut a center out of half the cookies (these will be the tops of the sandwich cookies). Bake as directed.

Dust the top cookies (the ones with the center cut-out) with gluten free confectioner’s sugar.

Spread the bottom cookies with raspberry jam (we prefer seedless), and top each with a cookie that has a center cutout – this will allow the jam to show through.

A pretty, gluten free cookie for Valentine’s Day!

Double Chocolate Cherry Cookies – gluten free

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This recipe was developed by Gf-Zing! , which celebrates flavor in the gluten free world.

1 cup gluten free butter or vegan margarine
1 cup white sugar
1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla

1 3/4 cups gluten free cookie flour
1/3 cup gluten free unsweetened cocoa powder
1/2 teaspoon gluten free baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

2 cups gluten free semi-sweet chocolate chips
3/4 cups chopped dried cherries (Rainier cherries are good)

Oven at 350 degrees.

Cream the butter 0r margarine (or one stick of each) with the two sugars and the vanilla until light and “fluffy.” Beat in the egg. Mix the dry ingredients in a separate bowl and add them to the creamed mixture. Mix thoroughly. Up to this point in the recipe you can use a food processor to do the mixing.

Stir in the chocolate chips and the cherries.

Drop tablespoons of dough on a silpat lined cookie sheet. Flatten them slightly with your hand or with the bottom of a glass that you dip repeatedly in sugar.

Bake the cookies for 11-12 minutes, then remove the cookie sheet from the oven and allow the cookies to cool for 2 minutes on the pan before removing them to a rack to cool completely.

This recipe will make a 3 dozen cookies or so, and they will be eaten so fast you will have to make more right away!

Be sure to use all gluten-free ingredients!

Ginger Biscuits or Cookies

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All those gluten-free cookies need to have the spice and flavor component enhanced, as spices and flavors tend to disappear into the rice flour…..Here is a good way to obtain a nice, strongly ginger-flavored cookie – a recipe from Gf-Zing!

You will need Miss Roben’s Mock Graham Cracker Cookie mix for this recipe.

Put the contents of 1 package of Miss Roben’s Mock Graham Cracker mix in a large bowl.

Add:

2 teaspoons gluten free ground ginger
1 teaspoon freshly grated lemon zest
3/4 cup minced crystallized ginger

Now, follow the instructions on the Miss Roben’s Graham Cracker mix bag, adding the honey, vanilla, butter, and water. Do not leave out the honey – use a fresh, local honey for extra good flavor.

Roll out the dough between pieces of waxed paper dusted with confectioner’s sugar, until the dough is about 1/4 inch thick. Cut with cookie cutters or a small glass. You can prick the cookies with a fork or press them with a ceramic cookie stamp – both methods will make nice designs on these cookies.

Bake the cookies as per the instructions on the Miss Roben’s bag. If you cook them longer they get darker and crunchier. They will keep for a long time in a cookie jar, and are excellent with coffee or tea.

Your friends in the glutenated world will want this recipe!

Make sure that you use all gluten-free ingredients!