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Armenian Dessert Cake with Syrup – gluten free

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Armenian syrup cake w honey gfzing

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

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

Make this cake by hand, for aerobic exercise.

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

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

Preheat oven to 350.

Cream together:

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

Add and stir to incorporate:

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

 

Add and stir to incorporate:

  • 1/4 cup milk

 

Add one at a time and stir til well mixed:

  • 3 eggs (large)

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

Make a syrup of

  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 1 cup water

 

Bring to a boil, then add

  • 1 Tablespoon honey
  • 1 soup spoon of fresh lemon juice

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

Use all gluten-free ingredients!

Chicken Sticky Rice

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

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

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

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

The dish is tasty and satisfying!

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free!

Corn and Bacon Risotto

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

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

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

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

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

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

Make sure that all your ingredients are gluten free!

© Gf-Zing! | Alice DeLuca

Rice Pudding in the Zojirushi Rice Cooker

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This nice rice pudding from Gf-Zing! has large grains of rice and tart cherries to offset the sugar. The recipe is not cloyingly sweet, and is quite attractive because of the large grains of rice.

In the rice cooker, put 3/4 cup of Arborio rice, 4 cups of non-fat milk, 1/2 cup of sugar, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, 1/4 cup of dried cherries and 2 Tablespoons of slivered almonds. Set the menu to Porridge, close the top and turn on the cooker.

When the cooker switches to “keep warm,” beat 1 egg, 1 teaspoon of almond extract and 1/4 teaspoon of lemon extract in a large bowl. Add the hot, cooked rice mixture to the egg mixture, about a soup spoon at a time, and beat well with a large spoon after each addition. The reason for adding a little of the hot rice at a time is so that the egg will not cook suddenly – if it did, it would make a sort of rice pudding with hard-boiled egg bits in it – Yuck! If you add the rice a bit at a time and stir vigorously after each addition, then you will get a nice creamy rice pudding.

After this mixture cools, serve it in small bowls with heavy cream to pour over each serving. You may have to do a little counter-top clean up, if the milk comes out through the vent holes in the top of the cooker during the cooking process. We had to clean up this milky mess, but we didn’t mind because the rice pudding was so tasty!

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free!

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.

Lemon Rice Pudding

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In a large bowl, mix the following ingredients:

2 eggs
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon finely grated fresh lemon zest
2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon gluten free vanilla

Cook one cup of dry, long-grain rice with 1/2 teaspoon of salt, until done. You can use a rice cooker, or do it on top of the stove. While the cooked rice is still very hot, stir it quickly and vigorously into the bowl with the eggs and seasonings. Stir quickly so the eggs don’t cook before the mixture is all mixed up. The hot rice will cook the eggs.

Transfer to a serving dish; sprinkle the top with gluten free cinnamon.

Cool the pudding to room temperature or colder before serving.
Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free.

The original version of this recipe is from Still Life With Menu, by Molly Katzen, published in 1988.

Sushi, Musubi

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Mix up a batch of gluten free sushi rice, and you are ready to make a Hawai’ian specialty called “musubi.” In Hawai’i Musubi is often topped with Spam, but no matter, it is a great method of making a sandwich-like concoction that is perfectly sized for lunch. This recipe is presented here by Gf-Zing!, celebrating flavor and excitement in the gluten free world.

You will need a plastic musubi mold or a Spam can to make this recipe. You are going to make a sort of brick of seasoned rice wrapped in seaweed, with fillings in the middle. Spam musubi would have the Spam on the top, rather than in the middle, but that is no matter.

You can cook sushi rice on top of the stove or in your rice cooker. Use about 2 to 1 ratio of water to dry, medium grain Japanese or sushi rice (Kokuho Rose or Nishiki are two common brands.)

Rinse 2 units of rice well. Cook it in 4 units of water, or use the sushi rice line on your rice cooker insert to measure the water. Turn on the cooker and wait until it is done.

When it is just finished cooking, place the rice in a large bowl. Have ready some gluten free seasoned rice vinegar, a rice paddle, and a piece of paper or a small hand-held fan.

While fanning the rice with one hand, stir the rice (using the rice paddle) with the other hand. Sprinkle a bit of seasoned rice vinegar on the rice and continue stirring and fanning. Continue to do this, adding more seasoned rice vinegar, until the rice has a pleasant sweet-sour-salty taste and has gotten cool. The rice is ready. For two cups of dry rice (5-6 cups cooked), you would use about 7 tablespoons or so of the vinegar.

Cut a piece of sushi nori (that is a dark sheet of edible seaweed that looks like shiny green-black paper) to fit the bottom and up the sides of the musubi mold. It should extend out the top of the mold on both long edges by an inch and a half. Typically, this requires half a sheet of sushi nori. Keeping the edges of sushi nori going up the sides of the mold, put some of the prepared rice in the bottom, on top of the nori. On top of this, you can add small amounts of any of the following fillings, as you like:

Cooked fish or shellfish
avocado slices coated in lemon juice (so they don’t get brown)
slivered cooked carrots
gluten free smoked fish
cucumber slivers
Japanese seasoning peppers (gluten free)
gluten free ham, sliced very thin

Fill the rest of the mold up to the top with seasoned rice. Press down on the rice with your rice paddle firmly. Fold the ends of the nori down over the top, then use the presser that comes with the mold to tightly compress the entire thing by pressing down on the top of the folded nori. You will have a dense brick of rice and pretty colored foods all contained in a portable form. Wrap this brick in tin foil (aluminum foil) and you have a nice complete lunch. Depending on the ingredients you used for filling, you may not need to refrigerate this musubi, making it very convenient for camping or work places without refrigeration.

Important Notes: Unfortunately, currently the gluten free community must avoid wasabi paste, which often contains wheat. Soy sauce also often contains wheat, so read labels before trying to dip your musubi in soy sauce. Be careful also to make sure that the seasoned rice vinegar is gluten free. Some are not. Also, imitation seafood products are often made with wheat and should be avoided.

A picture of spam musubi (with the spam on top) is available at the following page:
Wikipedia article

Always use gluten free ingredients.

Nilufer’s Khtichri – a rice pilaf

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This recipe is shared by Nilufer C. She says:

The traditional Indian khitchri is a combination of rice and moong daal cooked together. The following version is a Parsi style khitchri (yellow rice) made without the daal and eaten at least once a week with different curries, sauces and accompaniments.

Ingredients :
1 small onion
1 tablespoon cooking oil
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
3-4 peppercorns
3-4 cloves
2 whole cardamoms
1 stick cinnamon
1 cup rice
2 cups water
salt to taste
1 teaspoon turmeric

Sauté onion in a 4 quart pot till golden brown. Add cumin seeds, pepper corns, cloves, cardamom seeds and cinnamon. Sauté for about 1 minute.

Add rice, water, salt and turmeric. Stir and bring to a boil. Remove from stove and place covered in preheated 300 degree oven for about 20 minutes.

If desired remove pepper, cloves, cardamom, and cinnamon stick from ice before serving. (Serves 4)

Gf-Zing! notes: If you don’t have turmeric, you can try using a couple of gluten free bouillion cubes in place of the salt. The dish cooks nicely in a Corningware casserole with a glass lid. When you lift off the lid, the delicious aroma of the rice will bring everyone to the kitchen asking what is for dinner! Also, this dish can take longer than 20 minutes to cook, depending on the type of rice you use (basmati for example,) and the temperature of the water.

We have served this rice with a French-style pot-roasted chicken, a braised cabbage in a German style, and an Italian Chianti – the mulit-culti combination was outstanding.

Wild Rice in the Zojirushi Neuro-Fuzzy Rice Cooker

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All the websites say it is possible, even the Zojirushi website, but none of them tell you how! Well, here’s how you cook wild rice in the Zojirushi.

1 unit rice
rinsing water
additional 3 units of water

Allow a good 2 hours before dinner.

Rinse the rice by putting it in a bowl, filling the bowl with water, giving the rice a stir and then pouring off the excess water. Do this a couple of times.

Place the washed rice and 3 units of water in the Zojirushi, and use the menu setting button to change the setting to “brown rice.”

This rice will take a long time to cook, and should be allowed to sit in the cooker for quite a while before serving, to dry out some more. Using the extra water (3 to 1 ratio as listed) will make sure that the rice is fully cooked. Wild rice is not actually a rice, and it has a tendency to be served at an inappropriately crunchy stage – when fully cooked, the grains should have split open completely, and the insides will be an interesting translucent gray-white color. There will be a pleasant chewy quality to the brown part of the grain, but you won’t need to make a trip to the dentist after eating!

Pineapple Fried Rice

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You can use almost any proportion of these ingredients, and throw in other things besides…..

3 cups cooked, cold jasmine or other long-grain rice, massaged to separate the grains of rice
1 large pineapple (peeled, cored and cut in chunks), or a can of gluten free pineapple chunks, drained
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
1/4 cup peeled, sliced shallots
10 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 pound shrimp, shelled and cleaned (optional)
1 1/2 teaspoons gluten free curry powder
1 red or green bell pepper, chopped
3 scallions, sliced
1 1/2 Tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 Tablespoons gluten free Thai Fish Sauce

Note: Read the label on the fish sauce. Some fish sauce companies include wheat, for unknown reasons, in fish sauce. Purchase a fish sauce that does not include wheat.

Prepare all your ingredients ahead of time, and get out the wok.

Heat the wok, and add the oil by drizzling it down the sides. When the oil is hot, add the shallots. Stir-fry the shallots until they are golden, a couple of minutes. Add the garlic and stir-fry briefly until it smells good. Add the shrimp and stir-fry until the shrimp are just turning pink – they don’t have to be finished cooking. Add the curry powder and stir-fry for 30 seconds. Add the pineapple, bell pepper and scallions and stir-fry until the pineapple is heated through, about 2-3 minutes. Add the cold rice and stir-fry until the rice is hot. Add the sugar and stir-fry for 30 seconds. Lastly, add the fish sauce by drizzling it down the sides of the wok into the rice. That’s it!

For gluten free curry powder, we make our own, using the recipe in Rebecca Reilly’s Gluten Free Baking.

You can add grated ginger, and chopped jalapeno peppers, or gluten free chili paste to this dish if you like things a bit spicier.

Make sure that all your ingredients are gluten free!

Chicken Soup with Salsa and Lime

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Soup:

1 quart gluten free chicken stock
1 1/2 cups gluten free salsa
1/4 cup fresh lime juice (2-3 limes)

Add-ins:

2 cups shredded, cooked chicken
1 cup fresh or frozen corn kernels
1 cup cooked rice
1/4 cup chopped cilantro

Bring the soup ingredients to a boil. Add the “add-ins” and cook for 3-5 minutes. Season to taste with salt and freshly ground pepper.

Serve with avocado slices, gluten free sour cream (omit for dairy free), lime wedges and gluten free tortilla chips.

If using a pre-cooked chicken, make sure it did not include “an added solution” or a self-basting feature, as these added fluids can contain gluten.

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free.

Basmati Rice in the Zojirushi Rice Cooker

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To cook basmati rice in the Zojirushi (fuzzy-logic) rice cooker – that is the question! Is it possible to make this rice in the cooker and obtain the quality that one gets from cooking it using a traditional method?

Basmati rice is a delicious rice enjoyed by many cultures. It has a mildly pop-corny flavor and a wonderful texture. In some countries, basmati rice is cooked with a delicious bottom crust created by steaming the cooked rice on a base of butter or buttered sliced potatoes. In other countries, it is cooked as biryani, or in many pilaf-style dishes. Basmati rice is enjoyed plain as well. Traditionally, this rice is soaked before cooking and the grains of rice come out separate and elongated from the soaking/cooking. In some countries, after the initial boiling of the rice, after the cooking water has been absorbed, a cotton cloth is placed over the rice and the top placed on the pot. The cloth absorbs the last vestiges of steam from the rice, and leads to even more separate grains. That’s what happens in a traditional way….now for what happens with a rice cooker.

We have successfully cooked delicious basmati rice in the Zojirushi, but read on. We have tried just putting the rice in the cooker and treating it like any other white rice, but if you do that you will not get the double-long, fluffy but slightly chewy grains that make basmati rice one of the world’s premier foods. To obtain the finest quality finished product, you should soak the rice in salted water and not use the water measuring lines on the cooker bowl – instead you need to use the measuring cup – 2 measures of water per measure of rice.

Use the clear measuring cup that is provided with the cooker. We say that to make sure that nobody exceeds the capacity of the rice cooker by using a larger measuring cup.

Do not add lentils to the rice for traditional dishes that require lentils. You want to avoid adding anything during cooking that will clog up the steam vents!

First: Measure the rice using the clear cup. Wash the rice. Soak the rice in a bowl for one half hour, by adding twice as many measuring cups of cold water to the washed basmati rice, and add 1/2 teaspoon of salt for every measure of rice.

Then, transfer the rice and all the soaking liquid to the rice cooker and use the regular white rice setting to cook the rice. The Zojirushi (fuzzy-logic) rice cooker will add another soaking cycle to the cooking time. It will take nearly an hour to cook. When it is done, fluff it up with a fork, without scratching your cooker bowl, and let it sit in the cooker for another 15 minutes. The basmati rice cooked this way, in the Zojirushi (fuzzy-logic) rice cooker, will have separate grains, not stuck together. It takes a long time, but, if you were using a traditional method to cook the rice, whether Iranian (Persian), Indian or other method, there would be a step where the rice steamed after the initial cooking – it just takes longer to cook this type of rice in general!

If you prefer the rice a little bit more “al dente,” or you don’t have as much time, then just put the washed basmati rice and water (1 measure of rice, 2 measures of water and 1/2 teaspoon salt per measure of rice) in the cooker and change the cooking setting to “harder” using the menu button. Push cook. This rice will be ready to eat when the rice cooker starts singing. The grains will have a slightly greater resistance to the bite – our favorite way to eat this rice.

We fried some finely grated garlic in ghee (browned clarified butter), then dribbled this mixture on the cooked basmati rice and fluffed it around with a bamboo rice paddle from Japan. (The Zojirushi comes with a plastic paddle, but we are ashamed to say that we had previously melted that paddle and several other plastic paddles during interrupted cooking adventures…) Anyway, adding a flavored butter sauce was a winning strategy!

Having cooked basmati the traditional Persian way, where it is soaked and then boiled and strained, and then steamed on top of a butter and yogurt mixture, and having cooked it in a couple of different traditional Indian ways, we would say that this method (adding salt to the water and using the rice measuring cup to measure the water,) is acceptable for everyday cooking of basmati rice using a Zojirushi rice cooker.