banana bread

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Moroccan Style Chick Pea Stew

i spotted this recipe on Gluten-Free By The Bay's recipe round-up a few weeks back, and it instantly got a do this! from me for the crock-pot alone.  i adore my crock-pot for weekend cooking since it gives me just a bit more time to do other stuff, and makes the house smell great in the process.  of course the ingredient list was a mile long, but it ended up being worth it.  this was the yummiest lunch, and quite filling. 

packed and ready for lunch

Je Mange la Ville made quite a few modifications to the recipe, and i went back to the "original", but decided on some modifications of my own.  I noticed well into cooking that this really wasn't so much as a stew, but a soup, and i really wanted something thicker and heartier.  i quickly pulled out a couple yukon gold potatoes, nuked them half way and gave them a chop and tossed them in to catch the last two hours of cooking.  this was a huge improvement.  it gave just the right amount of starch, and the potatoes really soaked up the spices.  i really recommend tossing them in.

as for the finishing touches, i used a mix of raisins and chopped dried apricots for the fruit.  they plumped up obscenely as expected.  i also finished off with garlic stuffed green olives, and some toasted pine nuts.  the nuts added a nice contract to the sweet and spicy flavor of the stew.

this was such a delight last week, i was tempted to make it again for this coming week.  but i was good, and am trying out a different moroccan spiced lentil and chick pea soup, but will probably repeat this stew next weekend

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new year's resolution: post cook prepped for the week, even if a repeat of a tried-and-true recipe. 

so yes, i have finally hit burnout on what had become my standard evening fare of chopped hearts of romaine with some GF dressing.  ::yawn::  not to mention i was becoming incredibly lazy if for some reason i was out of already chopped and washed lettuce and had to take the 10 minutes to prep everything.

last week, i found myself once again in love with celery sticks (from the leftover bunch bought for what was cooked up).  of course, slather them with peanut butter, and who doesn't love a pile of the crunchy bugger to munch on in the evening.

quinoa greek salad

and is it ever!  with more crunch veggies (do you really think i put in a scant 1/2 or 1/4 each of those things? use the whole pepper, or the leftover 1/2 onion in the fridge!) than quinoa, it is filling and zesty.  as an extra treat on those days when i feel the need for the extra oomph of some more protein, i have have some cooked shrimp in the freezer i can pop on there, and add another splash of lemon juice.  i also went for cheve instead of feta.  just didn't feel i wanted the harsh acidity of the feta this week, and i love the crumbled cheve my WF carries.

now if i could just stop eating the leftover kalamata olives like candy, i'd be all set. . .

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all in all, the change to gluten free has been pretty painless.  after a few weeks without cookies, the Mi-Del atrocity of a chocolate chip cookie is actually tolerable.  saying good by to pasta has been surprisingly easy.  only as i walk by the cases of hand-made ravioli's at WF do i get misty-eyed.  i actually miss my udon noodles much more than i do the Barilla that used to be in the cabinet.  sandwiches and breads have been easily replaced if i feel and gnawing need, but those are actually rare.

but there was one area that continued to haunt me, a long-time lover stalking me, not ready to let go:  pizza.  i'm picky about my pizza, preferring a crust somewhere between thin and thick, and with no grease.  topping must be fresh and simple, light on the sauce (or even better, none at all), and excellent cheese. 

i did try a few of the GF pizza products out there, and found them absolutely miserable.  others i looked at were so ridiculously expensive ($10 for an itty bitty pizza crust?  that might be half a serving?), i didn't even bother.  i resigned myself to a life without pizza.

(or, quietly plotted to order one the friday night of a long weekend so i could gorge myself, and be sick for the next week.  sad, but it was really the point to where i was getting.)

Easy Gluten-Free Baking

until giftmas arrived.  bless my super-clever sister who managed to find my amazon wishlist and spotted Easy Gluten-Free Baking by Elizabeth Barbone that i put up there on a whim. 

see, i'm a cook.  i am in now way, shape or form a baker.  why make cookies from scratch when you can get the dough ready to go?  cakes are in mixes.  and hey, why else did we invent a breadmaker than to just dump in ingredients and be done with them.

but as i opened up this book and started flipping through, i suddenly felt inspired.  and then i saw it:  a recipe for GF pizza crust.  two of them in fact -- one thick, one thin.  and reading down the ingredients of rice flours, potato starch flour, corn starch, xanthum gum, i realized this was what i was already stock in my GF pantry. 

so a couple friday's ago, when i got to leave work early, i hit the grocery store for fresh veggies and some fresh mozzarella.  once home, i pulled out the world's oldest stand mixer (we are talking vintage 1989!  and it was used when i got it. . . ) and prepared to get the kitchen very dirty.  i should point out that i never did post my experience with making naan.  that recipe requires some modification because sadly, a dough never formed -- everything remained as a batter, forcing me to keep adding more rice flour so i could form little balls of almost-dough.  but that didn't mean they were going to then be palatable!

so i had me doubts as i measure and and began the mixer.  would this really work.  but after babysitting the mixture, and making sure everything got in there, i did have something dough-like to press out into my cookie sheet.  i happily set it in the oven to rise away, ala Alton Brown, and proceeded to chop up veggies, caramelize onions, and pull out various seasonings to create the pizza i had been craving for weeks.

the dough did indeed rise, and this was no "thin crust like a cracker" pizza that Elizabeth had described in the recipe.  oh, no, this was that in-between crust i love so much, full of the promise to be chewy.

so i set the crust in to bake first.  and oh, the smells that wafted through the kitchen! because of course i had to put in fresh rosemary and garlic into the dough as i made it.  my head was full of visions of the future, an thick pieces of focaccia served with soups, and dessert pizza piles high with fresh fruit and brown sugar.

once backed, i topped up that pizza so fast, and popped it back into the oven, eagerly watching for the cheese to melt and bubble so i could pull it out and eat.

that whole waiting to cool bit is a killer.  i did finally pull a corner of the crust off because i had to know if that most crucial bit, the crust, tasted as good as it smelled.

try better.  insanely better.  better than wheat flour crust.  this was rich and chewy, but with a finer 'grain' to it, as anything with rice flour is bound to feel on the tongue.  bu the flavor was spot on.  once finally cut into and first piece tasted, i nearly began to cry out of sheer happiness.   this is really what i had been missing, and was trying to very hard to ignore. 

amazingly enough, one piece was more than filling.  it is a magic crust, i say.  i was ready to eat half the pizza that night, but there was no way i could eat more than the one piece.  which is just fine. the rest was quickly sealed away and put into the freezer, a piece at a time coming out on weekend, heating up slowly in the toater over, and it passed the freeze/reheat test with flying colors.

so now, i'm actually looking into things like making my own chocolate chip cookies.  and maybe a cake.  that is, if i ever stop making pizza crust.

gluten free pizza

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but i am still cooking, continuing to feel better GF, and finally out of the massive heavy work-load at work.

i have a lot of catching up to do as far as recipes are concerned!

fried rice

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okay, it is now officially Cold in this part of the world, which means it is the perfect season for soups, stews, and those root veggies i so love.

this week i'm going with my old stand-by of cheap yet yummy eats of toor dal.  (recipe to be posted this weekend)  i serve with basmati rice, of course, but i did find a GF recipe for naan which excites me to no end.  i'm going to give it a go this weekend.

whilst poking about yesterday, i found this link, and i think i've died and gone to heaven!  not just food stuffs, but movies, too!  this could be very dangerous.  yet handy!

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you know, i was wondering why my email box lately was so quiet -- my pop setting for gmail were wacky, thus i though no one loved me or was reading this.  d'oh! 

besides, i'm still way behind in posting the latest in food adventures.  at the moment, i am fighting the creeping crud that has been ravaging the office.  silly me thought going gluten free and feelnig better meanty i could instantly stop taking my super-duper auto-immune support vitamins.  uh uh.  not with this crud!  i trippled up last night, and am feeling much more human today than i was yesterday.

so a briff look at what last weeks culinary adventures for al-desko dining.

bento for the week

sometimes the amount of cooking that needs to be done for this whole gluten free thing is just daunting. and then sometimes you don't care about the volume or mess because damn, it's tasty!

this is what the lunches will look like this week. on the left: lemon and mustard marinated chicken, and lemon scented quinoa salad with garbanzo beans. on the right: balsamic-honey roasted root veggies.

i spotted the root veggie recipe first this week. seeing as i have a couple (yes a couple) bottles of aged balsamic vinegar in the cupboard i am never remembering to use, it was a go. no rutabaga in my version, as the three turnips i had were huge (Baldrick would have been jealous), but i even used beets. something new for me (my mom hates beets, so never experienced them other than those day-glow things from a can they served as hot-lunch in junior high). of course, my delight at scoring all the veggies at WF at bargain prices meant i forgot to pick up the rosemary. and i had not dried in the cabinet. so, i just started puling out jars and sniffing and tossing them in. ended up with cardamon, marjoram and a little bit of thyme. it works.

the lemon scented quinoa salad had my mouth watering as well. i already figured i would make up some quinoa this week (two weeks is far too long for me to go without quinoa). but this was perfect to go with the veggies. and even though it already had garbanzo beans in it, i knew i would need a little more of a protein kick to pass the combo off as lunch.

so i marinated up a chicken breast to go with the salad. toss some extra virgin olive oil in a zipper bag (about 2 to 3 Tbs i think), then pour in some lemon juice (1/4 c?). add a healthy couple squirts of mustard (i chose a german mustard), and a more than generous sprinkle of lemon-pepper. add a dash of salt, and give it a quick fondle from the outside to get it mixed, drop in the chicken, massage it around a bit more and pop in the fridge for few hours.

being lazy, i didn't break out the grill. i decided i'd just cook it up in a fry pan on the stove. but decided to add a healthy bit, probably a 1/2 c. of the marinade to the pan, so i could pop a lid on and let it steam in as well. most flavorful, juicy chicken ever.

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yes, i'm still here, still cooking, and still on a tight budget.  last week, the challenge was to dig through the pantry and freezer and see what i could create.  easiest option for lunches that week was certainly chili.  i didn't feel like following any of the couple dozen recipe's i've tried, so instead, i stood at the stove and winged it. 

best. chili.  ever.

kelly's pantry chili

'pantry' chili

heat up about 2 T of olive oil in the bottom of a large dutch oven. turn off heat and drop in 2 jalapenos (i did seeds and all for a real kick) and 4 cloves of garlic finely diced to infuse the oil while you finely chop 1 very large red onion.

turn the heat back on to high so that the chiles and garlic start to sizzle and drop in the onion. give it a quick saute until the onions start to become translucent. add 1 pound ground beef and break up with a wooden fork. add salt, pepper, chili powder, cumin and a healthy splash of worcestershire sauce. continue to stir and break up beef until pink is few and far between.

add:
1 can tomato paste
1 large can (28 oz) crushed tomato
1 can each black beans, pinto beans, and kidney beans, all undrained (or drained if you want a really thick chili)
about 1/2 a can of refried beans. i used amy's refried pintos with chile and lime.

get fun with the flavors by grating in a healthy dose of cinnamon. chop up some extra bitter (82% pure cocoa) chocolate. have no idea how much i added -- enough to darken the red tomato base and give just the faintest hint of sweetness before the heat starts to warm around the tongue.

bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer. check seasons and adjust to taste let simmer as long as you can stand before grabbing a quick bowl and getting all warm and cozy with some corn chips and the leftover refried beans.

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since reading up on gluten intolerance/celiac, there have been tons of "lightbulb moments" of my life and experiences suddenly being explained.  everything makes sense, and that feeling that i have always had, that all these unrelated problems and illnesses HAD to somehow be connected were now being strung together like a string of beads.

i've not had a chance to document a lot of these moments, but another one fell into place this morning, and made me chuckle, and really puts this back to always being there:  night-sweats are a common cealic reaction/symptom.

i have always had horrible night-sweats.  but after countless decades, it is just normal to have to get up and change nightclothes in the middle of the night (i always keep an extra nightshirt by the bed) and to actually have to change the sheets in the middle of the night at least once a week.  it's so routine and 'normal' for my life that i never mention it.

my mom documented this phenomenon of the soaking wet infant on a nightly basis in my baby book.  no doctor seemed concerned when she mentioned it, so they just figured it was one of my quirks, and hey, mom occasionally gets night sweats as well, so why worry.

so gets added the earliest bead to the string.

and did you know that Skittles are actually listed by name as a food to avoid?  my eating Skittles in college used to be entertainment.  everyone would gather around and watch my face immediately blossom with bright purple splotches.  i used to love those things.  go figure. . .

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i know, i know, i've been quiet.  but things have been rolling along mostly without incident.

mostly.  last week, i was getting glutened everyday at lunch.  which is annoying because i MADE my lunch (my favorite sante fe chicken soup) and knew there was no gluten.  the only thing i could put my finger on was perhaps the high amounts of corn -- both in the soup and the tortilla chips it is served over.  i've been known to have a corn sensitivity in the past.  and now with wheat out of the picture, i was going to get might cranky if corn has to go, too.

yet when i had the soup on the weekend (both sunday night when i made it, and the last bit on saturday), no stomach problems.  so i'm befuddle by it.

but on top of the stomach issues, the fatigue was back big time. 

this week's lunch was a cheapo, not my fave by any measure fare: veggie enchilada caserole.  basically, lots of canned tomatoes, beads, some corn tortillas cooked in the slow cooker.  again, i allowed myself a scant helping of corn chips on the side (because this recipe is just 'mere sustenace' -- not my usual 'i love food' foodie fare).

stomach is still rather fritzy, but with no prediction. 

so i'm trying to plan out groceries for tonight (money still squeaky-tight) and seeing if i can kill the corn for a week.  so i think i'm going to do a risotto.  mmm, creamy with cheese and i have peas and pancetta in the freezer i can toss in there.  i'll see if any meats are on sale that i can pick up, but if all else fails, i picked up some pork loin fillets last week on sale.  i was hoping to save them for katsudon (japanese style pork and rice bowl).

my favorite from last week was the mix of romaine and baby greens salad with a new dressing (cindy's kitchen roasted garlic and rosemary vinaigrette -- yum!), shredded roast chicken and crumbled goat cheese.  i cannot tell you how anxious i was to get home each night, run on the treadmill and then settle down with a big plate of salad. 

The Gluten Free Pantry continues to rock my socks.  another batch of brownies for my treat each night (perfect will Eddy's limited edition peppermint ice cream), and i made up some corn muffins (to try and torture my stomach more).  as will most gluten free bread/cake items, the muffins are crumbly, but very good.  i also ordered a case of their coffee cake mix on amazon since my WF doesn't carry that flavor mix.  that will be cooked up this weekend.

still searching for a GF chocolate chip cookie recipe that doesn't involve 33 ingredients.  i'd rather it be a mix when it comes to baking.  cooking is one thing, but baking is a pain in the butt IMO.

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