7 posts tagged “gluten free”
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.
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
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.
so this week, i'm putting celery sticks (with a lower-fat alternative of humus for dipping) in the lunch-bag for a healthy and filling snack. and still not able to face the blah of lettuce in the evenings, i decided a nice quinoa greek salad would be a winner.
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. . .
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.)
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 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.
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!
thanks to the sticky white rice leftovers of the christmas day chinese feast, i was able to try my hand at making a quick, easy, and gluten-free version of the classic to try and satisfy my craving.
so with a non-wok type pan brought up to screaming hot temps, i added egg, a selection of frozen veggies (Whole Foods' Asian Medley is my favorite from the freezer case), some GF mirin, chicken stock, and GF tamari to the cold left-over rice, and comfort food was created.
since then, i've been cooking up rice simply to turn into stir fry. and with a fresh supply of onion on hand, some chapped onions have been into the mix.
talk about no effort filling food! and it even makes a perfect breakfast.
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!
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.
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.
did some baking and eating this weekend and have some grocery items that need to be reviewed.
Comfy Cuisine Cheese Pizza
I was hungry and craving pizza when i was at the market, so i decided to pick up a ridiculously expensive prepared pizza, instead of a ball of frozen dough and going back for more fresh veggies.
though i pondered of the selection on GF pizzas (3 in total, plus one "wheat free"), this looked the most promising as far as crust. boy, was i wrong.
this was nothing more than a crepe with some sauce and too much cheese on it. despite following the box directions of cooking in a skillet on the stove top (oven cooking is not recomended), cripness was no where near achived, and i ended up with a sticky, icky mess in the pan. i would have done better to just put sauce and cheese on a plate and nuke in the microwave because the crust was nonexistent.
never again.
Whole Food Gluten-Free Bakehouse: Sandwich Bread
second craving this week has been a BLT. perfect timing with the GF change. instead of trying to break the bread machine and trying a mix or recipe, i figured i'd give the WF bakehouse a go. there was a selection of about 5 different types of bread. all seemed to have the same problem i found with my zucchini bread -- they don't rise that high, so you end up with a "stubby" slice. i went for the classic Sandwich Bread even though i am not a fan of white bread. it seemed the best option for the BLT, as the whole grain Prairie Bread they offered looked to overpower the guts of the sandwich.
the bread comes frozen which is super since preservatives in GF foods are nearly nil. taking out two slices and defrosting in the microwave was no problem, and the bread toasted nicely. it is not your regular 'white' bread -- more of an ivory, with the taste and texture of a "country white" or country french. it had bite, good texture, and a nice chewiness i didn't expect to find.
two thumbs up. and actually, two sandwiches down in one sitting. . .
Mi-Del Gingersnaps
cookies. my pantry was calling for cookies! and these were on sale, so i figured what the heck.
"the heck?" is what i uttered after biting into my first one. wow. it tastes like a backing experience gone wrong. the cookies are very soft and loose (not just crumby), which is not good in a ginger snap. the texture is odd to say the least, even though i expected it to be. after a couple bites, the overpowering ginger taste does take over so you notice the bad texture and background taste. but they are too sweet for my tastes for a ginger snap, and distinctly lacking in "snap" when you bite into them.
verdict? maybe in a pinch. with a desperate craving. and only on sale. a big "meh" in my book.
Bob's Red Mill GF Pancake Mix
this was my biggest risk taker -- i ordered it from amazon in bulk of four bags. but it had good reviews, and i like the Bob's Red Mill i've encountered so far, and i needed to get over $49 to use my $10 coupon. besides, having a quick and ready breakfast in the freezer was key.
i've been a bisquick pancake girl for as long as i can remember, with a couple of modifications in the recipe. one, always add some sugar. two, always add a couple dollops of sour cream for a smoother, tangier buttermilk pancake.
i mixed up Bob's pancake according to directions, with 1 egg and opted for the 3/4 c of soy milk since i had an unflavored quart in the fridge that was not working for my peanut butter smoothies. once the basic were blended, i gave it a taste, noting the whole grain texture of the mix. i added the sugar and sour cream at this point until i felt the batter was close to what i liked and gave them a spin on the griddle.
the batter was a bit thiner than i expected or normally like, but they quickly puffed up to thick, hearty cakes with lots of bubbles. even without syrup, these were tasty, but very much with a "whole grain healthy" feel to them. not the cake-like pancakes i was used to making, and i have to say, i like the change. they can be a bit chewy if left to sit too long. on the second batch i mixed up, i tried to fix the thin batter caused by the sour cream addition with more mix. those cooked fine, but where far too chewy for my tastes. next time i won't alter the amount of mix, despite my additions.
i can report the reheated from the freezer, they are just fine, and go great with soy butter and maple syrup. a winner!
