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Oyster Sauce and Hoisin Sauce

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Simple Brown Rice Flour Pie Crust

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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 Deep Dish Pizza

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We were addicted to the deep dish pizza made by Edwardo’s on the South Side of Chicago in the 1980s, and after leaving that part of the country we went to great lengths to learn how to make deep dish pizza at home.  We even purchased an enormous specialized pan purposed for making stuffed pizzas. Fast forward a few decades and sadly a gluten free deep dish pizza seemed like an impossible dream.  But continue on, dear reader, because you can have a reasonable deep-dish pizza, gluten free, if you have a cast iron or Le Creuset skillet available to you.  The crust will be little chewy, somewhat denser than an ideal crust, but flavorful because of the potato flour in the dough.  It will have unique characteristics which make it worth eating, even though it is gf.

Crust:

Cut a 12″ diameter circle of parchment paper to line a 10 inch heavy cast iron skillet (ours is the enameled Le Creuset designed for use in a hot oven – some of the Le Creuset skillets are not meant for very hot ovens, so make sure yours is – the enamel on the inside of the pan should be black). A flat circle must be creased a few times to line a 3 dimensional pan, so flatten the paper against the bottom of the pan, and pleate and crease it up the sides to make it “fit”.  Make one recipe of the pizza base dough from Darina Allen and Rosemary Kearney’s Healthy Gluten-Free Cooking.  This is a rice flour, potato flour and tapioca flour dough that contains dried milk and an egg as well – but no bean flour. Note that the recipe calls for potato flour, not potato starch.  Weigh the ingredients using a kitchen scale because the book is written using Irish measurement units. I encourage you to purchase the cookbooks mentioned in my articles, to support the work of fellow recipe writers in the hope that they will produce more useful books for us!

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees.  When the oven is hot, roll out the dough between two sheets of waxed paper dusted with sweet rice flour (mochiko), and line the pan with the dough (the entire recipe’s worth of dough). Prick the dough all over with a fork and bake it (unfilled) for 10 minutes, remove the very heavy pan from the oven using two hands and oven mitts to grab the handle and edge of the pan.  Set the hot pan aside and prepare the filling.  I always leave an oven mitt on the handle to remind me that the handle of the pan is hot, hot, hot! That handle is 400 degrees, and you don’t want to grab it without an oven mitt!

Filling:

1/2 pound of mushrooms

1/2 pound gluten free italian sausage – spicy is nice – omit for vegetarians

1 large spanish onion, sliced (don’t use “sweet onions” as they don’t brown nicely)

1-2 bell peppers, sliced

6 cloves garlic, minced

Fry the mushrooms in olive oil for 4 minutes without stirring.  Remove the mushrooms from pan and set aside. Season with salt and pepper.

To the same pan, add the gluten free sausage, onions, peppers and garlic and fry for 10-12 minutes until cooked through.

Mix the sausage mixture with the mushrooms and add a 1/2 pound of full-fat mozzarella, hand grated, a half cup of canned diced tomatoes (fresh if you have them), 1/2 cup of chopped basil or 1-2 Tablespoons of gluten free homemade pesto sauce.  Test the filling to see if it needs additional salt and pepper.

Spread the filling in the prepared pre-baked crust, Sprinkle with another 1/2 pound of grated mozzarella, sprinkle with grated parmesan cheese, raise the temperature of the oven to 450 and bake the pizza for 30-35 minutes. Remove the very very hot pan from the oven using oven mitts. Serve immediately or cool slightly first.

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free!

The filling is based on one in the October 2005 issue of Cuisine at Home.  Ham and pepperoni have been eliminated, and the option of using prepared pesto in place of basil is added. You can tinker infinitely with the ingredients in the filling.  Use what you have available – spinach, other types of cheese, omit the peppers and double the onions, whatever you like!

Gluten Free Cookbooks for gift givers

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A reader says:
I love your recipes.  …  I am looking for a  GF cookbook for a relative who needs fairly easy recipes, doesn’t spend a lot of time in the kitchen and too much time in the restaurants. Do you have one?  Or can you recommend one?

Answer: Absolutely.  We can recommend cookbooks (and are hard at work on a Gf-zing! cookbook, seeking a publisher)!

GF friendly cookbooksMaking the switch to gluten free cooking is initially annoying and feels like deprivation, but your relative will eventually find that journeying to the parallel universe of gluten-free cooking presents an opportunity in disguise.  She will find that the complex flavors and textures of gluten free cooking are often superior to “wheatavore” cooking.  She will also see that the produce and meat sections of the grocery store are her favorite areas, and that there is very little reason to travel in to the cereal or bread aisles.

For simple GF baking, we like: Great Gluten-Free Baking by Louise Baker.  This British book relies on simple brown rice flour for many of the recipes. The superfine brown rice flour from Authentic Foods is the one we like best.  To use this book, your relative will need a kitchen scale – another excellent Christmas present for the home cook.  She should try baking the Victoria Sandwich Cake on p 124; the Lemon Drizzle Loaf on p. 54 , and the Cherry Crumble Muffins on p. 27.

For a general cookbook, Gluten Free and Easy by Robyn Russell is a good choice. Your relative could try the Quinoa Tabouleh on p. 30;  the Quinoa, Eggplant and Chickpea Salad on p. 32; the Pesto, Lamb and Sweet Potato Salad on p. 98; the San Choy Bau on p. 106; the Pistachio and Apple Cake on p. 150 (add some vanilla and salt); the Lemon Tea Cake with Lemon Butter on  p. 153.

Another fine general cookbook: Healthy Gluten-Free Cooking by Darina Allen and Rosemary Kearney. Your relative might like the Buttermilk Pancakes on p. 41 (make sure she gets flavorless tapioca flour – we like the one from Authentic Foods); the Fish Cakes with Parsley or Garlic Butter on p. 95; The Fruit Scones on p. 123 (grate cold butter in to the dry ingredients and mix by hand); the Pizza Base on p. 149 is excellent for deep dish pizzas.  Use it in a cast iron skillet.

And a third general book that uses no grains at all: Healing Foods: Cooking for Celiacs, Colitis, Crohn’s and IBS by Sandra Ramacher might also fit the bill. Your relative could try the Mini Chicken Satays with Peanut Sauce on p. 43; and the Apple and Blueberry Crumble on p. 165 (it uses almond flour for the crumble). No grains, no gluten, no refined sugar and no lactose in this book.

Also, although The Sultan’s Kitchen by Ozcan Ozan does contain recipes with gluten, most of the recipes are gluten-free. A few favorites include: Rice Pilaf with Chickpeas, Green Lentils and Caramelized Onions, (we used lentil orzo), Sea Bass Poached with Herbs and Raki in Parchment, (we used ouzo instead of raki, and your relative would need to make sure whatever licorice liqueur she used was gluten free), Stewed Lamb Kebab with Creamy Garlic Mashed Potatoes.

And finally, although Eating Stella Style by George Stella is pitched to low-carb dieters trying to lose weight, it has many, many excellent recipes that are gluten-free.  Your relative will need to be sure that the spices and meat products she uses are gluten-free, and she doesn’t have to substitute Splenda for sugar.  This cookbook is a find for the gluten-free community.  (The picture on the front of the book is a little goofy, and it is geared to weight loss.)

Thanks for inquiring, and there will be a Gf-Zing! cookbook coming, but not in time for Christmas 2010.

How to make gluten free beer

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gfzing.com gluten free beer At gfzing.com we have tried all the commercially available gluten free beers.  Our favorites were those made by Green’s – there are three that are imported in to the U.S., and in our area they generally sell for a mind-boggling $7/bottle.  This was the motivating factor behind a successful attempt at home brewing gluten free beer, the techniques of which are outlined here. A reasonable glass of gluten free beer (in the weissbier or weiss beer style), can be made for less than a dollar a bottle after start-up costs.  The beer is similar to the St. Peter’s Sorgham Beer from Suffolk England.

The major difference between most  fine artisanal beers and gluten free beer is that the ordinary beer is made with malted barley and wheat, and the gluten free beer cannot contain either barley or wheat.   Therefore, the gluten free brewer must rely on other malted grains. The ingredients for gluten free beer are available from home brewing shops.  The two tricky items to locate are the sorghum syrup, which lately we have had to purchase online from morebeer.com, and the gluten free brewing yeast.  The actual link for purchasing the syrup is here.

To make home brewed beer, you should first read some of the fine homebrewing websites and chats on the net, and learn the basic technique.  You are going to make a sort of soup called wort, and then ferment this soup with yeast in a large container with an airlock.  When it has finished fermenting, it gets bottled with a little “priming sugar” added to each bottle to cause another fermentation in the bottle – this produces the carbonation.  An excellent discussion with photos is available at WikiHow.

These instructions are provided here for use by adults of legal brewing age.

Recipe from gfzing.com for about 48 twelve ounce bottles of gluten-free beer requiring 2-3 hours of cooking time and about 7 weeks from starting the process to pouring:

Ingredients:
Malt Base – 6lb Sorghum Extract

Specialty Grain –

  • 1lb Flaked Maize
  • 1/2lb Whole Sorghum (for toasting)
  • 1/2lb gluten free Oats (for toasting) – optional

Specialty Sugar – 1/4lb Belgian Dark Candi Syrup (this is a product that is worth the trouble of obtaining – it can be ordered online)

Hops –

  • 1 oz UK Northern Brewer Leaf hops (bittering)
  • 1oz Cascade hops (aroma)

Yeast- Notthingham Yeast (check for gluten free status on the package)
Other-

  • 1/4 tsp Irish Moss
  • 3/4 oz Coriander Seeds
  • 3/4 oz. Bitter Orange Peel (in the event of a beer emergency, you can use the zest of one fresh orange)
  • 8oz Malto-dextrin (a weird, nearly flavorless material that makes a smooth “mouth-feel”)
  • 15 black peppercorns

Other: Priming sugar (about 1 cup for five gallons) dissolved in a couple of cups of water

Instructions:
Toast Whole Sorghum & gluten free Oats in the oven for 20 minutes @ 375 F.

Grind toasted Sorghum & Oats using a grain mill that is only used for gluten free grains, and then combine these with flaked maize.
Maize, Oats and sorghum go in a muslin bag in one and a half gallons cold well water in a large pot – large enough to hold at least 3 gallons.
Heat to 160F, hold at this temperature for 10 minutes.
Remove grains (the muslin bag full of grain will have swelled considerably) and discard.
Add Sorghum extract & Belgian Dark Candi syrup to the grainy water, stir to dissolve. If you have no Belgian Dark Candi syrup you may be tempted to use molasses.  Our advice – don’t use molasses because it will impart a distinctive molasses flavor to the finished beer.  If you must substitute for the Dark Candi syrup, try dark brown sugar or panela.
Bring to boil. ALERT: at this point, there are 60 minutes left in the cooking process. All the times listed next to the ingredients below are the total cooking time for that ingredient. When we say “set the timer” that is to indicate the time between steps.

Start proofing yeast in a cup of water – Nottingham yeast (marked gluten free).
While grainy water and sugars boil, add the following for the minutes indicated (this is a standard beer recipe convention, and you have to study on how beer is made so that this series of instructions will make sense):

  • 1 oz. Northern Brewer Hops (60 min)
  • Set Timer for 45 minutes

When timer goes off, start adding the following ingredients and cook them for the amount of time indicated:

  • 1 ounce Cascade hops (15 minutes)
  • Set timer for 5min, when timer goes off, add
  • 1/4  tsp Irish Moss (10 minutes)
  • Set Timer for 5min, when timer goes off, add
  • 1/2 lb. Malto-dextrin mix with cold water first (5 minutes)
  • 3/4 oz coriander seeds (5 minutes)
  • 3/4 oz bitter orange (5 minutes)
  • 15 black peppercorns(5 minutes)
  • After 5 more minutes, all the cooking is done.

The total cooking time, from the time an ingredient is added to the end of the cooking is show in parentheses next to each ingredient. This is how beer-making recipes are generally written. The instructions about “set the timer for X minutes” are our own addition and show the time between steps. So, the Northern Brewer hops go in, then you wait 45 minutes and add the Cascade Hops, then wait 5 minutes, then add the Irish Moss etc. The last 4 ingredients all go in at once, and they only cook for the last 5 minutes of the boil.

Pour wort through a fine strainer  in to 2 gallons of cold water in a sterilized 6 gallon fermenter.

Add cold water to increase to 5 gallons total volume in the fermenter (it helps to mark the fermenter at the five-gallon level so you know when you have added enough water).
Cool to 72 degrees F.
Measure the starting specific gravity and record.  It should be around 1.040.
Add  the  proofed yeast, give a stir, cover the fermenter and add an airlock.  This mixture should ferment for two or more weeks. This beer will not bubble as vigorously as a barley or wheat beer – it is a gentle fermentation and does best at around 70 degrees.
After the primary fermentation, rack off the beer in to another vessel, add the dissolved priming sugar, give the mixture a vigorous mixing, and bottle in sterilized bottles. Cap the bottles with new caps (you cannot re-use caps).  The beer will be ready to drink in about 3 weeks.

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!

Feeding a Gluten Free Toddler

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A reader writes asking for gluten free suggestions for their 18 month old, a somewhat picky eater who is currently on a Gluten- and Dairy-Free diet.

Answer:

Well, first of all, it is important to consultant with your child’s doctor, and ask about seeing a nutritionist.  The gluten free diet can be tricky, and it is not always easy to balance the diet, especially in terms of vitamins.  There is a new book: Real Life with Celiac Disease: Troubleshooting and Thriving Gluten Free by Dennis and Lefler, which can point you in the right direction and help with finding resources.

Consider the possibility of using “naturally mushy” foods such as banana, avocado, cooked sweet potato etc.  These foods have a lot of curb appeal for the under 5 set.  Of course, you have to choose those foods that work for you and your family.

You can also make a very nice breakfast “smoothy” in the blender, from frozen orange juice, frozen strawberries, banana, honey, and gluten-free yogurt or gluten-free non-dairy yogurt – it is the basic concept of this smoothy that is important – you should adjust the ingredients to suit your child’s tastes and needs.

For a “sandwich” try making musubi – see the instructions here, and use fillings and accompaniments that your child can eat.

Most importantly, make sure that the diet you are feeding your toddler is nutritionally appropriate for a growing child. Consult your doctor, and ask him/her for a recommendation for a nutritionist as well.

Gluten Free Baking without Tapioca

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A reader has asked for advice on gluten free baking without tapioca flour. She says:
I’m just learning to bake GF for my daughter.  She does not like the taste of tapioca flour.  After baking a rejected bread, we lined up all the flours & tasted them to see which one was objectionable.  What do you recommend to replace tapioca?  Would potato starch, corn starch or arrowroot be closest, or a mixture of one of them and sweet rice flour?

Gf-Zing has the following advice:

We think the best option would be to obtain a book of recipes for
gluten free baking without tapioca.  Our favorite is Great Gluten-Free
Baking by Louise Blair, published by Hamlyn in Great Britain in 2007.
This lovely book has some excellent recipes (don’t miss the Victoria
Sandwich Cake on page 124.) This book relies on a simple combination
of rice flour and cornstarch.  The book is available in the U.S.
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Gluten-Free-Baking-Louise-Blair/dp/0600615839

Likewise, Healthy Gluten-Free Cooking by Darina Allen and Rosemary
Kenney, published by Stewart, Habori and Chang has a few excellent
baking recipes that do not include tapioca.  The book does not have as
many recipes that exclude tapioca, but it is a great cookbook.This
book is also available in the U.S.
http://www.amazon.com/Healthy-Gluten-free-Cooking-Recipes-Lovers/dp/1584794240

Best wishes for gluten-free holidays!

Flour substitutions for gluten free cooking

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Gf-Zing! received the following questions about flour substitutions from a reader named Melissa:

I’ve read that as a substitute for wheat flour in a recipe that you can use chickpea flour for a substitute in a 1:1 ratio without any further changes to the original recipe. This seems too easy – do you know if this is true?

Here’s our answer: Chickpea flour can be substituted for wheat flour 1:1 for dusting meats that are going to be fried, but it has a pretty beany flavor so it is not the right choice for substituting in baked goods. We would not use large amounts of chickpea flour in baked goods because of this beaniness.

 

For frying meat, you might also try using mochiko flour (this is sweet rice flour), especially for making something like Coq Au Vin for which the flour is a vital thickening agent in the sauce.

I’ve also read that 1 cup of the following (after mixed very well) equals 1 cup of all-purpose flour, is this also true and how does it taste? 1 cup of cornstarch or arrowroot, 3 cups of rice flour, 3 cups of potato starch flour, ½ cup soy flour


Here are some effective flour mixes for various baking projects.  Gf-Zing! prefers the following general mix (except for pies), and if we are making a cake we add extra xantham gum to the batter:

General Flour Mix

  • 2 cups plain brown rice flour
    2 cups plain white rice flour
    1 1/2 cups sweet brown rice flour (this is a different kind of rice flour – you could also use sweet white rice flour – also called mochiko)
    1 1/3 cups tapioca starch or tapioca flour
    2/3 cups GF corn starch
    1/2 cups rice bran or rice polish
    2 teaspoons xanthan gum

For Pie Crust:

  • 1/2 cup tapioca flour (tapioca starch)
    1/2 cup cornstarch
    1/4 cup potato starch (katakuriko in Japanese stores – this is NOT the same as potato flour)
    1 cup sweet rice flour (mochiko flour – not the same as white rice flour)
    1 teaspoon xanthan gum
    1/2 tsp salt
    1/2 teaspoon sugar

For Cupcakes:

  • 1/4 cup tapioca flour (flavorless variety)
  • 1/4 cup potato starch (katakuriko)
  • 3/4 cup brown rice flour
  • 2 Tablespoons pure powdered egg white

For Biscuits and Cinnamon rolls that use baking powder and baking soda for leavening agents:

  • 1/4 cup potato starch
  • 3/4 cup cornstarch
  • 1/2 cup brown rice flour
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons Xantham gum

 

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free. Mix all the ingredients together in a large container or bag. Use as much as you need for your recipe. Store the rest.

Hope this helps!

 

 

Helpful Spanish Website

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A helpful reader has sent an email to gfzing@gmail.com with a new link for the Spanish recipes section, since the old Recetas sin Gluten: Aptas para Celiacos was no longer working.  The link has been changed.  Thanks to alert readers for their assistance!

The Gravy Problem

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2010 Update –

The immersion blender is the modern GF cooks best friend!  When your gluten free gravy lumps up, as it may, take out that immersion blender that someone gave you at the holidays, and follow the directions carefully.  Following the directions, you can blend the gravy without splattering the whole kitchen!

If all you have in the cupboard is some mochiko (sweet rice) flour for thickening, take heart.  Go ahead and follow an old favorite recipe for gravy, using equal parts of butter and mochiko. For example, you might melt 3 Tablespoons of butter and stir in 3 Tablespoons of mochiko.  Then, you start adding your stock, stirring slowly.  Suddenly, the whole thing goes lumpy and you fear disaster!  No worries! Here’s where you transfer the mess to a deep bowl, use the immersion blender (magic occurs), then transfer the mixture back to the cooking pot and continue whisking in stock. Presto, the mixture is a nice smooth gravy.  You can use the same trick when making macaroni and cheese, by the way.

—and now, the original article from 2005:

The annual holiday dilemma is – how do you make a gluten free gravy that is not reminiscent of glue, or perhaps paste?

There are several methods that work well, and Gf-Zing! has tested several options for the gluten free community.

First, let’s talk about the gourmet version. Here, you add a reduction or a ‘gastrique’ to the stock, and thicken the gravy with arrowroot. It is more of a sauce than a gravy, but will be delicious. You may want to increase the quantities to produce more gravy!

Degrease the pan juices from the roast bird. To the remaining juices, add 2 cups of hard cider (or 1/2 cup white wine) and reduce by heating – reduce it down to just 1/4 cup or a few tablespoons. Add 1 1/2 cups of stock, and reduce this mixture down by one third.

Mix 1 Tablespoon of arrowroot or cornstarch with a little stock and add it to this remaining sauce gradually, stirring constantly. Heat until thickened. Add salt and pepper as needed, and strain the sauce before serving. You may add currant jelly, as well, a few tablespoons, and a few tablespoons of fresh butter, to enrich the sauce.

You can make a similar sauce using a french ‘gastrique.” For this, you cook 1/4 cup of white sugar with 1/4 cup of red wine vinegar in a 2-quart saucepan until it caramelizes into a brown syrup – this will be thick, and you don’t want it to burn so watch carefully. Next, add 1 1/2 cups of rich stock and a little wine if you like, while being careful not to be burned by spattering syrup! The caramelized vinegar and sugar is the gastrique that will make your gravy taste really good. Thicken as before, adding a mixture of 1 Tablespoon arrowroot mixed with enough water to make a soupy mixture, and cook until thickened. Refresh this gravy with a little butter, and add some salt and pepper as needed.

For a more standard gravy, use a gravy flour mix as follows:

2 Tablespoons brown rice flour
3/4 Tablespoon sweet rice flour (mochiko)
1 1/2 teaspoons tapioca starch
1/3 teaspoon of xantham gum

Mix these ingredients together thoroughly, and then use it in place of flour in your regular gravy recipe.  Give the gravy a zap with the immersion blender and you will have a typical gravy, maybe even better than a wheat-based gravy.

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free!

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!

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.

Salad Dressings, in general

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When the gluten-free person makes that trip to the grocery store, they enter like a cart-horse with blinders on – seeing only the 25% of the product aisles that have gluten-free food in them. Naturally, we gravitate towards the produce section, where the vegetables are neatly sealed in gluten-free packages by their allmighty maker – not even the food industry could introduce a “solution” into a potato, or add a modified food starch to lettuce. So, we are always happy to see our colorful vegetable friends! A safe oasis of green, orange and red in a desert world of wheat.

The salad course is a favorite, so we collect a variety of healthy vegetables, but then we wander over to the dressing shelf and have to get out those reading glasses to see what creepy ingredients the manufacturers have added to the products. We are ready to present to you here, on the gluten-free Gf-Zing! website, a selection of salad dressing recipes that will make your vegetables sing!

Check the Salads and Dressings link in the menu on the left for some salad dressing recipes.