Vegetarian

Sesame-Crusted Tofu with Quick Microwave Curried Carrot Soup

0 · May 14, 2012 · 1 Comment

Curried Carrot Soup with Sesame Crusted Tofu - Alice DeLuca 2012 digimarc — Curried Carrot Soup with Sesame Crusted Tofu in a blue Heathware bowl

The inspiration for this dish from www.gfzing.com was a trip to the Garden Grille in Providence, Rhode Island. They make truly delish vegetarian food, much of which they will also prepare gluten free. This is recipe is NOT one of theirs, it is just inspired by their cooking. I did not have a chance to try their sesame-crusted tofu, unfortunately.

The soup here is done in the microwave oven, for quick, efficient dinner preparation.

It is easily adapted for vegetarians and vegans – just omit the fish sauce and adjust the salt.

For the Soup:

5 ounces peeled Spanish onion, diced

1/2 ounce (2 cloves) garlic, peeled and diced

1 TB olive oil

3 ounces red bell pepper, diced

3 carrots (about 6 ounces), peeled and chunked

3/4 cup rich coconut milk

1 cup water

2-3 teaspoons gluten free fish sauce (omit for vegetarians)

2 teaspoons gluten free Thai Red Curry paste

1 TB currant jelly

salt to taste (1/4-1/2 teaspoon)

To Fry the Tofu:

1 package of extra-firm tofu, drained and slice the short way in to four slices, then cut the other way to make 8 squares about 3/4 inch thick.

1 teaspoon homemade curry powder (see recipe on this site)

2 TB black sesame seeds

2 TB peanut oil

1 teaspoon sesame oil

To make the soup:

In a 1 1/2-2 quart microwavable casserole dish (such as Corningware), place the chopped onions, chopped garlic and 1 TB of oil. Cover and microwave on high for 5 minutes. Allow to cool for a few minutes before removing the cover (to avoid steam burns).

To the cooked onions and garlic in the casserole dish add the rest of the soup ingredients from the red bell pepper through the currant jelly. Cover and microwave until the carrots are tender, about 10 minutes. Allow to rest a few minutes before you remove the cover, to avoid steam burns.

Use a stick or immersion blender to puree the soup. Season with just a little bit of salt to taste. Adjust the sweetness. Set aside.

For the Tofu:

Mix the curry powder and sesame seeds and pat the mixture on to one side of each of the squares of tofu. Heat the oil and sesame oil in a large, heavy frying pan. When hot, add the tofu squares, seed side up. Fry over medium heat, undisturbed for 4 minutes. Salt the tofu squares. Use a spatula to turn the tofu squares and fry the other side undisturbed for 3 minutes. Salt the other side. The frying will crisp the tofu, rendering it golden brown.

Remove the fried tofu from the pan.

To Serve:

Reheat the soup briefly and serve 2 squares of fried tofu, seed side up, on each serving of the hot soup.

Curried Carrot Soup with Sesame Crusted Tofu in a Heathware bowl - Alice DeLuca 2012 digimarc — Curried Carrot Soup with Sesame Crusted Tofu in a white Heathware bowl

Serve with lime wedges, and a salad made from chopped arugula, fresh mint, orange juice, olive oil, gluten-free mustard, salt and pepper.

Leek, Potato and Cauliflower Potage

0 · Jan 26, 2012 · Leave a Comment

This is an easy, vegetarian gluten free soup from the website gfzing.com to serve as a first course or as a main course with an accompaniment of gluten free toast or scones.

It is delicious!

In a large pot, place 3 leeks, cleaned, trimmed and chopped, 5 Red Bliss potatoes, peeled and cut in half, and about a third of a head of cauliflower, cleaned and cut in to flowerets.

Pour in water to cover (6-8 cups), add 2 teaspoons of salt and bring to a boil, turn down to a simmer and cook until the potatoes and cauliflower are tender, about 20 minutes. Add 2 tablespoons of ghee (clarified browned butter) and a 1/2 teaspoon of freshly ground pepper, then puree the soup carefully using an immersion blender stick until it is velvety. If you do not have an immersion blender, use a regular blender or food processor, being careful not to burn yourself with the hot soup.

Note: If you are a wheatavore serving a gluten-free diner, make sure to use plain fresh water to make this soup. Don’t use water that was just used for cooking pasta, for example.

Test the soup for salt and balanced flavors, then serve sprinkled with a little chopped parsley if you have some.

It would be fine to substitute other vegetables for the cauliflower – for example: carrot,s sweet potato, broccoli, peas, spinach etc.

Make sure all the ingredients are gluten free.

Sealed With A Quiche

0 · Dec 28, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Including a food trend prediction for 2012…

By Alice DeLuca

When first married, I received lots of advice on how to stay married which is of course so much more complicated than “getting” married. For example, Sally told me that both a happy marriage and a career had been possible for her because she created and froze 4 quiches at a time. I immediately pictured 4 quiches in the deepfreeze, carefully labeled for rotation of the stock so as to avoid freezer-burn and waste. The quiches would keep.

Sally said she could just run home, pop a frozen quiche in the oven, and make a salad and – presto – dinner was on the table. That was the clue to a happy marriage for a woman who began her career in the late 1960s and lived through the advent of non-stick cookware and the 1970s food processor revolution. She soldiered on with frozen pie shells to make all things possible.[i] Sally’s husband enjoyed both a fabulous career and his hot meals without ever giving a thought to the benefits of compulsive quiche stockpiling. Sally did remain married and retained her career right through to retirement, so perhaps the quiche did the trick and the best wedding present for the new couple today would be a sturdy porcelain pie plate.

American quiche from the 1980s bears little resemblance to the quiches that graced the window of every charcuterie in Paris in the 1970s. The French Quiche Lorraine was a tart made with poitrine fumée, diced in to tiny delicious fatty cubes, just a hint of smoke barely held in suspension by a creamy egg custard. The total thickness of the quiche was just a matter of a few centimeters. The crust was buttery and flaky.

American artisanal quiche of the 1970s and 80s was really more of a pie, and a close relative of the casserole. Its deep-dish heart and soul was convenient sustenance with no hint of subtlety, yet it was delicious in its own right. Almost anything that could be considered main-course fare was served up in a quiche. It seemed like every restaurant served quiche[ii] and salad, and there were whole restaurants in the West that were entirely devoted to pie of all types and served up quiche in quarters. A quarter of a quiche was a serving. Up until at least the 1990s, it was still possible to waltz in to a Frontier Pies in Wyoming and buy a hearty slab of quiche for a quick dinner. Pioneer Pies was another such restaurant. In the early 2000s these pie-themed restaurants fell on hard times, but now that we are hearing that “pie is the new cupcake” perhaps these wonderful pie restaurants will make a comeback? They have a web presence again, although their menus show pie only as an afterthought, but we can perhaps hope and dream.

If you want to stock-pile frozen American downhome quiches as a hedge against late meetings and bad traffic, there is no better place to start looking for recipes than the cookbooks put out by local women’s groups during the height of the quiche rush[iii]. I use a deep dish 9-inch Pyrex pie plate, recalling however that as a marriage-saving device my friend used frozen pie shells. (Why not compromise and stockpile your own frozen pie shells?) The general rule that I follow is based on the Colorado Cache Cookbook:

For the custard that holds things together in the 9 inch Pyrex plate, beat together:

4 large chicken eggs

1 ½ cups of cream or other milk-based products

Seasoning such as salt and pepper, dried marjoram, fresh parsley, chives, a grating of nutmeg etc.

The flavoring and savory ingredients are up to the artisan. As a thoroughly mundane but delicious example of the filling, you could prepare the following ingredients and sprinkle them evenly in to an unbaked gluten-free pastry shell.

Hickory-smoked bacon fried until crisp (omit for vegetarian)

Spanish onions fried in butter until golden

½ pound of Gruyere or other hard cheese loitering in the refrigerator, coarsely grated to yield 2 cups

Pour the beaten custard over all of these and bake at 400 degrees F for 40 minutes, more or less, until a knife inserted in the center comes out barely clean. Serve warm. Or, freeze for later to save your marriage.

Other savory filling choices might be spinach and feta, ratatouille, wild mushroom with thyme (vegetarian), duck and preserved lemon (for meat-eaters), boneless Buffalo wings and gluten free blue cheese (for meat-eaters), five onion varieties (onion, garlic, shallot, leek, and scallion). The choices for savory fillings are certainly not limited to the tastes of the 1970s. Latin American, Cambodian, Thai, what sorts of quiche innovations await us now?

An American quiche renaissance is predicted – you heard it here first – and this will come as a great relief to the increasing number of people keeping “home flocks” of hens and consequently holding a surplus of eggs. The future of so many fledgling marriages and careers could depend upon a happy wedding of eggs and cheese.

[i] “Food Timeline: History Notes-pie & Pastry.” Food Timeline: Food History & Vintage Recipes. Web. 28 Dec. 2011. <http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodpies.html>.

David, Elizabeth, and Juliet Renny. French Provincial Cooking. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1984. Print.

[ii] Kalter, Suzy. “Jaye Tishman’s Business Is Serving Quiche to the Stars, and That’s Not Just Pie in the Sky: People.com.” People.com: The #1 Celebrity Site for Breaking News, Celebrity Pictures and Star Style. 30 Nov. 1981. Web. 28 Dec. 2011. http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20080809,00.html.

“When it comes to quiche, John Travolta prefers chicken-and-corn, Barbra Streisand orders broccoli-and-mushroom and Suzanne Pleshette likes Roquefort. So confides Jaye Tishman, 43, proprietor-chef of Ms. Tish’s Quiche Co. in Los Angeles, whose clientele reads like the Bel Air phone book. Her egg-and-cheese pies, which come in more than 100 varieties (from apple to zucchini), have themselves become celebrities of a sort. “Ms. Tish’s quiche boggles the senses,” raves food critic Merrill Shindler of the Los Angeles Herald Examiner. “It’s as close to perfect as I could want.”…”

[iii] Colorado Cache Cookbook. Denver, CO: Junior League of Denver, 1978. Print.

Gillies, Linda, Anita Muller, and Pamela Patterson. A Culinary Collection; Recipes from Members of the Board of Trustees and Staff of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1973. Print. (including a recipe for lettuce and bacon quiche)

Quiche – gluten free!

Gluten Free Cinnamon Rolls

0 · Dec 28, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Originally published January 14, 2009 and updated on December 28, 2012.

In 2009 we hit upon a really good gluten free cinnamon roll and in 2012 we still think these are great. Here is how you make these not-too-sweet cinnamon rolls. Make the dough for dinner rolls described at the Book of Yum website , omitting all flavorings except the salt (don’t use rosemary, sun-dried tomatoes, or any of those sorts of things) to make a plain dinner roll dough:

http://www.bookofyum.com/blog/adeenas-gluten-free-rosemary-teff-dinner-roll-recipe-1478.html

Then proceed as follows:

Make a mixture of 1/2 cup brown sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon and set aside (you may need more of this mixture depending on how much you put in each roll.) Get out some yellow raisins and set aside.

Put a paper muffin liner in to each part of a 12-cup muffin pan and 6 more cups from another pan (total of 18).

Put about 1/2 cup mochiko rice (sweet rice) flour on a large piece of wax or parchment paper. Make 3 rolls at a time as follows, take about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of the mixed plain roll dough and plop it onto the rice flour. The mochiko flour should be nice and thick on the paper to keep the dough from sticking.

Pat the dough into a rectangle about 7 inches wide by 4 inches tall, and a little less than a 1/2 inch thick. These are rough measurements. Dot the surface with butter (6 small bits of butter, totaling about 1 Tablespoon.) Sprinkle the surface (the whole surface of the rectangle) with a few tablespoons of the brown sugar/cinnamon mixture, and sprinkle with 8-10 raisins, distributing evenly. Very gently, roll the rectangle up like a jelly roll (from the 7 inch side), so that in the end you have a 7 inch long roll. Slice the roll in to 3 equal length sections. Put each section in to a paper-lined muffin cup so that the cut side is facing up. The top of the roll should show some sugar filling. Proceed the same way until you have used up all the dough. As you work, rearrange the remaining rice flour on the paper to provide a nice cushion for the dough.

Set the rolls aside to rise until doubled – this takes about 1/2 hour to 1 hour on a warm radiator. Bake to rolls at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes or until a knife comes out clean.

Allow to cool briefly, then slather each one with some of the following mixture.

2 Tablespoons softened butter
2 cups confectioner’s sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
enough fresh orange juice to make a nice frosting

Another excellent recipe for Cinnamon Rolls – Gluten Free – is available here: http://www.food.com/recipe/cinnabon-ish-cinnamon-rolls-gluten-free-376575/review

Say Cheese! – making homemade cheese

0 · Dec 9, 2011 · 1 Comment

By Alice DeLuca

Many years ago, on a train traveling slowly through the French countryside – I don’t remember exactly where and I refuse to invent a location for the sake of a story – I met a man whose job it was to sell cheese mold. This friendly man was sitting in the same compartment with me. I was naturally apprehensive when he started to speak. Sometimes men traveling on trains want to share stories and sometimes they want to show young women other things whether the women are interested or not, but that is another story.

The suited gentleman had a tidy briefcase which he offered to open so that I could see his wares. It was a great relief to find that he was a genuine gentleman, and that what he wanted to display was an assortment of tiny envelopes containing samples of unique cheese molds that were required in the production of famous French cheeses such as Camembert and Brie. Perhaps interpreting my relief at his desire to talk about cheese as an ardent interest in learning about his profession, he explained the whole process by which these molds would be sprayed on the cheeses during the manufacturing process. The uniform, paint-white rind of fresh Brie, with its mushroomy aroma, had mystified me until that moment when I learned that the rind was a fungus just like the kind of thing that produces mushrooms and that this fungus was sprayed on to the cheeses; an aerosol mushroom. I had wrongly pictured the right molds, living in the area, just meandering in on a fresh lavender-scented breeze from the French countryside and settled conveniently on each cheese, creating a uniform coating.

In fact, a mushroom is the fruiting body of an underground fungus, poking up through the forest floor. The Brie cheese rind is seeded with the spores of a particular fungus that does not make those pop-up fruiting bodies. So, fine cheese and mushrooms are related, which makes sense when you think about it, and I got the first inkling of this knowledge on a rumbling train.

It was also news to me at the time that cheeses were mass-produced rather than made individually the way we had tried to do at home. Unlike our lonesome artisanal cheeses that cured with the native spores traveling through the air at our house, there were whole rooms full of camembert, just sitting around waiting to be sprayed with precisely engineered mold. I pictured in my mind whole rooms full of cheeses just sitting there, waiting.

Our few attempts at making homemade cheese had been laborious. One particular cheese required a few gallons of whole, unpasteurized milk and some rennet, a funky smelling material derived from the stomach of a cow. You could obtain rennet at almost any grocery store by purchasing a package of “junket” mix – this is actually rennet that can be added to milk to make a sort of custardy dessert that has now fallen out of favor – or you could purchase rennet tablets specifically intended for cheesemaking, in a small cylindrical vial.[i] We used the rennet tablets and our homemade cheese had a pleasant flavor. We coated the cheese with wax that we tinted turquoise with candle-dye, to make our cheese stand out from those endearing goudas encased in the bright red wax that children love to play with at the table, annoying the grownups. Our wax was too hard and did not have the elasticity of the red cheese wax, so there were occasional holes and leaks in our coating which we patched horribly with little globs of additional wax. As amateurs we had lots of enthusiasm, but we didn’t have all the skills and equipment of the professionals.

There are so many diverse careers out there in the world. Here was a man who traveled around on trains with a suitcase full of mold. He provided a vital service to one of France’s major food industries, and he obviously enjoyed the work, the travel and the conversations along the way. He was not a Willy Loman character[ii] suffering from depression and despair, ruining his home life with his philandering ways. He was a proud, friendly gentleman who happily went about selling cheese mold to the heroes of French cuisine. I did not get his name, and by now he must be a very old man, but if I could I would thank him and ask him so many more questions.

I encountered another great member of the world of cheese professionals on Arthur Avenue in the Bronx, New York, in the 1980s. My memory is of a small shop where a lumberjack-sized man with large handlebar mustaches created mozzarella cheese with his bare hands. He made it look easy, as he kneaded the white curds in nearly boiling water until the cheese stretched like taffy. The process of creating hot ropes of cheese from milk turned out to be much trickier at home, especially since my hands were not used to being immersed in very hot water for extended periods. My hands turned red as they cooked, and I did not have the strength of this giant professional.

This video demonstration evokes the gentleness and patience of the true process similar to what I recall from watching the fellow making mozzarella in the Bronx in 1982: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_48-nGlxaw&feature=related [iii]

I have recently learned that it is possible to make homemade mozzarella using a microwave oven. People swear by this method and some claim to make cheese every week, almost ritually. This development could revolutionize many home kitchens, whether or not the cook adopts an obsessive-compulsive cheese-making habit. Following are links to a pictorial instruction on how this microwave mozzarella is made. The thing that is missing though is the slow, steady stirring; the brilliant efficiency of the strainer sinking in to the whey to separate the curds; the loving kindness of the great artisanal food artist at work.

Homemade microwave mozzarella: http://www.cheesemaking.com/store/pg/21.html

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPUortoNUWo&feature=fvwrel

[i] Junket mix is still available today, and there are recipes for using it to make cheese here.

[ii] Miller, Arthur. Death of a Salesman.

[iii] This demonstration gives an idea of the same process done by cheese professionals: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o-55_Hhjek&feature=related

Gluten Free Fruitcake

0 · Nov 29, 2011 · Leave a Comment

The Best Laid Plans of Mice[i]….

By Alice DeLuca

The black-and-white “tuxedo” cat who moved in recently is sleeping on the radiator, as an early snowstorm downs trees and power lines outside, and there is no sign of any mouse in the kitchen. At this time of year, just before guests start arriving for holiday meals, hordes of country mice would usually flood the house from every hole that is larger than a dime. They are Old World house-mice and little New World white-footed mice. These tiny half-ounce creatures can run at 8 miles an hour and jump vertically to distances of a foot and a half. The speed and agility explain how the fabulous mouse athletes got in to the chocolate, and also why we have a cat. Quite directly related to the presence of this cat is the very sparse influx of mice for the 2011 holiday season.

These are “The Misses Cheddar,” from a series of costumed mice called “Mice Named After Famous English Cheeses” obtained in Britain in the late 1990s. They are shown alongside an American dime, to demonstrate that a dime-sized hole, through which mice can pass, is very small.

Some mice sing[ii] – a lucky person who lives near mice will have heard this unforgettably sweet song once or twice, and there are scientific references from long ago alerting us to the fact that mice are known to sing. Despite this long-standing human knowledge, the internet abounds today with seemingly authoritative articles stating “It was recently discovered that male mice produce complex, ultrasonic songs” [iii] – but this is not news to anyone who lives around these delicate, small but annoying creatures.

The beautiful soprano warbling song coming from the silverware drawer late at night leaves me with mixed feelings. On the one hand having mice in the kitchen is disagreeable – since they rarely venture more than fifty feet from their established nest, have hundreds of offspring, spread disease and inadvertently cause expensive damage when they nip through electrical wiring and such. I do not blame them as they are just trying to live their lives, but when they nested in the seldom-used oven broiler, the conflagration of the nest caused a smoky incident that brought 3 fire fighters decked out in full turn-out gear to the house. There followed a visit from an extremely well-compensated stove repair technician who nonchalantly advised me to “turn the broiler on at least once a month just to discourage them.” He said he “saw this kind of thing all the time.”

A cascading mouse disaster also led to the expensive replacement of an automatic dishwasher – a mouse nested in the dishwasher insulation; the cat yanked off the bottom panel of the dishwasher to get at the mouse; the plumber who installed the new, replacement dishwasher said there was no point in plugging up the holes in the floor – “they can get in anywhere. It doesn’t matter what you do.”

Even while the mice cost us untold thousands of dollars and un-ending work, the presence of mice who have come in from the cold signals the start of one of the best food seasons of the year. It is a good season for roast pork, chicken and duck, and though many people today have lost touch with its glories, fruitcake.

A really good fruitcake made mostly of fruit, and soaked repeatedly in vast quantities of distilled liquor, is a great treat – very expensive and a required food for the winter season. The creation and production of a fruitcake marks the passing of time in the dark months. To have a fruitcake ready for the Christmas season, it is necessary to start working on the project now.

There follows a recipe for a terrific Fruitcake based on instructions from Darina Allen and Rosemary Kearney in their authentic and down-to-earth cookbook Healthy Gluten-Free Cooking. I have interpreted their instruction to season with “mixed spice” through research on such mixtures curated by the authoritative Elizabeth David, and I have adulterated the cake by completely saturating it with copious quantities of high quality gluten free Irish whisky*. (For the gluten free status of this whisky, see: http://www.jamesonwhiskey.com/Distillery/Meet-the-Distillery-Masters/FAQ.aspx)

1. Prepare an 8 ½” inch round, 3” deep pan, buttered and then lined with parchment. The parchment should stick up at least 1 ½ “ above the top of the pan. We have used one pan that was originally purchased to make cheesecake during the cheesecake mania of the early 1980s and have also used a spring-form pan effectively.

2. Mix up a batch of Mixed Spice (there will be some leftover after you use a teaspoon to make the cake so you can store that in a bottle for other uses). This mixture is based “loosely” on one from Elizabeth David’s English Bread and Yeast Cookery. I say “loosely” because I made a careless error in transcribing it at one time or another, and doubled the ginger. The error has persisted and this is the mixture I use. Again note that this will yield 3 teaspoons of which you will use only 1 :

1 teaspoon ginger
½ teaspoon pepper
½ teaspoon cloves
½ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon cinnamon

3. An important and informative note on Whisky: We use the better part of a quart of Jameson’s Irish Whisky for this cake. I would recommend that you use an Irish Whisky that does not have any smokiness to its flavor. Some Irish whisky is “enhanced” by smoked peat and frankly that flavor would do nothing good to this cake.

4. Use a kitchen scale to weigh the ingredients for this recipe.

5. Macerate the Fruit ingredients for an hour or so – the timing is truly irrelevant as this is not science and very little whisky is involved at this point in the recipe:

2 ounces sliced almonds

2 ounces finely ground almonds

12 ounces brown raisins

12 ounces golden raisins

12 ounces dried currants

1 cup (8 ounces) glace cherries (leave whole or cut in half but no smaller than half. I have successfully used dried cherries that have been rehydrated and cooked in a sugar syrup)[iv]

½ cup (4 ounces) candied citron – you can use homemade candied citrus peel instead[v]

Shredded rind of both an orange and a lemon

2 Tablespoons of Jameson’s Irish whisky (Jameson’s is an excellent choice – a whisky that does not have heavy “tobacco” notes – and noted as gluten free on the manufacturer’s website 2011-11-29)

Note: You want a total of 3 pounds of dried fruit, with vine fruits predominating. Candied Pineapple can be added successfully, providing a nice textural nuance. Currants are a required ingredient. Much different from raisins, currants are sugar-packed and have a crystallized texture that cannot be achieved with any substitution.

Raisins and Currants ADeLuca 2011 — Vine Fruits Predominate in a fine fruitcake

6. Preheat oven to 350 F.

7. Mix the Wet ingredients:

Cream 8 ounces of sweet butter, then stir in 8 ounces of brown sugar and beat until “pale and light.” Add 6 eggs one at a time, beating after each addition.

8. Mix the Dry ingredients:

Mix one teaspoon Mixed Spice[vi] with 8 ounces of finely ground almonds, 4 ounces of white rice flour (finely ground rice flour is available in Asian groceries – make sure it is rice flour and not sweet rice flour), 2 teaspoons of xanthan gum[vii], 1 cooking apple shredded (Golden Russet, Baldwin, Yellow Delicious).

9. Mixing and Baking:

Stir the Wet ingredients in to the Dry ingredients, and then add the Fruit ingredients. Do not overbeat. Scoop the very thick mixture in to the parchment-lined pan. Wet your hand and use your hand to smooth the top. Bake the cake for one hour, then reduce the heat to 325 and bake the cake for another 2 hours until a skewer comes out clean. The cake will be very dark. The original recipe calls for more baking, but I have found that it is important to start checking the cake after 2 hours.

10. Soaking:

Remove the pan from the oven and pour 2 ounces additional Irish whiskey over the cake. Let cool in the pan overnight.

11. More Soaking, a critical addition to an excellent recipe: Remove the cooled cake from the pan and remove the parchment. Wrap the cake in cheesecloth, and then soak the cake liberally with an additional ½ cup of Irish whiskey. Wrap the cheesecloth covered cake in an outer layer of tinfoil to completely cover the cake, then store the whiskied-up, tinfoil-covered cake in a tin or other container. Every 1-2 weeks, or whenever you remember, remove the cake from its tinfoil wrapper and soak the cake liberally on all sides with additional Irish whiskey. Restore the foil and put it back in its storage container. Continue soaking the cake every couple of weeks until Christmas.

12. In the original Allen/Kearney cookbook, there are elaborate instructions for adding an almond paste coating that I have never tried. It sounds like a good idea, but since we soak our cake in whiskey we have not felt the need for the almond paste coating.

Our fruitcake will be safe from the mice this year, well-wrapped and now protected by the feline security system. The cat has shown the discouraged mice the door, and they have packed up and moved their residence outside to the car. They continue to be very expensive tenants, however, and I have just received the car repair bill – $99 for removing a mouse nest from the engine.

Mouse Nesting in the car engine - a very expensive problem

The cat brings his own set of problems and expenses, but he is a charming and effective mouse-deterrent. He is good company, and does not eat and contaminate all the stored food, such as the all-important fruitcake – a medieval gourmet treat that marks the coming of the darkest season with the hope of new fruit on the vine the following summer.

[i] Burns, Robert. “To A Mouse. On turning her up in her nest with the plough”, November 1785. Accessed November 29, 2011 http://www.rbwf.org.uk/poems/translations/554.htm.

[ii] Dice, Lee R. 1932.”The Songs of Mice”, Journal of Mammology, Volume 13 Number 3. Accessed October 31, 2011 http://www.jstor.org/pss/1373992.

[iii] Ballenger, L. 1999. “Mus musculus” (On-line), Animal Diversity Web. Accessed October 31, 2011 http://www.animaldiversity.org/site/accounts/information/Mus_musculus.html.

[iv] Witty, Helen, and Elizabeth Schneider Colchie. Better than Store-bought: a Cookbook. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. Print. This book contains extensive instructions on candying a variety of fruits.

[v] Witty, Helen, and Elizabeth Schneider Colchie. Better than Store-bought: a Cookbook. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. Print. This book contains extensive instructions on candying a variety of fruits.

[vi]The following mixture is based on reading David, Elizabeth. English Bread and Yeast Cookery. New York: Viking, 1980. Print. …and several other books.. and then making a transcription error many years ago.

1 teaspoon ginger

½ teaspoon pepper

½ teaspoon cloves

½ teaspoon nutmeg

½ teaspoon cinnamon

[vii] The Xanthan Gum compensates for the lack of gluten in rice flour.

Day of the Un-Dead

0 · Oct 28, 2011 · Leave a Comment

The Day of the Dead and Halloween are nearly upon us and I am frantically digging for recipes that can protect the living against the Un-dead. Books and papers fly as I paw through shelves and piles, seeking something to ward off the Zombies, Vampires and Werewolves that may be lurking outside the door, or that may invade my kitchen at any moment. They all have highly specialized dentition designed to make swift work of the main course – me!

I’m calling on restaurateurs – please, this time of the year, an “amuse bouche” for the living might be just the thing to calm the customer’s nerves. Could chefs please get a little creative, and instead of offering me a puddle of olive oil, or herbed olive oil, or olives in a lake of olive oil with obligatory bread (that I don’t eat anyway), could they provide something that will protect our table from monsters? Let’s get our priorities straight please; safety comes first!

You can’t ward off zombies per se, with garlic or crosses, but you can put something on the table that won’t attract them to your establishment in the first place. How about some complimentary zombie-immune starters along these lines:

Vegetable Pakoras with a little yogurt sauce or a cilantro chutney on the side
Lightly pickled Carrot sticks and Dilly Beans, seasoned with garlic of course
A homemade cheddar-garbanzo bean cracker with a pear chutney
An endive boat with a vegetarian Banh Mi style filling
A black lentil salad with plantain chips
Yucca Fries with a sprinkling of salt and various peppers, and fresh limes

And chefs, if all the customers start moaning after the salad course, don’t assume narcissistically that they are in ecstasy over the fabulous new pâté de foie. Admit it, you were just making the pâté as a cost-recovery measure to use up chicken livers. It’s time to think on your feet – could the moaning coming from the dining room be a sign of zombie behavior spectrum disorder [i]? If so, take appropriate action immediately. If you are a fan of the zombie movie genre, you will know that you cannot necessarily trust anyone at this point, not even your sous-chef. Especially take note of this if you happen to be in Nashville, Tennessee this weekend where the Zombie Buffet 5K will be happening.

For the Vampire problem, everyone already knows to wear a garlic necklace, and frankly a random grouping of bulbs of garlic would fit right in with the giant globular necklace trends this season. Help us out please! Let’s see some velvety aioli, or the Greek skorthalia, or perhaps a beautiful green broccoli-garlic spread for gluten-free crositni or crackers – so easy to make, so garlicky and so green and lively that no zombie or vampire will come near the eater.

Broccoli spread:

· For each ½ pound of broccoli florets, 2 cloves garlic – peeled, 2-3 tablespoons olive oil, salt, pepper
· Bring water to a full rolling boil. Add the broccoli and cook until tender in boiling water, about 5-10 minutes, uncovered. Drain, dry and put into the food processor with the raw garlic. Process until smooth, adding the oil as needed. Season with salt and pepper. Serve at room temperature on gluten-free crostini or crackers.

One caveat about the drinks menu – The brilliant Zombie movie Ahhh! Zombies, a tale told from the perspective of the unfortunate zombies themselves, clearly demonstrates that to keep from attracting zombies you must absolutely avoid brain milkshakes, so there is no need for chefs to develop grizzly new martinis on the brain theme, thank you very mush.

For the werewolves, you need only serve the broccoli appetizer on a silver platter, and your diners’ problems with werewolves will be over. No matter who comes through the front door, the customers will be able to survive until the dessert course.

[i] The Zombie Attack Disaster Preparedness Plan from the University of Florida http://www.astro.ufl.edu/~jybarra/zombieplan.pdf

Homemade Seasoned Rice Vinegar

33 · Jun 24, 2011 · 4 Comments

Gfzing.com is once again bringing you the DIY recipe you have been looking for – how to make your own seasoned rice vinegar – the kind of vinegar that is used to make sushi.

The proportions for making Japanese seasoned rice vinegar are as follows – as described in the interesting Japanese cookbook Japanese Cooking for the American Table (by Karen Green, 1986, ISBN 0-87477-376-8).

Mix:

4 TB rice vinegar
2 TB sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons salt

That’s it! In any recipe that calls for seasoned rice vinegar you can use this mixture. If you include your own homemade vinegar, even better! You can be sure that your seasoned rice vinegar is gluten free!

Armenian Dessert Cake with Syrup – gluten free

0 · Jun 22, 2011 · Leave a Comment

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!

Sangria with strawberries

0 · Jun 8, 2011 · 1 Comment

It is nearly 100 degrees outside, and humid, so what better use of some dry red table wine than a tasty cold sangria to drink with a leisurely dinner of potato salad? The cinnamon in this recipe lends a certain richness and depth to an otherwise light-hearted drink.

We followed along with and embellished upon the ideas expressed at the interesting Spanish website La Receta de La Felicidad that lists Webos Fritos among its ancestors. These folks add salt and pepper to their sangria – brilliant! We added lime and triple sec.

Combine and chill:

1 liter (1 wine bottle) of red wine – sangiovese is a dry red

1 fresh lime, washed carefully and finely sliced (peel and all)

12 ounces of fresh strawberries, washed carefully and sliced

3 TB of gluten free orange liqueur (a gluten free triple sec) or 3 TB sugar

1/2 – 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon black pepper (depending on how spicy you like)

1 pinch of salt

1 Tablespoon vanilla (we make our own by soaking split vanilla beans in potato vodka for months and months)

Mix together fruit and wine and chill completely (about 2-4 hours). Add the spices and vanilla. Serve in wine glasses with plenty of the berry slices in each glass. The limes are there for flavor – you don’t necessarily eat the slices of lime.

We would have taken a photo of the glass of sangria, but all that was left was the fruit! Eat the fruit with a spoon.

According to the new food pyramid (which is now a plate), the combination of a potato salad made with grated carrots and hard-boiled eggs, and a glass of this sangria with fruit, would satisfy most of the requirements except for the mysterious “dairy” circle. That dairy circle could be taken care of with a simple slice of manchego cheese. And done! – a balanced meal.

Vegetarian Maple Baked Beans

0 · May 31, 2011 · 3 Comments

These gluten free, simple baked beans are sweetened with maple syrup and maple sugar and have minimal ingredients. They bake for a long time while your slow-cooked meat is cooking on the grill. Despite the small quantity of pepper they are surprisingly spicy.

Note: you add the salt to dried beans at the end of the cooking, so the beans will not toughen.

12 ounces dried flageolet beans (soaked overnight or pressure cooked for 2 minutes and allowed to sit until the pressure reduces naturally, or boiled for 2 minutes and allowed to sit for 1 hour.)

Drain the soaked beans and put them in an ovenproof casserole with a lid. We use a Corningware casserole that hold 2.5 liters or quarts.

Add to the drained beans:

2 Tablespoons ghee (clarified browned butter)

1/3 cup dark maple syrup

1/3 cup maple sugar

1/2 teaspoon black pepper (less if you don’t like spicy food)

1 large onion, peeled and diced

1 1/2 teaspoons French’s mustard (verify that this product is gluten free at the time of purchase)

2 Tablespoons of gluten free chili powder

4 cups boiling water

Cover and bake at 350 for 2 hours, remove the cover and continue to bake until the liquid has reduced to a thick sauce – another 2 hours or more is not unusual. Stir occasionally.

When the beans are done, add 1 Tablespoon of table salt and stir thoroughly.

Gluten Free Sourdough Banana Bread

0 · Apr 19, 2011 · 4 Comments

This delicious, intensely-flavored banana bread is baked with brown rice flour sourdough, cinnamon and brown sugar. It stands up to a good buttering!

Here is a real, honest picture of this bread, highlighting the banana elements.

First, make a gluten free sourdough starter according to this recipe http://www.gfzing.com/2011/gluten-free-sourdough-starter-and-pancakes/. Then, the night before you want to make banana bread, make a brown rice flour Overnight Sponge using 1 cup of brown rice flour and 1 cup of water, added to your starter.

Next day:

Preheat oven to 350 F degrees

Line a 9×5 loaf pan with parchment paper – use one large piece of paper and fold at the corners so that no part of the inside of the pan is showing

Ingredients:

1 cup gluten free sourdough Overnight Sponge (return the rest of the sponge, covered, to the refrigerator – that will be the “starter” for the next project)

1/2 cup white sugar

1 cup dark brown sugar

1/2 cup melted butter

2 eggs, beaten

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup mashed banana (about 2 bananas)

1 teaspoon gluten free ground cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking soda dissolved in 1 teaspoon water

1 1/2 cups finely ground brown rice flour mixed with 1 teaspoon xantham gum

Mix all ingredients up through the cinnamon, then add the baking soda mixture, then the rice flour mixture. Stir thoroughly – the mixture will stiffen as you stir. You can add raisins if desired. Spoon mixture in to lined pan and bake 1 hour at 350.

When the bread is done, remove the pan from the oven, lift the pan up about 10 inches above the counter and drop the pan straight down – that’s right – drop the pan on the counter top, bottom side down of course. This action will prevent the bread from falling. Cool ten minutes in the pan, then lift up the parchment paper to remove the bread from the pan to cool the rest of the way.

Gluten Free Sourdough Starter and Pancakes

0 · Mar 22, 2011 · Leave a Comment

The yeasty, buttery smell of sourdough pancakes will bring everyone running to the kitchen for breakfast, with or without coffee.

Sourdough is simply a fermentation product – it is made from ground grain, water and yeast – the yeast growing, reproducing and producing gas bubbles. You must keep sourdough alive. In the old times, maintaining sourdough was a practical necessity. Freeze-dried yeast was not available, so you would take out some of your live yeast culture from your sourdough pot. In modern times, sourdough is more of a hobby than a necessity, but if you want to keep a sourdough starter on hand, each time you use some of the sourdough, replace the same amount with ground grain and water. The yeast will eat the new grain for breakfast, making more little yeasts and gas. Keep the mixture in the refrigerator after the initial fermentation.

We have tried making gluten free sourdough starter with many different flours. The thickness of the starter will depend on the type of flour used. The following starter is excellent and you can try using it for pancakes. Note that sourdough pancakes are not puffy flannel cakes; they are thinner, more bubbly and have a nice browned edge if you fry them in butter. If you want a sturdier pancake, use a mixture of sorghum and classical gluten free flour mix for the overnight sponge. If you prefer a more tender, delicate sourdough pancake, use 100% brown rice flour. Here’s how to start from scratch and make a sourdough starter and some pancakes.

Two or three nights before you want to make the pancakes, make a starter culture by mixing the following in a large bowl:

1/2 cup Authentic Foods Gluten Free Classical Mix
1/2 cup Authentic Foods Sorghum Flour (this brand is very finely ground)
1/2 ounce gluten free freeze-dried yeast
1 cup warm water

Stir and cover with a plate. If it is fruit-fly season, you may have to cover the bowl with plastic wrap to prevent the accidental drownings of excited fruit flies. It is very discouraging to start the morning with a bowl of sourdough starter peppered with the drowned fruit flies lured in by the yeasty aromas.

The night before you want to make the pancakes, re-invigorate the starter to make an Overnight Sponge:

Add 1 or 2 cups of gluten free flours to your starter – (you can try using 100% brown rice flour, or more sorghum and gf flour mix) – and the equivalent amount of warm water, stir, cover and set aside to make more sourdough. So, if you add 1 cup flour, add 1 cup water, and so on. Only add ground grains and water to your starter – never add eggs or milk to the starter. If you use 100% brown rice flour, the starter will be very thin, thickening slightly when you add the other pancake ingredients.

The next day, make the pancakes:

Remove 1 cup of Overnight Sponge to use for pancakes. Put the rest of the sponge in the fridge as a starter for your next sourdough adventure.

For pancakes, mix in a two-cup measure

1 cup of Overnight sponge (that you removed)
1 egg
1 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 Tablespoons vegetable oil

Each 1/3 cup of the batter will make 3 pancakes. Stir the batter up, heat a non-stick pan and add 1 teaspoon butter – don’t skimp on the butter. Use at least a teaspoon of butter to fry 3 or 4 pancakes – we already gave up the wheat, but nobody says we have to give up the butter! Heat over medium high heat until the butter starts to brown. Pour 3 or 4 pancakes and cook them until the little bubbles on the top of the pancakes pop. Flip the pancakes carefully and continue cooking them on the other side.

Transfer the pancakes to a plate, serving them piping hot with real dark amber maple syrup – you can absolutely drown these pancakes in syrup.

Gourmet Gluten Free Brownies

0 · Mar 18, 2011 · Leave a Comment

A gourmet gluten free brownie that is just like the best wheat brownie you ever had.

Use the absolute best quality gluten free chocolate you can obtain. It is worth doing the website and company research to find the richest, darkest gluten free chocolate that is available.

For the brownies:

Melt the following in a small pot, then set aside to cool briefly:

1 1/2 sticks (12 ounces) unsalted butter
7 ounces bittersweet gluten free chocolate
3 ounces gluten free unsweetened chocolate

Place the following in a large bowl:

1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla or 1/2 teaspoon of Authentic Foods gluten free powdered vanilla
1/4 teaspoon salt
4 eggs

Beat the sugar/egg mixture with a spoon, then stir in the melted chocolate/butter mixture.

In a small bowl, combine

1 cup Authentic Foods GF traditional flour blend
1/2 teaspoon xantham gum

Mix the GF flour mixture in to the chocolate batter. Stir just to combine well.

Stir in:

1 cup walnut pieces, sized according to your preference.

Line a 9 x 13″ pan with parchment paper leaving quite a bit up paper going up the sides (so that you can grab the paper later and pull the whole brownie unit out of the pan. Pour and spread the batter in to the paper-lined pan and ease the batter out to the edges and corners of the pan. Bake at 350 F degrees for 30 minutes. Remove from the oven and cool completely before frosting. Don’t remove the brownies from the pan yet – frost first!

Frosting:

Melt in a microwavable glass dish:

6 ounces unsalted butter
4 Tablespoons milk (can be non-fat milk if you want)

Add:

4 Tablespoons (1/4 Cup) best quality gluten free cocoa powder
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 2/3 cups gluten free confectioner’s sugar

Stir together with a kitchen spoon until completely smooth. Because the butter is melted, the frosting can still be a bit loose or runny when you spread it, because the frosting will stiffen up later, as the butter cools and hardens. Spread the frosting on the brownies, then transfer the pan to the refrigerator to chill until firm.

To remove brownies from pan, just grab the edges of the parchment paper and lift. Transfer the paper of brownies to a cutting board and proceed to cut them.

Cut the brownies with a sharp knife. To make clean cuts, occasionally run the knife blade under hot water then wipe dry with a clean towel. Using a heated, clean knife will ensure a clean cut with no crumbs.

Make sure to use all gluten-free ingredients. If you are using a wheatavore kitchen, ensure that the sugar container is not contaminated with flour by wheatavore cooking adventures.

Potato Salad with Eggs and Carrots

0 · Mar 17, 2011 · Leave a Comment

A tasty gluten free potato salad with hard-boiled eggs, carrots and onion. The cooking is done in the microwave to cut down on the heat in the kitchen.

This is based on the potato salad shown at this webpage: http://www.sachikocooking.com/english/en0106prt.htm, altered to use less mayonnaise and much less sugar.

3 red bliss potatoes – if they are about the size of a tennis ball, the three potatoes together will weigh about a pound.
3 large carrots, grated on the large holes of a box grater
1 cup very thinly sliced onion
1/2 teaspoon table salt
2 eggs
1/4 cup coarsely chopped flat-leaf parsley

Sauce:

1/4 cup gluten free mayonnaise
1 teaspoon gluten free ballpark mustard
1/4 teaspoon freshly ground pepper
1/2-1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon fresh lime juice

Mix the shredded carrots, sliced onion and salt thoroughly and set aside. Let this rest while you do all the other preparation, so that the salt can draw water out of these veggies.

Clean the potatoes, pierce each one and remove the eyes, microwave them using the potato setting on your microwave. Set aside to cool, then peel and chop.

“Hard-boil” the eggs in the microwave, adding 1 teaspoon water per egg. We use a device called a “Micro Egg” for cooking eggs in the microwave. With this device, it took slightly longer than 1 minute at 100 power to cook the two eggs in one Micro Egg. Set the eggs aside to cool, then dice.

Squeeze the water out of the salted carrot/onion mixture by putting these salted veggies in a kitchen towel and squeezing firmly.

Put the squeezed carrots and onion in a bowl. Add the chopped cooked potatoes, diced eggs, parsley. Mix the sauce ingredients in a separate bowl, then fold the sauce in to the carrot-onion-potato-egg-parsley. Adjust the flavors, chill and serve.

Gluten Free Miso Soup

0 · Feb 24, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Loaded with vegetables, this simple, easy gluten free soup can be put together in under a half hour. Use other vegetables in place of the ones specified in this recipe – whatever you have available. Cruciferous vegetables (Brassicaceae family) like cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, turnip, watercress etc. or quick-cooking greens like spinach are ideally suited to this type of soup.

Ingredients:

2 Tablespoons toasted sesame oil

3 cloves garlic, minced

1 Tablespoon fresh ginger, minced

5 scallions, cleaned and minced

2 quarts water

1/2 cup dried sliced shitake mushrooms

1/2 head of cauliflower, in flowerets

1 bunch (1 pound) asparagus, washed, tough end removed, sliced in 1/2 inch slices

1 large yam or sweet potato (about 1 pound), peeled and cubed

8 Tablespoons gluten free miso (we used South River 3-year Hearty Brown Rice Miso – check with the manufacturer’s website for gluten free status)

black pepper

Simply heat the sesame oil, stir fry the garlic, ginger and scallions or onion for 30 seconds, then add the water. Bring to a simmer, then add the dried shitake mushrooms, cauliflower, asparagus and yam or sweet potato. Simmer for 10 minutes until the yams are tender. Stir in the gluten free miso paste, season with pepper and serve hot.

A surprisingly rich and satisfying vegan soup.

Double-check to make sure the miso paste you choose is gluten free.

A Simple Brown Rice Flour Pie Crust

4 · Feb 18, 2011 · Leave a Comment

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.

Homemade Vinegar

0 · Feb 3, 2011 · 1 Comment

Homemade vinegar is easy to make – it kind of makes itself under the right conditions – and we have been making our own for 25 years. The vinegar you buy in the grocery store (white, cider, wine) is sharp tasting and thin in flavor compared to the rich complexity of a homemade vinegar. Make your own vinegar and you will become a fan! Also, with your own homemade vinegar there is no need to read labels looking for gluten-containing items. The test of a delicious vinegar is this: sip up a teaspoon of the vinegar and you should want more! You will not want to waste this homemade vinegar making those baking soda and vinegar volcanoes that are so popular in elementary and middle school classes.

You will need:

Leftover Wine diluted with unchlorinated water
Vinegar culture (a bacterial culture, check with the manufacturer and do NOT use malt vinegar culture)
a wide-mouthed glass or stoneware container
Cheesecloth to keep fruit flies out of the vinegar while allowing air to enter the container
Room temperature (68-96 degrees)
surgical hemostat clamp (a ten dollar item) for easily removing old vinegar mother

If you really get in to making homemade vinegar, you may want to invest in a handy vinegar crock with a spigot, or an oak vinegar barrel. Bear in mind that it is not safe to use homemade vinegar in home canning or pickling, unless you are a talented chemist who can accurately test the acidity of your finished product. For pickling, you need 5% acidity.

Coyote Vinegar Crock gfzing.com square — Gfzing.com uses a vinegar crock with spigot - made by Clay Coyote Gallery

To make Vinegar:

Choose what kind of vinegar you are making: red, white, cider. Dilute leftover wine or hard cider with unchlorinated water, about 2 parts of wine to one part of water. Put about a quart of diluted wine in to a cleaned large mouth jar or bowl, or vinegar crock. We use C-brite to clean the container. Add the starter culture. Stir with a clean spoon; cover the container with cheesecloth secured with a rubber band (keeps out fruit flies while allowing air to enter). Store the crock at the back of the counter in your kitchen, where the vinegar will remain largely in the dark and at 68-96 degrees. In about 4 weeks the first vinegar should be ready to use in salad dressings and sauces. Pour off some of the vinegar, taste it and dilute it with additional water if it tastes too strong, then bottle it in sterilized bottles and cork the bottles.

Now add more diluted wine to your crock – this is called “feeding” your vinegar and let it go. Each time you get ready to bottle some vinegar, taste the finished product to see if it is ready for bottling, and add water if the flavor is too strong. Since this is a trial-and-error, imprecise method for achieving the final product, you will not know the final Ph of the homemade vinegar and cannot use this vinegar to make pickles or preserves that are not refrigerated.

Vinegar Culture:

To make vinegar, you add a starter culture of acetic acid bacteria to an alcohol base (like wine or hard cider). For the starter culture, you can use some vinegar from a friend’s vinegar crock, or you can buy a culture. For gluten free vinegar, do not use malt vinegar culture.

Vinegar Mother:

Vinegar mother is a thick cellulose material created by the vinegar bacteria. People who have never handled vinegar mother call it “slimy” but that is not a good description. The material is strong, thick and fibrous, stretchy, slippery and somewhat leathery – like the covering on a papaya seed, or a sort of fibrous jelly. It can break cleanly in to clumps when you pull on it. The mother accumulates in your crock or barrel, and eventually some of it needs to be removed to make room for more wine. The mother is not necessary to the formation of new vinegar – what you need is the bacteria. So, if you have a friend who makes good vinegar and does not pasteurize it, ask for a sample of their vinegar and you are ready to go.

Vinegar Barrels:

A word about vinegar barrels – the oak vinegar barrel adds a strong oak flavor to a red wine vinegar, and we use one for this purpose. However, the home vinegar maker should be forewarned about a couple of things. 1) The vinegar barrel should be soaked before using, to prevent leaking. 2) Unless the barrel has a large opening at one end, removing old vinegar mother from your vinegar barrel requires two people, because most of these barrels only have small holes through which to remove the mother. One person holds the barrel so that a hole is facing downwards (the largest hole is the air hole at the top) and the other person uses a surgical hemostat clamp to grab bits of the mother and pull them through the hole. This is a messy process.

Vinegar Crock and Barrel from GFZINGdotcom — Gfzing.com uses the Vinegar Crock for cider vinegar and an Oak Vinegar Barrel for red wine vinegar

Bottling:

We bottle the vinegar without pasteurizing it.

Homemade Vinegar and Pickling:

Do not use homemade vinegar for making pickles. Vinegar used in pickling must be of a certain Ph, or you can have spoilage and dangerous bacteria can grow in the pickles.

More Instructions:

Further instructions for making your own vinegar are available here: http://www.claycoyote.com/blog//SunsetMagazine_Vinegar.pdf

Thai Cucumber Salad Dressing

1 · Feb 3, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Salad is the BFF (best friend forever) of seasoned gluten free eaters. Here is another simple, inexpensive gluten free dressing that can be used on many different kinds of fresh vegetable. In this case, we used English cucumbers – those long, long cucumbers that are often sold mysteriously laminated but have the advantage of holding few seeds.

To make attractive edges on the cucumber, increase the fiber in the finished dish, and avoid peeling, we use a fork to deeply score a cucumber from end to end, on all sides. Scoring the cucumber in this way breaks up the peel so the diner does not have to masticate like a herbivore. Then we cut the cucumber in half lengthwise, then sliced it crosswise into moon shapes. If you use a standard American cucumber, after halving it remove the seeds by scooping them out with a spoon.

Put the cucumber slices (or grated carrot, daikon radish or whatever vegetable you want to lightly pickle) in to a glass bowl. A fancy bowl is not required – any glass bowl will do.

Mix up the following dressing, pour it over the cucumber slices, stir and chill:

1/2 cup cider vinegar (homemade is best)
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 water
1 teaspoon salt
1 medium shallot, peeled and minced
1 dried cayenne pepper, minced (or 1/4 – 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes)
fresh ground black pepper (optional)

You can add more cucumbers to the leftover dressing and serve the same salad again the next day.

A note for the wheat-eater who is serving a gluten free diner: be cautious with the sugar container. Sometimes a tired baker scoops up some flour from the flour container and then uses the same measuring cup to scoop up some sugar. If that’s something you tend to do, use a fresh container of sugar to make this dressing for your gluten free friend.

Gluten Free German Torte Cake base

1 · Jan 24, 2011 · Leave a Comment

German tortes can have a cake base with a cream filling, and maybe fresh fruit on top. Here is how to make a gluten free German sponge cake (this one is made with almonds and cornstarch) that will work well as the base for a torte with a cream filling.

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Line the bottom of a 9 inch spring-form pan with parchment paper, then grease the sides of the pan with butter. Set this prepared pan aside.

You need 3 bowls – like Goldilocks and the Three Bears! One great big bowl, one medium sized bowl, and one little bowl.

You need a kitchen scale to weigh the ingredients. Be sure to zero out the scale each time you measure something.

3 eggs, separated
3 Tablespoons cold water
75 grams Sugar
50 grams Cornstarch
65 grams Almond meal (Bob’s Red Mill makes the one we used)
1/2 teaspoon gluten free baking powder (measurement is for American baking powder. If using German baking powder, use slightly more.)

Beat the egg whites with the cold water in a large bowl until stiff. In the medium sized bowl, beat the egg yolks until light lemon colored and fluffy.

Beat the sugar in to the beaten egg whites, then fold in the beaten yolks.

In a third little bowl (capacity 2 cups), mix the cornstarch, almond meal and baking powder. (The volume of cornstarch and almond meal will be about one cup combined).

Fold the cornstarch/nut mixture in to the egg mixture. The mixture will be light and fluffy.

Carefully distribute the batter in to the prepared spring-form pan.

Bake for 35 minutes at 300 degrees until the cake springs back to the touch. Remove from the oven, slide a knife around the sides to loosen the cake, then remove the sides. Allow the cake to cool completely. Remove the cake from the pan. You can cut it horizontally in to two layers using a bread knife, if you need 2 layers.

Make sure your ingredients are all gluten free!

Gluten Free Lace Cookies

0 · Jan 18, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Lace cookies are quick to make, and require few ingredients. It is just as easy to make them gluten free if you substitute cornstarch for the wheat flour in the recipe.

In a 2-cup Pyrex measuring cup, put the following ingredients – then microwave on the setting you would use for 1 cup of coffee, until the butter melts and the mixture bubbles.

2 Tablespoons butter
1 1/2 Tablespoons corn syrup
2 Tablespoons dark brown sugar

Remove from the microwave, then stir in

2 Tablespoons cornstarch

Deposit the batter in teaspoon-sized circles on parchment paper lined baking sheet. Be sure to leave 3 inches between each cookie, and make only about 6 cookies at a time if you plan to roll them in cylinder or cone shapes because you will have to work quickly.

Bake the cookies 6 minutes, until spread out, brown and bubbly. Watch them carefully to make sure they don’t burn.

Remove the sheet from the oven. If you are going to make cylinders or cone shapes, allow them to cool about 15 seconds and then start working with them. Otherwise, wait about a minute and the parchment paper will be easy to peel right off the cookies! As you can see from the picture, these cookies spread quite a lot. I have included a quarter in the photos so you can compare the size, uncooked and cooked.

and these cookies are delicate like glass. Here are about 7 of them stacked on a Heath Ceramics coffee cup – (cup color is Moonstone.)

Lime and Agave Salad Dressing

0 · Jan 15, 2011 · Leave a Comment

Here is a delicious gluten free dressing of agave nectar and lime juice, based on a “thai-style” dressing that can be found all over the internet. (The standard “thai-style” dressing contains the now evil corn syrup, once sooooo trendy and now hiding shamefully in the back of many American cupboards, waiting to be used in pecan pie.)

We had a bottle of agave nectar sitting on the shelf, and apart from wondering why that agave was not made in to tequila we hadn’t given it another thought. As usual, we are entering the new year with a load of greens on our plates, hoping to reverse the effects of holiday indulgences. The problem with all that salad? It can be boring! The only hope is an arsenal of interesting sauces to “dress” up the greens. Here’s one:

1/4 cup amber agave nectar or other sweetener or your choice
1 1/2 tablespoons gluten free soy sauce (check the label)
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lime juice (about 1/2 of a large lime, or one whole small lime)
1 tablespoon oil (not from olives)
1/2 teaspoon dried basil (or 1 tablespoon snipped fresh basil
1 tablespoon snipped fresh mint leaves
1/4 teaspoon ground chili (cayenne or red pepper)
1 tiny clove of garlic, peeled and grated or minced

Mix all ingredients together and serve with a salad of mixed greens, sliced boneless chicken seasoned and pan-fried, sweet cherry tomatoes, nuts etc.

Chianti goes well with this dressing.

Maple Pumpkin Pie, no dairy, from fresh pumpkin

0 · Jan 14, 2011 · Leave a Comment

small pumpkin pie — Non Dairy, Gluten-Free Pumpkin Pie

This interesting recipe from gfzing.com has no milk, cream, rice milk or any other type of milk, is gluten free and uses fresh rather than canned pumpkin. The type of pumpkin used is the small “pie” or “sugar” pumpkin – they are sold at farm stands for the purpose of making pies. The natural liquid in the freshly cooked pumpkin is sufficient liquid and no added milk products are needed. Do not use canned pumpkin for this recipe.

The pie is quite light, and since the only sweeteners are maple syrup and molasses the pie is not too sweet.

Ingredients:

1 “pie” or “sugar” pumpkin
1/2 cup dark maple syrup
1/4 cup molasses
3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
3/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 unbaked Whole Foods gluten free (gf) pie shell, thawed and cracks repaired

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

Defrost the gluten free pie shell and repair any cracks. Sometimes frozen pie crusts get broken, but you can smush the crust back together along the breaks to make a whole crust.

Next, remove the stem (just break it off) from the pumpkin and stab the pumpkin through the shell to the center in 4 or 5 places with a pairing knife – to let out steam. You don’t need to cut the pumpkin up or remove the seeds before cooking. Set the prepared pumpkin in the microwave oven and cook it as for baked potato (use the setting on the microwave).

Remove the very hot pumpkin from the oven using potholders and let cool completely. Now cut the cooked pumpkin in half, use a large spoon to scoop out and discard the seeds. Then, scoop out the cooked flesh, set it aside for use and finally discard the peel. You should have about 24 ounces cooked pumpkin (weigh the cooked flesh.) You do not need to mash or strain the pumpkin flesh.

In a food processor, combine about 24 ounces ( one and a half pounds) of cooked fresh pumpkin (not canned) with all the rest ingredients except the pie shell. Process until the mixture is completely smooth. Pour most of the pumpkin mixture in to the uncooked pie shell until the pie shell is filled almost to the top. Depending on the size of the pumpkin, there may be a cup or so of extra filling. If so, grease a small oven-proof dish and pour the excess in there.

Put the pie in to a 450 degree oven for 10 minutes, then reduce the heat to 350 and cook for another 45 minutes. Check the pie – if the filling is set, the pie is done. Cool and serve with your favorite pie topping.

For the extra filling, bake that along with the pie but it will be done and ready to take out of the oven well before the pie. You can use this cooked pumpkin pie filling to make a nice pumpkin parfait, layering the cooked chilled filling with your favorite gluten free pie topping (whipped cream if you use it).

Gluten Free Deep Dish Pizza

0 · Jan 7, 2011 · Leave a Comment

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!