Zucchini Bread

For the first time in a while, I tried making zucchini bread. I'd been having a problem of it not getting done, so I modified the recipe a bit. To convert it to gluten free, I'd been adding an extra egg (adds protein and helps hold it together), but, on the suspicion that there was too much liquid in the mix, I did not do so last night. Instead, I added two teaspoons of dried egg. I also increased the leavening (from 1/4 t baking powder and 1 t soda to 1/2 t baking powder and 2 t soda + 1 t egg replacer) and replaced half the oil with butter. The resulting batter was considerably thicker than the batter I'd gotten in the past, and seemed to bake much better. I was still cautious and only put one inch of batter in the bread pans, but, as it got done with no problems, I think it would be safe to increase that depth next time. Oh, I also increased the baking temperature from 325° F to 375° F. So here's my grandmother's zucchini bread, modified to be gluten free:

Gluten Free Zucchini Bread

3 eggs
1/2 c oil
1/2 c butter (softened)
2 c sugar
2 t vanilla
2 t soda
1/2 t baking powder
1 t egg replacer (or other leavening agent)
1/4 t salt
2 t dried egg whites
2 t xanthan gum
3 c featherlight rice flour mix*
3+ t cinnamon
2 c grated zucchini
1 c chopped pecans or walnuts

Preheat oven to 375° F. Grease pans and dust with rice flour. Put the eggs into a stand mixer and let them beat while you mix soda, baking powder, egg replacer, salt, dried egg whites, xanthan gum and flour together in a separate bowl. Add the oil and butter to the eggs. Add the sugar and vanilla. Slowly add the flour mix to the mixture. Add the cinnamon. Add the zucchini. Add the nuts. Mixture will be very thick. Distribute amongst three 8" by 4" bread pans and bake for 1 hour.

Note: If you make smaller loaves or muffins, you'll need to adjust the cooking time. I only needed 45 minutes last night, since nothing wound up more than an inch deep.

*Featherlight rice flour is one of Bette Hagman's mixtures. I've modified it a bit. Instead of white rice flour, I use brown rice flour. Instead of potato flour, I use rice protein powder. Since a lot of the GF flours are low in protein, I figure adding a bit in, particularly rice protein to a rice mix, is a useful thing to do.

Inquire Further

Relinquish

GF: 5-Grain muffins

The first time I encountered Bob's Red Mill was a couple years before I found out I was gluten intolerant. I came across their 10-grain hot cereal mix, and bought it, despite the fact that I almost never ate hot cereal. However, there was a muffin recipe on the back which I did make, many times. Fast forward a few years, and I discovered that the mix contained several varieties of wheat, so I can't use it any more. However, there is an alternative which makes muffins just about as good: Bob's Red Mill's Mighty Tasty GF Hot Cereal (I'd link to the product page, but the site seems to be down). It also comes with a recipe on the back, but it's not nearly as good as the original (which you can find here), so I decided to adapt the original. To give some idea of the difference, the original recipe uses a full cup of the dry cereal. The one on the GF cereal uses 2 Tablespoons.

Mighty Tasty 5-Grain GF Muffins

2 eggs
2 t vanilla
1/2 c raw sugar*
1/3 c butter**
1 c 4-flour bean mix***
1/4 t salt
1 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1 t xanthan gum
1 c Mighty Tasty GF cereal mix ****
1 1/4 c milk *****

Combine cereal mix with milk and let stand for at least 10 minutes. Preheat oven to 400° F. Cream sugar and margarine; add eggs and vanilla. Add all dry ingredients except the flour and mix well. Add flour and mix well. Add cereal and milk mixture and mix well. Spoon into a prepared muffin pan. Bake 18-20 minutes.

* if you can't find raw sugar (sometimes branded "Turbinado") substitute brown sugar.

** I used olive oil instead, and the muffins still came out with a rich, buttery flavor.

*** this is one of Bette Hagman's flour mixes, only I use white bean flour instead of garfava flour; mainly, you want a moist, protein rich flour for these muffins.

**** Any GF hot cereal made by chopping grains into small bits would work here. Cream of rice, cream of buckwheat, cream of quinoa... The more different grains in the mix, the richer the flavor, though.

***** Original recipe calls for buttermilk. I generally just use goat's milk. When I could still have soy, I often used soy milk.

On the latest batch, I also added 1 t cinnamon to the mix, but these have a very good flavor all their own. The cinnamon made a good complement, though. These are very rich, flavorful muffins, chockful of fiber, and with less fat and sugar than most muffins.

GF Tips Index

Inquire Further

Relinquish

Coconut to Save the Day

I finally found a way of making beef taste halfway decent. My former method was to burn it to a crisp, as the burned bits tasted better than the beef itself. If it's not obvious, I'm not a big fan of the taste of beef. Rather than explain, here's an exchange that I've often gone through:

BeefEater: But why don't you like beef?
Me: It tastes like dead cow.
*confused pause*
BeefEater: It is dead cow.
Me: But it doesn't have to taste like it!
*even more confused pause*
BeefEater: Wh--?

It usually goes downhill from there. The problem is that beef just tastes dead. Chicken tastes like meat, like food. I would never say that chicken tastes like dead bird, though, in fact, chicken is dead bird. It does not taste dead to me. Neither does pork.

Not surprisingly, I don't cook beef very often. Every so often, though, my body informs me that we should have some. I tend to assume this means that there's some nutrient in the beef that my body hasn't been getting through other sources. So I give in, and cook up a batch, grimace my way through it, and move on.

Finally, though, I've found a way to cook it that improves it immensely: make it into a coconut curry. The key to any coconut curry is to cut the meat into thin slices, about 1/8 inch thick, and simmer it in coconut milk along with whatever spices and flavorings you want. Since coconut milk is very sweet, it's a good idea to throw in something sour (like lime juice, or tamarind, or tomato), and I tend to add a Thai garlic-chili-oil sauce. You can also find actual Thai curry sauces, but the last time I checked they all had ginger in them, and I don't particularly need another bout of suicidal depression, thank you very much. While the meat is simmering, add any slow-cooking vegetables. Potatoes and eggplant are commonly offered in Thai restaurants... I'm not a big fan of eggplant, and the coconut milk isn't much help with it. Let it all simmer until meat and vegetables are done, and then add a crisper vegetable that doesn't require as much cooking for the last five minutes or so, say zucchini or snap peas or even carrots. Serve with rice, preferably jasmine rice.

For those who want something more specific, here's the recipe I made Tuesday night (approximately, as I wasn't actually measuring):

1 eight-ounce steak, cut into thin slices
1 can coconut milk
a bit of salt
1/4 c tomato sauce
1 T chili oil or curry sauce
1 T basil (I used dried; if you've got fresh, go for it)
1 T red pepper flakes (at least; it is nearly impossible to add too much of this...unless you don't like hot food, but that's just silly, right?)
1/2 T fish oil (you can substitute GF soy sauce, but fish oil is more authentic)
----->Simmer in a large saucepan or crockpot, stirring every five minutes or so.

Meanwhile, get the rice cooking according to package directions. Assuming white rice, it should take about 20 minutes to cook, then let it stand for 10 minutes.

While the rice is standing, add 1 cup of fresh snow peas to the coconut milk mixture and stir. Let the peas simmer for 5-8 minutes, or to desired level of doneness.

The beef turns out remarkably tender and tastes much less dead than it usually does.

One can of coconut milk is actually more than you need for just 1 steak, but I've found it effectively impossible to keep the unused portion in usable shape. Still, you could easily double or triple the amount of both meat and vegetables. As written above, I got two servings out of it. Doubling, then, should be 4 servings.
I like to keep the rice and curry separate, and serve each in its own bowl, but some prefer to mix them in the same bowl.

Inquire Further

Relinquish

What to Do with Peanut Butter that You Can't Scrape Out of the Jar

I have a sneaking feeling that this represents my longest title for a blog-post, ever!

So, in answer to the title: drop a handful of chocolate chips into the jar; shake and/or stir them around; remove and eat them using chopsticks.

It didn't quite use up all of the peanut butter, but it took care of most of it, and tasted good to boot. ^/^

As always, make sure to read ingredients on both chocolate chips and peanut butter if you have food sensitivities, and avoid off-brands of either one. Of course, right now might not be the best time to be buying peanut butter products... However, the jar in question came from well before the salmonella scare, and never made me ill in any fashion.

Inquire Further

Relinquish

GF: Taco Seasoning

Before finding out I was gluten intolerant, my family would always make Mexican dishes using spice packets from the store. Unfortunately, nearly all of them contain "whe*t flour" as an ingredient. My best guess is that the gluten is supposed to help the spice stick to the meat. Whatever the reason, it means that I cannot use the pre-made spice packets. So I took it upon myself to make up my own spice mix. Essentially, I noted the spices used in the pre-made spice packets, and tried mixing them up.

There are two versions below the fold, but the instructions for use are the same:

Brown meat (usually beef), drain fat, add 2 T of spice mix per pound of meat and approximately 3/4 c of water per pound of meat, cover and let simmer for 10-20 minutes, uncovering for the last few if there's still too much water. Serve with your favorite taco fixings.

Here's my very first attempt. If you like very spicy tacos, it's pretty good. If not, go down to the milder version.

Spicy Taco Mix

5 t cumin
6 t chili powder
3 t cayenne or red pepper
3 t oregano
2 t paprika
1/2 t garlic or onion salt
1/2 t salt
(use 2 T spice + 3/4 c. water per pound of meat)

Mild Taco Mix

5 t cumin
2 t chili powder
1 t cayenne or red pepper
3 t oregano
6 t paprika
1/2 t garlic or onion salt
1/2 t salt
(use 2 T spice + 3/4 c. water per pound of meat)

Essentially, I just switched the amounts of chili powder and paprika, and decreased the red pepper. This time, I tried 3 t chili pepper to 6 t paprika and left the red pepper at 3 t. It's just a touch spicy to me, which means that my mom would hate it. As for the various salts, they're completely optional, imo. You can always salt the meat itself, and I usually put a fresh onion or garlic clove in with the meat anyway.

Oh, the level of spiciness will also depend on the kind of chili powder you get. Some are very mild, while some are almost as hot as the red pepper. So keep this in mind, depending on where your preferences lie.

The mixes result in 20 t and 18 t of mix respectively. 18 t = 6 T = enough for three batches if you cook one pound of meat at a time. I usually mix up a double batch and keep it in a jar.
GF Tips Index

Inquire Further

Relinquish

GF: Another corn bread recipe

This recipe is very similar to the way I modified the box recipe, with the primary difference being that it lists out a specific GF flour mixture. As I was hoping to try it for New Year's, I made a small test batch today, one quarter of the full recipe, or about 4 muffins' worth. Oh, the reason that I went looking for a different recipe is that on Saturday, rice did not agree with me at all. I suspect it's connected to the antibiotic I've been taking, but I wanted to find a recipe that didn't use rice flour. This one gives the option of using rice or sorghum, and I can verify that it works well with sorghum flour. The quartered recipe is below, or go to the link for the full recipe.

One Quarter version of Carol Fenster's Gluten Free Corn Bread

1/4 c + 1 T cornmeal
2 T sorghum flour
1 T potato starch
1 T tapioca flour
1/4 t + 1/8 t xanthan gum
4 t sugar
1/2 t baking powder
1/2 egg*
1/4 c milk
4 t vegetable oil

*I used 1 1/2 t of dried egg white + 1 T water instead of trying to divide up an actual egg.

This is actually ideal for me to just make a batch for myself. I wound up with four corn muffins out of it, ate two for lunch and I have two left over for another meal. For New Year's dinner, though, I'll need to make the full recipe.

GF Tips Index

Inquire Further

Relinquish

Gluten Free Tips (3): Coatings for Frying *UPDATED 10 November 2008*

Okay, I've decided to rewrite the intro. Original text is below if anyone cares. I've tried all of these flour mixes on chicken, with the results listed below. I've now tried sorghum flour on fish, and it works beautifully, possibly even better than it works on chicken. I still do not use batters* of any kind, nor do I dip the meat in anything before coating it (though I do generally salt it first).

First, two disclaimers. (1) The only thing I ever bread to cook is chicken, but as of 22.March, I can say that sorghum flour also works well on fish. That's it. I figure that the flours I suggest will work similarly on other meats, but I can't be certain of that. (2) I do not make any fancy batters. The chicken is slightly damp, just enough for the flours to stick, but that's all. If you're into using eggs and milk and crackers, my experience won't be much use.

Below the fold is a list of the types of flours I've tried as coatings with my results. It will probably be expanded at some point(s) if I try other variations.


corn meal: Gives a very good coating. It's just a bit crumbly, but if you're careful this isn't a problem. Also works well mixed with sorghum flour.


corn starch: I never had much luck with it. Bette Hagman recommends putting some in a ziplock bag, putting the meat in, and shaking it to coat, but the coating winds up far thinner than I like.

potato starch mixed with corn meal: Similar to tapioca starch mixed with corn meal, but the potato starch doesn't bubble up as much. Haven't tried potato starch on its own yet. I have two problems with this mix: (1) It's very crumbly and doesn't stay on the chicken very well; (2) It absorbs massive quantities of oil. Tasted okay, but it's not one I really recommend.

potato starch mixed with corn meal and sorghum flour: Basically I took what was left from the above experiment and added an equal volume of sorghum flour. It worked much MUCH better than just the potato starch and corn meal. The potato starch adds a bit of thickening that just corn meal and sorghum flour lack. Still, I prefer corn meal and/or sorghum flour without the potato starch.

rice flour: I've never had much luck here. It sort of works, but it just tends to fall right off. I suspect that if you did make a batter of it, it might work better.

sorghum flour: Gives a nice, thin golden coating that stays on quite well. For a bit more thickness, I often mix it with corn meal.

tapioca flour: Wow. This stuff bubbled and thickened up as if I had made a batter. It wound up extremely thick and rather hard. It actually reminded me of the coating Wrangler used on one of their fish baskets. If you're into really thick coatings, then this is a simple way to get them, but I'd suggest using a pan big enough to leave space around each piece you fry; they tend to cook together. I tried mixing tapioca flour with corn meal and got a less volatile result, but I still prefer corn meal + sorghum flour.

*UPDATE: For those interested in a thicker coating that does use eggs to help it stick, try this recipe. Thanks to Aunt Bee for providing the link!

GF Tips Index

Inquire Further

Relinquish

GF Tips: Hot Spiced Apple Cider

This was just one of those "DUH!" moments a few weeks back. Before finding out I was gluten intolerant, I would buy packets of spiced cider, the kind where you just add boiling water and stir. Most of them contain starches, malts, caramel color, etc. Then it suddenly dawned on me that all I needed was real apple cider and spice. So a very simple recipe:

Put a dash of cinnamon (and any other spices you might like) in the bottom of a microwave-proof mug. Fill the mug with apple cider. Heat in the microwave to desired temperature.

If you use Saigon cinnamon, it takes very little to get a good flavor. Other cinnamon varieties might take a bit more. And the microwave times will vary, but I find that if I start with refrigerated cider, 2:20 gets the temperature perfect for me.

GF Tips Index

Inquire Further

Relinquish

Craving...Muffins?

I've had cravings for lots of things, but usually they're things that make some sort of sense. Chocolate, for the stimulant. Salt, likely when my levels are a bit low. Various vegetables, presumably due to being low in some nutrient. But...what does it mean that I was craving muffins tonight? I suppose it could be for the carbs, but I've been getting plenty of carbs lately. Too many, arguably. So, I don't get it.

But I did make muffins. Since I'd just discovered that Fred Meyer had coconut flour and bought some, I decided I might as well try finding a muffin recipe that used it. I made a variation on this recipe, the blueberry muffin one, but I doubled it and reduced the honey slightly. I'm glad I did. The coconut flour is pretty sweet on its own.

They're not bad. Due to the large quantity of liquid and the thickness of the coconut flour, however, they seem to need extra cooking time, at least at this altitude (approx. 4500'), despite using a bit more of the coconut flour than the recipe called for. After eating two of them, I put the rest back in the still-warm oven. Hopefully that will be enough to get them completely cooked. I don't really like spongy muffins.

Anyway, next time I think I'll just try replacing some of the flour mix in my usual blueberry muffin recipe with coconut flour, and probably decrease the sugar a bit. The reason the recipe uses so many eggs is to add protein, as there isn't much in the coconut flour, and to help the muffins stick together. I'd rather add a touch of xanthan gum, and possibly some rice protein powder, and decrease the eggs.

Inquire Further

Relinquish

Chili

This is the first time I've made chili using ground chicken in place of ground beef. Much better flavor and texture, imo, but ground chicken is quite a bit pricier. I suspect to get ground beef that tasted anywhere near as good would be just as pricey, as it would require extremely choice cuts.

This is also the first time I've put zucchini in chili, and had more peppers than I could actually use from my garden. I did buy one red bell pepper for it. I'm sure I planted at least one red bell pepper, but I don't have any turning red yet. Yellow, purple, and green, yes, but no red. I thought about putting some fresh basil in as well, but I wasn't sure how well the flavor would go with the chili pepper.

Sketch of the recipe: One of each kind of pepper ready in my garden, plus one red bell from the store; roughly half of a medium zucchini, chopped (not quite two cups); one sweet onion; two pounds ground chicken (1.5 might have been better, but they came in one pound packages); lots of chili pepper, my own taco spice mix, some cumin, red pepper, salt, oregano.

Soak beans overnight (or in my case, for roughly 8 hours prior to starting cooking). Boil for two hours. In the meantime, chop everything. Brown and crumble the chicken with the chopped onion and peppers. When mostly done, add taco spices and other seasonings. Add to beans. Add zucchini. Bring to a boil and let simmer for at least an hour, preferably longer.

You can use canned beans but (a) they're more expensive; (b) they add all sorts of bizarre things to them as preservatives.

As I used the last of my taco-spice mix, you can expect me to post my version of it when I dig out my recipe again. ^/^ Again, you can buy taco and chili seasoning packets, which are less expensive if you don't use the separate spices very much, but most of them are made with wheat, presumably because the gluten helps the spices stick.

Inquire Further

Relinquish

Red Rice "Salad"

A quick generic tip to the gluten-challenged: look for cookbooks that utilize alternative grains. The cookbook that this recipe came from is not strictly gluten-free, but it does contain recipes for some of the gluten free grains, and it's often helpful to see ways to use grains that most people have never heard of before going gluten-free.

I found this recipe in Yoga Journal, modified to be vegan, and just discovered the original. The only change YJ made was to take out the hard-boiled eggs. I'll reproduce the recipe below the fold (minus the eggs) and note any changes I made (note to the gluten intolerant, soy sauce contains wheat but fish sauce does not):

ingredients
1 3/4 cups to 2 cups water
1 cup red rice
2 tablespoons canola olive oil
4 large shallots, chopped
I wasn't quite sure how to interpret this, but wound up interpreting it more like "4 large shallot cloves", as shallots seem to be onions that grow in cloves like garlic
31 cloves garlic, chopped
1 large red chile, seeded and chopped
All I could find were small red chile peppers, so I used 3
1-inch piece ginger root, chopped
With some trepidation I did use the ginger. So far no ill effects.
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1 large carrot, thinly sliced
8 ounces green beans, trimmed and chopped
I found a six ounce package of green beans that were in much better shape than the a la carte ones, so I decreased these a bit
1/2 cup coconut milk
1/4 cup soy sauce1 T Fish Sauce
1/2 teaspoon molasses honey
1 large lime, quartered
Forgot about this, so the lime is still sitting in the kitchen. Maybe I can make lime-ade with it?
1/2 cup julienned fresh basil
1/4 cup macadamia nuts, toasted and chopped

Instructions

In a 1-quart saucepan with a tight-fitting lid, bring the water to a boil. Rinse the rice and drain in a fine-mesh strainer. Add the drained rice to the boiling water and keep the heat high until it returns to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and cook for 45 minutes, or until the water is absorbed. Let the pot stand, covered, for at least 10 minutes, and then let cool to room temperature.

In a wok or large sauté pan, heat the oil over high heat. Add the shallots, garlic, chile, ginger, coriander, stir fry until the shallots are almost transparent, then add the carrot, and green beans. Stir-fry until the vegetables are crisp-tender.

Add the coconut milk, soy sauce, and molasses fish sauce and honey to the wok, and bring to a boil. In a large bowl, mix the contents of the pan with the rice. Add the basil and macadamias, then toss and serve.

I had this for lunch, with some baked fish, and it was quite tasty. If I make it again, I'll probably use more carrot and less green bean, but that's just my preference. Red rice tends to be just a bit dry, and adding the vegetables in coconut milk made up for that.

GF Tips Index

Inquire Further

Relinquish

GF Tips: Blueberry Muffins

When I was a kid, the first thing I learned to make on my own was Blueberry Muffins from a Betty Crocker box-mix. Well, those box-mixes are not an option now, and even if a GF mix exists, it's almost certainly cheaper to make the muffins from scratch. So here's how I adapted a blueberry muffin recipe out of Betty Crocker's New Cookbook. In fact, I bought the recipe book specifically for the blueberry muffin recipe, as I hadn't found anything useful in my GF cookbooks. Looks like it's out of print now, but there's likely to be a new edition that's comparable. Anyway, recipe with modifications below the fold. Apologies to IE users, but the modifications will look like they're mixed in with the recipe, as for some odd reason, my inset boxes don't work on IE.

1 cup milk
I've used goat's milk, soy milk, even coconut milk with no problems
1/4 cup vegetable oil
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Be brave. Go with a full teaspoon
1 large egg
I use two eggs, for the usual reasons: protein, binding, rise
2 cups flour
Bette Hagman's Featherlight Rice Mix works well, as does 4-flour bean mix, once you find a bean flour you can stand. Honestly, with quick breads, as long as you don't make the mix too heavy (e.g. all rice flour), it will probably work.
1/3 cup sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
Why can't we just call a tablespoon a tablespoon, hmmm?
1/2 teaspoon salt
As usual, I've decreased the salt a bit. It's a matter of taste in a recipe like this, but I use 1/4 teaspoon.
ADD: 1 teaspoon xanthan gum
1 cup blueberries
Recipe says "canned" or "fresh", but I've used frozen without incident. Try to find small ones if you can. The big ones (maybe a half-inch in diameter) tend to sink to the bottom of the muffin. Oh, and this time as I was a bit short of blueberries, I threw in some leftover frozen raspberries. Turned out great

Method: Heat oven to 400°F. Grease muffin cups (or line with paper baking cups). Mix dry ingredients, except sugar, in a separate bowl. In a mixing bowl, beat eggs*. Add milk, oil and sugar and continue to beat. Add dry ingredients. Mix just until moistened; do not overmix. Fold in blueberries. Divide batter evenly among the muffins cups**. Bake 20-25 minutes.

*I tend to put the eggs into my stand mixer and let it beat the heck out of them for 5-10 minutes. This generally results in a fluffier end product.

**Try using a 1/4 c or 1/3 c measure, and use a flexible spatula to transfer the batter into the muffin cup. I find this works well for getting the muffins to be close to the same size.



At any rate, for quickbreads it usually doesn't take much to make them turn out well and be GF. The main key is having a flour mix that's not too heavy, and adding xanthan gum, and maybe an extra egg.


GF Tips Index

Inquire Further

Relinquish

GF Tips: Hot Vanilla

As I'm currently trying NOT to re-addict myself to caffeine, I've been looking for alternatives to hot cocoa. First thing I found was a recipe for hot vanilla. I modified it very slightly:

Mix 1/4 - 1/2 t cinnamon** with 2-3 t sugar in the bottom of a microwave safe mug. Add 1-2 t GF vanilla extract*. Pour milk over the mixture and heat in the microwave. Stir. Drink.

*Artificial Vanilla flavoring almost always has caramel color in it, which can be made from wheat. Pure vanilla extract generally has alcohol in it, which can also be made from wheat or barley, but the fermentation process has been shown to remove/destroy the gluten. There are some specifically labeled "gluten free", but I've never had a problem with any of the pure vanilla extracts made with unlabeled alcohol.

**Discovered today (27.Feb) that Saigon cinnamon makes an enormous difference. With regular cinnamon, it's good. With Saigon cinnamon, it's awesome.

Modifications: I decreased the amount of cinnamon, as 1 teaspoon seemed like an awful lot for a single cup of milk, and modified the order, so that the liquid ingredients are poured over the dry ones. In my experience, this generally makes things mix together better. And the reason I put ranges on the measurements is because not all mugs are the same size. If you've got a very small mug, the smaller value is probably better. I used the larger amounts in a mug that holds roughly 1.5 cups.

As for timing, that will depend both on the size of the mug and on the power of your microwave. If you've already worked out how long it takes for hot cocoa to heat up without boiling over in your microwave, the time should be the same. For my microwave and mug size, it's 2:35. In my mom's microwave, it's more like 1:30.

GF Tips Index

Inquire Further

Relinquish

Gluten Free Tips: Making Chicken Stew

I've never eaten a stew that I didn't make. Why? Because I've always had tastes fairly orthogonal to most Americans. And, in fact, I never made a stew before finding out I was gluten-intolerant. I'll tell you my process, but I can't say how it compares to how anyone else might go about making a stew.



Ingredients:
Pictured above are the primary ingredients besides chicken: two (large) cloves garlic, one sweet onion, 4 bell peppers (2 red and 2 yellow), quite a lot of shiitake mushrooms (stems removed), and four carrots, all chopped into sizes that will fit in a spoon. I didn't actually measure, but there's probably about 1.5-2 cups of each of these. As for the chicken, I baked 5 boneless-skinless-breasts for about an hour, and wound up with roughly twice as much chicken as any of the pictured ingredients. I also put in a cup of wild rice and a cup of quinoa, after rinsing them well. Other than that, I used a bit of olive oil and whatever spices I had on hand that smelled good to me (today: chili pepper, cardamom, basil, red pepper, garam masala, oregano, rosemary, tarragon, marjoram, turmeric, thyme, sage).

Method:
Wrap chicken breasts individually in foil and put in to bake at 350° F. Chop all the vegetables, mushrooms, etc, and peel the garlic cloves while the chicken is baking. Rinse rice/quinoa or whatever grain you decide to use. Heat olive oil on low heat in a large stewpot. Mince the garlic (I used a garlic press) and add to the heated oil. Add the onions. Let them saute until the onions are roughly transparent. This is a good time to add any spices that you want. Then add the bell peppers, let simmer a bit, and then the rinsed rice/quinoa/etc. and stir. You may need to increase the heat as you keep adding things. Next add the mushrooms, and finally the carrots. If you time things just right, the chicken will get done as you start to add ingredients, and you can chop it into bite size pieces between adding things. Add about two cups of water after all the vegetables are in and start adding the chopped chicken. If you use roughly the same amount of ingredients as I did, you'll probably need 6 cups of water total. This is also where I add the salt, so that it can dissolve in the water rather than coating the ingredients directly. When the chicken and all the water are in the pot, bring to a boil, then put a lid on it and turn down to low heat and let simmer for about an hour. Wild rice sometimes takes longer to get done: when nearly all the grains have split open, it's done. The quinoa will have been done long since.

Serve

A few notes:

If you're serving this to a large group, you may need to add water as it cooks. I generally don't, because it's easier for me to take to work with me if it's a bit dry. I then add water before heating it back up.

Regular rice works fine, and will cook more quickly than wild rice. Probably any GF grain you like will work. I've also used GF noodles instead of rice on occasion. That may require adjusting the amount of water.

As the chicken cooks, a clear liquid will leak out of it. Some save this as chicken stock; I generally just add it to the stew.

The cloves of garlic I had today were extra-large. With smaller cloves, I generally use four.

My favorite thing to do is to make some fresh GF bread to serve with the stew. However, this generally requires better organizations skills than I possess; i.e getting the bread done before starting the chicken cooking.

As far as ingredients go, add whatever sounds good to you that you don't mind chopping up. I often use jicama. It's the only vegetable I've found that actually stays crisp after boiling for an hour. I also like to add other peppers besides bells (the hotter the better). I've put zucchini in it, or asparagus, or bok choy. On a time-crunch, desperado day, I've used frozen pre-chopped veggies. It turns out better with fresh, but the frozen ones weren't too bad.

Final thought: I wouldn't buy a pre-made chicken stew that did not specifically say "gluten free" on the label. Even if there's nothing suspicious in the ingredients, if the company makes anything-noodle-soup, there's probably cross-contamination. And as I've never had any interest in pre-made stews, I can't tell you which (if any) are safe.

Gluten Free Tips Index

Inquire Further

Relinquish

Gluten Free Tips: Corn Bread

Corn bread is actually fairly easy to convert to gluten free. I generally just use the recipe on the box, but make a few slight modifications. My modifications are in the brown boxes.

1 cup ALBERS Yellow Corn Meal
1 cup all-purpose flour
I use Bette Hagman's Featherlight Rice flour mix*
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 Tbs. baking powder
1 tsp. salt
I cut this to 1/4 t, since I'm not THAT into salt
1 cup milk
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 large egg, lightly beaten
I use two eggs; adds protein and helps it stick together
Add 1 t xanthan gum

PREHEAT oven to 400°F. Grease 8-inch-square baking pan.
COMBINE corn meal, flour, sugar, baking powder, xanthan gum and salt in medium bowl. Combine milk, oil and egg in small bowl; mix well. Add milk mixture to flour mixture; stir just until blended. Pour into prepared pan.
BAKE for 20 to 25 minutes or until wooden pick inserted into center comes out clean. Serve warm.
NOTE: Recipe may be doubled. Use greased 13x9-inch baking pan; bake as above.

*Any good GF flour blend should work here. I'd avoid ones with strong flavors, like Bette Hagman's 4-flour bean mix using garfava flour, since they'll overpower the taste of the cornmeal.

GF Tips Index

Inquire Further

Relinquish

Date Pudding

By and large, most things are fairly simple to convert to gluten free. Use a gluten free flour mix, add some xanthan gum, maybe increase the amount of baking soda/powder and add an extra egg, and otherwise keep the recipe the same. The only trick is to find a GF flour mix that has the same consistency as regular flour, and there are lots of those available in cookbooks and on-line. There are a few exceptions to this "simplicity".

(1) Yeast bread: For this, get a GF cookbook and follow the recipe to the letter the first few times (unless the temperature in the recipe conflicts with the temperature on the yeast you're using; temperature is key).

(2) White cake: I still haven't made a decent GF white cake. It's always too thick and dry. The closest is Bette Hagman's Italian Creme cake, but that's not really a white cake. Her supposed "Master White Cake" recipe was, well, er, interesting... It wasn't any better than any others I'd tried...and in some respects worse.

(3) Date Pudding: I've tried several times in the past to make Date Pudding with gluten free flours using my mom's recipe. It's never turned out. Until tonight. I finally found a GF recipe for date pudding that is similar to my mom's. It's in The Gluten Free Gourmet Makes Dessert. The differences were that I needed to decrease the flour, increase the baking powder, and add some eggs (and xanthan gum). That was it, and it turned out beautifully. So we now have a formerly traditional New Year's dish back on the table for tomorrow. ^/^

What else is on the table? Ham, corn bread, stir fried veggies, and...I'm not sure. I wonder if we have potatoes... I'll probably make rice to go with the veggies, so potatoes would be a mite redundant. At any rate, my mom and I are both happy to get to enjoy date pudding again.

Inquire Further

Relinquish

Gluten Free Tips (2): Hot Chocolate

Have you ever read the ingredients on those hot cocoa packets they sell in stores? Try it sometime. The vast majority of them are more chemical than cocoa, and with all those ingredients, there's a good chance of cross-contamination...not to mention that most of them have mono- and di-glycerides in them (can be made from wheat), and unnamed modified food starch.

However, it is surprisingly easy to make hot cocoa. All you need are cocoa, sugar and milk. The basic recipe I found suggested twice as much sugar as cocoa; I prefer equal amounts. You'll probably have to experiment a bit to find the right ratio for you. A good way to start, though, is to put

1 t cocoa
2 t sugar

in the bottom of a microwavable mug. Stir the powders together, then fill the mug the rest of the way with milk (I use goat's milk), and put in the microwave. The time will depend on your microwave; for a 1.5 cup mug in my microwave, it takes 2:35. Much more than that and it boils over. Also, I prefer my cocoa stronger than what I listed above; that's just a good starting point. In the same 1.5 cup mug, I would put 1 T cocoa and 1 T sugar, roughly.

Of course, this recipe won't work so well camping, or if you're out of fresh milk. You need some sort of instant powdered milk. Again, I use goat's milk. At home, put the correct amount of dry milk (read the label) in with the cocoa and sugar, mix, and pour boiling water over it. I'll give you my camping recipe, though if you prefer weaker cocoa, you'll probably want to cut down the amount of cocoa:

2 cups instant dry goat's milk
1/2 cup cocoa
1/2 cup sugar

For a 1 cup serving, use 4 T = 1/4 cup of the mix. Looks like a lot in the cup, but that gives you enough milk powder that it won't be watery. For a 1.5 cup serving, use 6 T, etc. Then pour boiling water over it.

Note: this uses 4 times as much milk powder as the other two ingredients. The ratio may be different for dry cow's milk; I don't know, as I don't use it. But it takes 1/4 c = 4 T of the goat's milk powder to make a single serving.

These amounts are all rough approximations. If you want it more watery, use less milk powder. If my mix isn't sweet enough for you, add more sugar, etc. But it's nice to have a definite starting point so that then you can fiddle with it if it's not to your taste.

GF Tips Index

Inquire Further

Relinquish

Gluten Free Tips (1)

Aka, things I wish someone had told me when I first started having to make everything be gluten-free.

The most important factor for getting yeast bread to turn out is the water temperature. Whatever flours you use, however you get it to stick together without gluten, if the water temperature is wrong, the bread will not turn out right. Period. Bette Hagman gets this consistently wrong, though I love her recipe books otherwise. She nearly always says to have the water at 105° Fahrenheit. When I first started out, I believed her and aimed for this temperature. Then one day I read the blurb on the jar of yeast. It said 110-115° Fahrenheit when added in liquid and allowed to froth, and 130° Fahrenheit when added into the dry ingredients. Most of Bette Hagman's recipes say to add the yeast with the dry ingredients. For the type of yeast I use, 105° Fahrenheit is just plain wrong.

There's a further complication, however. With wheat bread, water is generally the only, or at least the dominant, liquid. With GF bread, you're usually adding eggs at the bare minimum, which decreases the amount of water you use. This means that to get the liquid to 130° Fahrenheit, you need the water to be even hotter. I aim for 160° Fahrenheit. After some experimenting one summer, I found that 160° worked well for the type of yeast that I buy. For anyone else, read your own package of yeast and try to get all the liquid to that temperature before you add the dry ingredients. If there's a secret to making good gluten-free bread, this is the most important bit. Then, after you've gotten bread to turn out, you can start working on texture and flavor by experimenting with different flours.

For instance, for our Thanksgiving rolls today, I used Bette Hagman's Featherlight Rice Flour bread recipe, but I replaced a quarter of the flour with hazelnut meal. This gave a much lighter, moister texture, and a richer flavor. I'll find out tomorrow how well the moisture lasts. But still, it's best to start by following the recipe exactly, apart from the erroneous temperature instructions. When you can get it to turn out as a nice, risen bread, then it's time to start experimenting.

Oh, a few other modifications I make to that particular recipe. I use lemon juice instead of vinegar. The purpose is to make the dough more acidic to help the yeast rise, and I prefer to use lemon juice; I often add more than the recipe calls for, too. I also use more honey than the recipe calls for, especially if I'm making cinnamon pull-aparts out of the dough. And I use rice protein powder (1 T for the small loaf, 2 T for the largest recipe) in place of dry milk powder. The purpose is to add protein to a flour mix that lacks it, and rice protein powder works just as well.

GF Tips Index

Inquire Further

Relinquish

Unusually Easy Pie Crust

I just got back from my mom's house. We were making pumpkin pies for tomorrow. Well, I was making pumpkin pies for tomorrow, but since I made them at Mom's house, her dishwasher can take care of most of the mess. At any rate, this is only the second time since I started making gluten-free crusts that it was easy. Seriously easy. Like, pre-gluten-free easy. By and large, I followed the same recipe as last year, but with a few minor differences. I have no idea which difference made the, er, difference.

(1) I added the full quarter-cup of olive oil before cutting the butter into the flour mixture.
(2) I didn't actually measure the vinegar or water... I put some ice cubes in a cup, dumped some vinegar in, poured some water in, then dropped two eggs in and beat the mixture with a fork. Rather than add the whole thing, I measured out slightly more than 3/4 of a cup of the liquid (occasionally fishing out ice cubes that escaped).
(3) I used a different rolling pin, a very bizarre one made of plastic that you fill with water for weight.

A few tips for anyone working with gluten-free pie crusts, though. It does not hold together nearly as well as wheat-based crust. Gluten comes from the same root as "glue." It's very good at holding things together. We use xanthan gum to approximate that stickiness but it's nowhere near as strong. So we cheat a bit. Recipe books will suggest that you roll the crust between two sheets of saran wrap. This would work well...EXCEPT that I've never been able to find saran wrap that's a foot wide, and trying to combine two pieces so you've got the width you need just doesn't work.

What I've got is a pie crust bag. I can't see why you'd need it for wheat crusts, unless you were just starting out, but it's awfully handy for GF crusts. You do need to dust rice flour all around the insides of it, thickest directly above and below your ball of dough, but then you just zip the bag shut, roll until the dough spreads out enough to fill the inside, unzip, and flip into a pan. The plastic keeps the dough from breaking apart on its way to the pie-pan. It's not fool-proof. In years past, it's cracked while I've been trying to form it to the surface of the pan, but it gives you a better chance at a crust that doesn't need patching.

At any rate, I've actually got enough dough left over to make another crust, and Mom suggested we make a lemon pie tomorrow. I'm not sure why we need one when we've got three pumpkin pies to eat...but I haven't had lemon pie in a while, so I'll go along with it.

Inquire Further

Relinquish

Further Uses for Zucchini

Over at Bob's Red Mill, they have an extensive list of gluten free recipes. Yesterday, I tried making the Chocolate Zucchini Cake. I didn't try it until this morning, as I was trying to follow the recipes instructions about letting it cool. It's quite good, but rather heavy and filling. I followed the recipe almost exactly as written. I upped the vanilla and cinnamon a tiny bit, though, and left out the orange peel, and I used an 8" x 8" cake pan, which was almost too small. The cake rose above the edges enough that I can't use the lid that the pan came with. I also accidentally left out the walnuts. They were sitting out...and somehow never made it into the batter. *shrugs*

One comment about the Zucchini-taco casserole from the last zucchini entry: I've decided that the next time I make it, I'm going to have the corn chips on the side, NOT directly in the casserole. I don't like them there. Serving the chips on the side turns it into something like a taco salad. I've been picking off the remnants of the ones I put in the pan with the casserole.

Inquire Further

Relinquish