Oddball ingredients?

Well – strange title, I know.

I dare you to walk up to a grocery store clerk and ask for Expandex. Go ahead, I’ll wait whist they finish either looking at you like you’ve lost your mind, laughing their asses off, or refer you to the local undergarments outlet store.

And some of the other ingredients will provoke strange mental images: Mesquite flour? Charcoal flavored, right? 

You need to realize – and come to accept – that GF cooking, or to be much more specific, GF baking, will require the use of ingredients that you may never have heard of, let alone considered using (or considered using in the quantities you will now).

For illustration purposes, let’s take a look back at the second post of this blog (School lunches and sandwiches). If you’ve gotten a chance to look at the ingredients on that box of bread mix, look again. And if you’ve not had a chance to look, go do it now. I’ll wait.

Yep, that’s right – the first ingredient is ‘maize starch’ – another way to say corn starch. You’ll be surprised just how much ‘starch’ you’ll use to get the baked good you want.

It’s ok – the starches do an excellent job subbing for the structure normally served by wheat flour.

And that Expandex thing? It’s modified tapioca starch, and useful to getting the nice snap you expect out of things like crackers. Mesquite flour is made from the dried seeds of the mesquite tree. Cinnamon-smelling and tastes a bit like it as well. Here’s the source I used to obtain it.

Both ingredients were introduced into our family baking repertoire by the 1000 Gluten Free Recipes book.

The whole point of this article is to say – it looks overwhelming, all the new ingredients and terms and measurements and quantities. But – remember when you first learned to cook. Yea – it seemed kind of the same then, didn’t it? So it’s not insurmountable.

So – in thanks for reading so far, another recipe!

This is a recipe for hush puppies (YUM) that I obtained from a magazine somewhere. A non-GF magazine. The original recipe called for a 1/2 cup of regular flour, for which I substituted a 1/2 cup off Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Flour (I should add here that you can find a lot of the ingredients you may be looking for at Bob’s Red Mill store).

I also substituted the onion for shallots.

The kids DEVOURED them.

Hush Puppies (makes ~ 20)

• 1 1/2 Cups yellow cornmeal (GF, of course)
• 1/2 Cup Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free All Purpose Flour
• 3 Tbs Sugar
• 2 Tsp baking powder
• 1 1/2 Tsp salt
• 3/4 Cup creamed corn
• 1/3 Cup milk
• 1 Large egg, lightly beaten
• 1 Small shallot, finely diced
• Vegetable oil, for frying
• A deep-fat or candy thermometer

1. Mix all ingredients, except the oil (and except for the thermometer, duh), in a large bowl until combined.
2. Fill a large pot with enough oil to be 2 inches deep. Heat the oil carefully over medium high heat until the thermometer reads 350 degrees.
3. Work in 3 or 4 batches (depending on size of your pan) – drop soup spoons full of the batter carefully into the hot oil. Fry, turning occasionally, until yummy golden brown.
4. Using a slotted spoon, remove from oil and transfer to a paper towel-lined plate to cool/drain.

Enjoy warm, and make sure you don’t leave them unattended – they may disappear!

Enjoy!