Almond Pancakes

Every now and then the family sits back and I get an opportunity to make “breakfast for dinner”. 

Yep, the works.  Pancakes, eggs with runny yolks, bacon, sausage, etc.

Tonight I had to make some pancake tweaks and it was a great success.  We were out of pancake mix, so I began to put together all that I have been learning about gluten free cooking and put together a pancake mix that I think we will be revisiting often.

Here is the pancakes that I came up with.  One warning, these brown really easy (many gluten free pancake blends don’t brown much).

The recipe:

• 1/2 cup Gluten Free Bisquick
• 1/2 cup almond flour / finely ground meal
• 3/4 cup milk
• 1 egg
• 1 tablespoon oil
• 1 teaspoon Baking Powder

Mix this up like any other pancake mix and be sure to let it sit for at least 15 minutes before making the pancakes.

That is it.

I won’t even get into grilling bacon and breakfast sausage and how yummy that is.

Gluten free Gnocchi

Last year this time, we tried (in vain, with a gooey icky mess) to make gluten free gnocchi.

It was bad enough that we didn’t try again until two days ago – oh, we made frozen GF gnocchi, but at $6 – $8 for a bag that serves us four, it can get a bit spendy.

So I went looking, again, for another recipe. I found this recipe, and decided to give the variation of cooking method a shot.

Note: Cup Cake Kitteh’s recipe uses metric weights, not cups or ounces. If you have a scale that can convert, you may want to use it.

We have such a scale, but I decided to wing it and go by the feeling of the dough. When making gnocchi, the resulting dough should not be too sticky – you should add the flour (or flours, if mixing your flours) until the dough is no longer sticking to your hands.

Yes, hands – you do not want to beat the dough, nor should you over-knead it. If you over do it with the mixing, the gnocchi will be tough when cooked.

This recipe also ends by cooking the gnocchi in a fry pan, instead of boiling. We tried boiling some of them, and they were dense and goopy sticky – not yummy. So either we’re doing something wrong when cooking, adding the wrong ingredients to the dough, or gnocchi is just supposed to be goopy sticky (tho I do not remember it that way pre-gluten free days).

Pan-fried gnocchi are YUM.

Gluten Free Gnocchi

• 2 Lbs russet potatoes
• 2 Large eggs
• 2-3 Tbs chickpea flour
• 2-3 Tbs potato starch
• 1/2 Tsp xanthan gum
• Salt and pepper to taste

1. Puncture each potato with a fork, and bake the potatoes until soft.
2. Remove the potatoes from the oven, and when cool enough to handle, cut in half, scoop out the flesh, and then use a potato ricer to finely grate the potatoes.
• This part is very important – the potatoes must be fluffy and lump-free – the ricer does the job perfectly.
3. Chill the resultant riced potatoes until they are cold (about 40 minutes or so).
4. Put the riced potatoes in a large mixing bowl, and add the xanthan gum and eggs.
5. Start the addition of the flours/starches by adding 2 Tbs of each (the chickpea flour and the potato starch). Mix by hand, using your fingers to gently mix the ingredients.
• If the dough is still sticky, add a bit more starch and flour until it’s just barely not sticky.
6. Season with salt and pepper to your taste.
7. Lay out a piece of parchment or wax paper, large enough to hold all the gnocchi.
8. Using your hands, pull off enough dough to make a ball about 3/4 inch in size (roll the dough in your hands).
• This is a messy step, and a bit time consuming. Elicit some help – great use for idle children’s hands…. ;)
9. Roll the tines of a dinner fork over each ball, slightly flattening it and causing ridges.
10. In a pan, heat your oil of choice (as you can see in the picture above, we used pancetta fat – YUM).
11. Cook the gnocchi until golden brown on both sides. Serve with your choice of sauce and enjoy!

Lace cookies

Remember those lacey cookies with the chocolate bottoms, that were an almost essential part of the holidays?

We tried making some today. With varying degrees of success.

We started with this recipe, which has a beautiful yummy finished product picture – and modified it ever so slightly to remove the ginger, and add some orange zest.

For some reason, we couldn’t quite get the cookies to turn out the way they were in the picture. They kept rising and getting puffy, like you would expect a normal cookie to do.

So -  we had to modify the steps to get to the cookies to turn out – but once they did, yum, yum, yum!

So, our current adaptation of the lace cookie recipe:

• 5 1/2 Tbs sorghum flour
• 3 Tbs potato starch
• 1/2 Cup sugar
• 1/2 Cup GF rolled oats
• 1/2 Cup toasted pine nuts
• 2 Tsp fresh orange zest
• 1/4 Tsp baking powder
• 1/4 Tsp xanthan gum
• 6 Tbs butter, melted
• 2 Tbs light corn syrup
• 2 Tbs half n half or cream

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees

1. Using a food processor, blend all ingredients together until evenly distributed.
2. Line a cookie sheet with either parchment paper or a silpat (we used a silpat).
3. Drop by at most a tablespoon onto the sheet, and then, using the back of the spoon (or your oiled hands – sticky dough), spread them out to the desired thickness.
• If you want only a cookie sized portion, use a teaspoon size, but still spread the dough out.
4. Put no more than 4 on the sheet at a time, as you will need work quickly when they come out of the oven (if you want to shape them).
5. Bake approx. 8 minutes, or until the bubbling of the cookie stops (you’ll have to watch). They should be golden brown at this point.
6. Remove from the oven and, if shaping, count to 3 before using a large spatula to remove from the sheet and place over the object that is your form.
• You should cover your form in parchment or plastic wrap, or the cookie might stick.
7. Cool cookies on the forms until they feel hardened. Cool the formed cookies and the non formed cookies completely before storing.

Enjoy!

Flours, flours and more flours

A friend just asked us what we use for flours. Simple question - but the answer is kind of complex.

The flour we use is dependent on the item we're making. And - we honestly don't try to bake sandwich bread any more. Udi's bread has become readily available almost everywhere around here, and to be honest, having time to bake a loaf of bread twice a week when we're busy as heck is impossible.

Bob’s Red Mill GF All Purpose Baking Flour: We always keep this around – it’s the go to flour for us. This flour can be used to substitute for any gluten-containing flour. It’s made from a bunch of different GF flours, so be sure to read the ingredients if you have other food allergies/sensitivities.

Sorghum flour: (Link is to the Bob’s Red Mill page for this). We use this flour in sweet breads/quick breads. It’s a relatively light tasting flour.

Almond Flour: Ground up blanched almonds. That’s all it is. Very very yummy for cookies. Favorite use is for Florentines, a modification of a recipe from 1000 Gluten Free Recipes, and for Brian’s adapted banana bread.

Corn Starch: Yep – the same stuff you use to thicken gravy. Can be found just about anywhere, but you should try to find some that is specifically labeled gluten-free, as there can be cross contamination.

Potato Starch: Another staple, can sometimes be swapped with corn starch. Not to be confused with potato flour, tho.

Xanthan Gum: used to provide a bit of the adhesive/stretchy quality missing from gluten-free foods. More information than you ever wanted to know is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanthan_gum. Fair warning – if knowing that honey is produced from bee vomit makes ya queasy, do not read that link. Just be happy for the science that figured out its uses…

Guar Gum: also used to provide a bit of the adhesive/stretchy quality for GF foods. More information here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guar_gum.

While these are not the only flours we use or have in the house, they are by far the most frequently used.

Next up: Lace cookies….

Lentil flour crackers

 

Holiday time - yummy decadent treats like olives with prosciutto, marinated fresh mozzarella, and brie baked with cranberry sauce.

Except - baked brie really needs good crackers. The kind we've not been able to find. Oh, you can get crunchy savory GF crackers, but they tend to be salty, with GF soy as an ingredient. And Schar makes a great snack cracker, but they are spendy, and to obtain, require us to drive about 45 minutes to a GF grocer.

So - we went recipe surfing.

We found this Gluten-Free Chickpea Cracker recipe and it sounded yummy - except we didn't have any chickpea flour, or dried chickpeas. But - we did have dried orange lentils...

Hence - a baking experiment!

I took about a cup of the dried orange lentils and ran them thru the Breville Ikon blender we have, for about 3 minutes, and had ~ 1 cup of lentil 'flour' - ground up lentils to use in recipes.

So the modifications we used:

1. Substituted lentil flour for the chickpea flour
2. We didn't have any nutritional yeast, so we just omitted it
3. Added 1/2 teaspoon of dried sage, and 1/4 teaspoon of dried mustard, to help balance the stronger flavor of the lentils
4. We also just did a basic square cut on these - no fancy cookie cutter action here.

Some notes:

• The dough is very tough - be patient with rolling it out
• This makes about 2 realistic servings of crackers. If you are making these for entertaining, you'll need a few batches.
• Again - the base recipe for which the mods are listed above is available here: http://blog.fatfreevegan.com/2007/10/gluten-free-chickpea-crackers.html 

Enjoy!!

REAL pizza. Yep – YUM!

Ok – so one of the big things lamented in our household (outside pasta) was a good pizza. Yes, you can get GF pizza a number of locations (our local one is Garlic Jim’s), and there are a number of frozen pizzas and pizza crusts available.

However, they all lack that yummy chewy yet crunchy thing that a good pizza has. Pizza crust should hold it’s own, and not be second fiddle to the toppings. It needs to have good flavor, and not wimp out under sauce and toppings. It should not need a fork to eat.

We’ve found pizzas that taste starchy. We’ve found crusts that are just crunchy, but with no chewy. We found savory nut-based crusts that are almost impossible to come by – they taste fantastic, but don’t have the chewy thing. And we’ve found some pretty funky tasting pizzas.

Making a pizza at home is a great family affair. Each kid has a favorite (mushroom and bacon seems to be the theme). It’s been a bit of a bummer to not be able to engage in this activity.

Until last night.

An acquaintance shared his GF pizza dough recipe and we gave it a try this weekend. WOW. Chewy, yet crispy, with a nice doughy flavor. Held up to our (hubby and mine) gourmet pepperoni/green olive/shallot/mushroom/mozzarella/goat cheese concoction.

The kids demolished their pizza. Then they went about eating the leftovers today for lunch. Yep – it reheats great!

This is someone else’s recipe, so I cannot post it in it’s entirety here. However, it’s based on the pizza crust recipe on side of a box of Schar white bread mix:

The additions are a bottle of GF beer, and enough corn starch to make it not-sticky. It was fairly easy, outside finding a local source for the above.

If you cannot find Schar locally, you can obtain online at the Schar online store, or at GlutenFreeMall.com.

Truly yummy – give it a try.

Enjoy!

Dosas?

So among the things we’ve missed from our now GF (Gluten Free) diet is yummy warm flour tortillas.

My husband works with a culturally rich set of coworkers, some of whom introduced him to the dish called Dosa. See – we don’t normally eat Indian food – it’s not a cultural cuisine that I’ve learned to cook. But he brought home this idea, and set of instructions garnered from much discussion, and I said ‘Sure. Let’s try it.”

First, you need the ingredients. Here in our house, we use one part any variety of rice to one part any variety of lentil. Lately, we’ve been using the long grain rices (Jasmine) and the red lentils.

To this mix, add enough warm tap water to cover completely. And now for one of the parts that seem a bit on the strange side, at least to me.

Let sit on your counter in a covered container overnight. Do not mix, but do add more water if the lentils/rice soak it up totally.

In the morning, or afternoon (better) of the next day, add your spices to the mix. Traditionally (according to Wikipedia), fenugreek is added. We don’t add that, but do add cumin, coriander, and red chili flakes. Each of these to your personal taste, but remember that you are seasoning essentially flavorless (well, low flavor) items (rice and beans).

Now for the second strange bit. Place the whole mixture, without draining, into a food processor or blender (food processor is more resilient – we’ve already killed one blender with this process), and process until smooth. You’re shooting for a consistency of loose, runny pancake batter. Add water (or if daring, broth) until you get to that consistency.

After processing, let sit on your counter, covered, for a bit longer, to let the spices blend.

When you are ready to cook, heat your pan over medium high heat and add a bit (1 tsp) of olive oil. When the oil is hot, not smoking, add a 2Tbs ladle full of the mixture. Cook til the top seems dry, and then flip and cook a minute or two on the other side. remove from pan, and keep cooking til you have enough.

You will have mix left over. This can be refrigerated until you can cook it up. It keeps for about 5 days or so.

Serve warm. They are the perfect accompaniment to a tortilla-type meal – beans, rice, or meat. Or – just load with cheese and eat as a snack.

We’ve also done the soak part of this process with coconut milk. Very yum.

I’m a believer

Ok – so a soon as you write something, you’re taking the chance of having to ‘eat your words’ so to speak.

I was seriously craving a plate of spaghetti bolognaise last week. Not a shred of spaghetti in the house (‘course not – we don’t have gluten stuff in the house).

Well - ‘cept for the cave-in to the kids, the rice-based spaghetti. Craving, meet wall.

So – I crafted a truly nummy red sauce, added some browned Italian sausage, cooked up that rice-based spaghetti.

I was wrong. I admit it. I had said “I have to be honest – rice-based pastas are just NOT the same as regular pasta.” (Tortillas)

I’m gonna blame the fact that when we first started trying to get good gluten free stuff, we inevitably tried some really crappy stuff. Yea – that has to be it. Because, frankly, the spaghetti was fantastic, just the right mouth feel, just the right flavor.

The brand, you ask? Lundberg. Lundberg Brown Rice Spaghetti, to be exact!

Very yummy, very satisfying. I highly recommend. The kids did too – the sucked it up. Amazingly, this stuff even reheats well too – a trait we’ve found hard to to come by in gluten free pastas (they tend to get tough).

And we even did a traditional baked pasta dish by parboiling a bit of the Lundberg Brown Rice Penne, and then mixing with ricotta, left over sauce, mozzarella cheese, parmesan cheese, and some milk. YUM – cooked up perfectly (it was a pasta heavy week last week).

What? You want that sauce recipe? Well, it’s not really a recipe, but here ya go:

Kim’s red sauce

• 2 Tbs good olive oil
• 1 Tbs garlic (fresh preferred, but can use the pre-minced stuff)
• 1 Can (15 oz) crushed tomatoes
• 1 Can (15 oz) tomato sauce
• 1 Can (15 oz) fire-roasted diced tomatoes (can substitute another can of crushed tomatoes, but I highly recommend using the fire roasted varieties)
• 1 Cup good red wine (never cook with what you won’t drink)
• 1 Tsp basil (or more to taste)
• 1 Tsp oregano (more or less to taste)
• 1 Tsp thyme (or more to taste)
• 1/2 Tsp black pepper
• 1 Tsp salt

In a heavy bottom pot, simmer the garlic in the olive oil until just translucent. Do not burn the garlic. Add the tomatoes, carefully (or you’ll end up with oil burns), and then add the rest of the ingredients, including the wine, and stir to blend. Cook over low heat partially covered for at least 1 hour. The sauce should just simmer, not boil. Stir frequently, and taste periodically. Adjust seasonings as needed to your taste.

Enjoy over your favorite pasta, or any other red-sauce friendly dish.

Enjoy!

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!