Garlic. Winter. And Gifts.

The first time it froze hard I dutifully covered up my little garden in an effort to keep the poor garlic babies from freezing. Bah, they didn't even wilt.

Next time I decided to let them live or die without a cover. Well, they did not die. In fact, they are quite happy and thriving. If I have to pluck scapes (the flower tops) off of the tops before we even hit February I will be really confused. As it is I am hoping that the bottoms are happily growing away since the tops have stopped getting any bigger, just staying green.

Also got two new cookbooks for Christmas:
Gluten-Free Baking with The Culinary Institute of America: 150 Flavorful Recipes from the World's Premier Culinary College by Richard J. Coppedge Jr. 

 And:
More from the Gluten-Free Gourmet: Delicious Dining Without Wheat by Bette Hagman

I have had a chance to look through both of the books and so far I like both of them. The Culinary Institute of America book is nice and well tested BUT there are five different flour mixes and a few of them use soy flour which I abhor. On the other hand, substituting the soy for sorghum so far has worked wonderfully so I hope to continue to have promising results! There is even a recipe for GF puff pastry!



The Bette Hagman sequel is also great (just like her first book which I also like) and has many more involved recipes that I would love to try.  In this version there are lots of dinner recipes as well which have promise. I plan to try the recipe for cream of X soup in some of my more traditional casseroles (like tuna noodle!) which always have the cream of mushroom-chicken-tomato-etc condensed soup which are full of wheat.


Another gift from the holidays was Ree the Pioneer Woman's Cookbook (just like most of the bloggers that I know) which I have been drooling over and awaiting the day it would come to me! "The Pioneer Woman Cooks" is a beautiful book.

It is so pretty... and even signed just for me (arranged for me by dear friend)... I almost hate to bring it near my kitchen to start de-glutenizing the recipes and getting chocolate smudges and flours all over it... almost. But not enough to ignore the fact that I love that woman's cookin' and want to dig in as soon as possible to work on them.



And now I need to further delve into my new gifts and find out what is going to be in my kitchen later today, tomorrow, or as soon as I can find some spare sanity!

Gluten-Free Fish and ...not chips

I recently went up to my parent's house and was given a free-for-all pass to their freezer... including the seafood!  Not just any seafood, but real, hand caught, wild Alaskan goodies--most of which were caught by my family.  Once I thought of it, I realized that most of this fish had been in the bottom of the deep freeze for over five years. It had been that long since any of us had been fishing or since we last begged our family up there to send us a care package of the fishy variety.

I didn't care. I wanted fish and I wanted a lot of it!

My Fishy Goodness! ... With Freezer-burn

I now have slightly fewer vaccuum packed bricks of salmon (smoked and raw) and halibut than I orginally stole from the parental units. The main reason: Fish and not-chips. It would have been fish and chips, but I was too focused on eating freshly fried halibut to worry about sides. I am proud to say that I did finally manage to add some microwaved peas to my plate full of fish, but that was really an afterthought.

This is a great recipe to use freezer-burned or older fish because frying makes the texture less of an issue. It also is a great way to fix fish for anyone who is not a fan of "fishy" fish, and a really economical way to fix other fish (cod or tillapia) if your child can't have gluten.  You can even take frozen individual fillets of thin fish, batter them, and refreeze them on a cookie sheet so that you can take them out and cook pieces like ready made fish sticks.  It is much tastier and healthier (higher fish to batter ratio) than the frozen boxed variety... and cheaper too! So here is an all purpose fish fry recipe, catering to halibut, but usable for any fryable fish.

If you need to defrost your fish, either let it thaw in the fridge, or defrost in the microwave. If some of it gets a little cooked in the process of microwaving, don't worry, as it won't really affect the end tastyness.  If you are using another type of fish that is thinner than 1/2" you can even batter and fry while they are still frozen! (All the easier!)

Now you can:

Turn These Frozen Lifeless Chunks

Into Noms. Quite Tasty Noms.

(see, I even have something healthy tossed in there for good measure)

Gluten-Free Deep Fried Halibut:

 Ingredients:

2 to 2 1/2 lbs Halibut Fillets, defrosted or fresh, skin removed
Oil for frying
Thermometer for oil (or just cheat and use a deep fryer machine like my little one)

Batter-dry mix:
1/2 c. cornstarch (aka corn flour)
1/2 c. gf flour of your choice (I used a blend from Arrowhead Mills)
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1-2 Tbs. garlic powder
1 Tbs. salt

Batter-liquid:
3 large eggs, separated--whites in a large bowl, yolks in a small bowl
2 Tbs. lemon juice

Tartar Sauce :
3/4 c. Mayonnaise
1/4 c. Sweet Pickle Relish (yes, dig it out of the back of the fridge)
1/2 Tbs. Onion Powder
1 tsp. Cider Vinegar
1 tsp. Lemon Juice

Method:

1. Prepare fish by cutting into large chunks (mine were about 2" by 1 1/2" strips depending on the fish shape).
2. Mix dry ingredients for batter in a medium bowl.
3. Beat egg whites in a large bowl till soft peaks form.
4. Lightly beat egg yolks with lemon juice then combine with whites in the large bowl.
5. Heat oil in pan or electric fryer (aim for 375 to 400 degrees ideally).
   
6. Meanwhile prepare tartar sauce by mixing all ingredients and adjusting seasoning to taste.
7. Batter the fish and put in heated oil--first coat in flour mixture, then in egg goop, then put in oil. (Don't crowd the pan, or the fish won't cook nicely)
8. Cook the fish until golden brown and crispy all around then drain on a rack or paper towels before devouring with tartar sauce. (Thicker pieces will take longer to cook, my 2"x1"x1 1/2" pieces took about 5 minutes to cook through, and yes, if you find a piece not quite cooked all the way, you can add more batter and fry a bit more)
   

Golden Brown Goodness

You can use any firm fish with this recipe--cod, tillapia, swordfish, you name it.  My husband and I were spending so much time making happy munching noises in the kitchen that we never actually made it to sitting down to dinner. It was that good. Well, that and the fact that it has been over ten years since either of us had a good platter of fried halibut. We had no need for the chips with all that fish!

If you happen to have leftovers, like we did since there were only two of us and two pounds of fish, you can either heat up remaining fried fish in the oven on a rack and eat. Or, make a batch of fish chowder and break up the chunks into the soup, letting the breading add to the thickener in the soup.  I think our leftovers will be topping a pizza with garlic-olive-oil sauce and capers.  Lots of options.

So there you have it, deep-fat-fried gluten-free goodness. Much better than anything you can buy in your pre-breaded frozen food aisle--for much cheaper and healthier (if you can call anything fried healthy).

Chai update

Alright, I think I have the recipe down for a tasty chai--even caffeine free now (since my husband can't do caffeiene)

Chai Concentrate (8-9 cups):
3 inches (or more) fresh ginger--sliced very thinly

1g cardamom seeds (may be known as cilantro seeds depending on where you are)
.6g cloves
.3g black peppercorns
3 sticks cinnamon
1 bay leaf
around a gallon of water (normally a little less)
OPTIONAL--about 1/3c. loose black tea if you like (darjeeling or other)

1. Coarsely grind cardamom, cloves, and peppercorns with a mortar and pestle (or crush with a heavy object with spices in a plastic baggy).
2. Combine ginger, cinnamon, bay leaf, and water in a large stockpot and turn to high heat.
3. Place cracked spices either in a tea ball, herb strainer, or directly into the pot with the rest.
4. Cook for about an hour at a steady boil or until the level reduces by about half. 
5. Turn off heat
   
6. If using tea, place in a tea ball/piece of cloth tied closed and steep in pot during last 5 minutes of cooking.
7. Strain liquid through cheesecloth, a fine strainer, or a large strainer with a layer of papertowels (replace the towel when it gets too slow).
8. Store in a jug in the fridge for up to a month, best if used in first two weeks.

Now that you have the chai mix:

Chai Tea: 

1. Fill a microwaveable mug 1/2 to 2/3  full of the chai mix.
2. Add milk or milk substitute to almost fill the mug (leave room for honey and cream).
3. Add in a splash of cream to fill.
4. Microwave for a few minutes to warm the chai.
5. Add honey to taste and stir well
6. Enjoy!

So there you have it, one recipe for chai in easy-to-make large quantity. I keep a supply in the fridge at all times now that it has gotten cool outside (and inside for that matter).  Yes, you can scale down the recipe and make it cup by cup, but it tastes so much better if it has time to sit and concentrate...and it is much easier to make a big batch.

If you are wondering where you can buy ginger, I suggest looking in your neighborhood grocery store's vegetable section, hidden amongst bulk items and herbs.  Failing that, you can go to Whole Paycheck or other natural food stores (which I lack here in the middle of nowhere) and ask there.

As far as using dried ground spices... you can technically make it work, but it is a pain in the arse and makes straining the liquid very difficult. The flavors also do not come out well, if at all, especially in the case of the cardamom and ginger.

And lastly, this is a chai recipe that is only a suggestion for you to start with and alter as you see fit. Many people add in fennel for a licorice flavor, or omit the bay leaf, or add in vanilla, or sweeten during cooking, or add milk during cooking. This is only a place to start and is the easiest form of tasty chai that I have found so far that fits both my tastes and those of my household... and my budget.

If these spices start to smell familiar to those who eat curry, they should. I take a small amount of the same spices and toast them in a dry pan before sauteeing my onions and garlic when making a vat'o'curry. Very tasty.

Hope you all have a nice safe and tasty Thanksgiving Day soon! I hope to post a few times on various GF desserts or sides that I am making for our local get-together, with pictures...but that depends on how much time, energy, and overall usefulness I have.  I intend to try out a new flour that I just bought: Modified Tapioca Starch. It is supposed to give GF foods a texture like gluten--minus all those nasty gastro-intestinal side effects of gluten.

Tasty day

Just got done with a lot of cooking... but none of it was really that work intensive.

The list:
Chai Base (fresh ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, black peppercorns, cloves, Darjeeling tea, water)
Yoghurt (whole milk, one yoplait cup of yoghurt as starter, mason jars)
Apple Sauce (Apples--peeled,cored,diced, ground cinnamon, and some lemon juice)
The chai turned out well and I have about 6 cups of mix in the fridge, just waiting for some cold person to heat it up with some milk (and cream) and honey. Once I come down off of a prednisone-induced manic episode I will type up a recipe--not like I really have one written down anyway. The stuff I make at home is a good rendition of the Yogi Tea Black Chai bags that I get at the store, but much cheaper. It will be even better if I can get my hands on some Assam tea instead of the darjeeling, but that involves a trip to the city.

The yoghurt recipe is taken lovingly from The Frugal Girl's Blog where it can be found. It is very basic and makes a little over a gallon of yoghurt (yogurt?). I found that it is nice and easy to make yoghurt cheese and Greek style yoghurt with this recipe, so that I no longer pay $0.83/oz or more and instead only pay $.030/oz if I make it myself--and that is when milk is not on sale and when store brand yoghurt is! Big difference, and I like the texture better on it too when I strain it to make it nice and thick. It is a good thing that we like yoghurt in this house though, since I now have a gallon of it in the fridge... I give it till Wednesday till it is gone.

Finally the applesauce is basic: peel, core, and dice apples. Add in 1-2 tsp of lemon juice per pound of apples to keep it nice and vibrant and also add tartness (less needed with granny smith apples or other tart apples). Cook on low, stirring occasionally, until the house smells of apples and the pieces are mushy. I cooked mine down with some ground cinnamon, but it is just as good made without too! I have used a potato masher to get chunky sauce, but this time I used my immersion blender to make a smooth batch--mostly because the masher went M.I.A sometime between yesterday and today.

So there you have it. My cooking day as it stands. I am sure that eventually I will come down from this high of usefulness and crash hard... but for now I am going to put it to use (and make sure that nothing I do needs much attention to detail or I will have to redo it once I am back to normal).

Carne Adovada

So Here in New Mexico I was introduced to a wonderful dish known as Carne Adovada, which means literally Marinated Meat in Spanish. Normally it is a concoction of the cheapest cut of pork that can be found and gobs of red chile.

No. Not the chili with beans you get out of a can. Chile. With an "e" ending. This type of chile is what you can find in your Hispanic area of the supermarket, and--if you are lucky like me--everywhere in your supermarket. It is normally found either in whole pods as roasted dried chile in bags (Hatch is a common brand), or as pre-ground powder in the spice section. I prefer to use the ground stuff because it is easy for me to get a hold of, and eliminates the step of taking papery whole red chilies and turning them into tasty red sauce.

So here is my recipe for Carne Adovada as tweaked by me. And I really don't use the measurements listed as it is more of a dumping of ingredients until it satisfies my tastes, but this is a good place to start.

Also note that this recipe is good for either a crock pot or an oven. I have even made it on the stove but it requires more babysitting and that is just too much darn work.

Ingredients

• 5 pounds Pork--trimmed (cheap Cuts Are Best)
• ¾ pounds Red Chile Pods (or 1c. Red Chile Powder)
• 1 whole Onion--yellow or white
• 8 cloves Garlic
• 4 cups Pork Or Chicken Stock
• 2 teaspoons Oregano, Dried
• 2 teaspoons Cumin, Ground
• 3 teaspoons Salt
• ½ teaspoons Cinnamon, Ground
• 2 Tablespoons Vinegar--Cider Or White
• Cheese, Sour Cream, Tortillas, Eggs To Garnish

Destructions

(If using powdered red chile skip this step) Combine Chilies, water or stock, onion, garlic and spices in a large stockpot and simmer for 20 minutes covered.
While simmering stock, finish trimming and cube pork into 3/4″ to 1″ cubes.
Puree simmered stock and solids in a blender or food processor in small batches, straining the whole mess if it looks lumpy or if there are large pieces of chile left after pureeing. ***This is a basic red chile sauce that you can find all over New Mexico (when they ask you ,"Red or Green?" they mean red or green chile). It doesn't really take long to make and it lasts forever in the freezer and for at least a week in the fridge if not longer.***

Add cubed pork and vinegar to the red chile puree. If you have extra time, let the meat marinade for up to 36 hours in the refrigerator.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place pork and chile mix into an oven safe container with a lid (or aluminum foil to cover tightly). Bake for at least an hour or until you can’t stand the tasty fumes coming from your oven.
****Crock Pot Option****
Place pork and chile mixture on high for about 3 hours or on low for 6-8 hours and cook until meat is tender (low is better)
Serve with shredded cheese, tortillas, sour cream, and (in the New Mexican tradition) over-medium or over-easy eggs on top.
This dish freezes well and reheats like a charm. It is great with rice and refried beans as well.

Well huh.

My mother always told me to try everything at least three times in your life to make sure that you REALLY hate it.

I gave cilantro a good try. Several tries in fact. Honest to goodness fork to mouth tries...and I have to admit that I hate it with a passion. Not a fiery burning passion--that is reserved for eggplant--but with a passion none the less. And yet... I had a dish for supper that featured, no, highlighted that evil weed.

Let me go waaaaay back to my first few episodes with cilantro. Mostly this was the New Mexican tradition of making salsa with a few tomatoes and chilies and a few fist fulls of cilantro to "
add color". Bah. To me it literally tasted like soap. Spicy tomatoes and soap is not good eatin' in my book. So I swore off cilantro for a while and decided that later on I would try it again.

I moved out to a small town for college and was faced, yet again, with the greenery from hell in all my tasty Mexican and Thai foods. I love both of these cuisines and most recipes need something to put in the weed's place... but parsley and basil just never really did the trick. But I tried anyway.

Round three. CSA to the rescue.

Our local Community Supported Agriculture group sends my house a weekly box of goodness, but sometimes they foul it up a bit by adding in eggplant (which my housemates both like and I despise but can cook it well so it works) and cilantro (which two of us don't like and neither of us who cook can come up with anything for it but the compost pile). In this week's box was--you guessed it--a nice big heapin' helpin' of cilantro. Well huh. I figured that it would be another offering to the compost bin. But there was to be more to this innocent little bunch of green.

As my housemates left for the night I contemplated the demise of the foul weed in my fridge. I could bake it into dog biscuits to make them have fresh breath... or I could freeze it and give it to someone who really wants it... or I could give that third try a chance... ... Nah.

I sat down at my computer and was poking around the internet for inspiration for dinner and came upon a wonderful idea: Pesto! I have all the ingredients; garlic, cheese, oil, pine nuts, basi...

dangit.

My poor lonesome basil plants have not taken the neglect well and, though there was a sizeable amount of various types of basil, there was no where near enough for the piles needed for pesto. Foiled by my lack of full garden again. Or was I...

I have used extra parsley in place of basil for a twist on pesto before... what if I made Cilantro pesto... it just might be edible if hidden under tasty cheesy garlicy goodness. On the other hand it might be a waste of my time and ingredients. Meh. If not the man would eat leftovers. I set to it with a slight stop off to see what the internet had to say about cilantro pesto.

The only consensus other than cilantro, oil, garlic, salt and pepper was that it really needs a spicy kick to prevent the soapiness and it needed some vinegar. Well now, if they are going to go right out and make sure to avoid the very thing I despise about the upcoming dish, then I would have follow through with the tip. I had no jalapeños, and the new crop of chilies is not quite out yet, but I do keep around chile flakes and cayenne so that would just have to do.

Since I don't really like raw garlic (well... my stomach doesn't) I tossed a few tablespoons of minced garlic and some olive oil into a dish and then sprinkled in some chile flakes and salt and pepper on it. I microwaved it till it for 45 seconds and then dumped it into the blender with pine nuts, the entire (4-5cups) bunch of washed cilantro (stem ends cut off, but most of the stem still on), a few black olives and brine, and 1/2 cup of feta cheese.

I let my blender go at that for a bit and came back to something decidedly not soapy. But it was missing something... more cheese! I added a 1/4 c. shredded parmesian and a 1/4c. sour cream to get the texture a little creamier and blended it more. It tasted heavenly. WAIT. I just said that something with the main ingredient as cilantro was real food! What was this world coming to!

I was now desperate for food. While I heated up some leftover Tinkyada gluten free pasta (best of all those gf pastas ever), I used the handy dandy soup feature on my blender to heat up the pesto to perfect sauce temperature and then... I ... ate up all that my pasta could possibly hold (plus a bit that I faked). I ate cilantro and liked it.

I guess that the third time really is a charm. Now I need to see if I can get my cilantro-hating housemate to get near it... she hates cilantro even more than me. That could be interesting.

So in case I need this later when the CSA box arrives with that bunch of green:
Cilantro Pesto
4-5cups cilantro--washed and bottoms of stems removed
1/2 c. pine nuts
1 1/2 Tbs. Olive brine + a few olives (or just use vinegar or Italian dressing)
1/4 c. sour cream
1/2 c. feta cheese
1/4 c. shredded Parmesan cheese
1/2 c. olive oil
1/4 c. minced garlic
1/4 tsp. red chile flakes
1 tsp salt.
1/4 tsp. ground black pepper

Place garlic, chilie, pepper, salt and oil in a microwaveable bowl. Heat 45 seconds or until garlic is cooked a bit. Combine all ingredients in food processor or blender and puree until smooth. Heat, serve on pasta... bread... starch of your choice...

I love you Mr. Brown

For the record:
Sinus surgery... more accurately: sinusotomies... suck.

Also for the record:
Alton Brown... re: gluten free goodness really really wins

So to expound a bit, I had a complete rotorooter job of my sinuses last Tuesday. Whee. I would like to not have a resident sinus infection sitting there making my head unhappy. This means that right now my head is... well... rather unhappy, but in good time it will be much better than the alternative of not surgery.
Surgery also means that my sleep schedule has been shot to hell though I have been getting lots of sleep. I have been on a sort of 6 hours on, 6 hours off rotation of awake/sleep. Since I am no longer living pill to pill on the pain meds (yay happy meds!) I just sort of have been sleeping when my body orders or strongly suggests that I should rest. I have lots of experience at ignoring those suggestions. My body also has rather potent ways of making me sleep though... like shutting off my focal point vision till I sit down, shut up, and turn off my brain for a while (yay swelling. /pout)

In other news, this sleep cycle has a whole bunch of unexpected side effects. The first is that the dogs are really confused by me being awake--but on the same token it means that I have now seen them off the leads long enough that I trust them to behave themselves free in the yard now. Second on the list of goodies is that I have been cooking. Not intensive cooking, as that takes brainpower and non-medicated thought processes, but rather the instant gratification of FOOD! (and if I feel like eating it, it must be worth making because food in general has not been very appetizing of late) Along that same vein is that I have had time to just sit and surf the internets. For said food. Often.

Insert Alton Brown. Master of Good Eats and food geekery. I may not always agree with how he does his food, but I always appreciate why he does things the way he does. And he had a show recently on food allergies apparently where he made ***Insert fanfare***

Chocolate Chip Cookies!!!!

Not the store variety of cardboard or grainy wafers, no, these are the chewy yet crisp excuse to eat chocolate and milk and cookiedough straight from the spoon. Which I am doing right now as a matter of fact. I know that they will cook up well... but I am fighting myself to actually get them to the oven to become COOKies...

... rather than heavenly dough that I will devour at my not so slow leisure

So they are chilling in the fridge per instructions... waiting for their doom... either on a pan then my tummy... or I'll just skip the pan altogether.

If this post seems a bit fragmented, it probably is. I still have a micro dose of happy meds in me to keep my head from sploding. And I have cookie dough. The latter is probably more to blame for the fragmentedness.

Cakes and Sugar Oh MY!!

Today I got a feeling of absolute NEED for chocolate cake and icing. This is a bit of a problem because I have to make baked goods in order for me to be able to eat them: I needed a gluten-free cake in a hurry. Luckily I have in my kitchen, at all times, a bag of Pamela's Chocolate Cake Mix from my local supermarket.

This is the only way that I have found (so far in two years of searching, testing, tossing, and tweaking) that will work consistently at high altitudes without using bean flour. It happens to be one of the few mixes that I use anymore since I have found ways of baking gluten-free breads, crusts, sauces and most cakes... but I still have no scratch recipe for chocolate cake that can out-do the Pamela's mix. Don't get me wrong, I still doctor the mix a bit to allow for my tastes, but the mix itself is my main staple for actual cake--not dense torte or gummy glue, but actual fluffy cake that is not overly sugary (like a lot of GF recipes).

All told I basically follow the directions for the "pound cake" or "ultra-rich" version on the side of the package (I was almost out of sour cream, so it was the pound cake version today which is a little fluffier, but also a little drier...especially when I overcook it by a few minutes by getting distracted outside). I also add about two tablespoons of mocha powder (the little tin of drink mix has many uses!) to the mix and make sure to line the bottom of the pan with circles of parchment. I have had too many cakes go to crumbs because one small spot stuck in my pan and the parchment prevents that from being a problem.

The frosting is a newly-developed creation that is basically a 1/2 cup of butter, 3/4 cup cocoa powder, 1/2c. sour cream, and about 3 cups of powdered sugar (and a teaspoon of vanilla or other extract would be nice, but I forgot). I really like the texture of replacing my normal water or milk with the sour cream, but it means that refrigeration is a good idea unless it is going to be immediately eaten.

So without further ado, Here is my grand half second photo session of the cake before I inhaled every bite on the plate with a large glass of milk.

Note that it is not perfectly arranged as I am about to dive headlong into every last calorie on that plate!

Yes, it is not perfect and there are bits missing from the piece... they were properly disposed of I assure you. It was a last minute thought to take photos of my creation. The strawberries were also a last minute idea since I had a box of organic strawberries from our local CSA that were going to go bad soon. It really turned out wonderfully!

So the next time that you are hankering for a nice slice of Gluten-Free chocolate cake, and stopping by your local supermarket, pick up Pamela's mix, you won't regret it. And no, I do not work for, get paid by, or otherwise get compensation from Pamela's other than that they give me the opportunity to have wonderful chocolaty calories out of a mix.