Door Knock Dinners

Food Network really needs to bring back Door Knock Dinners.

For those who do not know... it was a VERY early reality TV show back when Food Network (actually showed cooking) was a baby.  Gordon Elliot, with some chef in tow, would show up on a doorstep and try to convince some totally tattered looking housewife into letting the chef make dinner for a family.

Right now, the most vivid memory is some poor chef who had to make panini by pressing some frozen leftover pizza slices together.  Gee, I wonder why the show was canceled.....

But now.... it'd be so easy.  Have people apply to be on the show without a firm commitment that a chef would show up... screen them before, like all "reality" TV show and set up the situation a little. 

Why?

Because I am a home cook.  The only cookbook my name will ever be on is the family one we recently threw together so we don't forget all the great recipes of family gatherings, etc. 

But you know what?

I'm also a foodie.

Even though I may be someone who only has about a 45 minute window to cook from the time I walk in the door to the time I need dinner done, I like food.  I like doing things with food.  And I have one HELL of a pantry.

Currently at my disposal -

Homemade beef, chicken, veal, and turkey stocks.  And the stuff to do a shellfish stock.
One quart of duck fat.
Marrow bones.
White and black truffle oil.
About 10 kinds of dried mushrooms.
4 types of rice (white, brown, sushi rice and jasmine rice)
Tuffle butter
Preserved lemons
Various types of canned oilives.
4 quarts of olive oil.
4 pounds of butter.
Leeks and shallots.
Multiple types of anchovies.
Various cured meats (salamis, hams, etc.)
2 quarts of leftover homemade chili.
1 quart of homemade caramelized onions.
1 dozen eggs
6 additional egg yolks.
etc.

So where would the challenge be??

There is no wheat flour in my house.  None for coating meats, none for thickening. I can't eat it, I don't have it in my house.

Sure.... Top Chef did that ONE episode with Zowie whats-her-face with the restricted diet stuff... but they need to do something more to focus on "This is not a personal lifestyle choice... this is a health issue" and something like that makes a WORLD of difference.

And you know what??

Even with all that minus wheat flour, I think a good chef would be able to make a helluva meal.

The more things change.....

So... it's been over a year gluten-free.  The second Thanksgiving dealing with this.

Last year was not so good.  Stuffing in the turkey (which my husband assured me his mother never did) and dealing with everyone not fully understanding just how serious to take this (no, you can't flop the pan de queso I brought into the same basket as the rest of the rolls, since now I can't eat those), etc.

I'm glad to say this year was much better.  Once I asked and explained to my mother in law that I couldn't eat turkey when the bird was stuffed, she was more than happy to make a separate turkey breast, sans stuffing, so I could easily eat.  And it's also very nice that she had become a label-reader when she's making a prepared dinner - she said she was thinking of calling me to see how she could do the gravy gluten-free until she looked at the chicken stock that she used for her turkey stock again, and saw that had wheat in it (happens a lot with stocks, which is why I am a firm Kitchen Basics gal). 

Last year, I had no sweet stuff at the end of my meal for Thanksgiving.  Thankfully, not this year.

While I have done an okay pie crust using a 30/70 ratio of mixed non-wheat flours, it was just okay.  I wanted to be able to do my good old tart crust, the way I used to.

Enter... Cup4Cup flour.

Yes, it is pricey.  Yes, it it worth every cent.

I had already used it to make some wonderful fried chicken....

(um... yeah... the breading kinda fell off that piece, and we had already greedily gobbled up the rest of the chicken by the time I got around to thinking about pictures)

Also used the recipe off the Cup4Cup website to make some apple spice muffins for the husband's birthday (and used cream cheese rather than the goat cheese... we're not goat cheese people).

For Thanksgiving... I got ambitious.

The usual pecan pie...

And a totally new recipe for something I've never even tried with wheat flour... Baked Apple Dumplings.

The dough was a little too wet, honestly, and getting the dough formed around the dumplings was not the easiest thing in the world, but since it's not a gluten-developing flour, I was able to go "oh well" and peel the dough off the apple half, flop it back on my board, add a little more flour, and work it into a circle again and give another go.  Worked out fine in the end.

It was like cooking with wheat flour again.  Just as easy... no special tricks or anything needed.

One fantastic thing about Cup4Cup is that it's not gritty.  Rice flour usually is gritty, and while you may not notice it as much in baked cakes and muffins, it shows in things like breading and pie crust.  Even working with it while making the fried chicken, it felt like "regular" flour.

Out of the single bag of flour, I got the whole fried chicken, the muffins, the pecan pie crust, and what pretty much equals two batches of pie/biscuit dough for the dumplings.  Not a bad haul.  And considering the amount of other things that have ended up going right into the trash with other gluten-free flours.... I'm a convert.

I went to buy a back-up bag before Thanksgiving just in case, and while checking out the sales person told me her family has been gluten-free for years and she absolutely loves this flour (she said she bought eight bags - yikes! - when it first came out).  She said the recipe for plain old Toll House cookies is AWESOME with this flour, by far the best one she's used - she said she likes the flour in the Toll House recipe more than the Cup4Cup cookie mix.  I still have to try that.

In fact, I have a lot of recipes I want to try. 
I can make cookies this Christmas.  And they won't all end up in the trash.  I like the thought of that.

Nuttle Family Pecan Pie

Tart Pastry:

Larger Pan (ceramic pie dish, etc.)	9-inch pan (disposable pie plate, tart pan., etc.)
1 ½ cups flour (210 grams)	1 cups flour (140 grams)
¼ teaspoon salt	¼ teaspoon salt
9 T cold butter, cut into small pieces	6 T cold butter, cut into small pieces
2 egg yolks	1 egg yolks
2-3 T water	2 T water

Mix the flour and the salt. Using a food processor or a pastry blender, cut the butter into the flour until the mixture resembles course meal or tiny peas. Whisk the egg yolks with the 2 tablespoons of water and add to the flour mixture. Mix or pulse until the pastry is smooth and holds together in a ball. Slowly add more water if needed. Wrap in foil or plastic and refrigerate for at least 20 minutes.springform pan, do not remove the sides until you are ready to serve the tart.

Pie/Filling:

Tart Pastry dough	1 cup dark corn syrup
3 eggs, lightly beaten	2 t butter, melted
¾ cup sugar	1 t vanilla
1/8 t salt	1 ½ cups pecans, lightly chopped

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Line the pie pan with the pastry dough. Combine the eggs, sugar, salt, corn syrup, butter an vanilla in a bowl and blend well. Stir in the pecans. Pour into the lined pan. NOTE: You may have some extra leftover syrup filling – the Nuttle way is to pack more nuts into the pan so it's not like a layer of nuts on top of the layer of gooey filling.

Bake for 10 minutes the reduce the heat to 350 and bake for another 35 minutes. Serve with whipped cream.

Overcoming Party Anxiety

Big, family parties can be a bit intimidating when you can't eat wheat.

Typical party fare for the Chicagoland area is catered Italian beef, fried chicken and baked ziti.  While Italian Beef may be OK on the surface (roasted beef, thin sliced and swimming in au jus) it's bound to get crumbs in it while people make up sandwiches.  The chicken is out.  The pasta is out.  Salads usually involvce croutons.  Chips and dips can have wheat, or be contaminated by dipping (like one party when I brought a HUGE amount of clam dip and potato chips, only to go and get some and find someone had obviously dipped a cheese Dorito - which has wheat - in the dip, making it all off limits for me after that point).

Now, I've also been raised that when you go to a party, you offer to bring something to help out.  Which makes it easy to say "I'll bring the baked pasta" and make it gluten-free.  No one can tell gluten-free pasta from the regular stuff once it's baked.

I do an adaptation of an America's Test Kitchen recipe.  And it's easy.

I usually do two half-trays of pasta.  For that, there is two pounds of pasta.

For the sauce, 2 cups of cream with a half tablespoon of cornstarch stirred in. Heat that until it thickens.

Into that, dumo in a jar of your favorite jarred sauce.

Stir to combine.

 Take your cooked pasta.......

Dump sauce on top....

 The ATK recipe calls for cottage cheese.  I forgot that fact and bought a big tub of ricotta.  Ooops.

Add your parm (and I also use some romano) and stir....

Dump into baking tray, and add 1/4 pound of cubed (NOT THE PRE-SHREDDED) mozzerella cheese.  Stir it in.

Top each tray with another 1/4 pound of cubed cheese.

 I make it the day before, and then stash that in the fridge.  The day of the party, pull it out, heat up the oven to 350, and cook for 30 minutes covered, then 30 minutes uncovered.

Bring to the party and let everyone dig in.

I promise you, no one will know it is gluten-free unless you tell them.

Wait... you're gluten-free menu is a whole TWO PAGES?

Until you have to do something like go gluten-free, you have no idea how exciting a two page menu at a restaurant can be.

For my father-in-law's birthday, we went to the nearby Biaggi's.  It's no more than five minutes away from our home.  Been there for awhile.  Had no idea they had a gluten-free menu until now.

And it's a whole two pages.  Appetizers, salads, entrees, even pizzas on gluten-free dough.  And I got some hot flatbread (I would guess the same they use for pizzas) to munch on while everyone else was munching on bread.  You don't even know how awesome that is... to have something you can dip into olive oil and Parmesan (if you ask, they'll bring you some from the kitchen so you're not using the one that has been sitting at the table) along with everyone else.

It did take longer for my bread to come out (they had to heat it up from frozen) and it may have taken longer for our mains to arrive since I had pasta and don't know if they have a dedicated pot for their GF pasta or if they had to bring water to the boil... but it was great.  Their gluten-free pastas are slighty different colors/shapes than their wheat counterparts (apparently Tinkyada pastas - I may need to buy more of this brand since it tasted so good I did have a moment of panic before I swirled my pasta around a bit and went "oh, good, it's breaking all apart like gluten-free pasta should... whew... it is gluten-free) so you can be sure there isn't an "oops" and you got the wrong plate.  And my oldest nephew was actually brave enough to try the carpaccio with me.

As we were leaving, I notice a little girl at one table eating what looked like the gluten-free pasta in alfredo sauce.  Imagine that as a 6-7 year old kid... this is a place where you can go and have an option like some pasta alfredo (kids menus are usually nothing but non-gluten-free items... pizza, chicken fingers, grilled cheese, etc.).

We will be going back. 

Tempura Pancakes

There are some things that can make you very excited when you have a wheat allergy.

Like The Gluten-Free Asian Kitchen by Laura B. Russell.  It came out in August.

But doesn't all Asian food stay away from wheat?

No.  Wheat is usually an ingredient in soy sauce and although there is evidence that naturally-brewed soy sauce has no gluten by the time it reaches the end product (a lot of times, fermentation de-natures proteins like gluten), it may still depend on the brand of soy sauce. And when you know soy sauce may cause you problems, that makes a take-out Asian kitchen a pretty scary place.

I've had Chinese food three times since going wheat-free.  Once, they did not pay attention to my "no soy sauce" instruction on some take out (it was a place mid-way between my own home and where I eventually brought the food) and I had an allergic reaction either from that or something else (it was early on in this process).  Another time (the same place) they did listen to my order, and I either had an allergy attack or a panic attack of minor symptoms.  The last time, it was from a place in Wheeling, Illinois (halfway between my work and my home) called the Golden Chef where the wife of the chef is actually a nutritionist so they are pretty "up" on their stuff about food, and they actually have a gluten-free menu.  That experience was great.

It's not just the obvious "don't use soy sauce when making my dish".  Everything is fried in oil that is also used for wheat products, a lot of other sauces use wheat or soy sauce in some form, and a lot of places will have meats marinating in some form of soy-sauce-based marinade before it even makes it to a wok.  Too many possibilities for error for a lot of people to be comfortable with.

I was very, very excited when I heard this book was coming out.  And it has a picture of pot stickers on the cover.  Pot stickers are one of those things that I miss the most.

I do still cook Asian food in my own home.  A basic stir-fry with tamari (wheat-free soy sauce) is not hard to do.  Serve over plain steamed rice.  Ho hum.

This book has a few sections - Sauces, snacks, dumplings and pancakes, noodles, rice, veggies & tofu, seafood, poultry, meat, and drinks & sweets.  I made it as far as the pancakes before I was already changing around menu plans for the week to try the Shrimp Tempura Pancakes.

I love tempura.  But I will be the first to admit, it is a lot of work.  Gotta bring a few inches of oil to a boil, a lot of cleaning/chopping veg, dip, fry, drip, fry, and so on.

But apparently Thai people do it differently and treat it a bit more like a fritter.  In other words... mix up a batter, dump in your ingredients, and cook it more like pancakes.  I'm all for that.

The recipe in the book (yeah... you're going to have to buy it if you want it, sorry!) uses just shrimp and shredded sweet potato.  One of my favorites in tempura is broccoli, so I added about a half a head (and a leftover half stalk) of chopped broccoli in addition to some shrimp and the shredded sweet potato.  I did my shredding in a my Cuisinart - by all means, buy a bag of broccoli slaw if you are too lazy to grate all that and don't have a machine that does it for you.  Shredded carrot would also work well.

The batter is just rice flour, cornstarch, egg and soda water.  You mix that with the chopped shrimp and veggies.  I cooked mine in a skillet with a layer of oil at the bottom (I probably could have even used less oil than I did).  Flip carefully when they are golden on one side and continue to cook.  I served mine with some soy/rice vinegar/Sriracha dipping sauce.  And the only reason I stopped eating was to upload the photos and write this (one more pancake may disappear before the leftovers make it into the fridge).

That is shrimp, sweet potato, broccoli and green onion all in a tasty little cake.  And it is very, very tasty.

And also... being gluten-free... I do not feel bad eating something that is fried in my own home.  Fried food at most places (even french fries) is a no-no since they also cook wheat things in the same oil. I can't decide I want some french fries and pull into the nearest drive-thru.  I can't go "I feel like a doughnut this morning" and stop and pick one up. If I want something fried, I have to plan ahead an usually make it myself.

Next recipe for my to try in this book is the salt & pepper squid.  It has been one of those things I always wanted to try.... and now if I want to try it, I'll have to make it myself.  It may even get cooked for some "first afternoon of watching football" munchies this weekend.

Happy Gluten-Free-versary To Me

One year.

One year without (knowingly) having gluten.

And I expect those vegan-like superpowers (Scott Pilgrim!) to kick in any day now.  Aaaaaaany day now.

Last year was the last time I had homemade no-knead bread and cheese ravioli as my "last meal".

In a year, I have not ONCE eaten anything from a McDonald's, Burger King, Culvers, Taco Bell, White Castle, Panera Bread, Subway, KFC, Popeye's Chicken.  No gyros (the meat involves breadcrumbs).  No fast food fries (except Five Guys) since they are usually cooked in the same oil as wheat products.  For the first time in my life I've had to send food back to the kitchen uneaten because there was bread or pasta in there somewhere.  And as much as I tried to deny my problems were "just wheat" and not gluten, I've also figured out the problem IS gluten and I can only drink totally gluten-free beers.  No paczki were had by me this year.

For some people, yes, it is fad.  But no one does it 24-7 on a whim.  Trust me.

I still have to ask my mother in law to cook the stuffing outside the turkey this year.  I would guess for awhile still, I will dread a lot of parties and gatherings (outside the family) that have to do with food, because it means I have to bring my own (usually).  I'll continue to bow out of some work events and gatherings because there just won't be a single thing I can eat there.  I will continue to live in mortal fear of the shared kitchen area at work on mornings where someone brings in bagels (seriously... engineers are NOT a tidy lot and the breadcrumbs get EVERYWHERE).

But I have learned other things.  Good things.

I can now (thanks to a rice cooker) cook rice and make an awesome risotto.  I can make a gluten-free pie crust.  In home cooking, I can sub for most gluten-ingredients and stay happy.

It has very much been a love/hate year with food.  I'm trying to lean more back towards love.  And it will continue to be difficult, but hopefully, I'll come around.

Oldie but a Goodie.... Sunday Gravy.

That is a happy plate.

It's always happy plates when it is Sunday Gravy night.

I originally used a recipe from America's Test Kitchen, and since the first time I have probably gotten more lazy and just do this on the fly.  It always works.

Buy a package of bone-in country style pork ribs.  By some beef that looks good/is priced right (a small chuck roast, beef shanks, flank steak - whatever looks good at the market and is priced right.  Tonight, I used beef shanks 'cause they were on sale today).  Buy a package of good Italian sausage, and a couple bottles of your favorite spaghetti sauce.

Then look in your fridge.  Have mushrooms you need to use up?  Slice up those. Zucchini?  Also a good addition.

Yes, it is going to better if you brown up your meat (but if you are really lazy, you don't have to).  You can then dump all the meat and the sauce into the cooking vessel of your choice - either a slow cooker and let it simmer all day, or in a big oven-proof pot that you will bring up to a simmer and then put into a 325 degree oven for 2 1/2 to 3 hours.

At that time, you need to fish out all the meat, degrease the top of the sauce, and then shred up the meat (slice the sausage).  Then dump it back into the sauce.

The hubby like Pappardelle with his.  For me, I did some risotto in the slow cooker.  I'd rather have risotto than most gluten-free pastas, and I can have that going in a rice cooker on the countertop so I'm not juggling stovetop space.

And even if it burns a little on the bottom of your pot, it's all good.

And it makes enough to feed an army.  A good dish if you're having a bunch of hungry people over (We always have tons of leftovers).