'Tis the season.....

... for ice cream.

Is there anyone who doesn't love ice cream on a hot summer day?

When I was a kid, it was the extra after-dinner treat to hop on the bike and ride to the nearby Baskin Robbins and get a cone, and then try to eat it before it all melted on you.

And there was always only one flavor for me... Chocolate Peanut Butter.  It don't get much better than chocolate ice cream with a ripple of peanut butter that runs thru it.

I did a recent freezer purge.  And of course, one of my first thoughts is "I can buy some ice cream 'cause I'll have someplace to put it!" 

But the amount of times I've reacted to things lately... every major brand of ice cream has some flavor that involves malt or has some type of cone, cake or brownie hunks in it.  My rule of thumb is to not by products that look like they are made on the same lines as anything else that contains wheat.  That leaves me with no choices when it comes to ice cream.

Hey, idiot, what about the TWO ice cream inserts you never remember to put in the freezer?

Oh yeah, those.

But even with the ice cream maker AND extra insert, actually making ice cream involves bowls and pans and measuring cups, etc., etc., etc. 

Or not.

After I flubbed my first batch of plain vanilla ice cream, I was on the web and stumbled upon recipe that don't require an ice cream maker.  But you have one, you just said so!  The whole reason I had a flubbed batch of ice cream was because I did not let my insert get cool enough, so my mixture never turned into ice cream in the freezer.  And it did happen to be an all-cream mixture, and I read that I could just whip that up to stiff peaks in the mixer, I could then just throw that in the freezer and in a longer wait than the ice cream maker (but no need for an ice cream maker) I would have ice cream.

And it worked.  Oh yeah.

A bit stiff, but still good.

For my next batch, I did actually let the insert properly freeze.  And I wanted my chocolate and peanut butter fix.  And I found some recipes that further simplified the ice cream making process... 2 main ingredients.  1 can of sweetened condensed milk and 2 cups of cream.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Ice Cream
2 cups heavy cream
1 can sweetened condensed milk
6-7 oz melted dark or semi-sweet chocolate, slightly cooled (I like it very very choco-tastic)
1/2 cup melted peanut butter, slightly cooled

1. Beat the cream to soft peaks.
2. Add the condensed milk and cooled chocolate.  Mix to combine. 
3. If you are not using an ice cream maker, beat that stuff until it is stiff peaks, then place some in your freezing container and then add a layer of peanut butter, then more ice cream, then the peanut butter, etc.  When all the cream is in there, stick a knife in the container to give it all a few swirls. Freeze for 8 to 12 hours.
4. If you are using an ice cream maker, beat it to soft peaks and add that mixture to your ice cream maker and follow the manufacturer's instructions for making ice cream.  When it is a nice soft ice cream, some in your freezing container and then add a layer of peanut butter, then more ice cream, then the peanut butter, etc. When all the cream is in there, stick a knife in the container to give it all a few swirls.  Freeze for 4-6 hours.

Little Miss Cross-Contamination Detector (And when "gluten-free" ain't so gluten-free)

It's a picture of me!  Little Miss Cross-Contamination Detector!  Complete with a typical hive breakout after I have ingested gluten!

Probably the most frustraiting thing about being gluten-free for medical reasons is having to find out, the hard way, when things are not really gluten-free.

In the past few weeks I've had allergic reactions (and as you can see by the picture, this means a fun breakout of hives all over) to canned beans, pine nuts, rice, and "gluten-free" soup.  All things that should be fine, but were not.

Cross-contamination.

It doesn't take much to impact someone who is sensative to those items.  We've all heard stories on the news about some people's reactions to peanut allergies that sadly, result in death.  It's not typical for celiacs or adult-onset wheat allergy folks like myself to have a reaction that drastic, but once you start saying the word "allergy" some people can get really scared about serving you anything.  Before our last trip to Vegas I was researching food options and I contacted one place that was on our bucket list for Vegas, Hot 'N' Juicy Crawfish.  I just wanted to know if they had any soy sauce or wheat in their seasoning and I gave a list of usual things that might cause a problem.  The email response I got?  "Maybe you better not eat here."

Thankfully I found the Las Vegas celiac group and someone there confirmed that really, the place was fine for anyone with problems with wheat.  And we did eat there, and I had no problems afterwards.

But a couple of weeks ago I met a friend for lunch and I ordered two things off their "gluten-free" menu - soup and a salad.  And when I ordered I did also mention I had a wheat allergy and asked if they could ask the kitchen staff to be careful.  I got my salad and started picking it apart, and promptly found a piece of pasta in the salad (they place has small tube pasta in some of their salads).  I brought it back to the servers, they apoligized, and then they brought me a fresh salad.  But I still ended up getting sick, and since then I've not been able to get a response from them if they use a dedicated pot for their "gluten-free" soup - I suspect they do not, and that was enough cross-contamination to have me in misery for a couple of days.

I understand the risks in eating out.  There are places that are usually fine - a bunless burger from Five Guys when you ask them to please put on new gloves before handling your burger, salads from Wendy's (all their croutons are in packages), my local Jimmy Johns will make me a sandwich on a clean surface and take all meats/cheeses from the bottom of the stack of meats so they aren't covered with crumbs.  I can eat at our local taco place if I get a tostada (whenever I go they are also usually heating bread for tortas on their flat-top grill which means even corn tortillas are out, and their toastadas are fried offsite by the tortilla makers in oil used only for tortilla chips and toastadas) and one of the meat options that is also not heated up on the grilltop.

Cross-contamination can also come early in the process... in the processing of raw ingredients.  That canister of cornmeal you have in the cabinet?  Guess what, it's not gluten-free.  They also process wheat flour, and it is enough to contaminate the cornmeal. I've pretty much given up on dried lentils since the ones I find always, ALWAYS, also have a grain of wheat in the bag.  One time I didn't look before I added them to a chili, and then a wheat grain bobbed to the surface.  I had to throw out 10 pounds of chili.

And a lot of places now will have a "No Gluten Ingredients Used" disclaimer on their product.  Which is NOT the same as gluten-free.  You can use the cornmeal from the example above - cornmeal on its own does not contain gluten - but if it is already cross-contaminated, you're going to have problems.  And I've come to learn that tricky statement usually always means it really does contain enough trace gluten to cause problems.

All that said... gluten-free is still not something to be totally scared of.  I do not maintain a wheat-free kitchen, or household.  I will cook and serve regular pasta to my husband, I keep fluffy white wheat bread on hand so he can have sandwiches and toast (I did have to give up the toaster to his wheat toast and if I want toast, it's broiler city for me), he'll eat fast food sandwiches.  If I have a sauce for the pasta, I'll put some aside so my hubby can serve himself from that dish (he's a smoosher of pasta sauce into his pasta and he always forgets and uses the spoon he's using to serve himself and then flops it right back into the container without thinking).  I try to keep a side of the sink clean so if he's had bread or pasta he can put his dishes right in there and they will be scrubbed before they go into the dishwasher.  If wheat bread was used in any form, the counters get wiped down when I am cleaning the kitchen.  There is no "X second rule" in our house - if it touches the ground, it goes in the garbage.  And I haven't had a problem in MONTHS from anything within my house (well, that wasn't a contaminated ingredient).

It's not that hard to at least make a good-effort to do gluten-free when you're not in a gluten-free environment.  It just takes some work.

Pie Party - Gluten-Free Black Bottom Banana Cream Pie

Anyone who has been on a diet misses pie.

And when the word "diet" no longer means "what I am doing temporarily to drop a few pounds" and it means "the dietary restrictions that I have to follow and can't 'cheat' on for the rest of my life", it may seem like you'll never be able to have a pie again.

Yes, I get irrationally (or maybe rationally) angry about all the talk of "The Gluten-Free Diet" as the next big weight loss diet.  It is not a weight loss diet.  It is dietary restrictions that you need to follow, and those things are very, very different.  A few break crumbs WILL make me sick.  (And as I often say, you never hear of anyone offering someone with a peanut allergy a scoop of peanut butter asking them to cheat a little, but it happens ALL the time when you say you're allergic to wheat).

It's been 10 months since I learned I can't have anything wheat.  And that includes pie.

I tried last Christmas to be normal and at least make some cookies and things to try and feel normal.  It was a horrible failure.

I bought the Culinary Institute of America's Gluten-Free Baking book, and I had a couple of successes and a couple of failures (I blame silicone pans).

Then I finally ran across Gluten-Free Girl and all the talk of ratios and how it plays into using non-wheat flours.

Well, duh. Of course.

Thank you, Shauna.  I can at least bake something again.

It makes so much sense, when you actually think about it.  The reason why white wheat flour works like it does is a magic ratio of elements.  And the 70/30 ratio of whole grain to starch.  My mix was brown rice flour and potato starch (I had both on hand in amounts needed to make the blend).

For the actual pie recipe, I was thinking of actually attempting a rolled dough.  But I still have yet to replace my rolling pin (used on flour items before, and gluten hides in wood) and really, I know the reality of any time I try to roll out ANYTHING.  It end up shaped more like Texas than a circle.

Well, you have the ratio and weights and a kitchen scale, dummy, why not just try it on your favorite crust recipe??

Again... duh.

My favorite pie crust recipe is actually a pressed (not rolled) tart crust recipe from an older version of the Fanny Farmer cookbook.  It is the recipe my mother has used for years to make pecan pie, and it was the recipe I used when I moved out and started making pies on my own.  When I decided to buy my own copy of the cookbook I sadly learned it was not the same in current editions of the cookbook (the first copy I bought went to my mother-in-law, and I thankfully found a used copy that was the edition I needed).

I've also adapted the recipe to make more dough, since I always seemed to be a little short on dough.

I know my recipe calls for a cup and a half of wheat flour, which translates to 210 g of flour.  Measured that out from my flour mix.

Threw that into the Cuisinart, and pulsed a few times to mix up the flour.

Then comes 9 T of cold butter.

After I pulsed that for about 30 seconds, I added 2 egg yolks and pulsed for about another 30 seconds.

Kinda looks like panko, doesn't it?

At that point, I started to add ice water until it all started to come together and look like a dough.

After it looks like a dough, you can flop the stuff right into your pie pan, no rolling needed, and press it into shape.

Since I was making this and adding cooked fillings, I docked the bottom of the crust.  Then I threw it in the fridge to chill for an hour.

Sadly, I forgot to take a picture of the "just crust".  Although it took a little longer than the original recipe says, it looked like crust.  It smelled like crust.  It didn't crumble into pieces (and when I broke off a small piece just to taste, it tasted kinda like crust).

From there, it was time to work on the fillings.

What... everyone doesn't work off recipe notes on bright pink Post-It notes in their kitchen??  Well, since most of my recipes are digital. this is how I tend to work. 

Once I got the Black Bottom filling done, I sliced in two ripe bananas

When done, topped with the other filling, then put plastic wrap on top of it and put it in the fridge to chill.

Several hours later, I cut out a slice and topped it with whipped cream.

For the first time in over ten months, I've eaten a slice of pie.

And it was good.

Crust might be a little gritty.  My big issue with no-wheat flours is they all tend to be a little more gritty than soft wheat flour... don't know if more resting time for the dough would have helped that, but I do plan on trying that.

Gluten-Free Black Bottom Banana Cream Pie

Flour mix - 70% brown rice flour, 30% potato starch

Crust:
210 g flour mix
9 T butter
2 egg yolks
2-4 T cold water

Bake at 425 for 12-18 min  (original recipe called for 12 minutes, I cooked it for 18)

Filling:
1 T cornstarch
2 T sugar
2 T cocoa powder
pinch salt
1/3 cup milk
1 oz semi-sweet chocolate
-------
2 ripe bananas, sliced
-------
2 T cornstarch
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 t salt
2 eggs
1 cup milk
2 oz cream cheese, room temperature
-------
whipped cream

1. Mix the first five ingredients together and pour into a small saucepan.  Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a whisk, until the mixture comes to a boil and thickens.  Add the semi-sweet chocolate and mix until melted.  Pour into prepared crust.
2. Top chocolate mixture with sliced bananas.
3. Mix the cornstarch through milk together, and same as above, pour into a small sauce pan and cook over medium heat, stirring constantly with a whisk, until the mixture comes to a boil and thickens.  Add 1/3 of the mixture to your cream cheese and beat together, then combine the two mixtures.  Pour on top of bananas.
4. Cover the pie with cling wrap and chill.  Top with whipped cream before serving.

Duck Carnitas... again. In case you also want to go to there.

It is always nice when something so awesome good is also so damned easy.

Duck carnitas.  And you don't even have to make it as complicated as the original recipe.

Buy a whole duck.  If you're feeding more than about 3 people, you might also want to hunt down a few more duck legs for more meat.

If you need to section the duck yourself... it's really not that hard.  Most poultry can be broken down using just a good pair of poultry shears, and you cut the risks of harming yourself with a knife.  You need to cut out the spine, then you can cut the bird into halves, and then section out the breast from the leg portion.  And when you're doing it for the shredded meat, it really doesn't matter how pretty it is.

Season with some garlic cloves and a tablespoon or two of oregano, salt, then squeeze a lime over the top of the duck.

I usually let it marinate for at least a day. 

On what is usually the next evening, I will pull out the duck and put it in the slow cooker to cook overnight.  I also add a slab of salt pork.  Pork + duck is actually one of the flavors of a now-forbidden Chinese food favorite - pressed almond duck (sorry, anyone who avoids pork products who may now feel guilty about eating that now).

And hey... if you happen to have a half a quart of duck fat from the last time you made this... throw that in too!

Yeah... when the hubby saw me throwing THAT in there too, he said "I DON'T EVER WANT TO SEE HOW YOU MAKE THAT AGAIN BECAUSE NOW I KNOW IT IS BAD FOR ME BUT THEY ARE SO GOOD!".  Which pretty much sums it up.

I also do have the duck spine and neck in the bottom of the pot - makes it easier to fish out the cooked bits on top, and you do end up with some duck broth at the end of it all, so might as well use them.  Or just throw them in the freezer and use them (along with the duck bones when you are done) to make some stock.

I let that go overnight, and then as carefully as possible I fish out the legs and the breasts, and throw them in the fridge to deal with when I get home from work.

You should also save all that delicious duck fat... I usually strain off the solids and just throw the whole thing into the fridge.  The fat will come to the top, and on the bottom you have some duck broth.

Next, you need to pull off the skin as carefully as possible, since you will fry that up later.  Then you pull all the meat off the duck and shred that.

And this is the best part.  All that skin you peeled off?

You put a little duck fat into the bottom of your skillet, and then you fry up the skin until it is nice & crispy like good bacon.

The whole recipe would be worth it for that alone.  When I was making these, the hubby walked into the house in a sour mood (had to work late) but he immediately came over to the cooling/draining plate of duck skins, picked one up, took a bite and smiled.  All ills temporarily forgotten.

With the meat, you throw that into your skillet (with a little of the fat leftover from cooking the skins - I usually have to drain off a bit) and cook that, turning often, until it starts to get a little brown and crispy.

Now tell me that you don't want to slap some of that into a tortilla and start eating.  I know I love Duck Carnitas nights.

Yes Wheat-free Etouffee.

I love that commercial.  That is basically my favorite type of cooking.  Last week, it was veal stock (oh, can't run to the store, honey, I've got veal stock reducing on the stove.  Which pretty much means walking past it every 20 minutes, skimming off any skum, and not doing much else).  This week, it was a wheat-flour-less oven roux.

Etouffee needs a brown roux.  And a brown roux is very, very easy to make in an oven.  1 part oil (I also used some bacon fat) and 1 part flour.  I started with what I thought was a sohrgum flour blend, but one hour in went "wow, it smells like popcorn, I think I used my corn flour" so I added another non-wheat flour blend and some more oil.  Cooked it at 350 degrees and stirred it every 20-30 minutes until I got the color I wanted.

Cooked up some onion, red pepper (used my green pepper yesterday, oops!), celery and garlic.  Added a couple cups of shrimp stock I had in the freezer, and a cup of the veal stock from last weekend.  Let that simmer with some bay leaves and thyme, and tossed in some crawfish tails and green onion at the end.

Delicious.  Tasted like any other good etouffee.

I need it.

I haven't exactly been happy with food for the past few months.  My allergy to wheat is apparently extremely sensative.  I can't eat candy that has been made on the same lines where they have used any wheat.  Other things that seem to be fine for people with things like celiac are NOT okay for me.  And last Thursday and Friday I was having a reaction to something... the suspected culprit was a friggin' RICE CAKE.  From a package that labels them as wheat free, says they have no wheat where they make them, etc. etc.  Too bad that when they grow the rice for those cakes, they also use oats as a cover crop, and either the oats are tainted enough to impact folks or it's just a sensativity to oats sometimes comes along with wheat stuff... I donno.

When you can be felled by a rice cake, yeah... you might start to have issues with food.

Which is why I need to get back to doing things that are "so good, so easy".  Veal stock.  I can't recall the last time I made garlic confit.  Oven roux.  Simmered heavy cream for a sauce that can even make gluten-free pasta good.

Why Foodies Should Care About Wheat/Gluten Food Labeling.

http://www.1in133.org/

Wheat and Gluten are hot topics when it comes to food.  Yeah, it is a fad.  But for some of us, it is more serious.

I avoid some of the gluten-free events at the local Whole Paycheck simply because I'm not even-tempered enough to not have stabby thoughts overhearing conversations of people who are gluten-free as a fad, people who can fall off the wagon without a lot of ill effects.

You're making it harder for the world to take those of us who CAN NOT have wheat or gluten a lot harder.

In the gluten-free world, there was recently a kerfuffle over an idiot cook who posted on his Facebook page that he served regular pasta to people and told them it was "gluten-free".  And yes, for people who do it as a fad, they may not notice.  Do that to me?  I'd be sick for days.

Wheat/gluten allergies and celiac tend to fall somewhere between the extremes of peanut allergies and general food intolerance.  Most of us are not going to die if we accidentially have some exposure to wheat, but there is a reason we avoid the stuff.  I don't need to feel like I have hundreds of tiny mosquito bites on my hands (one thing that happens to me after I have wheat).  It does not kill me, but it is damned uncomfortable.

I've been doing this since September of last year.  And although I read labels and do my best... I have a reaction to something almost every week.  Flour is not always clearly labeled on food.  If the people making a product are lax with their vendors, they might be getting spices that are "stretched" with flour.  I have huge problems with candies that don't contain wheat but are also processed on the same equipment as candies with wheat ingredients.  I have two stainless steel pots that I can no longer use for myself since they have pretty much only been used to cook pasta for the past 15 years.

I would really, really like the FDA to step up and set some guidelines for gluten-free labeling.  It's not hard to figure out if something is gluten-free.  If you, as a producer, know all the sources and you know how your product is produced, it's not hard to determine if it is gluten-free or not.  If it is?  Great.  If it's not?  I really would rather know something is NOT safe even if it means I can no longer eat it.

Trader Joes used to be a favorite store of mine.  Not so much anymore.  To the fad gluten-free people or those who do not totally understand, it looks like they have a lot of gluten-free products because they stick a "no gluten ingredients" label on every product that they can.  Well, good, you didn't use wheat flour.  But did anyone make sure there were no grains of wheat in the lentils used to make this?  (Wheat grains in dried lentils happen)  Was this soup cooked in a pot that is also used to cook a soup with wheat noodles?  Are the sources of cornmeal and oats for this gluten-free?  (Those are two things notorious for getting contaminated during processing)  "No gluten ingredients" does not always mean gluten-free.  And labeling like that is NOT helping.

I just want food to be labeled as clearly as for other allergens.  And you should want it to.  Unless you're cooking totally from scratch, there are things in your food that they are not telling you about.  And it should make you mad, too.

Happy Cinco de Mayo - Celebrate with Duck Carnitas!

It started with this recipe.

When I saw Rick Bayless do Duck Carnitas on his PBS show, my immediate cry was "I Want To Go To There!" ala Liz Lemon.

And boy, do you want to go to there too.

I did play around with the recipe a bit... I used a single whole duck (I find a whole duck usually feeds about 3 people).  If I wanted more meat,  I'd probably throw in a couple of extra duck legs with the whole duck.

I skipped the pork fat and went with a whole duck instead.  You can get a LOT of fat out of a whole duck, and frankly, with this wheat allergy thing, I was a bit uncomfortable trying to buy pork fat at the market.  I know they have it... they make their own pork carnitas on the weekend.  But I'm just paranoid that there could have been some wheat contamination I didn't know about.  Easier to just do my own whole duck and skip the pork fat.

On Tuesday night I quarted the duck and seasoned it with oregano, half the salt that is listed in the recipe, and some pepper.  Last night, I threw all the duck parts into the slow cooker, along with a handful of garlic cloves, set it to low, and let it cook overnight.

This morning, I fished out the duck parts and drained the liquid into another container, then stashed it all in the fridge.

Got home from work, then as carefully as I could, I peeled off the skin, and then pulled the meat apart into large chunks.  Then the magic really started.

You throw the skin into a skillet with a little duck fat, and let that crisp up.

Oh yeah... that is what I am talking about....

I had to drain off even more duck fat that rendered out of the skin, and then I tossed in the shredded meat and cooked that until it got all nice & brown & crispy on the edges....

Then it is just a matter of putting it on some corn tortillas with your favorite toppings (I went with some queso fresco, green taco sauce and some pickled shallot).

SO GOOD.

Really.... oh so very good.

Even better when washed down with a margarita.