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Cooking
Update on slow cooking
I have three days left for my month-long challenge, and while I’ve had a blast, I’ll be glad to start using my slow cooker only a few times a week instead of every day. It’s produced SO MUCH FOOD. I did get a 1970s-era 3 1/2 quart Crock-Pot, so that will be nice for smaller quantities of food. Here’s the list of things I’ve made since my last post:
Dec 2012slow cooking month
Merry Christmas! I thought it was time for another post after such a very long radio silence. I wanted to let y’all know about my month of slow cooking. I’m over halfway through and having a blast. I’ve used it every day except the first two Wednesdays (because we were rather overloaded with leftovers). I’m working from three sources - Michele Scicolone’s The French Slow Cooker, Cook’s Illustrated The Best Slow and Easy Recipes, and Stephanie O’Dea’s blog . So far, I’ve made:
Apr 2012GF communion bread
Another thing: I’m working on a recipe for gluten-free communion bread, preferably unleavened. I’ll post a recipe if I find one I like, but I would love suggestions!
Oct 2011a productive weekend (and GF chocolate chip cookies)
So I accomplished quite a bit this weekend. Figured out how to sew with Ultrex (a Gore-tex type material), got the guest room ready for a friend (quite a feat, I assure you, as it is also my sewing room), and did a fair amount of cooking. So here it is, in order of increasing good-ness: salsa: I had a lot of tomatillos and cherry tomatoes from the garden, so I decided to make salsa. I put in about a half-dozen tomatillos, four handfuls of cherry tomatoes, a shallot, two cloves of garlic, a jalapeno, and some lime juice. It is definitely spicy, a little watery (I probably just processed it too long though), but it is okay. I think it will be really good with chicken or fish, so we’ll try that tomorrow night. Mmm. dog treats: My husband made me breakfast on Saturday, and we had some leftover bacon. I made dog treats with bacon, peanut butter, shredded carrot, honey, and a mixture of oat flour and brown rice flour. I had to make my own oat flour using GF rolled oats (seriously, make sure the oats are GF), which I put in the blender until they turned to powder. The dogs seem to love them. I found the recipe at http://tidymom.net/2011/homemade-dog-treats/ . I followed the recipe exactly, and it turned out well. bread: Sad news - my sourdough starter died. Good news - I got to make beer bread instead. I used this recipe, though I cut out the dill. I used Green beer, partly because we had it around the house and my husband won’t drink it, but also because it is a nice dark beer (even if it doesn’t taste great). It made the bread really delicious. My husband said he liked it even better than the sourdough. Because it isn’t a yeast bread, though, it didn’t rise, and so it was just a really really flat loaf. However, like I said, delicious. If you know the beer is there, you can taste it, but it just tastes good. The texture was really light and the beer makes nice holes in the bread the way yeast does in yeast bread. and the best thing this weekend: chocolate chip cookies: I didn’t even try the recipe I have in a book, because my experimentation worked out so well. I adapted an old Toll House recipe that my grandmother had altered years and years ago. I wanted to try millet flour, and I’m glad I did. I think it added a flavor that just tasted substantial, if that makes sense. One thing I have done in the past that I wish I had done here is add some cinnamon. But anyway, here is my GF chocolate chip cookie recipe:
Oct 2011Bread. Mmm.
I made banana muffins and banana bread over the weekend using two different recipes. The muffins used brown rice flour and pecans, and the bread used teff flour and cream cheese. I had never cooked with teff flour before. Apparently it comes in different colors - ivory, brown, and red - but our grocery store only had brown. Thus, the bread was a little darker than you normally expect. My husband thought both were good, though he preferred the muffins slightly. I thought the bread was quite rich, probably due more to the cream cheese than the flour. I think the verdict is just that banana bread is easy to make taste good, no matter what recipe you use. In the past, I have used a mixture of white rice flour, tapioca flour, and cornstarch, and that always turned out well. Brown rice flour has a little more nutrition in it than white rice flour, so I think I will use the brown rice mixture from here on out. Might try mixing in some teff or millet flour next time though. And then tonight, I made sourdough bread. I end up making two loaves about every other week. Carl says he likes it better than the store-bought bread. The starter has settled down now, so it is consistent from loaf to loaf. I’ve had the starter since July, so it’s nice and sourdough-y. It uses a mixture of garbanzo bean/fava bean flour, tapioca flour, cornstarch, and sorghum flour. And it is delicious. I use Bette Hageman’s recipe - can I reproduce it here? That is something a lawyer should probably know… The pictures aren’t uploading. Just imagine two delicious-looking loaves of bread and a single muffin. Mmm.
Sep 2011Amaretto cake recipe
As promised in my prior post, here is the recipe for the gluten free amaretto cake I made last weekend. 1 box devil’s food cake mix (Betty Crocker makes a gluten free one) 1 3.9 oz pkg instant chocolate pudding 1/2 c vegetable oil 1/4 c water 3/4 c amaretto (Hiram Walker’s is gluten free) 4 whole eggs 1 egg yolk Crushed almonds to coat Bundt cake pan Preheat oven to 350F. Mix wet ingredients together in a big bowl. Add cake and pudding mixes. Sprinkle crushed almonds into greased cake pan. Pour mix into pan. Bake 1 hour. Invert onto plate and poke lots of holes into cake. (LOTS of holes) For the glaze: 3/4 c brown sugar 12 T butter 1 c amaretto Bring sugar and butter to a low boil, stir to make it creamy. Remove from heat and add amaretto. Pour glaze slowly over the cake, allowing it to seep in between pours. Let cool 1 hour before serving. I had a lot of glaze that didn’t seep in, so I cut the cake into slices, let each side sit in the glaze for about a minute, and then arranged the slices nicely on a plate… Mmm, cake soaked in amaretto.
Sep 2011Gluten free amaretto cake
A few weeks ago, some friends and I participated in a trivia night fundraiser for Metro Lutheran Ministry. Part of the evening was a dessert auction, and one of the desserts was a “boozy amaretto cake.” We didn’t win - the trivia or the cake - but on Friday, MLM emailed out the recipe for that cake. It called for a cake mix, and luckily enough, Betty Crocker makes GF devils food cake mix. That was the only non-GF item in the recipe (certain brands of amaretto are GF, so that wasn’t difficult), and voila, we had the amaretto cake on Saturday. It was delicious. There is a LOT of amaretto in it, and less than half of it has any heat applied, so the alcohol is all there. I will post the recipe tomorrow, but I wanted to write about it tonight. I think it is a good example of how easy it can be to make something gluten free. Frequently, you can just do a straight substitute, and really, even when you can’t, adding in four other flours to get the right consistency is just not a big deal. The real problem comes from contamination, in my opinion. That seems like a good post for later this week. Carl thinks I should write more about cake, but I will let you discover its deliciousness for yourself. Tomorrow.