Boring Dinnernoms an Thoughts

Saving the leftover Easter dinner for lunch tomorrow, so made a pizza tonight. No picture; sorry. Two thoughts on the pizza, though, involving the crust, which is ok but not stellar.

1. Why do "Gluten-free" recipes and cookbooks tout special wheat flour substitute mixes? I've made lots of gluten-free breads using recipes that, in essence, call for a non-gluten flour plus some xanthan gum and/or other common ingredients. But these are in the minority. For the most part, gluten-free cookbooks ask you to make up some convoluted flour substitute and use that. You almost would have to have a separate pantry to store all the things they want you to put into that wheat flour substitute. Why? The three or four types of non-gluten flour plus gum or similar plus what is contained in a normal pantry should be sufficient to make things on the fly.

2. I am really disappointed that focus groups, marketing, or whatever make companies feel the need to tout gluten-free alternatives as "low fat." Fat and gluten are different. People who are cutting gluten out generally are doing it for very different reasons than people who want to starve themselves by reducing fat intake (ok, bias showing.)

So. Goal for next time is to not make pizza until I find an acceptable non-wheat (because of me), non-corn (because of Phil) homemade pizza crust recipe. And yeah, I'll buy another rice crust as a back-up.

Leftover Millet Pancakes

Made the rest of the glutinous millet yesterday and have tons of leftovers. So this morning I made some up into true millet pancakes. Picture shows the pancakes served with a mushroom-tomato-leek omelet and liver (today's breakfast).

Courtney's Leftover Millet Pancakes
(Makes 6)

1/2 c millet flour
1/4 t xanthan gum
1/2 t salt
1 t baking powder
1 egg
1 c cooked millet
1/2 c milk
2T melted bacon fat (or melted butter)

With an electric hand mixer, thoroughly combine the dry ingredients.

In a separate bowl, beat the egg and add the millet, milk, and fat. Mix very well on medium-high speed until the millet has no clumps.

Heat a griddle and grease it well.

Add the wet ingredients to the dry, beating all the while. Beat until thoroughly mixed. As soon as possible after beating, pour the pancake batter onto the griddle using a ladle or large spoon. Cook until bubbles break open and do not seal on the top of the pancake and the bottom is medium-brown. Flip and cook until browned. Serve hot with syrup or a savory sauce.

Cooking Notes
I used glutinous millet, but I think regular millet would be fine. Regular millet is a bit dryer, so you might want to add more liquid or to soak the millet in the milk for a while to soften it.
If you're not minimizing gluten, you can substitute wheat flour for the millet flour and xanthan gum.

Eating Notes
We had these for breakfast with a little maple syrup. Because they are not sweetened, they also would be good with a creamed seafood or similar sauce. Millet is one of the grains I'm moving away from, but if I weren't I would definitely have these again.

Seafood and Veggie Chickpea Flour Pancakes

Saw this recipe in the "Dining and Wine" section of the New York Times and decided to adapt it to my gluten-reduced diet and pantry contents. Made it for breakfast, and it also would be a very nice brunch or luncheon dish. Picture shows Phil's, served with three eggs over medium-hard.

Seafood and Veggie Chickpea Flour Pancakes
(makes 6 approx. 4" pancakes)

1 c chickpea (garbanzo bean) flour (found at organic-focused supermarkets and coops)
1/4 t xanthan gum (ditto)
1/2 t baking powder (check to be sure it is gluten-free if this is a concern for you)
Salt and fresh pepper to taste
1 c water
Enough raw sea scallops and shrimp to make 1/2 c chopped with one extra peeled shrimp and 1/2 scallop per person for garnish
2/3 chopped cooked summer vegetables (I used some leftover zucchini and yellow squash) split into two 1/3 c portions
1 scallion, chopped fine
3T chopped fresh herbs (I used basil), divided equally among the two chopped vegetable portions.
2T mascarpone or softened cream cheese
ghee for frying

Heat some ghee on a skillet. Cut the scallop in half crosswise so that you have two disks. Saute the scallop and shrimp until just barely done (it will continue cooking after you take it off the heat). Remove and reserve.

Take one of the portions of vegetables and basil and saute in the ghee left behind by the seafood until well warmed. Remove and reserve, keeping warm.

In a bowl and using an electric hand mixer, thoroughly blend the dry ingredients. While still beating, add the water and continue beating until well mixed. Using a spoon, stir in the chopped seafood and the unwarmed portion of vegetables and basil just until mixed.

Put a generous amount of ghee on the griddle. When hot, make the pancakes, using the spoon to keep the batter mixed. Cook until nicely browned, approximately 3 minutes on each side.

Plate the pancakes. Mix the mascarpone in with the reserved sauteed vegetables and spread over. Place the scallop disk on top, and the cooked shrimp on top of that. Serve hot.

Eating Notes: The pancakes were an excellent combination of filling but light, which is why I think they would be perfect as luncheon/brunch dishes. It also was a good way to use up some leftover veggies. Tomatoes and mushrooms would have been nice additions, and could have been used instead of the seafood to make a vegetarian dish. Another thing I like about the recipe is that the finished pancakes taste like their own thing, not like something that is a gluten-free pretender to a wheat flour dish.

Ketchup Pizza

Circumstances conspire. 1: Pizza fail from the other night. 2: Wanted to get some chicken from the Fresh Fields but realized I had no money so went home empty-handed. 3: Had one more leftover pizza shell. 4: Thought I had some tomato sauce but it turned out to be chili paste.

The result: Ketchup Pizza. Used Lane's Super-Sweet Ketchup (see Eating Notes below) mixed with Thai chili sauce as the base. Instructions: Prepare the pizza crust or be lazy like I was and use a gluten-free (or regular if you're not bothered by gluten) ready-made as directed. Preheat oven to 450F. Mix 1/4 c ketchup, 2T chili sauce, 1T mixed dried herbs, and 4 sliced garlic cloves. Spread over the sauce. Layer over sliced veggies to suit (I used 4 mushrooms and half a red onion; again, what I had on hand). Grate 2 oz or to taste hard cheese over all. If desired, top with sliced meat or sausage (I used spicy Italian sausage). Cook 13 - 18 min or until done to taste.

Eating Notes: Lane's ketchup now tastes really sweet. I'm not sure if it's really all that much sweet-tasting or if because I'm eating far fewer sweets than I used to it's my palate that has changed. But it's a surprise and kind of nice when you think about what to mix it with. I think the ketchup/chili sauce was too obvious/harsh, but I will now start planning for more subtle future uses.

Mechazawa-san Pizza

A staple of my "pre-gluten" days was Mechazawa-san pizza done in the iron fry pan on the Egg. Who knows why, but we were craving pizza so revived the practice with excellent results. Instructions: Heat the Egg; make the pizza; cook at about 375F or so for about 15-18 minutes if you're using a relatively thin crust.

This serves 2. The pizza was made with a ready-made rice flour (gluten-free) pizza crust I had on hand, plus tomato paste, sliced garlic, sliced chili peppers, cooked spinach, cheese, fresh tomatoes, and spicy Italian pork sausage.

Eating notes: I like the rice flour crust - it is very thin and crispy and holds up well. People who like a chewy crust will not like it, though. Even though this is a small pizza, I use a whole can of tomato paste (not sauce) on it. It's a bit low fat and all, but I compensate with a lot of cheese and fatty sausage. We may be reviving weekly pizza night...

Corn Elbows with Gizzard Sauce

Rehearsal was canceled but still felt like a Monday night dinner, so made corn elbows with the leftover sauce from last night's curried chicken gizzards and some yellow squash (previously blanched and frozen) from last summer's CSA mixed in. It was so good we each had two bowls. I know I'll regret that much carb intake later, but now....mmmmmm.

Eating Notes: This was our first time trying the gluten-free corn pasta. From the experience with the rice, I cooked it just over 5 min (instructions said 6-8) and it was perfect for us. You can taste the corn. The texture is pretty good, not gummy and it seems like it would hold up to macaroni and cheese or another casserole type dish. But the star was the sauce. It had congealed into a sort of loose aspic in the fridge, belying its high fat content. When it heated, it had a wonderful sheen. Phil noted that in the "old days" pasta sauce used to have a lot of fat in it, but now, no. That certainly was the case in my family, as well.

Millet - Rice Cakes

Felt like something substantial for breakfast, but still trying to avoid the gluten. My white (1975) Joy of Cooking had a recipe for rice flour "pancakes" but I wanted something a little bit more robust, and I thought I could improve things with some xanthan gum. I was right. While these look a lot like pancakes they are made differently and they taste like their own thing (see Eating Notes below)

Recipe:

Millet-Rice Cakes
Makes 10 cakes; recipe can be doubled

1/2 c white or brown rice flour
1/2 c millet flour
2-1/4 t baking powder
1/4 t xanthan gum
1/2 t salt (really! It will not taste too salty)
1 t light brown sugar or maple sugar (not syrup)

1 c milk
1 md - lg egg
1 T butter

fat as needed for frying

Melt the butter. Beat the egg in a small bowl.
Mix the dry ingredients together in a large bowl and then sift. Do not skip the sifting step.

Using an electric hand beater, beat the dry ingredients while slowly adding the milk. Be sure everything is well mixed. Beat in the egg and melted butter. The batter may look a little thin. Do not worry.

Using a large spoon, pour the pancakes onto a hot, greased griddle. Mix the batter in a folding motion as you do this, as it may start to separate slightly. Flip when bubbly on top. Serve hot with topping of your choice.

Eating Notes: A success. While they can stand in for pancakes, they didn't taste at all like fake wheat pancakes. The texture was fluffy and a little crisp, and the inside had the distinct warm grain taste of millet. The cakes were perfect for breakfast with a bit of syrup or jam. Because of the millet, they also would be good as a foil to creamed shrimp or seafood or something similar. I would still add the small amount of brown/maple sugar; it added overtones but wasn't enough to make the cakes noticeably sweet.

Gluten-free Baking: Cornbread

First, a bit of a rant about gluten-free recipe books. Phil bought me a couple, and I am highly underwhelmed.

• Seem to focus almost entirely on making ersatz versions of things rather than on embracing things that naturally don't have wheat or gluten
• Call for all sorts of things you're not likely to have in the house - one asked for four different kinds of flour for a simple cornbread recipe
• Want you to make up magic baking mixes, which is fine if you're baking all the time, but if you're not, it's difficult if not impossible to figure out how much of ingredient X to put into just the thing you are making

But I was determined to make gluten-free cornbread this morning. So off to the Internet. I found a couple of interesting recipes to build from, and settled on this. I will have to check out more of the celiac.com site when I have a chance.

Recipe:

Gluten-Free Cornbread
Makes 1 8" x 8" pan
(Ingredients reflect what I used)

1 c Buttermilk
1 egg
1/4 c butter plus enough to grease pan
2T maple syrup

1 c cornmeal
1 c white rice flour
2 T san on tou (or light brown sugar or more maple syrup)
2 t baking powder
1 t baking soda
1/2 t xanthan gum
1/4 t salt

Grease an 8" square baking pan. Preheat oven to 400F.

Melt the butter. In a blender, process the egg and melted butter and slowly add the buttermilk and syrup. Blend until smooth.In a large mixing bowl, thoroughly mix all dry ingredients. Add the liquid ingredients, mixing gently but thoroughly with a large spoon. It will come together differently than with wheat flour. Turn out into the pan (the original recipe said "pour" but my my batter was stiff enough that I had to spoon it into the pan). The picture above shows the batter poured into the pan.

Bake 30 minutes. Turn out onto a rack to cool. Serve with butter or jam.

Eating notes:

I was very surprised when the cornbread turned so nicely out of the pan (see picture at the top of the post. Cornbread just doesn't do that, in my experience, unless you cook it in a hot, buttered iron skillet. The cornbread is definitely dryer than a wheat version, but not unpleasantly so, and a little butter took care of that right away. We really liked the crispy crust. The other good thing was that although this was made in a conventional oven and I did not use convection, it cooked very evenly. The center and edges, including the corners, were very uniform. So, all in all, a success that will go into my breakfast rotation.

Update: We each ate 1/8 of the cornbread at breakfast. I was gone for lunch and dinner and Phil ate 1/4 more. He felt out of sorts and overloaded until he had a bit of stew - it was just more carbs than he can handle in one day any more. Honestly, I'm surprised he didn't have to stop before he did. We have frozen the rest for later.

Corn Pudding

Trying corn pudding this morning in the Advantium (result shown above). I understand corn is one of those "modern" foods I should probably be avoiding, but I just like it too much! This is adapted from the GE recipe website.

Recipe:

Advantium Corn Pudding
Serves 4 - 6

15 - 16 oz cooked corn kernels (one drained can or a bag of frozen is fine)
1 c milk
3 eggs
2 T butter plus enough to grease the casserole
2 T flour (I used rice flour)
2 T sugar (I used san on tou)
1/2 t salt

Grease a 1-1/2 quart round casserole or souffle pan.

Melt 2T butter. If using frozen corn, run under warm water until it is about room temperature.

Crack the eggs into the casserole and beat them until fairly well mixed. Add all the other ingredients except the corn and mix well. Add the corn and stir in.

Cook 22 - 24 minutes or until barely set at u=6 L=4 M=0. In a conventional oven, I'd guess maybe 325F for 40 - 45 min. - the "until barely set" part is the key.Eating Notes: I had this with some pork breakfast sausage and fried eggs. It's filling enough that you wouldn't really need the rest, but they were a nice counterpart.

The pudding came out with a sort of thin, sweet-ish sauce component. The eggy part was set perfectly, so I know that wasn't the issue. My leading explanation is that this was because I used frozen corn instead of canned, which is what the initial recipe called for. Or maybe there is something to wheat flour even when it's only being used in small doses as a thickener. The flavor was really good and the textures complementary, so I wouldn't change it. But it did mean that a bowl-like dish was required and I couldn't plate it directly with the rest of the food.

I-Hate-Leftovers Pork Dumplings

I get bored easily and really hate leftovers. So when the Ham-as-Bread Sandwiches ended up stretching to a third night (we had half served hot the first night, a quarter as cold ham sandwich slices last night, and the picture above shows what was left looking at me from the fridge) I just didn't want to slice it up again.
Because of my gluten intolerance, I've been investigating gluten-free and -reduced cooking, and thought to make some rice flour potsticker wrappers, but turns out that to make about anything I need xanthan gum. Lane says it's ok, but I don't have any, so even so I'm SOL.
Fortunately, thanks to some inspiration from the Art of Cooking Indian Food blog (recipe here) I decided on rice flour dumplings. The result was fantastic (even though it gave me even more leftovers...)


Leftover Pork Dumplings
Serves 4

1/4 of the Ham-as-Bread Sandwich recipe (recipe)
1/4 t black pepper
1/4 t cayenne
dash Chinese 5-spice (or another similar "sweet" spice)
dash of MSG (time for your "MSG isn't bad for you" post, Lane! But if you have a sensitivity or really object, just leave it out)
1 c rice flour
1 c water
1T lard for frying
1T udon tsuyu (or a light soy sauce)

Cut any bone out of the remaining ham and grind the rest - including the fat and any of the "stuffing" remaining. The object on the left of the first picture shows the coarse grinding plate I used; the picture below shows the result. If you don't have a meat grinder, you could pulse it through a food processor.


Mix in the rest of the spices - add more or less to taste.

In a heavy frypan, heat the lard. Add the ground meat mixture and saute for a little bit.

Add the water. When it boils, add the rice flour slowly. Stir constantly so that it doesn't lump.

Once all the flour is mixed in, remove the pan from the heat. Keep stirring for a bit because the pan will be hot. Form the mixture into dumplings. The picture above shows the entire output with some "large" dumplings. As an experiment, I made half that size and half (as shown in the finished dish) as little balls, half the size of the ovoids.

Steam the dumplings (over, not in, water) for 8 - 10 minutes (for the balls) or 12 - 15 minutes (for the ovoids). In a 7" steamer it took two batches to do.

Put on a plate, sprinkle udon sauce over, and serve. Can be served cold also (put sauce on just before you eat it).

I suggest serving with chard or other dark greens (recipe below) - the slight bitterness really complements the flavor of the dumplings. The picture at the end of the post shows one serving with chard.

Chard and Chard-rib salad

To economize on time I decided to make a chard rib salad for lunch tomorrow while the first batch of dumplings was cooking, and then to do the greens for dinner so they'd be ready and hot when the second batch finished up.The picture above shows the leaves and stems from the chard bunch I used.

Chard and Chard-rib Salad
Makes 2 servings each of chard and chard-ribs

1 bunch swiss chard (or use another similar green)
1T unhulled raw sesame seeds
1t sesame oil
1T strong soy sauce (Kikkoman type)
1T coconut oil for frying

Wash the chard and separate the ribs from the leaves.

Cut the ribs into strips approximately 1/4" wide and 2" long.

In a large heavy frypan, heat the coconut oil. When just fragrant, add the ribs. After a few minutes, add the sesame seeds. Cook until the ribs are nearly cooked through, about 3-5 min. Add the sesame oil and heat until fragrant. Add the soy and saute until the ribs are cooked but not limp, a few minutes more at most. Remove to dish to cool. When cool enough put in fridge.
This is your chard-rib salad for tomorrow.

Do not scrape out the pan - leave some seeds and liquid.

Return pan to heat. Add chard leaves. Saute until just limp and remove from heat. Serve and eat hot.