GF Rosemary drop biscuits

It’s been a long day full of children who refused to nap. And, oh, they so needed one and mommy as well, so I’ll get right to the recipe. These are my favorite biscuits, though, and the fact I’ve had some success makes me eager to post. This is my GF version of a recipe in Bread Alone by Daniel Leader and Judith Blahnik. This is a book of great European style (read takes 14 hours to make) yeast bread recipes which tragically my husband never fully succeeded at no matter how many weekends he devoted. He later learned the reason–all the temperatures are off. However, the biscuits are a quick bread so no worries. The secret to their addictive flavor is caramelized onions. Mmmm. And they were still tasty after a turn in the toaster oven days later. Sadly, I forgot to take pictures. I’ll have to add them later since I’ll certainly be making more of these.

This is my first attempt so if anyone has advice for tweaks feel free to pass them my way.

Rosemary Drop Biscuits

7 tbsp chilled butter 1 medium onion, chopped
2 tsp chopped fresh rosemary
2/3 c sorghum flour
2/3 c brown rice flour
2/3 c tapioca flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 to 2 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
1 cup cold buttermilk

Melt 2 tbsp of the butter in a skillet, then add the onion and cook over med-high heat for 3 minutes. Add the rosemary and continue cooking for around 3 minutes more. Remove from heat once the onion is quite soft and turning a golden brown. Drain well then cool completely.

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.

Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl then cut in the butter. (I used Mary Frances’s technique of grating the butter in which she got from Kate at Gluten Free Gobsmacked). Work the mixture until it resembles course crumbs. Then add in the cooled onion mixture, working it in thoroughly. Pour in the buttermilk and egg and stir it just enough to form the dough. (My dough was thinner than I expected but I worked out fine.)

Drop dough by heaping tablespoonfuls or whatever size makes you happy onto an ungreased baking sheet. Bake about 12 to 15 minutes and serve immediately. WARNING: high risk of eating them all in one sitting.

 

need help with a birthday cake

Alright all you brilliant gluten-free bakers out there. My little friend Judah is having his first birthday on Saturday. He’s going on an elimination diet to hopefully find out what is bothering his skin, which is going to be very good for him but complicated birthday cakey goodness. Can any of you come up with a cake recipe that doesn’t have gluten or dairy or eggs and probably not coconut or pineapples or anything we aren’t certain about?

thanks!!!

 

a change of season is almost here

So, every other week a box is delivered right to my front door full of organic and as local as possible for the season fruits and veggies. It is marvelous. However, it has also been the same season for quite awhile. I’ve gotten a lot of leeks. I’ve gotten a lot of kale. I’ve gotten a lot of potatoes and squashes. I’m looking forward to a new growing season and more variety in my box. At the same time, I hopefully won’t need our box in parts of the summer because Jeff is working on building raised beds out on our front parking strip, complete with their own watering system. It is a rather big project but he keeps plugging away at it week by week. Hopefully this summer we’ll have so many amazing vegetables I’ll have to learn how to can or something.

This week Gluten Free Mommy is hosting the menu swap. Her ingredient of the week is thyme, which I may or may not be able to work into any of my recipes. We shall see. I am making a recipe from Gluten-Free Girl’s blog to celebrate Shauna. She just announced she is pregnant! I am so excited for her. In October when I first learned that I was gluten intolerant, her voice was one of the first that I stumbled upon online. And what a lovely, positive voice it was. I was personally grateful to have finally learned the cause of my illnesses as well as a way to hopefully feel better, but the more I have read online the more negative voices I have come across. People who view food as the enemy. Shauna has none of that. Her words are full of hope and joy and celebration. That is what I needed to hear in those first weeks of learning that I was going to have the change a lot of things in my life, changes that would impact my whole family. The week my doc discovered all those gluten antibodies in my blood also just happened to be the week that Shauna’s book came out. I rushed out and bought it, devoured it, tried a few recipes, and then learned she was local and was teach a class on eating gluten-free at a local food co-op. I went to the class and to an event she and the Chef had at his restaurant that week. It was so encouraging to be able to meet other people face to face who were making the same life changes I was. It was great to be able to ask Shauna some of the specific questions I had. It was encouraging to taste gluten-free hors d’oeuvres at Impromptu and soft, tasty baked goods in her class. All these things gave me the courage to jump off and successfully pursue really good gluten-free eating, the courage to claim that I had the right to feel safe from cross-contamination in my home, and the courage to claim that I could still enjoy eating with friends at my home and theirs.

So, here’s to you, Shauna and the little one growing in you. I’ll be praying for good health to both of you.

Menu

Monday–Jamaican Jerk grilled fish, sweet potato fries, black beans and rice

Tuesday– Caldo Verde (Portuguese potato kale soup) and Natalie’s millet oatmeal bread

Wednesday–grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato basil soup and maybe a simple green salad

Thursday–leftovers. I have class and Jeff is with the kids. As long as they have rice, they’ll be fine.

Friday–pork and bean soup, cornbread and salad.

Later this week I hope to post the first version of a rosemary and carmelized onion biscuit recipe I’m playing around with.

And for kicks, here’s a picture of my baby who at the rate she is going won’t be a baby too much longer. I’m so proud of her–she eats about anything I fix.

 

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

(I posted this the other week on my previous blog but thought I’d transfer it over here because these cookies were so yummy).

I love, love, love oatmeal raisin cookies. I must confess they are my favorite. They seem perfect to me, sweet enough to satisfy my craving with enough healthy stuff I have little guilt. I’ve been wanting to try making a GF version for awhile now, but I was diagnosed right after Thanksgiving which meant I had to figure out how to make my favorite Christmas cookies first (which, I have to say, were marvelous and gave me great hope for gluten-free eating). Then I had to recover from all the Christmas cookies.

But last weekend I was finally ready. The first batch was very very sad. I could hardly scrape them off the pan, and once on the cooling rack I could see the countertop through the thin collapsed cookie. However, they tasted great! I felt hopeful. So I took my dough and kneaded in more rising agent (I think I added baking powder when I hadn’t before?) and then I added more flour. The next batch was much much better. A couple more tweaks and woot! Oatmeal raisin cookie perfection. Mind you, I’ve only made them once but I was so excited that I wanted to share. Here goes.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

3/4 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup white sugar
3/4 cup packed light brown sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 cup tapioca flour
1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup sorghum flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 3/4 cups rolled oats
1 cup raisins

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Cream butter and sugars together. Then add in eggs and vanilla and beat until fluffy. In another bowl whisk together dry ingredients except for the oats. Slowly beat into the butter sugar mixture. Stir in oats and raisins. Get out all the cookie sheets you have because this makes a lot of cookies (you’ll need them, trust me. Mine have gone fast!). Drop by teaspoonful onto the ungreased cookie sheets. Bake for 10 minutes in the preheated oven. Check on them and if they don’t seem quite done leave them in one more minute. (10 minutes seemed like too little but 11 minutes was too much. It must have been that moment of opening the door to check them, giving them 60 second more time, and then pulling them out that did the trick.)

Let them cool just a bit so they aren’t too gooey to transfer to a wire rack, then move to rack and let cool. Make sure you sneak one or two while they are cooling.

 

Gluten Free Menu Swap–March 3

This past week I’ve been sicker (in the general flu, cold, virus manner) than I can remember being for a long time. Days on the couch unable to take care of the kids, much less cook. My husband was sick too, not quite as badly as I have been, and was home for a good part of the week trying to take care of us all. We lived on boxed soups, rice, Gatorade and orange juice. It was a much much simpler week of cooking than I expected and definitely not the kind of break I’d ever want. At one time I somewhat enjoyed getting sick because it was a chance to lay on the couch all day reading books and watching videos. That scenario just doesn’t play out when there are two small ones who don’t quite understand why mommy isn’t as interactive as usual. Thankfully they’ve been sweet and funny all week. And I did get to take many, many naps.

One of the hardest things about the week was that food neither sounded nor tasted good. I just couldn’t taste much and my throat was on fire. It made me realize what a sad thing it would be if we couldn’t share our enjoyment of food. All those lovely adjectives we use to describe food, the beautiful pictures were meaningless, empty and bland to me this past week. It was tragic. Thankfully, this isn’t normally the case. Normally I can describe my favorite dish to best of my ability, ingredients, smells, the look, the bite, the flavors and you can begin mentally to experience it yourself and maybe even ask for my recipe. We can relive favorite family or travel memories by swapping stories of food. And we can sit down and share food together and understand by looking at each others faces what a marvelous part the food plays in our coming together. On that note, I’m honored to be hosting this week’s menu swap and gathering together a lot of delicious looking meal plans in one place. I’m sure some of these dishes will be ending up on my menu down the road because just thinking about them is making me hungry. It is so nice to have my appetite back.

My chosen ingredient for the week is cauliflower. I’ve loved cauliflower ever since I was a kid, but I’ve particularly grown to love it in Indian dishes. It seems to hold the aromatic spices perfectly. It is in season now, I was actually suprised to learn, and is super high in vitamin C, something I’ve been in need of. Eating them (along with broccoli, cabbage, and kale) also seem to reduce the risk of certain cancers because of a compound they contain. It is a tricky plant to grow, so you don’t usually find it in the home garden. It can be eaten raw, pickled, or cooked in a variety of ways. I think mashed cauliflower has a great slightly sweet flavor.

I’m hopefully going to go easy on myself this week, especially since my 2 year old is also pretty sick. I’ll try to get some good vegetables in us. And if you have a menu you’d like me to add to the list, please email me at cris (at) souphouse (dot) org.
The Menu

Monday– Kale and white bean soup (since we didn’t get to this one last week)

Tuesday– Chicken in a Indian simmer sauce and aloo gobi (a cauliflower and potatoe dish) all on Basmati rice, of course.

Wednesday– stir fry (our veggie box is delivered on Tuesday and will have baby bok choy and broccoli in it, so hopefully I can do something with those)

Thursday–breakfast for dinner

Friday–taco salad

Sea at Book of Yum has her menu up, including a collection of great sounding cauliflower recipes if you are looking for ideas. She’s also got some marvelous sounding Thai and Asian fusion dishes I wish I could get in on. Make sure you note that she’s beginning a weekly feature–homemade salad dressings. Yum.

Carrie at Ginger Lemon Girl has a new feature along her menu. She’ll be highlighting a cookbook each week and letting us know why she likes it. She has many great sounding veggie dishes as well as a number of recipes from her cookbook of the week, More-with-Less.

Karen at Gluten Free Sox has a yummy looking collection of dishes this week, including Jambalaya…and she’s promising to give us the recipe for that one later this week.

Sally at Aprovechar is focusing on adding leafy greens to her breakfasts. Good for you Sally! Her gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, soy-free meals look great and I wish i could have been there for the fish fillets and sweet potato fries last night.

Ester at Lilac Kitchen has her menu up even though she is due on Saturday. I’m so impressed. She figures her boys will then know what to cook for themselves even is she delivers this week. She even has two nights of cauliflower (since she had some on hand to use up).

Ginger at Fresh Ginger is back from traveling and has her menu up from the second half of this week. She’s promising to post a recipe for Shepherd’s Pie, which is one of my favorite dishes, later this week.

Happy Eating!

 

A Simpler Week

In menu planning–as in most things–I have burned a lot of fuel in my initial burst of effort and am now beginning to run out of steam. On the one hand, I have eaten well the past two weeks. I would continue the trend if someone else could cook for me this week. However, I think it is time for a slower week. In fact, my body is insisting on it. I’m finally coming down with some variation of the bug that everyone I know has had. So, drum roll please. Presenting my third menu plan ever.

Monday–beef and broccoli (or an even simpler stir fry if I keep feeling worse.)

Tuesday (Vegetarian)–Sweet potato black bean chili with cornbread

Wednesday–Kale and white bean soup and biscuits

Thursday–Leftover soup (I have class and J has the kids)

Friday–Spaghetti

Natalie at Gluten Free Mommy is hosting the swap this week. Bananas are her chosen ingredient. It may be time to begin to try degluten my favorite banana bread recipe.

In the next week, besides bringing some of my recipes I previously posted on my other blog over here (too make it simplier for me to find them), I hope to post a Peruvian recipe or two. My husband grew up in the jungles of Peru and seven years ago I was able to travel for three weeks with him and my in-laws to a few different areas of the country. I quickly discovered the trip was all about revisiting favorite restaurants and having favorite dishes. The food is wonderful, diverse, and, best of all, almost completely gluten-free (though a far far cry from starch free. Peruvians have no qualms about having potatoes and rice and maybe even yucca in the same meal).

 

Of food, life, and culture

I grew up in the south, Alabama to be exact, the daughter of Midwestern parents. My mother to this day does not like one hint of hot spice in her food. My father is a bit more adventurous but is also your basic meat and potatoes guy. Oddly enough, he is the one who taught me to cook my first meal–scrambled eggs. Years later when I told him this he laughed and told me that it was one of my older sisters who had taught him how to make scrambled eggs. My mom’s cooking was healthy and good enough but not adventurous. My brother had two things he went into the kitchen to make: fudge and peanut brittle. However, for some strange reason whenever I went into the kitchen I had to try out things we’d never made before.

My second year of high school I became good friends with a girl who’d moved from Louisiana. Her mother could cook things that made my stomach burn and my mouth amazed. Soon I made a few of her recipes my own. I also had Mexican for the first time and began to discover flavors I had no idea existed. In college quite a few of my friends were MKs–i. e. missionary kids–or International students. From them I began to learn about Indian food, Thai food, and the importance of really good rice (as opposed to what they served us in the dining commons). The other things I learned from them was hospitality. Eating just wasn’t worth doing unless you were doing it in the company of others. Most of my life I’ve been a self-protective introvert but over and over again I was thrown in with generous crowds who valued good food, hospitality, and eating in community above almost anything else. Good conversation, of course, was assumed part of it all. Pretty soon it became a habit for me. In fact these days if I find myself making a particularly good meal that we are going to have more than enough, on impulse I begin thinking, “Now who can I invite over to eat with us?” It is an odd day when someone doesn’t walk through our door for at least a cup of tea (loose leaf and steeped at just the right temperature, of course).

As sick as I get of doing dishes, as much as I complain about the time it takes, preparing good food seems to me one of the most basic things we can do. It hits all of our senses. The variety of tastes, the smells of food cooking filling the house, the sight of it being prepared and again as a finished product, the feel of it in our hands and in our mouths, the sound of chopping and simmering and sizzling and of glasses and knives and the conversation around the food. It is all there. It is a gift to prepare for another and a gift to receive. There are many days when nothing makes me happier than the taste of my wine or the smell of muffins in the oven. They are my reminders that every little thing is going to be alright.