Monthly Archives: May 2018

Recipe Revamping: Carbonara

dairy free, egg free, gluten free, nut/peanut free, reduced refined sugar, soy free Leave a comment

“It’s just that it was one of his favorites….”

Most folks ask me to revamp baked recipes since that is what I mostly post about, but I received a request this week from a mom after she saw my roasted garlic bread recipe, asking if I might help with one of her son’s favorite recipes, carbonara. Her son is eight, and the family recently learned that much of his stomach issues were due to eggs, dairy and wheat, all three of which are in carbonara.

For anyone who might not be familiar with carbonara, it is an Italian pasta dish which is essentially a creamy, cheesy sauce over noodles which tends to use cured meat products such as bacon, pancetta, prosciutto, or Italian sausage to flavor the sauce. To make the sauce creamy, recipes usually use cream or half and half and egg yolks with a variety of fancy cheeses and then adds the cured meat and white pasta to the dish. So, as a rule, even if you do not have food allergies, you probably should not make carbonara a regular part of your diet.

Unless, of course, you can find a way to create a healthier, allergy friendly version….

My first order of business was to tackle the cheesy sauce. The beauty of a carbonara sauce is that it clings to the noodles, so the sauce needs to be a thick, heavy sauce, which is why usually cream and egg yolks are utilized. I opted to make a basic white sauce with olive oil, millet flour and dairy free milk. To that I added Daiya cheddar cheese, garlic, onions, oregano, basil, and a tiny bit of red pepper.

The next item to tackle was the cured meat. To make it a tiny bit healthier, I chose to chop just four low fat, reduced salt, no nitrates, sweet Italian style fully cooked chicken sausage links into small pieces. This distributed the flavor without all the extra added fat and sodium and nitrates.

The final decision I made was to nix pasta altogether and use spiral cut veggies. I used a mixture of turnips, yellow squash and zucchini. Because I like my food to have lots of color, I also added diced petite tomatoes, which added a slight flavor twist to the whole dish. The result was quite yummy!

Vegetable “Noodle” Carbonara

(This recipe makes a lot because I wanted to feed a family of five and have leftovers for a second meal. You may want to halve the recipe.)

Ingredients:

2 tbsp extra light olive oil (you don’t want a heavy taste)

1/4 cup millet flour (or any other variety you’d like to use)

2 cups dairy free “milk” (I used soy but any variety will work)

8 oz shredded Daiya cheddar cheese

garlic, onions, oregano, basil, and red pepper (to your taste and liking)

16 oz each spiral cut turnip, yellow squash, and zucchini (you can change up the spiral cut noodle veggies as long as you have 48 oz total so the sauce and “noodle” amounts are in a good sauce to noodle clinging ratio)

4 low fat, reduced salt, no nitrates sweet Italian style fully cooked chicken sausage links

garlic, onions, oregano, basil, and red pepper (to your taste and liking)

14 oz can of no salt, no sugar added petite diced tomatoes (optional)

Cooking Instructions:

  1. In a shallow sauce pan, heat the olive oil for a minute over medium-low heat, and then stir in the millet flour until well mixed and cook for another 30 seconds.
  2. Slowly add one cup of the milk, stirring until the flour mixture is incorporated into the milk. Let the mixture begin to thicken. Time will vary, depending on how shallow your pan is but shouldn’t take more than a couple of minutes.
  3. Slowly add the second cup of milk, stirring to evenly mix the sauce.
  4. Add the Daiya cheese and stir well. Add the spices, and stir until the cheese is all melted, and turn the heat to low, stirring occasionally.
  5. In a larger shallow nonstick pan (if you aren’t using a nonstick pan, drizzle a tiny bit of olive oil), cook the turnips until softened, usually about 3 to 5 minutes.
  6. Dice the sausage links into small bits and add to the turnips. Mix well and cook for a minute.
  7. Add the yellow squash and zucchini with the spices, and cook just until the squash and zucchini begin to soften.
  8. If you are using the tomatoes, add the diced tomatoes to the cheese sauce and stir well. Then add the sauce to the veggie noodles, mix well and serve. (As a garnish, you may sprinkle a mixture of fresh basil and chopped garlic as I did in the picture.)
  9. If you are not using the tomatoes, simply add the cheese sauce to the veggie noodles, mix well, and serve.

 

 

Roasted Garlic Bread

dairy free, egg free, gluten free, low fat, nut/peanut free, reduced refined sugar, soy free Leave a comment

“It’s the simple pleasures….”

I celebrated another birthday this year, and unlike many people, I don’t mind that I did. While I am not thrilled that my metabolism is slowing down and that aches tend to last longer, I am grateful for the maturing process which only aging and experience can bring. One gets to know oneself better as time goes on, and that’s a good thing, in my opinion, because only then can you really embrace your strengths, recognize and work on your weaknesses, and allow yourself to be the best version of yourself.

My husband wanted to know what I wanted to do for my birthday this weekend, because we have had a particularly stressful couple of weeks with a funeral and a graduation and time at a hospital with a dear friend. As I thought about what I wanted, I realized I simply wanted to hang with my family, particularly to have a good meal and to watch a movie while all three of my children were actually with me on my birthday for the first time in a few years.

Now, both cooking and watching a movie are not my husband’s ideas of a good time, but as a loving husband, he dutifully grilled the zucchini and chicken I prepared and sat through a movie. My gift to him for being kind enough to grill for me was to figure out a starch to go with the meal. Since I do have that slowing-down metabolism, I tend to eat less carbs these days, but I know that my husband thinks a meal is not complete without bread.

So, I decided I’d make garlic bread, but I didn’t want to use traditional white bread or the large amounts of butter. As I thought about garlic bread, I realized what I love best is the garlic so it occurred to me that garlic should be the the “showpiece” of garlic bread as opposed to the minced versions usually made, which led me to the idea of roasting the garlic and making a garlic bread similar to bruschetta which used olive oil, tomatoes and basil, only I used a gluten free whole grain bread instead.

The roasted garlic bread was ridiculously easy to make and added a nice dimension to the grilled dinner!

Roasted Garlic Bread

Ingredients:

peeled garlic cloves

olive oil

whole grain bread (gluten free or whole wheat or multi-grain)

fresh basil

grape tomatoes (optional)

Cooking Instructions:

  1. Preheat the oven to 500 degrees.
  2. Mix a couple of cups of peeled garlic cloves (how much you need depends on how many slices of bread you are making; also if you buy them already peeled, it makes life easier) with just enough olive oil to coat them, and roast them in the oven, turning them every five minutes until the garlic has darkened in color. (Usually this only takes ten to 15 minutes.)
  3. Remove the garlic from the oven and reduce the oven to 350 degrees. Let the garlic cool for a few minutes.
  4. While the garlic is cooling, slice your whole grain bread (whether gluten free or not) into thin slices (unless you bought the already sliced version, in which case you’re set) and place the slices on a cookie sheet or shallow pan.
  5. Chop up a couple of cups of fresh basil into small sprinkle-able pieces (how much you need depends on how many slices of bread you are making; also, if you don’t have fresh basil, you can also use dried basil, but you’d only need a couple of teaspoons then).
  6. Slice the roasted garlic into thin slices and sprinkle evenly among all the bread slices. Then sprinkle the basil. (Optional: slice grape tomatoes into think slices and sprinkle in between the garlic before sprinkling the basil.)
  7. Drizzle a small amount of olive oil over each bread.
  8. Bake in the reduced-heat oven for five to ten minutes until the bread is toasted.
  9. Serve immediately and enjoy.
  10. Leftovers keep well in the fridge. Simply reheat in the oven for a few minutes for crispy bread or microwave for a few seconds if you simply want it warm.

Recipe Revamping: Cardamom Citrus Bars

dairy free, gluten free, nut/peanut free, reduced refined sugar, soy free Leave a comment

“It was so nice of someone to think of us….”

The first full week in May is designated as appreciation week for teachers and nurses, and in our schools, the local PTO plans a week of nice surprises for the teaching staff. One day might be a luncheon. Another could be a day of raffles and winning prizes which have been donated. Sometimes they provide a breakfast. A few years included massage therapists coming in for 10 minute chair massage opportunities.

In the past I’ve helped to coordinate appreciation week for our schools but recently I’ve stepped down and help just by donating food for whatever special opportunities are being provided. This year, I made a couple of soups for the luncheon and signed up to bring in desserts for a special salty and sweet day the PTO planned.

Since I wasn’t sure what to make for the dessert, I asked for ideas from the staff, and someone mentioned that it would be lovely if I could make lemon bars for those with dairy, soy, gluten and nut allergies, all of which were prevalent among a number of the teachers. Since usually the bars I make are made from tofu, which was one of the allergies, I looked up a basic lemon bar recipe to revamp.

The recipes I found were all pretty much the same: To make the crust, mix 2 cups of flour, 1 cup butter, and 1/2 cup sugar, which was baked in a variety of pans sized from 8 x 8 to 7 x 11. The filling was usually 4 eggs, 2 cups sugar, 1/4 cup flour, and lemon juice which strangely ranged from 1/3 cup to 3/4.

Revamping the recipe:

For the flour: It was easy to simply substitute the flour with a gluten free flour blend. I chose King Arthur’s whole grain blend which is my current favorite since it is easy to get at the grocery store and has more protein and fiber than the other blends.

For the butter: To make the bars dairy free, I simply used Earth Balance’s soy free vegan butter.

For the sugar: The sugar was where I simply had to make some cuts. 2 1/2 cups of sugar in bars in an 8 x 8 or 7 x 11 or 9 x 9 pan is just too much sugar. I opted to use only 2 tablespoons in the crust, switching powdered sugar for the white sugar because it would combine more easily with the flour. And for the filling, I reduced the amount to 1/2 cup of white sugar and used 1/4 cup agave. As a final change, I used a 9 x 13 pan for thinner bars.

For the lemon: As a general rule, I suggest folks use fresh lemons for lemon bars. As I was looking at the recipe, I decided that I wanted to change things up a bit, so I opted to make citrus bars instead where I mixed freshly squeezed lemon and orange juice together. I also decided to add cardamom which is a spice that I like, just to further change things up a bit. Since the recipes varied greatly in amount, I cut the difference and used 1/2 cup of juice.

When I went to the school later in the day to help clean up, several staff stopped me to say how much they enjoyed the citrus bars, mostly because someone thought to make something they could eat, but also because they liked that the bars had so much less sugar but still tasted good.

Cardamom Citrus Bars

Ingredients:

2 cups gluten free flour blend (I used King Arthur’s whole grain version)

1/2 tsp cardamom

2 tbsp powdered sugar

1 cup vegan soy free butter

4 eggs

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup agave

1/4 cup gluten free flour of choice (I used sorghum flour)

1/4 tsp cardamom

1/2 cup freshly squeezed lemon and orange juice (I used 1/4 cup of each)

Baking Instructions:

  1. Line a 9 x 13 pan with parchment paper. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
  2. Mix the gluten free flour, powdered sugar and cardamom together. Using a pastry knife or two knives, cut the butter into the flour mixture until crumbly.
  3. Spread the crust mixture into the prepared pan and use your clean fingers to press the mixture evenly into the pan.
  4. Bake in the preheated oven for about 15 minutes until the crust is puffed and golden.
  5. While the crust is baking, mix together the eggs, sugar, agave, flour, cardamom, and lemon and orange juices.
  6. Pour the citrus mixture over the hot crust and spread evenly.
  7. Bake in the oven, another 15-20 minutes until the filling has solidified.
  8. Cool completely on a wire rack.
  9. Just before serving, sprinkle with powdered sugar. (Note: The bars absorb the powdered sugar, so sprinkling just before serving allows you to serve pretty bars without having to add more sugar than you ought to be eating.)