Autumn Appetites: Cinnamon Apple Strudel Muffins

“Will you teach me to cook?”

A couple of months ago my son asked if I’d give him weekly cooking lessons because as he explained, “When I grow up I need to know how to make the two most important meals of the day: breakfast and dessert!”

So, over the past several weeks he’s learned how to make pancakes, waffles, French toast, marble cake, brownies, and oatmeal crumb cake. This morning, since Autumn has officially begun, and my favorite apples, Honey Crisp, are finally in season, I thought I’d teach him how to make my version of an apple strudel.

Strudels are lovely recipes where dough is filled with yummy fruit, rolled and cooked. I have found them to be rather messy, though, and not easy to eat without a fork and knife. I do, however, love to make use of Honey Crisp apples during the Fall months because they are naturally sweet which means I don’t need to add any additional sweetener to them.

The recipe that follows is sort of a combination between an apple strudel and a cinnamon roll which is cooked in the shape of a muffin using muffin tins. I got the idea from a recipe by Nicole Hunn of Gluten Free on a Shoestring (http://glutenfreeonashoestring.com/). If your only issue is gluten, she is a good source to refer to for recipes. Since I, however, have multiple allergies, I’m always having to adjust her recipes to fit my particular needs. In this case, though, her idea of making cinnamon buns in a muffin tin appealed to me, and I adapted that method for my recipe, which it turns out even my eleven year old can easily make.

Making this recipe for a Saturday morning is lovely because while the forming of the muffin takes about 20 minutes, the last half of the time is them baking in the oven while you make something else to go with them, which in our case this morning was turkey breakfast sausage.

For the recipe, I created my own flour blend because I wanted the “breakfast” muffins to be fiber full and have some protein. I found over time that a combination of sorghum, millet, oat, brown rice and tapioca flour gives us the best taste and texture. I also opted to use coconut sugar because I stay away from refined white sugar. Folks who have coconut allergies, though, should go ahead and use sugar or some other sugar substitute. In addition, I chose flax milk for my liquid because I figure it doesn’t hurt to add more omega 3’s to our diet, but again, if folks are allergic or prefer some other milk, go for it.

Cinnamon Apple Strudel Muffins

Ingredients:

Filling:

Apple:

2 Honey Crisp apples

1/4 cup water

1/2 tsp cinnamon

Cinnamon:

1 cup coconut sugar

2 tablespoons cinnamon

1/4 cup vegan soy free butter (or regular if you’re not allergic and prefer)

Batter:

1 cup sorghum flour

1 cup millet flour

1 cup tapioca flour

3/4 cup brown rice flour

1/4 cup oat flour

2 tsp xanthan gum

2 1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup coconut sugar (or sugar, if you’d prefer or are allergic)

1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons of vegan soy free butter (or regular if you’re not allergic and prefer)

2 eggs

1 cup flax milk (or other type if you prefer or are allergic; I would’t recommend rice milk, though, because it’s too thin)

Topping:

1 tbsp vegan soy free butter

1 tbsp coconut sugar

1/2 tsp cinnamon

Baking Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease a 12 muffin tin with your preferred method.
Peel, core and chop the apples by cutting them into quarters, then slicing each quarter thinly into five or six slices, turning the slices on their sides and cutting them on the short ends into small strips. You’ll have a couple cups worth of matchstick width pieces of apples.
Put the apple pieces into a shallow pan which allows the pieces to be one layer. Pour the water over the apples and sprinkle the cinnamon on top. Stir the apples to coat them well with the cinnamon and then saute the apples over medium-low heat. The water will come to a boil and then slowly dissipate. Stir occasionally until all the water is gone and the apples are soft. Usually this entire process only takes about five minutes. Turn the heat off and let the apples cool while you make the rest of the filling and the batter.
Mix the coconut sugar with the cinnamon and set aside. Melt the vegan butter and set aside.
Mix the sorghum, millet, tapioca, oat and brown rice flours with the xanthan gum, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg, salt and coconut sugar.
For the next part, it works well if you have a mixer with a dough handle but if you don’t have a dough handle, you can mix the dough with spoon and then finish kneading everything in by hand: Add to the dry ingredients, the vegan butter, eggs and milk, incorporating them just until you have a ball of dough, if you’re using the mixer. If you’re doing it by hand, mix the ingredients into well incorporated and then knead on parchment paper sprinkled with flour until you have a soft, pliable ball of dough.
Put the dough ball onto parchment paper sprinkled with flour (I use the brown rice flour but you can use any type you’d like). Lightly sprinkle the dough with flour and roll it into an 15 by 12 inch rectangle. I find it’s best to start in the center and slowly work your way outward in all four directions, occasionally shaping the dough with your hands into a rectangle shape. (This was the part my son found to be the most fun!)
Using a brush, brush the melted butter over the surface of the dough, leaving about a 1/4 inch on one of the short ends free of butter. It’ll seem like you have a lot of butter but be sure to use all of it on the top of the dough.
Sprinkle the butter surface of the dough with the coconut sugar mixture, leaving that 1/4 inch on the short end free as before of anything.
Carefully spread the apple slices evenly on top of the cinnamon covered dough so that they’re in an even single layer but mostly covering the surface with the exception of the 1/4 inch on the short end.
Starting on the short end opposite the free 1/4 inch side, carefully tuck in the end and begin rolling the dough toward the uncovered end. You can use the parchment paper to help roll. With every roll of the dough, it helps to use your hands to tighten it along the entire edge before continuing with the rolling. If you are using the parchment paper and have sprinkled flour, the dough will easily roll off the paper. If you are finding that it does stick, use a spatula to gently unstick the dough from the paper before continuing with your rolling. (I have never had to do this, but just in case….)
When you reach the end which is free of filling, gently seal the edge and use your hands to carefully shape the log so it’s evenly round along the entire log.
Slice the log into 12 even pieces. I like to just lay a 12 inch ruler and mark off the 12 inches and then use a serrated knife to cut the pieces.
Put the pieces into the greased muffin tins. You should find that they just fit into the tins. You may need to shape/squash them a bit on the sides to get them in if your dough is nice and puffy, but that’s okay.
Bake in the preheated oven for 25 minutes. They’ll be puffed and golden brown. While the muffins are baking, mix the tablespoon of coconut sugar with the cinnamon. Set aside.
Using a butter knive, gently go around the edges to release them from sticking. Let them cool about five minutes in the tins before removing them to a cooling rack. While they are cooling in the tins, divide the tablespoon of butter evenly on top of each of the 12 muffins and brush them until the butter is melted. Sprinkle the sugar/cinnamon mixture evenly on top of the muffins and let it melt into the butter.

Note: For the holidays, instead of using the cinnamon sugar on top, I make an icing to drizzle on top which is tofu cream cheese blended with agave and cinnamon. If you prefer to use sugar, you can mix powdered sugar with cinnamon and milk.

Happy Labor Day!: A Better Burger

September 5, 2016PajamaLiving dairy free, gluten free, nut/peanut free Leave a comment

“Mom, they’re cooking like you!”

15 years ago on Labor Day, we hosted a barbecue for some associates of my husband whom we wanted to get to know better. One of the guests was a gentleman who cheffed for a local restaurant. We were only a few moments into enjoying the food when he exclaimed, “Oh my god! This is the best burger I have ever eaten.”

My husband replied, “Well, except for the ones you make, right?”

To our surprise, he said, “No, this is better than what I prepare at the restaurant.”

When he asked me later for my “secret”, I told him that I simply barbecue like my mother taught me — Korean-style: liberal amounts of green onions, garlic and ginger with reduced sodium soy sauce for tenderizing and a splash of sesame oil for taste and moisture.

Fast forward 15 years: We were at the store yesterday, shopping to once again barbecue today, and my son yells, “Mom, they’re cooking like you!”

Sure enough, in the prepared, ready to cook section of the market, the Labor Day weekend offerings were Korean-style burgers, chicken and kabobs. My son may have been surprised, but I wasn’t. Over the past eight years, I’ve noticed that many of the trendy cooking magazines and restaurants are incorporating more ethnic-fusion recipes into their repertoire. What people haven’t realized, though, is that those folks are simply catching up to how my mother and other Koreans in the United States have been cooking for over 40 years.

The difference, though, is that for some reason, the American “Korean” versions all seem to add sugar, which I simply don’t understand. It may be that the chefs believe Americans want their food sweet, but for my family, we stick to the way I’ve always made my burgers, with no sweetener added.

What’s nice about our Korean-style burgers is that it works for any type of burger, whether beef, pork, chicken, turkey, bean, or tofu. I’ve made them all, and always do the burgers get rave reviews.

What to know:

The Protein:

Beef or pork: We don’t eat a lot of meat in general, maybe four times a year, if that. Overall, the consensus seems to be that eating too much meat isn’t good for you, healthwise. Sometimes, though, you do feel like a beef or pork burger, and in our case, if we do eat meat, we make sure the beef or pork is grass-fed and organic. Because we eat meat so infrequently, we figure it’s worth the additional cost for the splurge. If you want “healthier” burger, you should choose the leaner ground versions, but as a rule, burgers cook up moister if there is some amount of fat, so I often use the 85% lean version as opposed to the 93%.
Turkey or chicken: If you’re going to choose ground turkey or chicken, the same rule applies as with the beef or pork. The leaner the turkey or chicken, the more likely that you’ll have a drier burger. It doesn’t mean you can’t use it, and I do, especially if we’re cooking for folks who need to watch their fat intake, but if your health is fine, an 85% lean version if fine to use over the 93%.
Bean: If you are going to make a bean burger, I recommend starting with the canned versions. I know some folks don’t like canned foods, and as a general rule I don’t purchase many canned products. Canned beans, however, have the perfect consistency for burgers, and nowadays you can purchase varieties which have no salt and no sugar added to them. No matter which type of beans you choose for your burger, you’ll want to rinse them, drain them, and pat them dry before using them. Then it’s best to smash them with a fork over using a blender or processor. You want a “fresh” bean burger, not a “pasty” burger which is what you get with the traditional bean burger recipes.
Tofu: Tofu burgers are really becoming vogue these days and there are many ways to make one. I prefer to use simply slice extra firm tofu and marinate them overnight in my mixture of green onions, ginger, garlic, soy sauce and sesame oil. If however, you prefer more of a “burger” style, you should use extra firm tofu which is well drained of all water and crumbled into a bowl and mixed with your other ingredients.

The Seasonings: For 16 oz of any type of protein, I usually chop up a whole lot of green onion. They’re usually sold by bunches at the store, and I use at least one whole bunch and usually two bunches. You may want less, depending on your tastes. Then I mix reduced sodium soy sauce, between ¼ to 1/3 cup with about 2 tsp of minced garlic, a tablespoon or two of minced ginger, and two to three teaspoons of sesame oil.

The Preparation: What’s important for all the burgers, is that you really don’t want to handle the protein more than necessary, so once you’ve put your protein into a bowl, you should mix all the seasonings together and add them at once to the protein. Then either using a spoon or your clean hands, only mix all the ingredient until the seasonings are more or less incorporated into the protein.

For meat or poultry burgers, you don’t need to add anything else. I gently grab about ½ cup worth of the meat mixture and loosely shaped the seasoned meat into patties. For the best cooking, you should make a little indent in the center of the burger, because your burger will then cook more evenly so the outer edge doesn’t cook before the inner, and your burger won’t puff up but stay uniform.

For bean and tofu burgers, you’ll find that you may need a binder. Not always, though, because sometimes your mixture clings enough to enough that nothing is needed. If you do need a binder, using an egg or tomato paste or either mixed with some bread crumbs works well. By bread crumbs, though, I don’t mean those masticated, fine crumbs you buy at the store. I mean taking some fresh bread slices and chopping them coarsely in your food processor. Trust me, you’ll taste the difference.

The Cooking: Okay, here’s my snobbery coming through: I think if you’re going to have a burger, of any type, you really ought to grill it. The taste is so much better. Only with grilling do you prevent the burger from steaming. If you must broil it in your oven, okay, but please don’t fry your burger in a pan. When the juices begin running out, your burgers will steam instead of achieving that nice crusty exterior and juicy center.

Summer Loving: Tomato Tarts

September 3, 2016PajamaLiving dairy free, gluten free, nut/peanut free, soy free Leave a comment

“It’s the best time of the year!”

If you have children, had children, or simply remember being a child, you know that this time of the year is filled with the rush of buying needed school supplies, the excitement (for the children) and exasperation (for the parents) of replacing worn or outgrown clothing and shoes, and either the sadness or the joy, depending on the type of children and parents, of going back to school.

I’m one of those parents who is always sad when the new school year begins because I prefer the lazy days of summer when the children and I don’t need to rush anywhere, can play games, and no one is stressed by homework and relational angst. So, when school resumes I need to find ways to cheer myself up, and fortunately for me, this is also the time of year when some of nature’s best gifts present themselves.

I’m talking about tomatoes. Large, fresh, sweet, home or local farm grown, deep red, yellow and even purple organic tomatoes. True fact about me: I only eat large tomatoes in August and September when I can get them fresh from the garden. I will not purchase store tomatoes which have yet to fully turn their color and have very little taste. Life’s too short to insult my taste buds.

So, when tomatoes are in season, I make as many different types of dishes as I can because I know it’ll be another year before I can enjoy their taste again. One of my family’s favorite dishes is tomato tarts. A simple crust, layers of lovely, tasty fresh tomatoes, and an egg custard. I recently made some tomato tarts using fresh tomatoes to serve at a brunch for my husband’s family forest, and they were an absolutely hit. Fortunately, I had made several of them so that when people went back for even thirds, we had enough!

Now, a warning: Yes, you can make these tarts with any tomatoes, but you have to trust me when I tell you that there’s nothing like the sweet taste of a freshly picked tomato to enhance these tarts. So, if you can, swing by your local farm and get a basket full. Your taste buds will thank you!

Tomato Tart

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup your favorite flour (I use gluten free flours like garbanzo or fava bean or oat or sorghum but whole wheat works, too)

1/2 tsp ground onion powder

1/4 to 1/2 tsp salt (your taste preference)

1/2 tsp dried oregano

1/8 tsp black pepper

1/3 cup safflower oil

3 tbsp your favorite milk (cow, soy, flax, quinoa, rice, etc…)

3 eggs

1/2 cup your favorite milk (cow, soy, flax, quinoa, rice, etc…)

1/4 tsp black pepper

1/2 tsp dried oregano

Fresh tomatoes

salt, pepper and oregano

Cooking Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Mix the flour with the onion powder, salt, oregano and pepper.
Whisk the safflower oil with the milk until it’s creamy. Pour into the flour mixture and stir with a fork until a dough ball forms.
Press the crust into a 8 or 9 inch pie pan, using your clean hands to form an even crust along the bottom and sides of the pan. Set aside.
Whisk the eggs with the milk, pepper and oregano. Set aside.
Thinly slice the tomatoes, allowing some of the juices to drain out in a colander. Then layer the tomato slices in the prepared crust, sprinkling some salt, pepper and oregano on each layer before putting on the next. How much you put in is up to you, but I like to layer them up to the top of the crust.
Carefully pour the egg custard over the tomato layers. If you find that you’ve layered so many tomatoes that your egg custard doesn’t cover the tomatoes as you’d like, whisk another egg with a tablespoon of milk and add it.
Bake in the preheated oven until the eggs are set. How long will vary on how thick your tomato layers are as well as which type of milk you ended up using. I suggest you set the timer for 15 minutes and go from there. The longest it’s ever taken for me is 30 minutes.

Creative Cooking: Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cake

August 24, 2016PajamaLiving dairy free, egg free, gluten free, nut/peanut free, reduced refined sugar Leave a comment

“Anyone who wants them can take them!”

Every summer my husband’s family descends upon the Adirondacks to help with the family forest which has been in existence now for 60 years. When we are up there in the mountains, we have no television, can barely tune into a radio station, can only access email if we go into the town to little one room library, and still have a landline in the house because cell phone coverage is spotty at best. (This is why I’ve written no posts in the past few weeks!)

What we do have here, though, is a lot of farms with wonderful vegetables, and I love going weekly to the farmers’ markets they have every day of the week in a different town. After a while, however, I laugh because folks in the area begin to want to rid themselves of the abundance of vegetables they have, and people will show up at our place with huge bags of vegetables, and when you go to places like church, zucchini will be sitting on the table with a sign, “Please take!”

As such, I’m always looking for ways to use up vegetables like zucchini, and recently my son asked me if I could make a zucchini chocolate chip cake. I hadn’t made one in a long while so I needed to create a recipe. I was out of eggs so I used bananas instead, and because I never use white refined sugar, I chose to use coconut sugar. In place of regular flour I used gluten free blends and single types, and for flavoring I simply used cinnamon and vanilla, which is all I had in the house. In place of milk I used soy milk but any type will work.

What follows is what we made, and we declared it a success since the entire cake was eaten within two meals!

Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cake

Ingredients:

2 cups gluten free flour blend (I used a brown rice flour blend)

1/2 cup gluten free oat flour

1/2 cup sorghum flour

1 cup coconut sugar

1 tsp salt

2 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

2 tsp cinnamon

2 to 3 ripe bananas (you’ll need one cup’s worth of pureed bananas)

1 tbsp gluten free vanilla

1/2 cup safflower oil

1/2 cup soy milk (can use any type, though)

3 cups finely shredded zucchini

1 cup Enjoy Life mini chocolate chips

2 tbsp apple cider vinegar

Baking Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line a 9 x 13 pan with parchment paper (or grease as you prefer).
Mix the GF flour blend with the the oat flour, sorghum flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and cinnamon. Set aside.
Puree the bananas so you have a cup’s worth. Add the vanilla, oil and milk and mix well.
Stir in the zucchini and chocolate chips.
In a large bowl mix the dry ingredients with the wet, adding the vinegar.
Pour into the prepared pan and bake in the oven until the cake is puffed and golden and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Will take between 20 to 30 minutes, depending on your oven.

Recipe Revamping: Pumpkin Tunnel Cake

July 26, 2016PajamaLiving dairy free, gluten free, nut/peanut free, reduced refined sugar Leave a comment

“Calories: Tiny evil creatures which live in your closet and quietly sew your clothes tighter every night.”

The above was written on a pillow sitting in a store window, and my son pointed it out to me, thinking it would make me laugh. He was right! I’m convinced these creatures have been multiplying in my closet over the past few years. What else would account for my clothes beginning to become more snug as I age? *grin*

I thought about the pillow when I received an email asking if I could revamp a recipe not just for allergies but to reduce overall calories. The recipe in question was for a tunnel cake and called for a total of six eggs, a cup of butter, and 12 ounces of cream cheese, so it’s no wonder the request was being made!

If you’re not familiar with a tunnel cake, it’s simply a bundt cake with a filling inside. They’re fun cakes to make wonderful to serve to guests because they look pretty and taste lovely. This particular cake was a pumpkin ginger cream cheese cake. The original recipe called for the filling: 12 oz cream cheese, 1/2 cup sour cream, 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 tsp ginger, 1/4 tsp salt, 2 large eggs, 1/2 tsp vanilla, and 1/2 cup crystallized ginger; and for the cake: 2 1/4 cup flour, 2 tsp salt, 2 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp baking soda, 1 tbsp ground ginger, 2 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 tsp nutmeg, 1/4 tsp cloves, 1 15 oz can pumpkin, 2 cups sugar, 1 cup butter, 4 large eggs, and 1 tsp vanilla.

To revamp the cake:

The Filling: To tackle the calories and the allergies to dairy, I opted to use tofu cream cheese and tofu sour cream in place of the regular cream cheese and sour cream, and I decreased the amounts by half. Even with half of the filling, there was plenty to fill the “tunnel” and to give the cake it’s pretty look and it’s surprise taste. I opted to keep one whole egg in the filling because it would help with the texture of the filling, figuring I could do something about the amount of eggs in the cake itself. To further reduce calories (and because I never use white refined sugar), I used Truvia in place of the sugar, which meant I could use half the amount needed.

The Cake: Because the person emailing couldn’t eat gluten, I swapped a gluten free blend for the white flour, but I didn’t want to use a rice flour blend for the entire cake, so I only used 1 1/2 cups of a GF blend and used sorghum and gluten free oat flour for the rest of the amount to add protein and fiber to the cake as well as to give the texture of the cake some density. I also chose to use 3/4 c of Agave instead of the 2 cups of sugar which further reduced calories as well as getting rid of the refined white sugar. To tackle the bad fat in the butter, I opted for safflower oil instead and reduced the amount to 3/4 cup. For the eggs, I decided to use 2 eggs and use 1/2 cup of egg whites for the rest.

The cake came out quite lovely. I served it to guests who asked for the recipe because they liked it so much! Below is the recipe as I made it. Enjoy!

Pumpkin Ginger Tunnel Cake

Ingredients:

Ginger Filling:

6 oz Tofutti cream cheese, room temp (3/4 cup)

1/4 cup Tofutti sour cream, room temp

1 1/2 tbsp Truvia

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/8 tsp salt

1 egg

1/4 tsp gluten free vanilla

1/4 cup finely chopped crystallized ginger (I chop it in my food processor into tiny pieces)

The Pumpkin Cake:

1 1/2 cup Gluten Free rice flour blend

1/4 cup sorghum flour

1/2 cup oat flour

1 tsp salt

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tbsp ground ginger

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/4 tsp cloves

2 cups pumpkin, cooked and pureed or canned

3/4 cup Agave

3/4 cup safflower oil

2 eggs

1/2 cup liquid egg whites

1 tsp gluten free vanilla

1 tbsp apple cider vinegar or white vinegar

Baking Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and grease and flour a Bundt pan with your preferred method. Just make sure that you’ve covered every crevice well so that your cake will easily come out when you invert it. Nothing is worse than the top of your bundt cake sticking to the pan!
Using a mixer, blend the cream cheese until smooth and creamy. Add the sour cream, truvia, ginger, and salt. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating just until incorporated. Mix in the vanilla and crystallized ginger. Set aside.
Whisk together the gluten free flour blend, sorghum flour, oat flour, salt, baking powder, baking soda, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. Set aside.
Mix together the pumpkin, agave, oil, egg, egg whites, and vanilla.
Add the dry ingredients to the wet with the vinegar and mix well until the dry ingredients are completely moistened.
Fill the prepared bundt pan half full and make a little tunnel in the batter for the filling.
Give the filling a good stir because the ginger pieces would have have fallen to the bottom. Carefully spoon the filling into the tunnel. It will probably spill out a bit. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.
Carefully add the rest of the cake batter to cover the filling.
Bake for about 40 minutes until the cake has risen, is golden and a toothpick inserted comes out clean.
Cool on a wire rack for at least 15 minutes, better to do 25 to 30. Carefully invert and remove the cake from the pan. Cool completely.

Creative Cooking: Crepes

July 11, 2016PajamaLiving dairy free, gluten free, nut/peanut free, soy free Leave a comment

“Sorry we tried to kill you and your students. Do you want a job with us?”

Several weeks ago I had a terrible experience at a banquet I helped to host for the music students of our high school. Several conversations and in-person meetings with the chef and the functions manager of the facility to ensure that the students from our high school would have no worries regarding their food allergies didn’t yield the expected results . Despite having put together a completely allergy friendly menu ahead of time, on the day of the banquet, the chef cooked the food with all the ingredients he was supposed to leave out which caused no end of stress as we learned that fact literally minutes before several students put the food into their mouths! Fortunately, we did get to the students before their forks touched their lips, and new meals were made, but as you can imagine, I was not at all pleased.

Laughably, all my mother’s etiquette training must have worked, because at the end of the event, the onsite coordinator actually took the time to thank me for being the most polite angry person he’d ever had the pleasure of working with to deal with an issue. More incredibly, he also told me that he and the chef had taken a liberty in having a piece of the gluten, dairy, soy, nut free chocolate mousse cake I had brought for the students with allergies and that it was the best cake either of them had ever eaten. Most unbelievable, though, was the next day when the manager, who had called to see what she could do to keep our school’s business after the unfortunate event, asked me if I wanted to work for them, making cakes for their weddings!

As a writing facilitator, I always tell the folks who attend my writing groups that truth is stranger than fiction and that they only have to look at life for creative writing ideas. My experience above bears out the truth of what I’ve been telling them!

The fact is that while there’s more recognition around gluten and nut sensitivities, there’s still a long way to go for the world to think proactively about accommodating people with food allergies in general. Our allergy friendly menu fell off the radar for the chef and the manager because they simply don’t think about it regularly. Fortunately, now the manager has revamped all of their forms so that allergies are actually the first item on the form — and in bright red now! So, hopefully no other folks will have to deal with the issues we went through on that day.

As for the job offer, the chef was surprised that my cake was actually good! The site coordinator went on and on about how the chef couldn’t believe how much the texture and the taste was like a “real” cake. As he spoke, I kept thinking that my cake WAS a REAL cake. It wasn’t “fake”. It wasn’t made of air. All the ingredients were ingredients you can buy at the store, made from real, natural foods like tofu and garbanzo beans and oats and flaxseed.

I was thinking about all this the other day as I made crepes….

Like the cake I made, crepes are misunderstood to be something they are not. Most folks I’ve spoken to seem to believe crepes are complicated to make. Crepes are actually wonderfully easy to make and are very versatile. They are basically just flour, eggs, and milk — all of which people can be allergic to. This, however, isn’t a problem, because it’s so easy to substitute ingredients for crepes. And it’s worth doing, because you can make crepes for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert in just a matter of minutes. And if you have guests, they’ll be highly impressed because they’ll think you did a lot of work when you didn’t!

What you need to know about crepes:

Ratios: Google crepes recipes, and you’ll discover that the only consistency lies in the three basic ingredients: eggs, milk, and flour. The ratio of the three to one another varies from recipe to recipe. For every one cup of flour, some will call for 1 cup of milk; others 2 cups. For that same cup of flour, some recipes will call for two eggs; another four. What you need to know is this: crepes are supposed to be thin, so your liquid ingredients combined – the milk and eggs – should be more than the flour, unlike in pancakes where the dry to liquid ingredients are usually one to one. How much milk versus eggs you add is really all about your preferences. More eggs makes slightly thicker, custardy crepes. More milk creates lacier, more delicate crepes. If you are making crepes for the first time, I’d suggest using one cup of flour, one cup of milk and two eggs as a basic recipe and then experiment from there to see which texture you prefer.
The Flour: You are not limited to white flour for crepes. You can use wheat; you can use gluten free; you can even use nut flours. What’s important to know is that because you want your crepes to be light, if you are going to use a heavier flour like garbanzo bean or whole wheat or sorghum, you should opt to use less than you might with typical white flour – more like 1/2 cup. If you want to use the same one cup amount, opt for a lighter flours like rice or tapioca or arrowroot.
The Milk: Once again, your options are unlimited. You can use other types of milk for crepes besides cow milk. Almond milk, coconut milk, rice milk, quinoa milk, etc… they all work! And unlike the flour substitutions, these can all be substituted one to one for the regular milk.
The Eggs: If you are watching your cholesterol, you can opt to use only egg whites. Just remember that you need two whites to replace one whole egg, or if you’re using liquid egg whites, that about 1/4 cup is equivalent to a large egg. If you are allergic to eggs, you can also simply leave the eggs out. You can simply increase the milk amount to replace the liquid you’re losing from the eggs — again about 1/4 cup of milk for each egg you omit. You can also mix one tablespoon of ground golden flaxseed with three tablespoons of water to replace one egg.
The Fat: Crepes usually have one other important ingredient: a fat. Usually one tablespoon of butter or olive oil or melted coconut oil or almond butter or whatever you decide is enough, but it’s good to choose a fat because it helps the crepes to stick less to your pan, as well as adds some flavor.
The Flavor: Crepes are usually made so that you can fill them with savory or sweet fillings so you don’t really need to add anything other than a pinch of salt, but as always, tailor the crepes to your taste. If you want something sweet, add a bit of honey or agave to the batter. If you want something savory, add some herbs. Want something distinctive? Substitute orange juice for part of the milk. Experiment and see what you like.
The Batter: Okay, I promised you that making crepes was easy, and it is. Whatever you’ve decided to use for your crepes, you simply mix all the ingredients together. You can whisk them, blend them, shake them, food process them, and in a matter of minutes you have a nice batter. What’s key is that you want your batter to be very smooth. The smoother, the better. If you are making crepes with flour, you should let the batter rest because this relaxes the gluten in the batter. If you’re making gluten free crepes, then you have no such worries.
The Cooking: People think making crepes is difficult and takes time, but I make enough crepes for a family of five in less than ten minutes. Crepes cook very quickly. You simply grease your pan, pour a scant amount to just cover the bottom, let the crepes begin to solidify (usually only about a minute), flip, let the crepes finish cooking on the other side (usually about thirty seconds), transfer to a plate, and you’re done with a stack in just mere minutes. You simply need to follow a couple of easy steps:
1. Don’t use a large pan. A pan sized for an omelet is the perfect size. It allows you to easily flip the crepes without worrying about tearing them.
2. Cook over medium heat. Too low and the crepes won’t cook quickly enough. Too high and the crepes will burn.
3. Don’t use a large scoop. You only want enough batter to just cover the bottom of your pan. Usually a quarter cup works just fine.
4. Invest in a wide spatula. A spatula which allows you to get completely under the crepe to flip it quickly is best.
5. Make sure your crepes won’t stick to your pan. Use your favorite spray or oil in between each crepe if you don’t have a nonstick pan. You don’t need a lot – a quarter tsp will work – but you do need something to make sure the crepes don’t stick because otherwise they’ll tear or burn.
The Filling: Crepes are great because you can fill them however you want. You can keep them simple and spread jam on the crepes and roll or fold them over. You can put fresh fruit on top. You can make a creamy vegetable filling (I like to make a white sauce with spinach and mushrooms which I roll the crepes around). You can fill the crepes with ice cream or a vanilla custard. You can spread cheeses like ricotta or marscarpone and fold the crepes. You can fill them with pureed pumpkin or squash. You can use a lemon curd. You can roll chicken salad inside crepes. The list is endless. Experiment and see what you like!

Cooking Techniques: No Bake Cheesecakes

June 25, 2016PajamaLiving dairy free, egg free, gluten free, informational, lesson, nut/peanut free, reduced refined sugar, soy free Leave a comment

“But they’re really more like suggestions than hard and fast recipes….”

Once again some friends were telling me this week that I needed to write a cookbook….. And once again, as I thought about it, I realized that the problem with a cookbook is that it presumes you believe your recipes should be followed…. And I don’t!

I personally never follow recipes. Even the ones I put on this blog, I’m always re-creating to see if I can either make them better or differently. To me the goal of this blog is to give folks enough tips and techniques and knowledge that you can then be as creative as you want. My recipes are supposed to be jumping off points, not “hard and fast, you must follow this to the T” types of experiences. That’s why I write at length about the “how’s” of each recipe I give, and it’s also why there are so many posts on this site which give no recipes and only “techniques”.

To illustrate my point today, I thought I’d use no bake cheesecakes: Right now they’re all the rage because they’re versatile and summery without the use of an oven. I could certainly give you a recipe for a no bake cheesecake but the fact is that there are so many different ways to make them that I’d hate to limit you to just one recipe.

For instance:

The crust: For a no bake cheesecake, you can use just about any type of crust you’d like: a crust made from graham crackers, cookies (any type there is from ginger to lemon to sandwich cookies to chocolate chip to oatmeal to you name it!), pretzels, crackers,coconut, goldfish, vanilla or chocolate wafers, nuts, etc…. What type of crust you’ll make will depend on what you’re making for the filling. If you want a traditional cheesecake, use graham crackers. If you’re making a cheesecake with chocolate in it, you might want to use chocolate wafers or a cookie with chocolate pieces. Maybe you’re making a lemon cheesecake which might go well with lemon or vanilla cookies. You can experiment and see what tastes you prefer. If you have allegies, you can use allergy friendly versions of all the above which you can now find in any supermarket.

What’s key is that you should process whatever you’re using into fine crumbs and mix them with a binder such as melted butter or vegan substitute or coconut oil or a nut oil or plant oils such as olive or safflower. Rule of thumb: about 1 1/2 cups of finely processed crumbs will cover the bottom and sides of a traditional pie pan. How much binder you use depends on your tastes and health: I tend to use a low amount, about 2 tablespoons, just enough to moisten the crumbs so they’ll adhere to one another. Many recipes will call for 4 to 6 tablespoons. You can also begin with two and add more if you think it’s needed. What you use can depend on your tastes and health and allergies. If you’re allergic to dairy or have health issues, you may opt to use a plant oil instead of butter. Or maybe you want just the taste of the cookies you’re using to come through, so you might use a more neutral canola oil. Or maybe your cheesecake will do well to have the complementary flavor of a nut oil.

Whatever you choose for the crumbs and the binder, for a no bake cheesecake, the crust should be made first. You then can either pop the crust into the freezer for 15 to 30 minutes or put it into the fridge for an hour or two. Either way, you want the binder to get cold enough to keep the crumbs together so it won’t crumble when you cut into your cheesecake. So, make sure the crust is solid before making and adding your cheesecake filling.

If you’re looking to make things even easier, you can use store bought crusts. Now they even make gluten, dairy, nut free versions which you can purchase at the regular grocery stores.

The cream cheese: For folks with no allergies, regular cream cheese is what most cheesecake recipes call for. if you’re trying to watch the fat, using a light or fat free version of the cream cheese is acceptable. If you have dairy allergies, you can use the Tofutti vegan cream cheese. If you’re allergic to soy, you can puree tofu or soaked cashews to replace the equivalent 16 oz of cream cheese. What’s important is that if you’re using cream cheese, any version, you should bring it to room temperature so it will blend more smoothly without chunks. If you’re using the tofu or soaked cashews, make sure to puree them completely so they’re as smooth as they can be. For a traditional pie pan, two packages of cream cheese or two cups of a replacement is enough to fill the pie pan once you’ve added the rest of the ingredients.

The sweetener: Most no bake cheesecake recipes call for the use of either sugar or powdered sugar in quantities ranging from 1/2 to 1 1/2 cup. You can use either, varying the amount to your particular tastes. If you’re like me and don’t use sugar, you can substitute coconut sugar or stevia or agave which usually require half to less the amount you’d use of sugar. I’d suggest beginning with 1/4 cup and tasting to see if you need to add more. What’s important to know is that no matter what you use for the sweetener, you should add it immediately after you’ve creamed your cream cheese smooth, and you should combine the sweetener well so the cream cheese is not grainy. If you using Agave, keep your mixer going on low while you slowly pour the agave in a little at a time.

The flavor: A no bake cheesecake can be whatever you want it to be: chocolate, lemon, mint, berry, peanut butter, etc…. What’s important to keep in mind is that whether the flavoring is an extract or peel, or chunky like chopped chocolate pieces or mint cookies or pureed strawberries, or if you opt to use jello or pudding mix for the flavoring (see below), add it AFTER you’ve made your cream cheese or substitute smooth and after you’ve added the sweetener. The first thing you always do with a no bake cheesecake is to make the cream cheese smooth. Then you want to add the sweetener, and then you can add the other ingredients, with the binder being the final ingredient.

The no bake filling binder: When making a no bake cheesecake, you don’t use eggs which is what usually helps to solidify the cheesecake as it bakes. What you can use in the place of eggs varies, though. Some recipes use heavy cream. Others use a combination of sour cream and whipping cream. Some use condensed sweetened milk. Others use whipped topping. Still more use pudding mixes or jello/gelatin or even marshmallow creme. This is why I’d rather not give you a recipe, because you may want to use one or the other depending on tastes, allergies/health, and/or what you have in the house.

What I can give you, though, are tips and information to help you: So, for example, if you are going to use heavy cream or sour cream or whipping cream or whipped topping or marshmallow creme, the ratio is usually two 8 oz containers of cream cheese to 3/4 to 1 1/2 cups of whichever you use. What’s important is that they should be added at the end after you’ve mixed the rest of your cheesecake ingredients, just before you put the cheesecake into the fridge. The quantity will depend on the type of consistency and taste you want for your cheesecake: the more you put in, the airier, lighter and less cheesecake-tasting the cheesecake will be. The less you put in, the more dense cheesecake-like and tasting it will be.

If you choose to use gelatin or pudding mix, the ratio is usually two 8 oz packages of cream cheese to one package of jello or pudding (3 oz size) or one envelope of unflavored gelatin. What’s important is that if you’re using jello or pudding mix, you have two options for how to use them. One is to simply mix it in really, really well with the cream cheese so it’s smooth. Another is to make up the jello or pudding and let is slightly set before mixing it in with the cream cheese mixture. If you’re using an unflavored envelope of gelatin, the gelatin needs to be dissolved according to directions (usually a couple of minutes over a tablespoon of cold water and then stirred with a tablespoon of hot water until dissolved) and added to the cream cheese mixture at the end.

For people with allergies, So Delicious makes a whipped topping out of coconut which you can substitute for whipped topping. To substitute for heavy cream you can puree an equal amount of silken tofu; or mix 2/3 cup soy milk with 1/3 cup melted vegan butter for one cup of heavy cream; or use coconut cream in a one to one ratio; or make a cashew cream (soak cashews for a day and puree really, really well) where about one and 1/4 cups of soaked cashews purees into one cup of cream.

The topping: A no bake cheesecake can be simple with just the above ingredient choices mixed together and poured into a crust, but you can also jazz up the cheesecake with toppings. You can pipe whipped topping in designs. You can melt chocolate and drizzle it over the cheesecake. You can chop up cookies or chocolate and carefully place the pieces on top. You can chop berries and put them on top. You can spread jam on top. You can cook a fruit compote and pour it over the cheesecake. The ideas are endless. Let your creative side have fun.

For folks who do like a recipe, below is one a version I made recently. It does have coconut and soy, though if anyone has allergies to either, you can substitute with anything I’ve written about above!

Lemon Blueberry No Bake Cheesecake

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cup gluten, dairy, nut free graham cracker crumbs (I pureed Midel graham crackers)

2 tablespoons vegan butter, melted

two 8 oz containers Tofutti vegan cream cheese, at room temperature

2/3 cup coconut sugar (I like things tart; you may want to sweeten it more)

one tablespoon lemon juice (Meyer lemons are sweeter)

one tablespoon lemon peel (optional, grating fresh lemons are better; store bought dried peel can be bitter)

one teaspoon gluten free vanilla

one cup So Delicious dairy free Coco Whip

one cup fresh blueberries

1/4 cup water

one tablespoon Agave

one tablespoon cornstarch

one tablespoon water

Cooking Instructions:

Combine the graham cracker crumbs with the melted butter and mix until the crumbs are completely moistened. If you need to add a bit more melted butter, do so. Carefully press the crumbs in a glass pie pan to cover the bottoms and sides. Place into the freezer for half an hour.
In a mixer, blend the cream cheese until smooth. Scrape down the sides and bottoms.
Add the coconut sugar and blend for a couple of minutes until completely smooth and not grainy.
Add the lemon juice, lemon peel, and vanilla. Mix well.
Add the Coco Whip, and mix just until blended. Pour into the prepared crust.
In a small saucepan on the stove top, mix the blueberries with the water and agave and bring to a boil over medium heat.
Once boiling, mix the cornstarch with the water and blend until smooth. While stirring the blueberries, add the cornstarch mixture and keep stirring until the blueberries thicken. Remove from the heat.
Carefully places spoonfuls of the blueberry mixture on the top of the cheesecake. Use a knife to run through the berries to create a pretty pattern and to mix the berries a bit into the top layer of the cheesecake.
Refrigerate for at least four hours.
Enjoy!

Creative Cooking: Dairy Free Dark Chocolate Mousse

June 2, 2016PajamaLiving dairy free, egg free, gluten free, lesson, nut/peanut free, reduced refined sugar Leave a comment

“But I want it quick and easy!”

I’ve already confessed to being a lazy cook, someone who likes to make a good meal with the least amount of effort. Now, I confess that I’m also a very impatient cook. If I want to make something, I rarely like to wait the time it takes for something to get cold or to reach room temperature, and I never have patience if I try someone else’s recipe and it fails, making it a waste of my time.

Recently one of my daughter’s really wanted a chocolate mousse, but with my dairy allergy we couldn’t make it with heavy cream. Many online recipes call for using coconut milk which I have done in the past for making a whipped cream. The problem is that it doesn’t always work. Sometimes you purchase a can of coconut milk, put it the fridge, and it doesn’t solidify properly. Other times, the coconut milk tastes a little off, making your mousse not as palatable. And in both scenarios, you’ve had to wait for the coconut milk to chill, only to be disappointed.

So, we then looked at recipes which used tofu, but we found many of those recipes to be too sweet because people wanted to cover the tofu taste and did so with sugar. We also discovered that many of the tofu recipes either still called for the use of heavy cream or used almond milk, both of which I can’t have. In addition, a bunch of the recipes required a wait time for the tofu to get to room temperature or required a complicated process of straining the tofu mousse after making it.

Undaunted, though, I decided I’d make a mousse to my liking in taste, texture, and time spent. So I pulled out two cold 16 ounce containers of silken tofu and went to work. Since the process of straining the mousse seemed to be because people wanted a creamy texture which would be marred by chunks of tofu, I decided that I’d simply puree the tofu completely smooth first with my hand blender. This would eliminate any additional work needed later. And it worked really well.

Next, after looking at the too sweet recipes, many of which called for two cups of chocolate chips for one package of tofu plus additional sugar, I figured that for the two tofu packages, one 10 ounce package of Enjoy Life allergy friendly mini chocolate chips (about one and a half cups) with no addition of any other sugar products would suffice. I microwaved the chips in a large four cup measuring bowl for one minute, stirred, and then microwaved them for another 20 seconds so that when I stirred the chips, they were melted and smooth.

Because I knew that adding the warm, melted chips to the cold tofu would result in the chocolate becoming solid again, I decided that I’d adopt the tempering process one uses with eggs to the chocolate. I added a couple of spoonfuls of the cold tofu to the warm chocolate and blended it well with the hand blender. I repeated the process three times, and then added the entire chocolate mixture into the rest of the smooth tofu, using my hand blender to completely blend the chocolate and tofu together.

When we tasted the mousse, we realized that while cutting the amount of chips made for a less sweet mousse, it also made for less of a chocolate taste, too, so I added two tablespoons of Hershey’s Special Dark unsweetened cocoa powder with 1/2 tsp of gluten free vanilla and blended one more time with the hand blender until everything was smooth and creamy. We divided the mousse among eight dishes and sprinkled chopped dairy free chocolate pieces on top as a garnish.

The entire process from start to finish was less than ten minutes, and by the time we were done eating dinner, the mousse had cooled enough in the fridge to make for a delicious impromptu dessert!

Dairy Free Dark Chocolate Mousse

Ingredients:

Two 16 oz containers of silken tofu

10 oz package Enjoy Life mini chocolate chips

2 tablespoons Hershey’s Special Dark unsweetened cocoa powder

1/2 tsp gluten free vanilla

Cooking Instructions:

Puree the tofu completely smooth first with a hand blender. If you don’t have a hand blender, use a food processor or blender. The key is to make it completely smooth and creamy.
Microwave the chips in a large four cup measuring bowl for one minute, stir, and then microwave them for another 20 seconds so that when you stir the chips, they are melted and smooth.
Add a couple of spoonfuls of the cold tofu to the warm chocolate and blended it well with the hand blender. Repeat the process three times, and then add the entire chocolate mixture into the rest of the smooth tofu, using the hand blender to completely blend the chocolate and tofu together.
Add the Hershey’s Special Dark unsweetened cocoa powder with the vanilla and blend one more time with the hand blender until everything is smooth and creamy.
Divide the mousse evenly among eight dishes and sprinkled chopped dairy free chocolate pieces on top as a garnish.

Cooking Techniques: Croquettes

May 28, 2016PajamaLiving dairy free, gluten free, nut/peanut free Leave a comment

“But you play that, not eat it!”

I confused my son last week because I made croquettes (kro-kets), and he thought I said, “Croquet (kro-kay).” He thought it was funny that we were going to eat the game! And of course, croquettes actually look like little balls, so throughout the entire meal, he kept pretending that he was hitting them through croquet hoops.

If you aren’t familiar with croquettes, the name comes from the French, but they’re simply chopped up meat or chicken or cheese or vegetables or fish or potato or rice or quinoa or beans or combinations of all these, rolled in breadcrumbs or seeds or nuts and then cooked. For me, croquettes are a lovely way to use up leftovers. They’re versatile, not only in what you can put into them, but the way you can make, cook, and serve them. Plus if you serve them for company, the French name makes them think you’ve done something special. *grin*

Croquettes are quite easy to make, especially if you’re beginning with leftovers. The most common recipes you’ll find online are for ones made with mashed potatoes, either alone or in combination with meat, chicken, cheese, or vegetables. You’ll usually find, too, that they’re fried in some way, whether deep-fried or pan-fried, but they can be just as good baked. Below I’ll give you some tips for how to go about making your own.

The Main Ingredients: What’s important to know about croquettes is that no matter what you use, smaller is better. You don’t want large chunks in your croquettes. Because you’ll be rolling the mixture into balls, the smaller the pieces of meat or vegetables, the easier it will be for them to adhere to one another. I use my food processor to zoop at least one of the ingredients into almost a paste – potatoes, butternut squash, chicken, fish, rice, quinoa, beans, etc… all work well. Then I process the rest of the ingredients into tiny pieces which will mix well into the more paste-like ingredient. The reason I made croquettes last week was because I had some leftover chicken breasts which weren’t enough to serve as another meal for the whole family, so I processed them into a paste and added finely chopped cooked zucchini, mushrooms, and broccoli (also leftovers).

The Seasonings: You can season croquettes however you like. Salt and pepper, of course, but herbs (basil, oregano, thyme, rosemary, chervil, sage, mint, dill, tarragon, marjoram, etc…) and spices (allspice, cayenne, cardamom, coriander, tumeric, cumin, paprika, nutmeg, cinnamon, garlic, ginger, cloves, mustard, onion, saffron, etc…) of your choosing are great, too. If you are going to eat the croquettes by themselves, you should season more heavily. If you are going to serve them with a sauce, then the croquettes can be more plain because the sauce will give them flavor.

The Binder: It’s important that your ingredients hold together to keep their shape. If you do as I do and puree one of the ingredients into a paste, then the rest of your ingredients will stick to that. It’s one of the reasons why so many croquette recipes are made with potatoes. Potatoes are naturally glutinous. If you want all your ingredients to be small, solid pieces, though, then you’ll need something to hold them together. Most anything works. Some recipes use eggs. Others call for mayonnaise or sour cream or yogurt. Many just moisten the ingredients with a little bit of liquid like chicken or vegetable broth or milk and add some flour or bread crumbs to give the vegetables or meat something to adhere to. Whatever you choose to do is fine. What’s important is that your ingredients can be shaped into balls, so if they can’t and won’t stick together, try something different.

The Shaping: Whatever ingredients you use and however you choose to bind the croquettes, I recommend that you chill the mixture before you shape the croquettes. Unless your ingredients are super sticky, chilling the mixture will help them to adhere to another better. I use a quarter cup measuring cup to form my croquettes but you can certainly make them smaller or larger. Whatever size you make, though, having them be uniform will allow them to cook evenly if you bake them or help you to time them consistently if you’re frying them.

The Coating: After you’ve shaped your main croquette ingredients into balls, you need to coat them with something. Usually they are coated in bread crumbs. I like to make my own with gluten free bread, but you can use store bought bread crumbs. What’s important is that your crumbs be very fine. Texture is very important to the taste of the croquettes. If you opt to use something other than bread crumbs, there are many options: cracker crumbs, finely ground nuts or seeds, flour, etc… Once you decide on your coating, you can decide how you want to adhere the bread crumbs (or other choice) to the croquette balls. You can roll the balls in beaten eggs, in milk, in broth, in mayonnaise, in just about anything which will help the bread crumbs stick to the croquettes. I find that eggs make for a crispier croquette, mayonnaise (or something similar like sour cream or yogurt) for a moister croquette, and milk and broth for softer croquettes, so you can choose.

The Cooking: If you want to deep fry them, it’s best to make sure you have enough oil to completely cover the croquettes. You also want to heat your oil as hot as you can. I have a deep fryer which heats to 374 degrees but if you heat oil in a pan stove-top, you can usually get the oil to about 350 degrees. The hotter your oil, the more quickly the croquettes will cook and the less oil they will absorb. Since your ingredients in the croquettes are already cooked, all you’re doing is making the croquette warm and crispy, so usually just two to three minutes is all they need to cook.

If you want to pan fry the croquettes, you simply need enough oil to brown all the sides of the croquettes. Having your skillet on medium high is good. Simply place the croquettes in the skillet and allow them to brown on one side before turning them over to brown on the other. When making the croquettes in a skillet, they usually take about four to five minutes per side.

My preferred method for making croquettes is to actually bake them because they’re healthier that way. I line a pan with aluminum foil which I’ve crinkled and very lightly grease the foil with olive oil. I place the croquettes on the foil and then lightly brush them with olive oil. I preheat my oven to 450 degrees and bake the croquettes for about 20 minutes, turning them halfway through.

The Sauces: Croquette sauces are as varied as the ways you can make the croquettes. You can dip them into a barbecue sauce, a cheese sauce, a tomato sauce, a lemon sauce, a mustard sauce, a garlic sauce, an avocado sauce, a dill sauce – if you can imagine it, you can make it. What’s important is to think about the ingredients you used in the croquettes and to match a flavor which would complement the croquettes. So, for example, if you used ham and potatoes, maybe a mustard sauce. If you made fish croquettes, maybe a lemon-dill sauce. What’s fun is if you make croquettes and serve them with a couple of different sauces for the family to try.

The Coating:

The Cooking:

Cooking Techniques: Stir Fry

April 30, 2016PajamaLiving dairy free, egg free, gluten free, lesson, low fat, nut/peanut free, reduced refined sugar, soy free Leave a comment

“It was magnificent!”

Our family had a recent opportunity to attend a concert my oldest was performing in which was her women’s Glee club singing with Cornell’s men’s Glee club. Over 120 voices combined in four part harmony to create a most wonderful listening experience. What was amazing was listening to the individual voices even as their voices melded to become one united sound.

I thought about this when I received an email asking about how to make a good stir fry. Stir fry is food’s equivalent to a choir. Separate types of food becoming one dish where the tastes of the individual food remains even as their flavors meld to create a delicious stir fry.

Too often, though, people think of stir fry as something difficult. “Well, I don’t have a wok,” some say. “It’s too much chopping,” others say. I’ve also heard, “I never have the proper ingredients.” The fact, though, is that stir fry can be easy, quick, and done without a wok. It’s a great way to use up leftovers or to make when you only have a little bit of a variety of food items available. It’s also versatile and can be made any number of one thousand and one ways, not to mention stir fry is very accommodating for people with food allergies.

The Pan: The reason people like woks is that their curved shape allows you to cook at different temperatures at the same time. The bottom, which is closest to the heat is hotter and the temperature gets increasing cooler as you get to the top. This means you can move cooked foods toward the top and add newer food to the bottom to begin cooking on the hottest part, and then you simply mix everything together in the end. The shape of a wok also allows you to cook in different ways. The food that hits the hot bottom sears which traps flavor into the veggies or protein. When the sauce is added, though, moisture rises in the concave center of the convex wok, allowing the foods near the middle to top of the pan to be braised, which softens the food without making it mushy. If you don’t have a wok, though, you can still make a good stir fry. The key is simply to use a skillet which is just slightly larger than your burner and which has at least 2 in sides, which most of the larger skillets have these days. The center closer to the burner will get hotter than the edges of the skillet which allows you to move food to cooler sections of the pan, and the higher sides will allow you to braise. If you don’t have a large skillet with 2 in sides, you can also simply cook in smaller batches, cooking the veggies and protein separately, then mixing the two, and thickening the sauce separately and adding it to the mixed vegetables and protein. Doing everything separately doesn’t add time, it only adds another dish, and if you use the dish you’ll ultimately be serving the food in, then it won’t even do that!

The Veggies: All good stir fry dishes have an assortment of vegetables. Varying what goes into the dish can make for a colorful presentation as well as provide a variety of nutrients, textures, and flavors. People tend to get hung up on what they see as a “traditional” stir fry with bamboo shoots and baby corn and water chestnuts, but virtually any vegetable can go into a stir fry, so whatever you may have on hand works: broccoli, green beans, carrots, peppers, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, spinach, sweet potato, zucchini, squash, bean sprouts,leeks, asparagus, beets, radishes, mushrooms, onions, eggplant, and of course, baby corn, water chestnuts and bamboos as well. What’s key is cooking your vegetables uniformly. This means chopping vegetables of similar texture into the same size. It may also mean that you start vegetables which may take longer to soften like carrots and sweet potato first and adding greens like spinach or kale at the end. What’s nice about stir fry is that your goal isn’t to cook the vegetables for a long time; it’s to cook them just long enough for their colors to become bright and deep. You want the veggies to be still have some of their crunch and crispy-ness, not for them to be mush. For folks who don’t want to do any chopping or prep at all, nowadays you can buy your vegetables pre-chopped in the vegetable section. You can also used frozen chopped veggies, which is what I tend to do because then I always have veggies on hand.

The Protein: A stir fry doesn’t need to have protein but if you’d like to add protein, just about any type can go into a stir fry. Beef, pork, chicken, shrimp, scallops, tofu, beans. As with the vegetables you want the protein to be able to cook quickly and uniformly, so make sure all pieces are similar size. Cutting the protein into smaller pieces allows you to use less, increases it’s ability to blend in with the vegetables, and spreads its flavor. Most recipes will tell you to sear the meats like beef, chicken and pork first and then to move them to the cooler section of the wok or skillet while you cook the vegetables and then to mix the two together, adding the sauce. This allows the meats to begin cooking their cooking process with the searing but then finishes the cooking with the braising which keeps the meat from becoming tough and dry. When using protein like tofu or softened beans or seafood, though, it’s often better to cook those at the last minute, just before you add the sauce because they usually only need a couple of minutes to cook, and overcooking them will make them tough or fall apart. For folks worried about the prep and chopping for these, you can find pre-sliced tofu and meats at the grocery store. For seafood such as scallops, I use the frozen variety; I simply thaw them in cold water for about 15 minutes and throw them in. You can also simply used leftovers from previous meals which you throw in at the last minute just to rewarm.

The Sauce: A good stir fry will have some flavor added more than just your veggies and protein. What you do can vary, though. If you don’t want a sauce, you can simply use herbs and spices. Stores carry premixed blends for specifically adding to stir fry. You can also experiment with herbs and spices to see what you like. For me fresh ginger, garlic, and green onions are my preferred flavors. If using dried herbs and spices, you’ll want to add them to the veggies and to the protein as you begin cooking them so the flavor have time to meld. If using fresh, add them at the end. If you opt to make a sauce, the key thing to know is that you need a thickener for your sauce. For stir fry usually cornstarch is the thickener of choice but you can also use tapioca starch or arrowroot or any type of flour. You want to whisk the thickener in with your liquid before adding the sauce to the pan to thicken. A good rule of thumb is that one tablespoon of cornstarch, tapioca starch, arrowroot, or flour is needed for every cup of liquid. When cooking the sauce, you’ll want to continually stir the sauce whether you’re cooking the sauce separately or whether you’ve added it to the pan with the vegetables and protein. If you add it the pan with food in the pan, simply move the veggies and protein to the edges of the skillet or up the sides of the wok, so you can thicken the sauce in the middle of the pan. Once thickened, combine the sauce with the veggies and protein. As for ingredients in a stir fry sauce, that all depends on your tastes. For the liquid part you can use soy sauce, hoisin sauce, oyster sauce, broth such as chicken, beef, or vegetable, red or white wine, sherry, etc…, whatever your tastes prefer. To add another dimension of flavor to whatever liquid you choose, you can add different flavored vinegars like apple cider, rice, or red wine, juices like lemon or lime or pineapple, oils like sesame or peanut, etc…. You can also add herbs and spices like garlic, scallions, ginger, shallots, lemongrass, etc…. To make the sauce, simply mix all your chosen ingredients in the ratio that tastes the best to you and which makes one cup’s worth, add your thickener, mix well, and cook over heat, stirring constantly until the sauce thickens to a consistency where it will cling to the veggies and protein in your stir fry. If you find that for some reason you need more thickener, simply mix more of your thickener with the equivalent amount of water and add it to the sauce (so, one teaspoon of cornstarch with one teaspoon of water).

The Sides: Stir fry can be eaten alone or atop something else. Good options if you want to eat them with something else are rice (brown, white, wild, jasmine, etc…), quinoa, barley, noodles such as udon, soba, lo mein or rice noodles, strips of spaghetti squash or zucchini ribbons or chopped cabbage, fresh greens like spinach, kale, arugula or swiss chard, etc…. Use your imagination and be creative.

Cooking Tutorial: Eggless Baked Macaroni and Cheese

April 5, 2016PajamaLiving dairy free, egg free, gluten free, lesson, nut/peanut free Leave a comment

“Third time’s the charm!”

There’s something about the number three…: We all know the folks who sneeze in three’s; there’s that belief that bad things happen in three’s; the occult, divine, and human psychology seem to value the power of three; and of course, we talk optimistically about the third time being the charm.

When I opened up my email to find a question about baked macaroni and cheese, I had to laugh because this will be the third posting about macaroni and cheese, hence my thinking about the number three this morning!

Previously I had posted a general baked macaroni and cheese recipe which was a lightened up version of an Emeril recipe. Then someone asked about a gluten, dairy free version of the lightened version. Now I’m being asked about whether you can make a baked macaroni and cheese without eggs.

The answer, of course, is yes. The purpose of eggs in a baked macaroni and cheese is to create a firm and thick texture. Combining the eggs with evaporate milk also makes for a silkier macaroni and cheese. A baked macaroni and cheese can achieve the same texture and silkiness, though, without eggs. Instead of using evaporated milk, though, you would use regular milk or milk substitute, and because you won’t be using eggs as a thickener you’ll need to make a thick sauce first as opposed to simply combining everything and baking.

Creating a thick sauce: There are a few ways to go about making a thick white sauce:

Roux: You can make a roux by warming 2 tbsp of olive oil (or other plant oil or you can use butter/butter substitute, too, if you’d prefer) and adding 1/4 cup of your preferred type of flour with a whisk. Once the flour mixture has cooked for about 30 seconds, you slowly add 2 cups of your “milk”, stirring constantly to mix the roux into the liquid well. Heat over medium low heat, stirring constantly until the mixture thickens. Then you add your cheese.
Cornstarch: You can simply mix cornstarch into your “milk” and heat over medium low heat, stirring constantly until the mixture begins to thicken. A good ratio is 1 tbsp of cornstarch per cup of milk, so you’d use 2 tbsp of cornstarch in 2 cups of milk, and once it’s thickened, you’d add your cheese.
Flour: You can also simply mix the milk with flour and again heat over medium low heat, stirring constantly until the mixture begins to thicken. Usually 1/2 cup of whatever flour you’d like to use in 2 cups of milk will do the job. Once it’s thickened, you add the cheese.

Creating a creamy cheese sauce: Again there are a few ways you can go about making a creamy cheese sauce:

Using good cheeses: One way to make a silky, gooey, cheesy sauce is to invest in cheeses with good melting and great taste. This means opting for the more full fat cheeses like gouda, fontina, sharp cheddar, etc. If you have no dairy allergies and don’t mind the expense, the taste will be worth the investment. These cheeses, when added to your thickened white sauce, will simply melt into creaminess. Depending on your tastes, you would add one to two cups of shredded cheese to the white sauce.
Mixing types of “cheese”: Another way to create cheesy-ness is to use half shredded cheese of your choice and half cream cheese. Since I have a dairy allergy and can’t use real cheese, I’ve found that the non-dairy cheeses don’t provide the creamy texture, so in my mac and cheese, I mix Daiya mozzarella with tofu cream cheese, and it makes for a lovely creamy sauce. So, once my white sauce is thick, I add the mozzarella and let it begin to melt, stirring constantly; then I add the cream cheese and keep stirring until both the mozzarella and the cream cheese have completely melted into the sauce. Depending on your taste, you would use 8 oz of the mozzarella and then add between 1/2 cup to 1 cup of the cream cheese to the white sauce.
Adding sour cream or yogurt: A third way to create a silky texture is to add either sour cream or yogurt to the cheese sauce. After you’ve made the cheese sauce the way you prefer, simply mix in yogurt or sour cream until it’s well blended. Depending on your tastes, you would add between 1/2 to 1 cup.

Using the best noodles: For macaroni and cheese the best noodles to use are ones with nooks and crannies, so pastas like elbows, shells, penne, rotini are all good choices. What’s key for baked macaroni and cheese is to only cook the noodles until al dente, which means they are mostly cooked but still a little sturdier in texture. The reason you slightly undercook them is because the noodles will cook more in the oven during the baking and you don’t want them to become mushy. Because of my wheat allergies, I like to use a quinoa elbow or shell variety which adds some protein to the dish.

Being creative with add-ins: Yes, you can make a straight mac and cheese but additions to the dish can intensify the flavor and texture. My children like ours best when I add chopped up bits of turkey ham or turkey sausage with chopped up bits of zucchini or broccoli, but you can opt to add whatever you’d like — chicken, spinach, peppers, bacon, tomatoes, etc….

Choosing spices and herbs: Many flavors complement cheese so you can be imaginative in your choices. I like to combine cumin, nutmeg, onion powder, black pepper, and oregano. Sometimes I simply add some red pepper flakes. Other times we opt for thyme and sage. Think about the type of cheese you’re using and what you’re adding in, and experiment with flavors.

Assembling the macaroni and cheese: The best way I’ve found to make a good macaroni and cheese is to cook my noodles al dente and then cool them with cold water, rinse and put into a bowl. Then I mix the noodles with my add-ins and spices and herbs. Then I make the cheese sauce, also adding spices and herbs to the sauce. Then I combine the cheese sauce with the noodles, before putting the entire contents of the bowl into a greased glass casserole pan.

The topping: Baked macaroni and cheese can be topped in many ways:

Cheese: Most people simply put shredded cheese on top of the macaroni and cheese casserole. This adds another level of gooeyness.
Bread crumbs: If you mix bread crumbs with herbs and spices and either a plant oil or butter and spread it evenly over the macaroni, you’ll get a nice crispy contrast to the creamy macaroni.
Add-ins on top: Another way to top the macaroni is with more of the add-ins, so sprinkling chopped bits of bacon or broccoli on top. This makes for a colorful presentation of the baked macaroni and cheese and lets folks know what else might be on the inside.
Creative toppings: Some folks like to be a bit more creative in their toppings and add foods like crushed potato or tortilla chips or crushed corn flakes. Use your imagination and see what flavor combinations work best.
Herbs: Another way to make for a pretty and tasty baked macaroni and cheese is to sprinkle fresh chopped herbs on top immediately after the dish comes out of the oven. So, adding chopped fresh basil or mint or thyme — experiment and see what you like.

Baking the macaroni and cheese: Most dishes cook well in a preheated 350 degree oven for about 30 minutes. Because everything is already cooked, you simply need the casserole to set and become hot and for your topping to melt or become browned and toasty, depending on what you chose to use.

The Scoop: Zucchini Bundt Cake

March 31, 2016PajamaLiving dairy free, gluten free, informational, nut/peanut free Leave a comment

“Please let me do that….”

I am envied by many of my female friends because my husband is a godsend. He washes dishes even if I don’t ask. If clean laundry is sitting on the bed, he will fold and put his away instead of moving it to ironing board so he can get into bed. Because of his job, he’s home during the witching hour and will help set the table or drive the children to baseball, dance or guitar lessons. On Saturday mornings when we clean the house as a family, he vacuums and dust mops.

I thank God every single day for him because I know that I’m blessed to have such a husband. There are two things, however, which I rarely ask my husband to help with – cooking and making the bed – for the same reason. Both require an attention to details which my more conceptually-minded husband often forgets.

With the beds: Growing up as a military brat, I believe beds are to be made with tight corners and nary a wrinkle in the sheets. My husband thinks that if the sheet is mostly covering the bed, he’s done well.

With the cooking: The idea that you have to actually pay attention to what you are cooking is foreign to my husband. We have been together 23 years, and he still burns his grilled cheese sandwiches because when an academic thought pierces his brain, he forgets that he’s grilling a sandwich and walks away to his computer, only remembering the sandwich when either the smell of burnt bread reaches the office or I discover the sandwich on the stove with no husband in sight.

Paying attention to details is important… especially when it comes to baking. I was reminded of this when I received an email about a disaster a friend had trying to make a Bundt cake. Bundt is a trademark name for a pan with fluted ridges and a tube in the center of the pan. Nowadays you can find a myriad of differently shaped Bundt pans on the market. Bundt pans are designed to distribute heat more quickly and more evenly to the cake batter, and the tube in the center allows denser batter to cling and rise more effectively.

As such, recipes designed specifically for Bundt pans tend to be moister, denser cake batters. They often include fillings like fruit or nuts and tend to require more eggs than regular cake batters. Because this is the case, if you try to bake a Bundt cake recipe in a regular flat cake pan, you’ll usually get a cake which hasn’t risen as well and which is usually more cooked at the edges than the center. If you decide you want to make a Bundt cake recipe in a regular cake pan, you’re better off dividing the batter between two smaller pans over trying to cook the Bundt cake recipe in regular 9 x 13 pan, even though the batter amount will fit such a pan.

The converse is not true, however. If you have a regular 9 x 13 cake recipe, you can substitute a Bundt pan without fear of a cake disaster. There are a couple of things to keep in mind when using a Bundt pan, though:

One, it’s very important to prepare Bundt pans well. The same ridges which make for a beautiful Bundt cake, also make for a disaster if the cake sticks to them and won’t come out of the pan. With most cakes, I don’t grease; I simply line the cake pans with parchment paper. With Bundt pans, however, I not only grease, I grease so that not a single crevice, line, spot on either the sides or the tube is missed. Then I carefully and evenly coat the grease with flour, cocoa powder or coconut sugar, depending on what type of Bundt cake I’m making.

The second important consideration is cooling the cake before removing it from the Bundt. If you try to remove a Bundt cake from the pan while it’s still warm, the cake is more likely to stick. If the pan is prepared well, however, and you wait until the cake is mostly cooled, the cake will release from the pan more cleanly. It also helps to run a butter knife around all the edges, including the center.

To help my friend with her Bundt cake disaster, I decided to create a recipe of my own using the original as a jumping off point. She had wanted to make her recipe gluten free but the brown rice flour blend she used wasn’t as structurally sound as one needs for a sturdier Bundt cake. As such, I created my own flour blend which combined sorghum, fava bean, garbanzo bean, oat, sweet rice, and tapioca flours with just a little bit of xanthan gum. The heartier high fiber, high protein flours would lend depth to the cake.

Her recipe had came out a bit oily because the large amount of oil just soaked into the brown rice flour blend. I opted to include ripe mashed bananas into the recipe and reduce the oil to 1/2 cup of safflower oil. I also replaced the sugar with Agave which allowed me to reduce the sweetener amount to only 1/2 cup. My friend’s cake was supposedly a Spice Bundt cake but it only called for cinnamon. I added cardamom and also decided to include shredded zucchini because veggies are a wonderful way to add moisture to a cake as well as natural vitamins. My last change was to swap out 1/2 cup of allergy friendly mini chocolate chips for the cup of chopped nuts, because unfortunately I have a tree nut allergy.

I didn’t change the eggs because we don’t have any allergies or health issues related to eggs but folks who do can always swap liquid egg whites for the whole eggs or ground flaxseed mixed with water.

The resulting cake, of which I made two, were met with appeals for the recipe when I served them at a workshop and at a bible study on the same day.

Zucchini Bundt Cake

Ingredients:

2 1/2 cup gluten free flour blend* (recipe below)

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground cardamom

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup Enjoy Life mini chocolate chips

1 cup mashed ripe bananas

1 cup shredded zucchini

1/2 cup safflower oil

1/2 cup Agave

3 whole eggs (or 3/4 cup liquid egg whites or 3 tbsp flaxseed mixed with 9 tbsp water)

1 tbsp vinegar (white or apple cider)

Baking Instructions:

Thoroughly grease and then flour a normal 12 cup Bundt pan and preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
Combine the flour, baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, cardamom, and salt. Add the mini chocolate chips. Set aside.
Mix together the bananas, zucchini, agave, oil, and eggs.
Combine the dry ingredients with the wet, adding the vinegar. Mix well, until everything is incorporated together.
Pour the batter evenly into the Bundt pan and bake until the cake is golden, risen and a toothpick in the center comes out clean, usually about 30 to 35 minutes. (I usually check around 25 minutes and go from there.)

*Gluten Free Flour Blend:

1 cup tapioca flour, 1 cup sorghum flour, 1/2 cup garbanzo bean flour, 1/2 cup fava bean flour, 1 cup sweet rice flour, 1/2 cup gluten free oat flour, 2 tsp xanthan gum. Mix well. Make enough flour for two cakes.

Pajama Living

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Cooking Tutorial: Eggless Baked Macaroni and Cheese

The Scoop: Zucchini Bundt Cake

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