Flageolet Beans with Smoked Paprika

This is a tasty dish to serve in the fall using your locally grown peppers, cayenne peppers, leeks, and garlic, along with your fabulous imported flageolet beans. This is a bean stew which would go well with chicken, pork or just plain bread and a salad.

1 leek, cleaned and sliced
2 tbsp olive oil
3 small green or long italian peppers, deseeded and cut into strips
1 dried cayenne pepper, chopped finely
2 clove of garlic, peeled and crushed
1/2 tsp smoked spanish paprika
4 small tomatoes, chopped coarsely
1 pound flageolet beans, soaked and pressure cooked until done (pressure cook about 12 minutes after the pressure is up - use plenty of water), then drain
3 cups homemade chicken stock
1 teaspoon sugar
3/4 to 1 teaspoon salt

Clean the leek and slice it thinly. In a 12" non-stick pan, heat the oil for 30 seconds then add the sliced leek. Stir and fry for 2-3 minutes until beginning to soften then add the green peppers and the cayenne pepper. Stir and fry for 3 - 4 minutes, then add the garlic and the smoked paprika. Cook for another minute over medium heat. Add the tomatoes and the chicken broth, stirring all the while. Cook the this sauce for another 2 minutes then add the drained flageolet and cook for another 3-4 minutes until heated through. Season to taste with sugar, salt and pepper. Adjust the seasoning as needed.

The quality of this dish is entirely dependent on the quality of the chicken stock you use, so it is best to make your own.

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free!

© Gf-Zing! | Alice DeLuca

White Chocolate and Strawberry Dessert

For this dessert, you need fresh local strawberries, high quality white chocolate (gluten free) in a bar form, and gluten free orange liqueur.

Find a bowl that will hold 3 cups exactly when filled to the top with water. This will be serving dish. Set it aside.

Melt a 4-ounce bar of gluten free white chocolate over hot water. Take it off the heat, add 1 Tablespoon sugar, 1 Tablespoon gluten free orange liqueur, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla and 1 ounce of cream cheese. Beat well until mixed.

In a different bowl beat 1/2 cup of heavy cream until stiff. Fold in the white chocolate mixure.

Put enough strawberries (or other berries) in the serving bowl to cover the bottom of the bowl. Spoon the whipped cream/white chocolate mixture on top. Smooth the top and chill the dessert for 3 hourss or overnight. This will serve 3-4 people.

You can triple the mixture, make a crumb crust in a spring-form pan, and triple the amount of berries, put the berries on the crust, add the cream mixture, chill, then cut the dessert like a cake (since it has a crust.)

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free.

© Gf-Zing! | Alice DeLuca

Mujaddara - a Lebanese lentil dish

Inspired by a wonderful Mujaddara from a Lebanese restaurant in Troy, New York, we set out to find out how to make the dish at home. Luckily, we found a good recipe in the interesting Arab Cooking on a Saskatchewan Homestead, by Habeeb Salloum (published by the University of Regina, 2005). The secret to this terrific dish for lentil lovers is the enormous quantity of fried onions. We have found that adding a cup of turnip gratin to the finished dish makes it even better!

Here is the revised recipe:

Wash one cup of regular lentils (the inexpensive kind found in any grocery store), and put them in a pan with 5 cups of water. Bring to a boil, cover and cook over medium heat of 15 minutes, then add 1/4 cup white rice , cover and cook another 20 minutes until both the lentils and the rice are cooked.

Melt 2 Tablespoons of ghee (or butter), but ghee is better, in a frying pan and fry 3 thinly sliced big spanish onions for 10 minutes, stirring, until they are golden brown. (The original recipe called for an alarming 6 Tablespoons of butter for this process.) Do not use vidalia or sweet onions for this - they do not break down or brown in the same way as spanish onions.

Stir the fried onions in to the cooked lentils, then add 1 teaspoon salt, 1/2 teaspoon fresh ground pepper, 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin, and 1/4 teaspoon hot New Mexico chili powder. If you have an extra cup of turnip gratin, add that as well.

Stir everything well, and serve hot with yogurt (add a clove of grated garlic to make a sauce) and salad.

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free.

© Gf-Zing! | Alice DeLuca

White Hakurei Turnip Gratin

The first turnips of the spring have arrived, courtesy of a local CSA. We have learned to love the strong umami of white hakurei turnip prepared with cream and seasonings. In many recently issued cookbooks there is a complete dearth of recipes for turnip, but if you turn to the older books, notably the 1961 New York Times Cookbook by Craig Claiborne, or the stellar 1979 From Market to Kitchen Cookbook by Perla Meyers, you will find many recipes for this neglected vegetable. The well-cooked turnip will take you on a time-travel journey back to the days when real vegetables, packed with flavor, made people grateful for every meal.

An excellent recipe for a gratin of white turnip appeared in Gourmet magazine 2007 but that recipe called for a whole cup of heavy cream and a matching cup of grated parmesan. It was hard on the arteries and on the wallet, and required both top of the stove and oven baking. So, we have modified it slightly for recession and health reasons. Serve the turnips with a small steak, and a salad. You will want to obtain more fresh spring turnips, once you try them this way.

Melt 1 Tablespoon butter in a non-stick 12 inch skillet (make sure you have a top to fit the pan.)

Wash one bunch of white hakurei turnips well, top and tail them, and slice them in 1/4 inch slices. Save the turnip greens for another recipe. You don't need to peel the turnips. Layer the slices in the pan. Sprinkle the sliced turnips with 1 teaspoon dry thyme, 3/4 teaspoon salt, 1/4 tsp. freshly ground pepper, and 1/8- 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper.

Cook for 3 minutes over medium heat, then pour 1/2 cup heavy cream and 1/2 cup gluten-free chicken stock over the top. Cover and cook the turnips over medium heat for 20 minutes. The turnips will be completely cooked through, but there will be considerable liquid left in the pan. Remove the cover and cook to reduce the liquid. When most of the liquid has reduced (about 5-10 minutes), and the sauce is thickened, grate finely 1/2 cup of fresh parmesan cheese evenly over the top. Watch closely as the cheese melts and make sure that the liquid does not entirely cook away.

Serve the turnips hot. The recipe is supposed to serve 6, but maybe realistically it would only serve 4, once they discover that they love turnips!

If you should happen to have a cup or so of the finished dish left over, by all means add it to a lentil dish like Mujaddara.

Make sure all your ingredients, including the spices, are gluten-free.

© Gf-Zing! | Alice DeLuca

Salad for two, with fried eggs

We are all excited that the first food share has arrived from a local CSA - a local community agriculture program. The first share of the year included beautiful red lettuce, spinach, radishes, white turnips, and bok choy.

For this salad, we chose to use what was in the cupboard to approximate a recipe from the Hamersley's cookbook - Bistro Cooking at Home. This is a great spring meal after a hard day's work. It makes you realize how a few simple things are all that are needed for a truly fine meal!

Make a whole red lettuce ready for a salad dressing (clean and tear the salad). Fry a couple of slices of gluten-free bacon until crispy, then drain the fat and reserve the bacon and a tablespoon of the melted fat. Toast up some regular wheat bread for the wheatavores, and a couple of slices of Glutino bread for the celiacs. Set out some butter, the bacon pieces, and a couple of glasses of Riserva Ducale Chianti, 2005.

Next, make the dressing:

Mix: 1 teaspoon gluten-free Dijon mustard

1/2 a medium shallot, chopped fine

1/2 a clove of garlic, minced

1/4 teaspoon dried thyme

salt

fresh pepper

1 Tablespoon red wine vinegar

1/2 a Tablespoon sherry wine vinegar (that's 1 1/2 teaspoons)

1 Tablespoon reserved bacon fat

2 Tablespoons olive oil

Dress the lettuce, then fry 4 eggs, over easy, in the remaining bacon fat. Season them with salt and pepper. Serve the dressed salad with fried eggs, bacon pieces, toast and butter on the side, and a glass of chianti!

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten-free!

© Gf-Zing! | Alice DeLuca

Banana Coconut Ice Cream

It's time for the Memorial Day barbecue, and with 6 extra-ripe bananas on the countertop, our minds wandered - what to do, should we make 4 loaves of gluten free banana bread? No, and although deep-fried banana fritters were sounding pretty good what ended up seeming much better was homemade ice cream.

This recipe is refreshing, and not high in fat. The bananas have a slight tartness, and the dulce de leche's deep brown color covers up the color of the overripe bananas, making an attractive finished ice cream. There are no egg yolks or heavy cream in this ice cream, but the texture is creamy. The major ingredient is banana.

Make the following mixture (use a potato masher to mix), and chill in the refrigerator for a few hours:

3 cups 1% milk

1 cup coconut milk

2/3 cup sugar

6 very overripe bananas, too mushy for anything but banana bread

13.4 ounce can of gluten free Dulce de Leche (or you can make your own)

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/8 teaspoon cardamom

1/8 teaspoon cloves

1/8 teaspoon nutmeg

The mixture will be brown, like caramel. After the mixture has chilled, freeze it in an ice cream maker according to the directions.

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free!

© Gf-Zing! | Alice DeLuca

Gluten Free Trifle

It's spring and the temptation to purchase strawberries is renewed again. Unfortunately, "strawberry disappointment" follows, when the first strawberries to arrive in the supermarket, while red, are not flavorful! Time to make trifle, but how to do this in an interesting and gluten-free way?

We searched the internet for gluten free trifle recipes, and found the most interesting recipe, not quite gluten-free and way too complicated, at this address: Teafactory. Even though this recipe is "simplified" it is still too complex for ordinary humans like us, and it includes puff pastry which is not gluten free, and 2 custards. So, we have modified it to a delicious, easy and gluten-free dessert.

At the request of a fan, we have added the measurements for volume, rather than weight, for the dry ingredients, but we strongly recommend using the weights. GF flours can be ground finely or coarse, and that changes the volume tremendously. When we measured the ingredients with tablespoons, we used Koda Farms mochiko, and finely ground cornmeal and garbanzo bean flour from the natural foods store nearby.

Included in the original recipe is a Cardamom Biscuit which is gluten free and a very close textural approximation of an English digestive biscuit, but with a whallopping cardamom punch. This is an excellent cookie in its own right.

You need to make 4 layers: The strawberries, the cookies, the custard, the whipped cream. Use a scale to measure the ingredients.

Berry Jelly:

Make a compote by mixing the following ingredients and simmering them for 20 minutes:

250 grams of strawberries, cut in quarters

40 grams of sugar (3 TB or slightly more)

1 teaspoon amontillado sherry

1 teaspoon lemon juice

(the original recipe includes rose water which we omitted)

When it has cooked for 20 minutes, add 1 envelope of plain gelatin (no flavor) which has been softened in cold water. Do not add the gelatin directly to the strawberries without first softening the powder in water or the gelatin will form globs of glue in a strawberry soup - not what you want. Cool to room temperature then distribute amongst 8 dishes that hold about 1 cup each. Refrigerate these 8 dishes until the strawberry layer has firmed up. (If you do not add the gelatin, the strawberry liquid would soak through the biscuits which are the next layer.)

Cookie layer: (this has been altered to eliminate some refrigerating and freezing steps)

Use a scale to weigh out the ingredients - this really makes a difference!

70g unsalted butter (softened) - about 5 Tb

45g white sugar - about 3 Tb + 1 tsp

25g ground almonds - about 3 Tb + 1 tsp

¼ tsp salt

½ tsp baking powder

35g glutinous rice flour (also called mochiko) - about 4 Tb + 1 tsp

25g cornmeal - about 3 Tb + 1 tsp if finely ground

20g chickpea (garbanzo bean) flour - about 2 Tb + 2 tsp

1 tsp freshly ground cardamom (skin the pods, and grind 1 teaspoon of seeds in a mortar and pestle)

1/2 tsp powdered vanilla from Authentic Foods

1 egg yolk

1. Cream the butter & sugar.
2. Add all the dry ingredients & mix well.
3. Add the egg yolk and mix until a dough forms. Make the dough in to a disk shape.
4. The original recipe calls for chilling the dough for one hour here, but we just proceeded since the air is cold in winter.
5. Get 2 pieces of waxed paper about the size of a cookie sheet. Put 1/8 cup of white rice flour on the bottom piece, put the disk of dough on the flour and turn it over to coat both sides with rice flour. Put the second sheet of waxed paper on top. Roll the dough to 1/8 inch thick and cut cookies in a size that will fit in the dishes that have the strawberry mixture in the bottom. Re-roll the dough as necessary to make 16 cookies (17 if you want to taste one.)
6. preheat the oven to 300F
7. Transfer the cookies to a parchment lined baking sheet and bake for 10-12 minutes until golden. Cool on the pan, then remove them gently and put one cookie on top of the strawberry mixture in each dish. You will have 8 cookies left for the next layer.

Custard layer:

Mix 1 cup 2% milk, 3/4 cup light cream, 1 teaspoon amontillado sherry and one small (3 oz.) package of gluten free instant vanilla pudding. Beat with a whisk until thick. Divide amongst the 8 dishes on top of the cookie layer. Add another cookie on top of this custard.

Whipped cream:

Whip one cup of heavy whipping cream with some sugar to sweeten. Add vanilla or sherry to flavor this whipped cream and distribute on top of the last cookie layer.

Candied nuts (can be omitted):

Taste some pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds to see if their flavor will be an asset to the dish.

In a pan that can be heated relatively hot, put 2 Tb of pumpkin seeds and 2 Tb of sunflower seeds with 2 Tb of sugar. Heat the nuts over medium heat, stirring constantly until the sugar melts and the nuts brown slightly. Transfer to a plate immediately and cool completely. Garnish the top of the whipped cream with these nuts if you want an extra crunch texture.

Make sure all your ingredients are gluten free!

© Gf-Zing! | Alice DeLuca

Gluten Free Cinnamon Rolls

At long last - we had really good gluten free cinnamon rolls. Here is how you make them. Make the dough for dinner rolls described at the Book of Yum website , omitting all flavorings except the salt (don't use rosemary, sun-dried tomatoes, or any of those sorts of things) to make a plain dinner roll dough:

http://www.bookofyum.com/blog/adeenas-gluten-free-rosemary-teff-dinner-roll-recipe-1478.html

Then proceed as follows:

Make a mixture of 1/2 cup brown sugar and 1 teaspoon cinnamon and set aside (you may need more of this mixture depending on how much you put in each roll.) Get out some yellow raisins and set aside.

Put a paper muffin liner in to each part of a 12-cup muffin pan and 6 more cups from another pan (total of 18).

Put about 1/2 cup rice flour on a large piece of wax or parchment paper. Take about 1/2 to 3/4 cup of the mixed plain roll dough and plop it onto the rice flour. The rice flour should be nice and thick on the paper to keep the dough from sticking.

Pat the dough into a rectangle about 7 inches wide by 4 inches tall, and a little less than a 1/2 inch thick. These are rough measurements. Dot the surface with butter (6 small bits of butter, totaling about 1 Tablespoon.) Sprinkle the surface (the whole surface of the rectangle) with a few tablespoons of the brown sugar/cinnamon mixture, and sprinkle with 8-10 raisins, distributing evenly. Very gently, roll the rectangle up like a jelly roll (from the 7 inch side), so that in the end you have a 7 inch long roll. Slice the roll in to 3 equal length sections. Put each section in to a paper-lined muffin cup so that the cut side is facing up. The top of the roll should show some sugar filling. Proceed the same way until you have used up all the dough. As you work, rearrange the remaining rice flour on the paper to provide a nice cushion for the dough.

Set the rolls aside to rise until doubled - this takes about 1/2 hour to 1 hour on a warm radiator. Bake to rolls at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes or until a knife comes out clean.

Allow to cool briefly, then slather each one with some of the following mixture.

2 Tablespoons softened butter

2 cups confectioner's sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

enough fresh orange juice to make a nice frosting

© Gf-Zing! | Alice DeLuca