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