Caribbean Feast

For my mom's birthday this year, I treated her to a Caribbean feast! I slaved away all day in the kitchen. Um, I mean, I went shopping, made the salad and placed it in the fridge, did as much mise en plas as I could until my mom and sister came home from work and I could get the pans fired up and dinner on the table. All the recipes I used came from Modern Caribbean Cuisine by Wendy Rahamut and the entire meal was dairy, gluten and shrimp free. (This book is AMAZING for anyone looking to cook Caribbean food - LOTS of great recipes that are easy-to-follow and accessible.) My sister agreed to try fish as long as it wasn't shrimp, so the shrimp recipes all had to be placed aside for another time. Since this was a birthday dinner and I was left alone to my own devices, I went through the living room and cabinets and took out some of our fanciest dishes (including some that garnered the "Are those ours?" response from my sister) and washed out wine goblets. I set the dining room table with a tropical table cloth and hung an "Island Party" sign across the china cabinet. Since we eat with our eyes first, I was going to make sure this feast was gorgeous! My sister was in charge of making our frozen strawberry daiquiri mock-tails (can of frozen mix + water + ice + fun straw + tall glass = delicious!)

For our salad, we had tomatoes and avocados (with finely chopped green bell pepper, and onion with minced garlic coated with a olive oil, fresh lime juice, and sugar mixture, and garnished with chives and cilantro). Eating the salad (a bursting-with-delicious-flavors kind of dish) from a wine glass was fun! The glass was the perfect size for the job and it was very easy to see all the ingredients inside.

The main course was plantain-crusted tilapia over a rice dish. The rice was made with onion, celery, thyme, garlic, tomatoes, rice, chicken stock, and coconut milk. I'm a big fan of coconut milk - it is an easy way to add a creamy texture to a dairy free dish. And this wasn't even my substitution - it was written right into the recipe! (Non-American cuisines are a gold mine for gluten and dairy free recipes - the United States seems to sneak wheat and milk in everything!) I found plantain chips in the Mexican aisle at the grocery store and they were delicious to snack on while cooking and helped provide a fun flavor profile to the fish.

Dessert was grilled pineapple with brown sugar and rum. This literally spent three minutes in the broiler before it was done. In my family's traditional style - my mom and I had the dessert a few hours after dinner was finished and the dishes were washed.

I had a lot of fun making an event out of the meal and was proud to showcase some of my dicing and chopping skills. I even got my sister to try fish! My mom loved her birthday dinner and I loved being able to create and share such an elegant meal with my family.

Cooking with Jamie Oliver

I have a major food crush on Jamie Oliver. While at my sickest, I watched Jamie Olive’s Food Revolution on my laptop in bed on the weekends. He keeps talking about how easy it is to eat healthy and cook meals yourself with fresh ingredients and used stir-fry as a gateway into helping ordinary people make some pretty amazing dishes. One night, I made myself a stir-fry and felt a little better. (Possibly because the stir-fry only had a trace amount of gluten-filled soy sauce compared to my normal dinners of pasta…) On one of my most recent adventures through the cookbook stacks at Harold Washington library, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution book caught my eye and I fell in love a little more. The book’s premise of teaching people to cook and pass on the skills and recipes is amazing.

For our Friday night dinner, Eliot and I made Jamie’s Parsnip and Ginger Soup and Super-Quick Salmon Stir-Fry. Both dishes were full of flavor and really highlighted the fresh vegetables we bought from Whole Foods. As a bonus recipe, Eliot fried the salmon skin as an appetizer as we waited for the soup to finish cooking. With the stir-fry, the smells and flavors kept changing with each new ingredient addition - what an alive dish!

Here are the foods in their before and after state!

Salmon skin

Parsnip and Ginger Soup

Super-Quick Salmon Stir-Fry

Cooking for Isiah

My rule when purchasing a cookbook is I need to be able to make (or have the desire to learn to make) at least three recipes. I have started checking out cookbooks from the library first to make sure that the recipes match my cooking style and eating habits. The latest find is Silvana Nardone's Cooking for Isaiah: Gluten-Free & Dairy-Free Recipes for Easy, Delicious Meals.

I'm ordering my own copy on amazon before the book is even due.

Most of her recipes include her flour-blend so I bought another bag of rice flour and bought a container large enough to hold her just-over-ten-cup mixture and dove right in. A flour mixture of that size is quite the investment, especially since I have only worked with smaller mixtures for individual recipes. I went in completely trusting Silvana and it was worth it.

Last Saturday, I bought some ribs (conveniently labeled gluten-free on the back of the packaging - thank you, Hormel!) http://www.hormelfoods.com/brands/glutenfree/default.aspx I made her delicious pineapple-brown sugar barbecue sauce (omitting the hot sauce since my taste buds are not a fan) and made ribs. I have always loved ribs - they are very easy to make. At their simplest, you pour bottled sauce over the ribs on a cookie sheet covered with aluminum foil. But these were amazing! Once cooked, the barbecue sauce just exploded with flavor and richness.

For my side, I made double corn cornbread and hit another home run. This bread tastes like normal bread!!! My recommendation is to make sure that the corn kernels are fully cooked because otherwise they can be a bit chewy while eating. I was particularly excited by this recipe because now I have a bread to eat for Thanksgiving.

And since no meal is complete without dessert, I kept my All-American Traditional theme going with her chocolate chip cookies. When I opened the oven door, I loudly swore in complete shock: the cookies came out of the oven just like cookies are supposed to!! They rose and grew and were everything a chocolate chip cookie should be. When I gave one to Eliot, he proclaimed, "This is how a cookie is supposed to taste." This could easily be passed off as a traditional cookie.

This book is hands down the one book any lactose and gluten free cook NEEDS propped up on their counter. The book is one giant YES! If I ever have the Julie and Julia goal to work my way through an entire cookbook, this would be chosen with no other book even coming in second. Every recipe already takes into consideration the different types of milk and shortenings for cooking. The recipes are all kid tested (her son Isaiah is gluten and dairy-free) and range from traditional favorites to delicious splurges, such as s'mores pancakes. And honestly, only a mom would think to use Fritos to coat chicken tenders. Brilliant!!!

http://www.amazon.com/Cooking-Isaiah-Gluten-Free-Dairy-Free-Delicious/dp/1606521659/ref=sr_1_1?s=gateway&ie=UTF8&qid=1285441129&sr=8-1

Fried Chicken 'n Biscuits

I went to the library on Friday and checked out Roben Ryberg's You Won't Believe It's Gluten-Free. What is truly unique about her book is she gives the same recipe a few different ways using the different flour. So there are multiple recipes for breads that are rice, potato, corn or oat based. These recipes all emphasize the chosen flour so unlike the other cookbooks I'm reading, there is only the need to have one or two special flours - not five or six! A welcome change for my small pantry! She includes recipes for fried chicken. I have not had fried chicken in over a year. Although at some fast food chicken restaurants, I could have a certain variety of chicken that was not made with milk, my choice of sides were extremely minimal and I could never have the biscuit. Growing up, I would eat more than my fair share of biscuits when my mom brought home KFC or Popeye's for dinner! I'm not sure what I loved more - the crispy flour texture surrounding the chicken or the melt-in-you-mouth biscuit.

I set out to make my own fried chicken. I have never fried anything before; I am much more of an oven-baked kind of cook. My small kitchen lacks a deep fryer so I used the last of my cheap cooking oil in one of my pans. I used Roben's recipe for corn-based fried chicken ("special" ingredients are cornstarch and xanthan gum) and used eggs with water for my dredging liquid. Making the fried chicken was fairly easy but a bit messy. In hindsight, I would have cut my chicken pieces smaller and cook them for a few minutes less, but overall, an easy dish to repeat.

For the biscuits, I used her rice-based recipe, substituting rice milk for rice. The result was a very softy and delicious biscuit. It lacks the height of my favorite fast food biscuits, but it was still tasty!

After dinner, I began reading another one of my library books: How to Read a French Fry and Other Stories of Intriguing Kitchen Science by Russ Parsons. I wish I began reading it sooner! The very first chapter is all about the science behind frying, which leads to extremely helpful tips on frying because when you know the why behind cooking, it is much easier to do.

Gluten-Free Girl

I just finished re-reading Gluten-Free Girl: How I Found the Food That Loves Me Back & How You Can Too by Shauna James Ahern.

Amazing.

I initially read this book simultaneously with Gluten-Free for a Healthy Life. Shauna's book is a conversational invitation into her world and experiences with Celiac disease and moving towards a life full of "yes" rather than depriving herself of foods when she went gluten-free. I have already recommended this book to a few people who are looking to know more about Celiac disease and gluten-intolerance.

Shauna recommends shopping from local butchers and at farmer's markets. The last time I went to a butcher shop was when I was a very little girl and accompanied my mom to buy meat for a party. I'm sure I could find a butcher in one of Chicago's ethnic neighborhoods (I'm surrounded by chains in my neighborhood.) Almost religiously, I go to the downtown farmer's market on my Thursday lunch hours. Being able to buy fresh food from a market is so great. Seeing the abundance of foods in season help navigate food choices for upcoming meals.
***The next day***

Two of Shauna's tips are to "Make as much as you can from scratch" and "Only use a packaged product if it says it's gluten-free."

When I initially read that, I was congratulating myself on finding so many incidentally gluten-free products. Even with a list of dozens names gluten can go by, I paid the price by having incidentally gluten-free chicken broth. It was manufactured in the same facility that processes milk and wheat. I used the broth earlier and felt a little sick. I made quinoa with the broth (to give the food some more nutrition) and felt sick when I had about half a cup. Last night, I had about a cup and absolutely crashed. The pain returned in my chest, I had trouble breathing, I lost all energy and could barely string together some coherent thoughts and even went to bed two hours earlier than normal. Well, I think my incidentally-gluten-free broth is the trouble-maker. (And I bought three more boxes of the broth - oops!)

Moral of the story:
Use the chicken broth I already made from scratch myself.
Avoid packaged foods that are surprisingly gluten-free.

When I first found out that I was going to be gluten-free for the rest of my life, I was disappointed because my taste buds were finally maturing and coming alive. My body wanted to be a foodie but my lifestyle was forcing me into a grab-and-go way of eating. I learned to cook foods that I could easily freeze when I was not able to cook more than once a week for a few hours (2 or 3 total). Now, I AM a foodie. Every closed door in my diet means that a few new doors open with foods I have never tried. Nothing seems daunting any more. Reading Gluten-Free Girl has been such an encouragement to me. Here is someone who is a few years into her gluten-free life and what a life it is! She is truly living and loving her food. If you are gluten-free or simply want to better appreciate food or live better, please read her book! It is a guidebook and an uplifting testament from someone who really knows food and the dangers that gluten can cause some people!

Peanut Butter Cookies

I just finished re-reading Bette Hagman's "Living Well Without Wheat: The Gluten-Free Gourmet." The first time I read gf books, I was so hungry to learn everything that I could, I was merely skimming the surface without absorbing anything. So the re-read was much slower and deliberate. Her popover recipe washed away my fears of cooking bread. A few of her bread recipes call for powdered milk, or non-dairy powder for those of us who are lactose intolerant. I have not been able to find this in stores and have not been able to bring myself to buy baby formula as a substitute yet. (I know this day will be coming soon, but I only need a small amount in my baking so cannot justify such a bulky and expensive purchase. Why do none of my good in the city friends have babies whose food I can steal?!?) So I decided to do a cookie recipe instead. I wanted to do something simple before I graduate to more complicated multi-flour recipes, so I went with her Peanut Butter Drops. Three ingredients: eggs, peanut butter, sugar. Here are the reasons why I love these cookies so much:



1) They look like cookies!
2) They taste like cookies!
3) Peanut butter is so good for you! This past week, a number of people have been suggesting that I just eat a jar of peanut butter to help me gain weight.
4) They were so easy to make!
5) I'm willing to share these cookies with friends without being embarrassed!
6) I can be creative.


Once the cookies came out of the oven, I wish that I had a sugar mixture to sprinkle on top. One of my favorite cookie recipes when I was little was Honey Bee Cookies and I have fond memories of sprinkling some sugar mixture on top of them within seconds of my mom pulling the tray out of the oven. (Perhaps brown and white sugar? Or white sugar with cinnamon?) Or even chocolate chips! Since I know have a successful "base" recipe, I feel like I can make them again and again with modifications. And with only two eggs in the recipe, it is super easy to halve the recipe for test batches. As the recipe stands, the cookies are so moist and delicious. The peanut butter (obviously) has such a large presence. These cookies are much better than just having a jar of peanut butter with a spoon!

Gluten-Free for a Healthy Life

My first week and a half of being gluten-free, I stuck to obvious gf foods. I bought a bag of pasta and a box of crackers so I wouldn't go crazy (or starve). I only went to the grocery store for a few things, likes meats and veggies during that time. I knew that I needed to do a major overhaul of my pantry, so tried to weed out all the g-filled food I could. (Thankfully, I spent the two weeks prior expecting to hear a celiac diagnosis, so ate as much of my cookies, crackers, and pasta stockpiles as I could!) I went to the Harold Washington library and found their gluten-free books, checked out a few of them, and read them on my way to my mom's house for the weekend.

The first book I read was Kimberly A. Tessmer, RD, LD's Gluten-Free for a Healthy Life. This book is extremely comprehensive and answers a LOT of questions about going gf. Her conversational yet informative tone lets people realize that this IS possible, it will be hard, but you can do it and do it well. Some of her most valuable sections to the newly diagnosed (or those wondering what exactly gf entails) are her lists of foods to eat, question and avoid. There were a lot of foods and ingredients that I did not necessarily think of when calling to mind the standard wheat, rye, and barely (and sometimes oats.) She also has a section of "Tips from the Experts Themselves" - people who are living gf and eating well. There are a handful of recipes as well as suggestions for gf meals and snacks. I highly, highly recommend this as the first book to read regarding gf and celiac. I used her listing of flours and recipes to make my grocery shopping list and even took the book to the store with me so I could consult it. Tessmer also provides great resources and practical advices for families and children who are gf.

For me, this book gave me so much hope. There is a FAQ section and in it she addresses lactose intolerance and its relationship to gluten intolerance. She says (p 177) "Lactose intolerance is usually only temporary until the condition is under control and the small intestines heals." I constantly remind myself to focus on the word "usually", because my body does not like to respond in the "usual" ways, but even though I will always be gluten-free, I love knowing that one day I can try lactose again and maybe be able to reintroduce that in my diet.

I'm currently rereading this book and am working really hard to not dog ear important pages or highlight every bit of advice since this is a library book. I have read some sections of it aloud to my mom as I help her understand what changes need to be made in my foods, as she always cooks for me when I'm home. (Her recent solution was steaks! Brilliant!) I have added Gluten-Free for a Healthy Life to my "must purchase" book list to add to my growing personal library of cookbook and allergy-related resources.

http://www.amazon.com/Gluten-free-Healthy-Life-Kimberly-Tessmer/dp/156414688X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1279067485&sr=8-1