Easy Easter Lunch

I hosted my first ever holiday this past Easter with my mom and her boyfriend joining me for a culinary feast...and a chance to show off my plates and serving pieces my mom bought me as my Christmas present one year.  Since I was attending Mass a few hours before lunch, I had to be a good chef and have my mise en place in place so I could start the oven within minutes of returning home.  Everything below is very easy to make and I did not create too many dishes.  (The dishwasher did have to run twice that day.)  After lunch, the three of us headed off for a light four mile stroll along Lake Michigan to Montrose Harbor, enjoying the beach, protected bird area (never knew we had that in Chicago), and city skyline.  Then we headed back home for some gluten free angel food cake topped with pineapple and chocolate ice cream.

It was great fun hostessing the holiday as well as enjoying quintessential spring foods.

Here is what I made for our Easter lunch:
Scalloped potatoes: http://southern.food.com/recipe/scalloped-potatoes-85629
   Substitutions: coconut milk, vegan butter, cheddar cheese (I'm only doing small amounts of dairy at a time) with Bob's Red Mill All Purpose Flour
Ham with Peach and Apricot Glaze: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/classic-glazed-ham-recipe/index.html and http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/pineapple-apricot-glaze-recipe/index.html
   Substitutions: used crushed pineapple and its juice
Roasted Asparagus: http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/roasted-asparagus-recipe/index.html
   Substitutions: added a side of bacon.  Just kidding.  I ate all the leftover bacon so had none to spare.
Spring Penne with Bacon: finally, an original recipe!  This is my new favorite and I was thrilled to have lots of leftovers for lunches.  I am also addicted to the Eating Right Gluten Free Penne pasta from Dominick's (Safeway).  It is the best corn based pasta I have had!  And it goes on sale frequently!!

Spring Penne with Bacon

12 oz gluten free penne
2 T olive oil
1/2 lb frozen peas
3 shallots, thinly sliced
1/2 lb cooked bacon cut into small pieces
1 t red pepper flakes
Salt and pepper

Cook the noodles according to the package's directions.
Cook the frozen peas in the microwave for one or two minutes less than recommended.
Add oil to a pan and saute the shallots until tender.  Add the peas, shallots, bacon, and red pepper flakes and cook for another two or three minutes.  Drain the pasta and toss with this mixture.

Happy spring from Windy City Cooking!  Enjoy the glorious spring days ahead!

Gluten Free Bread Bowl Soup

Soup belongs in a bread bowl.  Period.  Just because I am gluten free does not mean that my days of eating soup this delicious way is over!  I used one package of Bob's Red Mill's Gluten Free Homemade Wonderful Bread to form four tasty, you won't believe its gluten free, bread bowls.  After experimenting with their delicious thirteen bean soup mix, I found chorizo to be a great pairing for soup with a kick.

Check out my guest blog post on Bob's Red Mill's site for the recipe and more pictures of the delicious soup! http://www.bobsredmill.com/blog/2012/10/19/windy-city-cooking/  The recipe is gluten free, dairy free and packed with flavor!

Bob's Red Mill and I want you to try this recipe yourself at home!  So much so that WindyCityCooking.blogspot.com is having its first ever giveaway!  Three lucky winners will receive a package of the GF bread mix and the 13 bean soup mix just in time for warming up with a delicious fall soup.  Leave a comment on this entry before November 5, 2012 to be entered.  Let me know what your favorite bean is OR why you love to be gluten free!  Good luck!  And check back on November 6, 2012 for the winners!!

GFDF Lasagna

Lasagna was the first dish I made for my family by myself. I always referred to the no-boil lasagna recipe my mom had clipped from a magazine and kept in the cabinet next to the spaghetti sauce. My small hands were great at layering the noodles, sauce, and cheese in the pan and putting in the oven. This was my most commonly repeated recipe growing up. I’m sure my mom loved it – “Michelle, can you make lasagna?” meant I went to work for five minutes, barely made a mess, and an hour later, a perfect lasagna would come out of the oven and out to the dinner table.

Dairy free lasagna? I thought it was going to be impossible, or at least a $50 dish. I’m fortunate to be able to tolerate goat and sheep cheeses in reasonable amounts, but spending $30 on specialty cheeses for one dish is too much of a hit on my budget.

And gluten and dairy free lasagna? I may as well give up. But gluten free lasagna noodles exist for a reason, right?

My lasagna is a mash up of this recipe from Glutenfreechops.blogspot and the Engine 2 vegan lasagna with tofu ricotta.

The tofu ricotta was simply made with two blocks of extra firm silken tofu, honey, apple cider vinegar and salt mashed together with a fork.

I cooked 2 medium sized sweet potatoes and then mashed them with my electric hand mixer.

The noodles (I used the entire 8 oz package of Maplegrove Gluten Free Foods Inc's brown rice pasta lasagna) were cooked with the Glutenfreechops hint borrowed from The College Housewife. My secret to prevent the noodles from sticking together? Add some olive oil to the water first. I had no issues!

I browned some ground beef mixed with some Italian seasonings and drained it. Then I sautéed some sliced zucchini and diced onions and red peppers with salt, pepper, and some more seasonings.

In my Corning Ware casserole dish, I placed some olive oil on the bottom and then laid out three pieces of lasagna. I poured my store bought basil spaghetti sauce on top and layered in mashed sweet potatoes, beef, tofu ricotta, and more noodles until my ingredients were almost used up. The last bits of spaghetti sauce and tofu went on top and the dish (with the glass lid on) went into the 375 degree oven for 30 minutes. For the last 5 to 10 minutes of cooking, I took the lid off to brown the tofu.

This definitely wasn’t my mom’s lasagna recipe. I think I used almost a whole dishwasher’s worth of dishes and pans and bowls making this. But the lasagna was heavenly. My first bite made me forget that I even had food intolerances. I was able to make a delicious gluten and dairy free lasagna without ruining my budget and made it guilt-free with the extra veggies. My lasagna made about 8 servings – some more is already packed away in the freezer for the next time my lasagna cravings hit!

Turkey Tetrazzini

After Thanksgiving, my mom made another turkey and sent me home with the carcass to make stock (delicious!) and have some leftover turkey to turn into more delicious meals. I decided to try my hand at Turkey Tetrazzini. Since substituting any flours would be easy enough, I switched my focus to finding a dairy free recipe (since a white sauce is just a bit difficult to do without milk or butter) and then convert it myself to gluten free. With a game plan in mind and a bunch of different websites to try, I found a recipe...that was both gluten and dairy free. So a little less work for me! The dairy and gluten free substitutions for this recipe were rice milk and rice flour.

This recipe, however, almost requires a sous chef. I had so many pots, pans, cutting boards, knives, and even a Dutch oven (for the final steps) out it seemed a little ridiculous. By the time I got to the steps of how to make the sauce, I was checking out of the cooking process and was trying to fast forward through the steps. So I was not successful with trying to "cook out the 'flour' flavor." Sadly, this recipe tasted diary free and a little bland to me. Rice milk is rather thin and doesn't make for a good, thick sauce. I am going to start experimenting soon with more sauces because exclusively having red sauces is getting a little boring.

Chicken Quinoa with Bell Peppers

Chicken Quinoa with Bell Peppers

Ingredients:
1 cup quinoa
2 cups chicken broth (or the amount given on the quinoa instructions)

1 onion, thinly sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1-2 Tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
3 or 4 bell peppers (of any colors), thinly sliced
4 chicken thighs
Kosher salt

Rinse and drain the quinoa. Prepare the quinoa as directed on the packaging, substituting chicken broth instead of water.

Heat large nonstick skillet over medium heat and add the oil. Once the oil is hot, add the minced garlic and onion. Cook until the garlic is aromatic – do not burn! Add Kosher salt and the chicken thighs and sauté for a few minutes. When the chicken is about 4-5 minutes away from being fully cooked, add the bell peppers and sauté until the chicken is cooked and the bell peppers are limp. If the chicken is cooked and the peppers are still firm, you can reduce the heat to simmer and cover the skillet for a few minutes.

Add the cooked quinoa and toss all the ingredients together. Add Kosher salt to taste. Serve from the skillet.

Some helpful hints:

• For this recipe, mise en place is SUPER important! This literally means to have everything in place before you start. Mince your garlic and slice your onions and bell peppers before you turn that stove on! No sense in ruining your dish because you were busy trying to cut a bell pepper while your chicken was burning!
• If you are using chicken broth instead of water with the quinoa (I highly recommend doing so – more nutrients and flavor!!!) make sure it is gluten free. Or better yet? Make your own stock, measure it out in one or two cup increments and freeze it! I have ziplock containers full of one and two cups of my stock! When I have a recipe that calls for it, I just take out my large chicken ice cube and heat it up in a pot!
• Okay, you CAN cheat to the first helpful hint I said and start preparing your quinoa before you take your knife out. The reason for cheating is because the quinoa is very hands off in the preparation. Just be sure to set a timer so you don’t forget about it!
• Kosher salt is your friend. Get in the habit of cooking with it – you’ll notice all the flavors really shine when it is used.
• Don’t have quinoa? Try using rice.
• A fantastic garnish for this dish finely chopped flat leaf parsley.

And here are instructions on how to slice a bell pepper:

Slice the bottom off the pepper.

Stand the pepper up and cut off the sides, being careful to work WITH the curve of the pepper and not cut into the seeds.

Repeat until the pepper is only the core. Discard the core.

Slice the pepper sides into even strips.

Pepper slices.

Lastly, slice the bottom of the pepper, cut side down. The trick is to arch your knife and cut on diagonals until you reach the center (and cut straight down) and then resume cutting on a diagonal. This part closely resembles cutting an onion.

All done! The above recipe calls for three to four bell peppers, so it is fantastic for practicing your new skills!

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