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!

Chocolate Mousse

When I went dairy free for health reasons, I started cutting out desserts. My intake easily dropped by half. And then when gluten free was added to the mix, I became too depressed to even want dessert! Over five dollars for a box of gluten free dairy free cookies? Or box mix for the same price? Gone are the days of finding packaged dessert items for under a dollar. I've heard that people on a gluten free diet easily spend three times as much as their wheat consuming counterparts. Whether the number is accurate or not, what remains true is that finding specialty items that are gluten free and not manufactured in the same facility as wheat gets pretty pricey pretty fast.

Even though I've been dairy free for twice as long as gluten free, I never really exploited the dairy-alternatives out there beyond rice milk ice cream and soy dream ice cream (lovingly dubbed "fake ice cream" in my house). When I went gluten free, I knew I needed to get creative and get back in the kitchen.

One of the joys of participating in this plant-strong Engine-2 based diet is that it is vegan. The emphasis is on plant-strong rather than vegan so people are running out to the stores to buy their fruits and veggies rather than the processed meat-alternatives. But for me, I take extra delight in vegan because it means dairy-free. I get to relax my guard for wondering if butter or a tablespoon of cow's milk could be in a dish or racking my brain trying to figure out a replacement for dairy in a recipe, only to give up before I finish reading the ingredient list.

My vegetarian friend opened the door to exploring vegan options for desserts last year when I tried vegan fudge for the first time. If I want a creamy dessert, it doesn't need to be cow's milk based - it is easy to explore other ingredients like tofu! Yes, tofu in dessert. It is what made the fudge so good, too!

One of the recipes I really liked from the Engine 2 book is the chocolate mousse. The ingredients are simple: tofu, cocoa powder, vanilla, and maple syrup (or agave nectar). And the recipe? Toss it all in a blender until well mixed. Refrigerate until firm. Enjoy. For some extra fruit flavor, I added frozen (defrosted on the counter for about 20 minutes) strawberries, blue berries, and raspberries. I ate most of the mousse in one sitting, in case that vouches for the dessert's amazing sweet flavor! Give it a try! It is the perfect snack on a warm Chicago day!

Eggplant and tofu curry

As part of my twist on the 28 Day Healthy Eating Challenge, I'm trying hard to eat a rainbow of foods and broaden my horizons. I stocked up on tofu and was searching my favorite recipe site (Food Network) and discovered this recipe! Eggplant and tofu curry! It met my gluten and dairy free requirements without any substitutions (yay coconut milk!) so I was good to go. To meet the oil free requirements, I sprayed a little bit of Pam in my wok while cooking with no negative results. This was a really basic curry I served over a bed of quinoa. I liked the variety of veggies - eggplant (which I really only had before on a tofu kabob during Battle Tofu), onion, garlic, and loads of spinach. I always pass on adding jalapeño peppers. My stomach is very gringa - I'm not ready for spicy foods. I'm not totally sold on eggplant yet. I think my chunks were too big and probably not cooked long enough. I'll have to give eggplant another try with a different cooking style before officially moving it to the "meh" list.

The recipe is a super basic introduction into making curry. Now that I know the formula to follow, it will be easy to create loads of other curries in the future. And THAT'S what cooking is all about - learning the basics so you can create an endless variety of meals on the fly!

Tofu Stir Fry

Mise en plas.

That's the secret to eating your veggies when stir-frying. The idea is to prepare all your ingredients ahead of time. Notice how recipes say "1 onion - diced" rather than saying "1 onion" and then step 1 is to dice your onion? It's because you're supposed to be ready to go before the stove is turned on. And if all your ingredients are chopped and neatly prepped in their respective bowls awaiting their orderly turn to enter the wok, you'll be able to quickly tell that your rainbow of vegetables is rather white. With my herbs standing only 1/16" tall in my windowsill garden, I couldn't even have the final splash of greens to the finished product.

Here's a delicious (even if rather white), oil free, gluten free, vegan stir fry:

Tofu with Rice Noodles and a Splash of Color

Marinade:

2 T gluten free soy sauce (I use San-J)

1 T brown sugar

1/2 t (or more to taste) Bragg's Liquid Aminos

2 cloves garlic, minced

Other ingredients:

1 package of extra firm tofu

2 bell peppers, diced

2 shallots, sliced

Pam cooking spray

1/2 T grated ginger

Rice flour noodles

Cut the tofu into equal sized cubes. Place in a medium sized non-metal bowl.

Whisk the marinade ingredients together in a small bowl. Pour over the tofu. Marinate in the fridge for about half an hour.

Prepare rice flour noodles according to the directions.

Heat the wok. Spray with cooking spray. Add the bell peppers. Cook for 3 minutes while stirring. Add the shallots while stirring. Cook for another 2 minutes. Add the ginger, tofu, and drained rice noodles while (you guessed it) stirring until everything is evenly heated. Serve!

For more ideas of how to maximize tofu, check out some of the dishes my friends and I created during our vegetarian and tree nut/dairy/gluten free dinner party when I was fully introduced to the chameleon qualities of tofu!

Here's a kitchen tool that normally doesn't get a lot of mention: my bamboo spoons. Aside from the eco-friendly, green-ness of the product, they are super cheap. When I went gluten free, I got rid of two things in my kitchen: my toaster and my wooden spoons. Since wooden spoons are often used for things like wheat pasta, gluten is allegedly absorbed in the cracks. Um, no thank you. I recently bought a set of three spoons and since I live with a completely gluten free kitchen, I have no worries of cross-contamination. Meanwhile, my family knows to switch to the plastic spoon whenever cooking something I will eat while at their house. Wooden cutting boards are off limits. Being gluten intolerant means I have to pay attention to not only the food, but the utensils used to create it! Stir frying with bamboo spoons is so easy! These spoons remain in perfect condition after I'm done, unlike my plastic spoons which tend to chip away during the stir fry process! Gross!

Battle Tofu

If you are going to learn to love a new food, it is best to turn to an expert. I needed to introduce tofu into my repertoire of foods and there is no better person for the job than a vegetarian! We not-so-creatively dubbed our dinner: Battle Tofu. Tofu was our secret ingredient and we gave ourselves the luxury of a week to plan and shop before creating a leisurely three-course meal that was dairy, tree nut, gluten and meat product free.

When cooking tofu, it seems like “let marinate for x hours” is standard. And with only one kitchen and (more importantly) one food processor between four chefs, we became creative in our prepping order and cooking method – including grilling, baking, frying, and chilling! Grilling in a city apartment is surprisingly easy thanks to my George Foreman grill! This is the easiest way to get grilled foods indoors. We had our spicy grilled kabobs as one of our appetizers. The tofu was sandwiched among red onions, Japanese eggplant, and mushrooms.

The second appetizer was fried firm tofu with sesame seeds with two different dipping sauces. We decided that the sauces together (one was peanut based and the other was made with plums) on the tofu was extremely reminiscent of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on a hot summer day. Tofu as bread? Who knew?

For the main course, we had oven baked tofu that was marinated with a peanut butter sauce. This was really good and the tofu was especially tender.

The first round of desert was served in old fashioned ice cream glasses – a food processor creation with silken tofu, mangos, fresh ginger, and egg whites. The recipe I followed called for crushed nuts on top, but this was a tree-nut-free day and I needed something with a crunch so I found an even more delicious alternative: crushed (gluten-free) ginger snaps!

One of the best parts was the final round of dessert: fudge. Vegan fudge. I had given up on fudge since I never thought I would be able to find it dairy-free since condensed milk is a pesky ingredient to substitute. But I should have known better: vegans would be the ones to creatively make fudge that can rival any traditionally made fudge. And it contains tofu! To all the vegans out there who create such delicious recipes: thank you!

This was an amazing meal with friends and I had a fantastic time creating and tasting tofu dishes. I did not even miss meat!