Gingerbread Pecans

I wasn't quite ready to attempt a gluten free version of my aunt's gingerbread recipe, but I thought I might try making it into a glaze for nuts.  They're tasty and quick to make.

2 T salted butter
4 T sugar
2 T molasses
1 t ground ginger
1 t ground cinnamon
1 t ground nutmeg
1/2 t ground allspice
1/4 t ground cloves
1/2 t kosher salt
1 t lemon extract
16 oz. pecan halves

Preheat the oven to 300F.  Line a rimmed cookie sheet with parchment paper.  Place the pecans in a medium-sized bowl.
Combine butter, sugar, molasses, dry spices and salt in a small saucepan.  Heat until the butter is melted, stirring occasionally.  Stir in the lemon extract. (It's OK if the alcohol in the extract boils off rapidly.  Just stir until the bubbling stops and the extract is mixed in.)   Pour the mixture over the pecans, and stir until they're evenly coated.
Spread the nuts out in a single layer on the prepared cookie sheet.  (Clumps of nuts will stick together.)  Bake 20 -25 minutes at 300.  Allow to cool completely before storing in an air-tight container.

Apple Buckwheat Muffins (Gluten-Free)

When I made Buckwheat-Corn muffins, I loved the texture -- crisp on the outside, crumbly inside.  They tasted great and the frozen leftovers thawed and reheated well.  I know a recipe is a winner when Nick asks if I've blogged it.  I just made a second batch with apples and spice. This recipe is lightly sweet...so you could add a dollop of apple butter or a drizzle of honey.  See the note at the end for the modifications to make a savory dinner muffin.

1/2 c. cornmeal
1 c. gluten free buckwheat flour
4 T sugar
2 1/2 t Baking Powder
1/2 t salt
1 1/2 t Penzey's Cake Spice blend
1 T whole psyllium husk
2 c. of peeled, diced baking apples (Cortland, Jonathon, Granny Smith)
6 oz. plain Greek Yogurt*
1/2 c. water*
2 eggs
1/2 t Penzey's Double-Strength Vanilla
1/4 c. butter, melted and cooled

Grease or line 12 muffin cups.  (I use foil cupcake liners, sprayed with cooking spray.  The pans stay clean, and the liners come off easily for a crispy outside on your muffins.)
Preheat the oven to 400°F, using a convection setting if you have it.

Melt your butter in the microwave and set it aside to cool.   Peel and dice the apples.
Measure the dry ingredients into a bowl and stir to combine thoroughly.
In another bowl, combine the yogurt and water and beat with an electric mixer until it's smooth and lump-free.  Scrape down the sides of the bowl, and beat in the eggs.  With the mixer running, drizzle in the butter.
Add the apples and dry ingredients and stir until everything is well combined, with no dry lumps.
Fill the muffin cups almost to the top.  (I used ~ 4 T of batter per cup.)  Leftover batter can be baked in greased custard cups.
Bake 14 - 18 minutes, until browned and firm.

* The Greek yogurt and water can be replaced 1 1/4 c. low-fat buttermilk or 1 1/4 c. kefir.  I use the three pretty much interchangeably for quick breads and muffins.

TO make a SAVORY DINNER MUFFIN :  Omit apples, Cake Spice, and vanilla.  Reduce sugar to 2 T.

Unstuffed Pepper Soup

When we stopped a the Sharp Edge Creekhouse near Pittsburgh in 2009, the soup of the day was Stuffed Pepper.  We loved it, and I thought "I could do that."   I now make this soup about 3X as often as I make stuffed peppers.  It freezes well, so it's a good dish to make at the end of the summer when bell peppers are cheap or friends are giving away excess from their gardens.

The local meat market had just started carrying grass fed ground beef, so I tried that for this recipe.  It didn't have the fat content listed, but I would guess it was close to 15%.  Enough fat that I didn't have to add oil to brown the onions, but not so much that draining the meat seemed necessary.

1 pound ground beef
2 small onions, chopped (1 ~ 1 1/2 cups)
2 cloves of garlic, minced
1 ~ 2 t of Italian herb blend
1/2 ~ 1 t of oregano
1 T Worcestershire Sauce
1 T of Penzey's Pork Soup Base
Freshly ground black pepper to taste
4 c. water
10 ~ 12 oz of low sodium V-8 juice
15 oz. can chopped tomatoes (plain, low-sodium, or  fire-roasted)
1 c. of brown rice
2 -3 bell peppers (green, red, or a mix).


In a Dutch Oven, brown half of the ground beef and set aside on a plate.  Add the rest of the ground beef to the pot, and when it is cooked, add the onions.  Cook until the onions are translucent, and the beef in the pot is starting to brown.  Stir in the garlic, herbs, black pepper, Worcestershire sauce, and soup base.  (You don't have to completely break up the lump of soup base...it will dissolve later.)  Add the water, V-8 juice, and tomatoes.  Bring the soup to a boil and add the brown rice.  Cook ~ 45 minutes until the brown rice is tender.

Meanwhile, halve the bell peppers and remove the seeds.  Slice the peppers thinly, and then cut the slices in half cross-wise.

Taste the broth and add salt if necessary.  (Depending on the flavor of V-8 and the brand of tomatoes you use, you may not need any.)  Stir in the peppers, and cook for ~ 10 minutes.

If you store leftovers in the refrigerator, the rice will swell to make it more of a porridge than a soup.

Gluten Free Sandwich Bread and Faux Pumpernickel

I made this lovely loaf of sandwich bread using the recipe from Shauna James Ahern's book Gluten Free Girl Every Day.  I'm not going to post the recipe because she makes her living developing recipes, but I am going to rave about it. (Pardon the exclamation points.)

The finished product is light and crusty, slices beautifully (when cool) and toasts up beautifully.
It's >50% whole grain!
It's faster and easier to make than any of the GF bread mixes I've tried!
The loaf released from a pan that had merely been sprayed with olive oil!  Most of the bread mixes I've tried create an adhesive-like batter, which sticks unless I use solid fat (butter, coconut oil, or shortening) to grease the pan.

OK, raving over.   To provide a full and fair review, I will warn you that this recipe contains 3 eggs and 1/4 cup of butter, so it's not suitable for a vegan, low-fat, egg-free diet.  It's also a batter bread, and came out looking like it had been baked in a Pullman pan.

I made the loaf in the picture using buckwheat flour for the whole grain, and my  All Purpose blend, which is a recipe I got from the Shauna Ahern's blog, Gluten Free Girl and the Chef.  I sprinkled the top with golden flax seeds.  I also used my 4" x 10" bread pan, because the narrower, longer pan seems to work better for GF loaves.

The bread was so good that I immediately made a second loaf, adding 1 T of instant espresso, 1 T of cocoa powder, 1 t of caraway seeds and ~ 1 t of molasses.  It was a wonderful faux pumpernickel (faumpernickel?) for pastrami & Swiss cheese sandwiches.

Smoky Green Bean Soup

About once a week, I need to make a fast dinner for two, so we've been having a lot of soup and sandwich suppers.

Since the sandwiches cover the protein and carbs, I want the soup to provide at least a serving of vegetables.  Unfortunately, most canned soups throw in half a day's worth of salt with 1 serving of vegetables, so I decided that I needed to start making some homemade vegetable soups.  Over the summer, I saw a recipe in Eating Well magazine that suggested that you create the smoky flavor of green beans and potatoes cooked with bacon by using smoked paprika.  That seemed like a great combination for a soup.

We ate 2 cups of this soup with our lunch, and had 8 cups to go in the freezer.

Green beans can be very green or they can be very tender.  In soup, you really need to accept that tender is more important.

2 ~ 3 T extra virgin olive oil

2 medium onions, chopped

2 t smoked Spanish style Paprika

1/4 ~ 1/2 t Hungarian Half-Sharp Paprika (optional)
Freshly ground black pepper to taste

24 oz. frozen Italian cut green beans

1 quart unsalted vegetable broth

12 oz. V-8, original or Spicy
3 medium Yukon gold potatoes
Salt to taste (may not need any)

Heat the olive oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat and saute the onions until they're translucent.  Stir in the smoked paprika, half-sharp paprika, and black pepper and cook until you can smell the spices.

Stir in the green beans and vegetable broth, and increase heat to high.  Bring the soup to a boil, reduce the heat to low.  Cover and simmer for 25 - 30 minutes, until the green beans have turned to a dull olive.

Remove any deep eyes or blemishes from the potatoes, and cut into half inch cubes.  Add the V-8 and potatoes, return the soup to a simmer.  Taste the broth and add a little salt if it seems flat.*

Simmer until the potatoes are tender.

*A note on salt --  You will probably need to add at least a little. A 12 oz. bottle of original V-8 is 975 mg of sodium (the spicy hot is 720), but you have 10 cups of soup in the pot.  The quart of unsalted stock contains about 600 mg of sodium, so your soup is about 157 mg of sodium per serving. (The onions,green beans, and potatoes also contain traces of sodium, which add about 10 mg per cup of soup.  I looked those up in the USDA Nutrient Database.)  Even if you add a whole teaspoon of kosher** salt, you're only up to 269 mg of sodium per serving.  I find that when I make soup using low-sodium canned goods and broths, I need to add some salt to make it taste good.  On a few occasions, I've needed to add a *lot* of salt, but when I sit down and work up the total sodium in the batch, I realize that it's only about 250 - 300 mg per cup of the final product.

** If you care enough about sodium to read the first note, you really should be using kosher salt, which is less dense than table salt because it has a different crystal shape.  The Serious Eats Food Lab has a good article explaining it here.  http://www.seriouseats.com/2013/03/ask-the-food-lab-do-i-need-to-use-kosher-salt.html

Gluten free pizza crust

I avoided pizza for the first year of baking gluten-free, but I finally gave up and started trying various crust mixes and recipes.  So far, none of them was anything I wanted to eat -- even adding garlic and herbs to the dough resulted in sort of disappointing crusts.  But this crust can be rolled very thin, bake up crisp on a pizza stone, and be chewy and satisfying.  I think it can still be improved on upon, but it's good enough to serve to guests.

This dough seems to taste a lot better if you give it a long rise in the fridge.  I make this dough on Thursday night to make pizza for dinner on Saturday.

This recipe makes four 12 ~ 14 inch thin crusts or three 16~17 inch thin crusts.  I make a big batch of dough every 3-4 weeks and freeze 2 or 3 extra pizza crusts.  You can halve the recipe if you don't want to have extra crusts in the freezer.

600 grams 40/60 Gluten Free All Purpose flour

300 grams chickpea flour (aka besan) or garfava flour

3 T whole psyllium husk

2 t sugar

2 t yeast 

1 t kosher salt

1 1 T flax meal

3 T boiling water

6 T extra virgin olive oil

2 1/2 ~ 3 cups warm water

Parchment paper for rolling

Cooking oil spray

Measure the 3 Tbsp of water into a microwave safe container, and boil.  Stir in the flax meal, and allow to rest.

Place the dry ingredients in the bowl of a stand mixer, and mix on low speed to combine. With the mixer running, drizzle in the olive oil and the flax mixture.  Then drizzle in the water.

Use at least 2 1/2 c. of water... the dough will be more of a batter, but it will dry out a lot in the fridge.  Scrape the dough into an oiled 3 quart bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and refrigerate for 24 ~ 48 hours.

1 1/2 ~ 2 1/2 hours before you want pizza, remove the dough from the fridge and let it rest on the counter to warm up.  It's also a good idea to preheat your oven and pizza stone now, so the stone is really hot when the pizza goes in.  I have a convection oven, and find that the crust burns a little by the time the cheese is browned if I heat it above 450.

After the dough has had at least an hour to warm up up, tear off 5 pieces of parchment paper.  Place one piece of parchment on the counter and give it a light spray of cooking oil.  Form 1/4 of the dough into a flat disk and set it in the center of the parchment.  Spray one side of another piece of parchment and lay it oiled side down over the dough.  Roll the dough into a 12 ~ 14 inch circle with a rolling pin.  Peel off the top sheet of parchment.  The edges may be crackly and split -- press them in with your fingers to form a smooth, round edge. You want to roll the dough about as thin as you'd roll a pie crust.

Set aside the first crust on a cookie sheet and let it rise.  Place the top parchment paper, oiled side up on the counter, and repeat, adding another sheet of oiled parchment on top.

To freeze the crusts : slide the crust and parchment paper on the pizza stone and bake for 5- 8 minutes, until set, and lightly browned on the bottom.  Cool completely.  Store the crusts, with the parchment in between, in a large plastic bag and freeze.   I usually thaw the crusts and bake them on a pizza stone, but you could probably top the frozen crust and bake it directly on the rack.

To eat the pizza now :  top the crust with sauce, cheese and toppings to the edge.  Trim the excess parchment paper away from the corners so it doesn't burn in the oven.  Slide the pizza and the parchment paper on to the pizza stone and bake for 18 ~ 25 minutes, until the crust and cheese are as brown as you like them.

Chicken and Spinach Sandwiches

This filling would be good rolled up in a pizza crust to make a calzone, or layered on top of a pizza crust and baked.  You can leave out the chicken for a vegetarian...or leave out the mushrooms for someone who doesn't like them.

For 4 servings :

Olive oil
6~8 oz of mushrooms
6~ 8 oz of cooked chicken breast, shredded

10 oz. box frozen chopped spinach
2 T chopped parsley (6 Dorot cubes)
2 cloves garlic, minced (2 Dorot cubes)
2 T Parmesan, Romano, or Italian Cheese blend
1/4 ~ 1/3 c. crumbled feta cheese
salt and pepper
hot sauce (optional, to taste)

1 c. shredded mozzarella
4 brown rice tortillas

Remove the stems from the mushrooms, cut larger caps in half, and slice.  Warm 1/2 Tbsp of oil in a non-stick skillet, add mushrooms.  Season with salt, and cook over medium heat until the mushrooms have given up their moisture.  Pour off the liquid to cook the mushrooms dry more quickly.

Meanwhile, thaw the spinach in the microwave, and press out as much water as you can with your hands.  Remove mushrooms to a plate, and add the spinach, garlic, and parsley.  Cook until heated through, season generously with black pepper.  Stir in Parmesan and feta, and season with salt and hot sauce to taste.

Spread 1/4 of the spinach mixture over half of a tortilla. Top with mushrooms and chicken.  Sprinkle 1/4 c. of mozzarella over the filling.  Fold the tortilla over, and toast both sides in a skillet or on a griddle.  Slice each sandwich in half for easier eating.