Cooking Mojo

My cooking mojo is back, and I have no pictures, a cardinal sin on the interwebs because who wants to read all of the words?

But it's back, and along with it a frenzy of disorganized work on The Book That Shall Not Be Named or talked too much about, lest I scare it away. It's like a frightened stray kitten, but I want to be the one riding the kitten, like this:

[caption id="attachment_1163" align="aligncenter" width="300"] (not my picture, so if you know whose it is, let me know and I will credit the photographer)[/caption]

But I digress.

I just sat down to a lovely bowl of Chipotle-like goodness, with the beef and the rice and the corn salsa, except I made it all, smoky and spicy and sweet and crunchy and lime-spiked with cilantro that I am growing to love. I just at this moment remembered that I forgot the peppers and onions, but it was still delicious.

In the past 24 hours I have also:

• Cooked and canned strawberry rhubarb ginger jam


• Made scones to go with the jam (they were delicious but flat. Working on that; see below)


• Started almonds soaking for almond milk


• Concocted a chicken tandoori marinade of epic fucking proportions (very excited about that)


• Researched another two ways to make GF scones (one trial will happen tomorrow)


• Mixed another batch of GF flour because PIZZA DOUGH is happening


• Planted two types of tomatoes and four herbs (it's a crapshoot with not much sun anywhere in our tiny Hampden backyard, but I have to try because TOMATOES)

I recruited my new neighbors to be tasters because The Teenager hasn't been around much and has been eating her meals out with friends, and when she is here she is picky as hell. So there is a surplus of food to try and comment on, and they are close by.

So nice to be cooking again, in my own kitchen, with my own tools. It's about freaking time.

What's your mojo rising towards?

Cream Cheese Tarts With Lemon Marmalade

It's winter. Not the depths of winter, technically, but we got seven inches of snow yesterday, so here in Baltimore, we are IN IT.

I love winter. It's annoyingly true. While others grumble about snow days and kids staying home, I like nothing better than to have The Teenager all to myself for the day. Yesterday at the height of the storm we hiked down to Golden West for the Lisa Marie (a pancake with a strip of bacon fried in it, topped with peanut butter butter - not a typo, a real thing -and served with maple syrup), plus hashbrowns for good measure. We let the dogs run up and down the alley, off leash, until they found a kitty and chased it, then we made snow angels in the middle of the road.

So snow days are my thing.

Especially when you have this just lying around in your cabinet:



This is a jar of epic, three-day organic lemon marmalade that I made last week. It is tart and sweet and faintly bitter from the pith that gives it the pectin to set up all by itself.

I have five of these. That's a lot for two people to eat, one of whom doesn't actually like lemon marmalade. Logical choice, for me, is a lemon cream cheese tart. Individual tarts because a whole tart is too much but maybe individual ones will be more manageable.

An easy, gluten-free pie crust, a luscious, creamy, whipped cream and cream cheese filling, and a thin layer of juicy lemon marmalade. Drizzling it with chocolate may be overkill, but I am going there.

Come with me.

Cream Cheese Tarts With Lemon Marmalade

Crust:

5 tablespoons butter (softened)

1/4 cup sugar

1 room temperature egg

1 cup AP flour (I used gluten-free)

1/2 teaspoon salt

Directions: Cream butter and sugar with a hand mixer until smooth. Add egg and incorporate thoroughly. Combine flour and salt in a small bowl and then add into the wet mixture a little at a time until it is just mixed. Shape dough into a ball, then wrap in plastic and flatten. Pop in the 'fridge and chill for an hour.

When it's chilled, remove from 'fridge and flour your work surface. Turn out dough and roll until it is between 1/8" and 1/4" thick (I use a wine bottle to roll, but I suppose a regular old rolling pin would work as well). For individual tarts, you could rush out and spend lots of cash on individual tart pans, or you could grab some wide-mouthed Mason jar lids and flip the lid so the metal faces up in the center of the ring (instead the white underside).



Place your tart dough in the lid, pressing lightly into and up the sides of the ring. Make sure you make your dough circles just a bit wider than the ring so that there is enough dough to go all the way up to the top of the metal ring.



This recipe made eight of the wide-mouthed lids and three of the regular lids. Perfect if you have small children who need an even smaller tart. Chill in the freezer for half an hour (wrap lightly in plastic wrap).

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Bake mini crusts until lightly browned and dry, about 15 minutes (about 30 minutes for a full-sized tart). Keep an eye on them. If they start to bubble up, you can prick them lightly with a fork, or you can line each crust with aluminum foil and use pie weights to prevent bubbling (or just use rice. I use the same rice over and over. I let the rice cool after each use then store it in a jar for the next time. This lasts indefinitely, or until you move and decide to throw it out.). Your crust should be a lovely golden brown color. If you are using pie weights or rice, remove them in the last few minutes so the whole crust can brown.

Let crusts cool completely while you make the filling.

Filling:

1 8-ounce bar of cream cheese, softened

1/4 cup of sugar

1 cup of whipping cream, whipped until it forms peaks

optional: 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract and one tablespoon of sugar to add to whipping cream

Directions: Cream the cream cheese and the sugar together until fully mixed. Whip the whipping cream (and optional sugar and vanilla extract) in a separate bowl until the cream forms stiff peaks. Beat the cream cheese and the whipped cream together. Spoon into cooled crusts and chill for at least an hour.



Top with your topping of choice and chill for another 30 minutes. I am using lemon marmalade, about a tablespoon per tart, but guess what? Jam of any sort would be delicious, or slather the tops with hot fudge sauce. If you do that, be sure and finish with a bit of fleur de sels.



To serve, unmold from the Mason jar rings. You should be able to slide the tart off the lid, but if not, serve it with a dollop of whipped cream, a smile, and a strong cup of black coffee.

Spring is just around the corner.

 

Pie For Breakfast

It's raining outside. The thin drops of water ping off the metal awning covering the porch and the sound filters itself through the windows into my ears as I sit in front of the computer, only just starting my second cup of coffee and finishing up a piece of peanut butter cup pie.

Pie for breakfast.

It is one of the simplest things that I love so much, and, according to my Ayurvedic dosha, it's perfectly acceptable. Something sweet, at least. Maybe not pie. But I choose to interpret "sweet" as "pie" this morning, and what's done is done.

It's a simple, gluten-free pie. I have no pictures of the process. I only can tell you what I've done.

Crush about 20 gluten-free Oreos (one whole pack. You could also use gluten-filled Oreos, or you could have a simple graham cracker crust) and mix with melted butter until just wet. Press in a pie pan and chill. Sip on some gin and juice while you wait. #LaidBack

Whip 1 cup of peanut butter (any kind), 1 bar of cream cheese, and a little sugar until smooth and creamy (only use sugar if you use peanut butter without sugar. If your peanut butter has sugar, don't add anymore. Trust.). Fold in 1 cup of heavy whipping cream, whipped into submission as well as stiff peaks. Spread into chilled crust. Chill even more. Overnight is best. That way it is set and ready for breakfast, but I doubt you can wait that long.

To serve, top with homemade fudge sauce, or buy some really good fudge sauce and use that. You could add whipped cream if you like, or you could sprinkle with a homemade ice cream topping that includes chocolate sprinkles, turbinado sugar, and coarse sea salt. Eat for breakfast.

Have a beautiful weekend.

Spicy Ginger Pumpkin Pancakes

You know you want them.

I don't usually hop on the pumpkin bandwagon. It's not that I don't like pumpkin. It's that it's not really pumpkin that is in pumpkin-flavored stuff. I am not a purist in that sense, but I won't generally seek pumpkin-esque things out intentionally. I like cloves and cinnamon year-round, so when fall hits and everyone starts up with their pumpkin this and pumpkin that, I am not so influenced.

But.

I had some leftover pumpkin from my pumpkin chocolate chip scones. And I thought I would try some pancakes because The Child loves pancakes and if I can get actual breakfast into her before school that would be great.

I have only the picture above because we ate them as fast as they came out of the pan and then I was too full to care about taking pictures.

These pancakes could not have been more delicious if they tried. Faintly spicy, studded with crispy candied ginger and tasting very much of pumpkin. Light and fluffy. Delicious with or without maple syrup. Delicious with homemade apple butter. You will want to keep this recipe and make it often, especially my gluten-free friends. They freeze beautifully, and you can even freeze the batter (although the resulting pancakes are less fluffy. Still delicious.). Add more or less spice, use the ginger or don't, fry bacon until it's super crispy and then crumble it into the batter before you fry them up: go crazy. Here is the basic recipe.

Spicy Ginger Pumpkin Pancakes

In a large bowl, mix together the following dry ingredients, adjusting the spices as you see fit:

2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (I used the GF flour mix I made)

4 tablespoons sugar (use less if you like)

4 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

minced crystallized ginger (as much as you like; I ended up with about 4 tablespoons).*

In a separate bowl, mix together the wet ingredients:

1 1/4 cup pumpkin puree (freeze the leftover puree in ice cube trays and pop them in soup as a thickener)

1 1/2 to 2 cups of milk (when combined with the dry ingredients, it should be like thick cake batter)

4 tablespoons melted butter, cooled slightly

2 eggs

Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. You don't have to be gentle here, but it's also okay if there are still lumps in the pancakes. I gave the batter a good thrashing with a whisk because lumps drive me crazy, and the pancakes seemed to like it. Use a little less than 1/4 cup of batter per pancake, and cook on one side until the edges are dry and little bubbles form (about 2 minutes, depending on the heat. Figure that your first pancake is going to look awful and just resign yourself to eating that steamy mound of deliciousness right away. It's a sacrifice I am sure you are willing to make). Flip, cook for another minute or two, then serve with syrup, apple butter, wrapped around a sausage, or plain.

This makes about 20-24, 4-inch pancakes. Maybe. I can't actually remember. Plus we ate many, many pancakes and I lost count. But it makes a bunch.

If you have leftovers, cool them all the way then pack them four to a bag in Ziplocs and freeze. YUM.

*You can also use ground ginger, but I like the texture of the crystallized ginger in the pancake. For ground ginger, try 1 teaspoon.

 

Pizza

Today's blog is about pizza. Hot, bubbling, pizza. Pizza is intensely personal, in my view, but it is just as they say: as with sex, even when pizza is bad, it's still pretty good.

However.

Try a gluten free pizza once. The sauce can be amazing, the cheese the best, the toppings local, organic, whatever. The crust on a gluten free pizza is merely a conveyance. Often the crust on a gluten free pizza resembles nothing more than a stale cracker, bearing zero resemblance to the yeasty, thin, crispy-yet-chewy crust that a pizza should have. Gluten free pizza is, generally, not worth the time it takes to order.

So today is about pizza.

I made crust with my gluten free AP flour mix. There is promise here; the dough feels vaguely elastic as I am kneading it, and the yeasty fragrance floats up for a moment. There are, in fact, little bubbles in the dough where the yeast is going to work, eating and farting and eating and farting. The bubbles are small, though, and the crust is still a bit crumbly without the stretchy, satiny feel of a good pizza dough.

Half will go in the freezer; the other half will be dinner.

Awkward update: it was, indeed, like a cracker. Beyond the initial promise of springy dough and gassy bubbles, the dough rose no more and resolved itself into a thin, over-crispy base for sauce and cheese. Not awful, per se, but not pizza.

I still have half of the dough in the freezer, and I may turn them into crisps of some sort, maybe with some fresh parmesan and cracked black pepper. Back to the drawing board.

Food Love

"If you really want to make a friend, go to someone's house and eat with [her]...the people who give you their food give you their heart." ~Cesar Chavez~

I've said it before, and a section of this blog post prompts me to say it again: food, to me, equals love. If I cook you something delicious (or anywhere close to delicious, like merely okay or just edible) and give it to you, chances are good I like you. I probably even love you.

Not necessarily in that way, unless you are Ryan Gosling, or Viggo Mortensen, or a smoking hot neighbor with a steady job, a sense of humor, and a tool box. And a truck for moving big things. No more dogs, though. If you are aforementioned smoking hot neighbor and you have a dog, keep driving your truck on by. I am full up of dogs and just waiting for one of them to die so it feels more manageable.

But I digress.

Food means comfort and creativity. It is at the base of who we are; it shapes our culture, our day, our life. We move to places based on where we will be able to get food; one of the first things we find when we land in a new place is pizza that doesn't suck and a bar with delicious cocktails (or a coffee shop, or bakery, or whatever floats your culinary/survivalist boat). In Georgia, you identify your neighborhood by which Kroger you live near (with clever nicknames, like Murder Kroger, Disco Kroger, and Done Been Kilt Kroger. Seriously. I can't make this up. Except the last one that Sicily and I made up  based on a murder/suicide that happened in the parking lot but still cannot say without chuckling). In Baltimore, it's a farmer's market or a hipster nose-to-tail butcher. Or the newest ironic dive with innovative food.

We speak of food deserts in inner cities where the landscape is sere and hard with the lack of fresh green places and bustling life. Food swamps with their hot Cheetos and Twinkies aren't much better. It crushes my soul in a very non-hyperbolic way to think of kids who have no idea what fresh food tastes like, kids that haven't seen a non-canned green bean or a roasted beet.

I fully recognize the elitist nature of my even being able to write this blog. Absence of food does not mean absence of love, and all around the world people love each other in ways that have nothing to do with calories.

Still.

For me, a cookie is a caress. Fresh bread is a warm embrace. Food is love.

(Image)

Gluten-Free All-Purpose Flour Mix

This is the basic recipe for a gluten free flour mix that you can sub in cup-for-cup when a recipe calls for AP flour. It is based on this recipe but changed for ease of creation.

Here’s the recipe:

1 24-oz. bag Bob’s Red Mill brown rice flour

1 24-oz. bag Bob’s Red Mill white rice flour

1 16-oz box of mochiko (sweet rice flour; available only at Asian grocery stores or online. We subbed potato starch in our first batch because we couldn’t find an Asian grocery in Marietta, GA)

1 15-oz bag of tapioca flour (also at Asian grocery stores, but sometimes in regular stores)

2 tsp. xanthan gum

Directions: Dump everything in a big bowl, stir together thoroughly. Stir again when using.

A word about xanthan gum. Some gluten free people are still sensitive to gums, and they can actually be eliminated from this recipe. I choose to keep it in there because A) it seems it make the flour perform a wee bit better, and B) it’s not an issue for me. Xanthan gum is a bit pricey, but I got it on sale for 25% of the regular price, so it was a no-brainer.

To date, this has worked well in chocolate chip cookies, pancakes, scones, and biscuits. Leave a comment below and tell me how it worked for you!

Update, 11/1/14: Made batch #2 with ingredients all purchased at a local Asian grocery and made over five pounds of mix for $8.77. Still more than regular flour, but way less than other mixes!

(image source)

Sunday Night Curry

(because nobody takes a good picture of curry, here's some beef)

I cannot keep up this pace for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that it gets damn expensive to cook something other than mac-n-cheese all the time. I still have the grand Pizza Dough Experiment to conduct before I am smack out of my gluten free flour mix, and a few other things, but this might be the last food blog for the week.

It is odd what happens when you start closely reading recipes with an eye to cooking someone else's food and writing about it. No one will accuse me of being a good noticer (not a word, but I am a notoriously BAD noticer. We're all bad at something, and this is my Achilles heel. I have to look at stuff and take pictures multiple times before I remember something was there, and then if it pisses me off I block it out like it never happened. SUPER inconvenient.), so that I have noticed some deficiencies quickly is a Big Thing.

And if I am being honest, some of the things I notice are deficiencies in me also. So "boneless" means "no bones," and usually for a reason.

But.

A recipe without salt is an odd thing. And also a recipe that calls for water but has a very short cooking time for a pretty tough cut of meat is strange. So there were adaptations.

Korean curry

Last entry from this weekend's orgy of cooking is Korean curry. Except it's not really Korean because my version did not specifically use Korean curry powder because "Asia Food" did not have specific Korean curry. A cursory search of the interwebs tells me that there are a million regional curries, each with their own proportions, but many of the spices are similar. And the "Asia Food" lady told me all curries were basically the same. So we are going with that theory, calling it Korean curry even though it should be called Madras curry, since that it the type I purchased (unfortunately more hot than The Child would like, but more on that later).

Side note: Korean curry of the Ottogi brand (which everyone recommended) also has wheat flour as its first ingredient, which tells me that it is super mild and also not GF. So it's a good thing we couldn't find it.

And full disclosure: Prior to this I was not a huge fan of curries in general, so I haven't usually sought them out. I have no idea what "authentic" curry tastes like, and this might offend some people. Ah, well. Life is too short. If  decide I Love. Curry. I will then refine it a bit. Until then, here's this one.

Which was delicious, with a few tweaks, like adding chicken broth instead of straight water and FOR GOD'S SAKE ADDING SOME SALT. How is there no salt called for in this curry recipe? Nothing? Did I miss it? No salt in the ingredient list.

This was a steaming bowl of love on a windy Sunday night. The house was buttoned up all cozy-like, dogs were walked and bedded down, and all was left was working on Halloween costumes and eating our weight in rice and this delicious food. As I eat it, I can already think of what I might like to do, starting with choosing a rough cut of meat and braising it for longer, adding veg later. The short cooking time didn't do the short ribs any favors; they were delicious, but it would have been better if the collagen had broken down a bit more. And I like a bit of bite in my veg. And I would have added a bit more curry. I toned it it down for the kid just to start, but I think I would maybe season the beef with curry first, then add more with the veg.

The biggest surprise? The Child loved it. Ate a huge bowl.

An unqualified success, this dish, and a satisfying end to a lovely fall weekend.

Edited: link fixed!

Weekend Baking/Cooking

It makes no sense to write every time I use this new gluten free AP flour blend, especially since I am going a little crazy right now because A) I am back in my own kitchen, and B) I want to try the flour in as many things as possible to make sure it's rock-solid. So this is a weekend baking/cooking round up.

Pumpkin cream scones with chocolate chips 

First of all, there was a lot of pressure on these  to be good because they used an absurd amount of butter and flour, three sticks and four-and-a-half cups, respectively.

(in hindsight, I would have taken the butter wrappers out of this picture. Next time.)

I did make some adaptations to the recipe (including using my gluten free AP flour mix). Additionally, I cannot fathom a pumpkin/chocolate recipe without cinnamon (I added a teaspoon), and I don't have a stand mixer, so I did not freeze/grate the butter but simply cut it in with my hands (which was messy but worked well). The original recipe also calls for vanilla extract but never says when to add it, so I just put it in with the sour cream and pumpkin. I didn't have white chocolate chips and am not a huge fan anyway (chocolate impostors, they should be called), so I used dark chocolate chips.

The result?

YOWZA.

These scones were tender, crumbly, not too sweet, and delicious. They make me want to sit on the couch and curl up with a cup of coffee, several of the scones, and a Sunday New York Times. And maybe a nap. These are for sure a lazy brunch day treat. Highly recommended and will make these again, perhaps with a touch more cinnamon and some clotted cream.

Apple butter

An unqualified success. What could be easier? Five pounds of apples, a splash of apple cider vinegar, about 3/4 cup of apple cider, and tons of clove and cinnamon. I used an apple peeler to save my old lady hand joints (you could keep the skins on if the apples are organic and just run the final product through a food mill, but I don't have a food mill. This blog totally takes donations, and while you're at it I could use a stand mixer, a food processor, a tablespoon, a new pastry brush, and a bench scraper. Oh, and a large stainless steel mixing bowl to replace the one a dog watcher made off with. How weird is that? He took a rectangular glass baking dish, too, and slept in my bed. That was his last engagement at our house.), and I don't believe in measuring spices for apple butter. You just add them until it tastes good to you. Put the whole shebang in a pot on the stove and simmer until it turns brown and mushy (or double/triple the recipe and do it in a crockpot. That's what I usually do, but I didn't have that many apples), then blend with an immersion blender until super creamy. You could shove it through a chinois if you REALLY wanted to make it smooth, but I don't have one of those either.

I didn't add any sugar to this batch because it was plenty sweet (I used Red Delicious and a couple stray Honeycrisp), but if you do use sugar, add it later in the cooking time, and taste often as you add because that is a bell you cannot unring.

I also canned the apple butter but promptly opened a jar on Sunday and ate it on a scone. And I am giving another jar away. But it's nice to have a spare.

The bread brick

Seriously.

I blame the bread machine. Yes, I used a machine, and I don't give a rat's ass who doesn't like it. A bread machine allows me to make pizza dough and bread fresh daily if I want. When I have the time and space, I do make bread the old-fashioned way, but otherwise, it's all ingredients into the bread machine, push a button, and walk away.

Except maybe my bread machine is getting old and didn't make the move quite as elegantly as it perhaps should have. I noticed when it was in the kneading cycle that it wasn't kneading so much as building a little cave in the bottom of the dough. I opened the lid and tried to push it down, but I had visions of a broken finger and was a bit tentative. Safety first.

Plus, when you make bread on a quick bread cycle it is supposed to get super hot, so I maybe ruined it that way.

Whatevs. I am not giving up on the gluten free AP flour for this. I  may need to tweak the recipe to up the protein content, or something. The GF bread I am buying is crap, and it costs a small country's GDP per loaf.

Bubble (boba) tea

This one was a bit of an outlier. I have never had bubble tea before, but it looks interesting and "Asia Grocery" had black tapioca pearls. So in the interest of doing whatever the hell I feel like, I decided to throw this one in.

Note to self: perhaps a better idea to try it somewhere that makes it professionally first.

Another note to self: if it says to cook the tapioca pearls for a total of a half hour, 15 minutes will not cut the mustard. That's just hubris.

The Child was not a fan of the black tapioca pearls, which are large, chewy orbs that can be disconcerting if texture is an issue for you. I like them.

You drink bubble tea out of fat straws, and watching them approach your mouth up the straw is half the fun (or terror, if you are The Child). The tea itself is just very strong, very sweet black tea. I added clove and cinnamon because Fall Flavors. Some people also use fruit-flavored tea.

A note of caution: every element (tea, sweetener - we used sweetened condensed milk - and boba needs to be very cold, and when the boba get cold, they get firmer/chewier. I thought The Child was going to vomit when she swallowed her last slippery black orb. #PointsForTrying

As this has gotten rather wordy, I shall continue tomorrow with Korean curry. No pictures of that one; it looks a bit like the aforementioned potential vomit. And that's not an enticing thumbnail.

Chocolate Chip Cookies: Part 2

So this happened:

But let's backtrack a bit, shall we?

Firs came the gluten free flour mixture, adapted from another recipe to be easier (no measuring, no muss, no fuss). When I told The Child what I was doing, she went on a brief rant about how dumb the American measuring system is (based on units of twelve) and that colonists developed it because they wanted to be nothing like the British but in the process they totally screwed generations of children who are clueless about the metric system, an infinitely more logical system.

Can't argue with that, really.

The other good part about my flour mixture is that it is based on the weight of the flours, not the physical measure, which as any baker worth their chocolate chips will tell you is the way to go with baking.

But I digress.

I used the basic Nestle Tollhouse cookie recipe. Nobody said this was going to be a health food blog.

Cooking tip: most chocolate chip cookie recipes require packed brown sugar. This is a pain, very messy, and ultimately super bad for you because you always end up licking the delicious brown sugar off your fingers when you're done. Also bad for your sampling team if you happen to have ebola and don't wash properly after licking your fingers. Easier method is to dump the brown sugar in a plastic freezer bag, then use the side of the bag to pack the sugar into the measuring cup as needed (lightly or firmly, as required).

I did promise food photography ranging from the terrible to the merely okay, but that's part of the process, yes? You get the idea here. No sugary fingers. Which could be a blessing or a curse. I may or may not have eaten a big clump of sugar anyway.

So when the cookies came out, I made a huge mistake, and tragedy struck.

This is what happens when you don't wait a minute or two for the cookies to cool. Half of the hot, chocolately deliciousness falls into the sink where, try as you might, it is unsalvageable. No 5-second rule in a sink with soap in it.

The verdict?

I thought they were damn near perfect, but I needed an unbiased set of opinions. I sent a bag of cookies to school with The Child with instructions to share at lunch and not tell her friends they were gluten free until after after they were eaten. Apparently, I have several new fans and orders for more.

This is not quite enough, though, as teenagers are not known for their palates (generally). I also delivered some to my gluten free friend Peter and asked for an honest assessment. Did they taste like gluten free cookies? Did they feel like gluten free cookies, or could they pass as a regular cookie?

Let's be honest: many (most?) gluten free cookies have the mouthfeel of that wonder sand stuff that sticks together. The texture is generally dense, grainy, and heavy, with a slightly beany aftertaste (from the chickpea and other bean flours that gluten free folks seem to favor).

Peter reported thumbs up all around. Not only were they chewier and softer than other gluten free cookies, but there was also a pleasant salty aftertaste (I may or may not have added a little extra salt than was called for to achieve this).

Days later, the cookies remain chewy in the center and crispy around the edges. So I rate this gluten free flour experiment  success, and move on to the next two challenges: bread in the bread machine (no counter space to properly knead, plus, if I am being honest which I always try to be, I am just too lazy) and pizza dough. I am also making apple butter in the crock pot, which can save most any baking disaster. Stay tuned.

(Images all mine. You were warned.)

Chocolate Chip Cookies On A Rainy Day: Part 1

So apparently we are experiencing a hurricane. The rain has been torrential and unceasing since the middle of the night, but without the threat of funnel clouds I can't bring myself to worry too much about it.

Just seems like a good day to bake. And chocolate chip cookies are just the thing.

Even better are gluten free chocolate chip cookies because then even I can eat them.

First, there was flour.

This recipe is adapted from a gluten free all-purpose flour from The Art of Gluten Free Baking. Sicily and I used it once before without including the mochiko (more on that later) and it was AMAZING. Light, tender biscuits and fluffy pancakes. Normal people would leave it alone and not change a thing, but no one has ever accused me of being normal. I wanted a flour recipe that didn't involve actually measuring different flours to combine in odd ratios, leaving a 1/2 cup of four weird flours in crinkly bags in the pantry. I wanted it to be easy and delicious. Here's the recipe:

1 24-oz. bag Bob's Red Mill brown rice flour

1 24-oz. bag Bob's Red Mill white rice flour

1 16-oz box of mochiko (sweet rice flour; available only at Asian grocery stores or online. We subbed potato starch in our first batch because we couldn't find an Asian grocery in Marietta, GA)

1 15-oz bag of tapioca flour (also at Asian grocery stores, but sometimes in regular stores)

2 tsp. xanthan gum

Directions: Dump everything in a big bowl, stir together thoroughly. Use as a cup-for-cup substitute when AP flour is called for.

A word about xanthan gum. Some gluten free people are still sensitive to gums, and they can actually be eliminated from this recipe. I choose to keep it in there because A) it seems it make the flour perform a wee bit better, and B) it's not an issue for me. Xanthan gum is a bit pricey, but I got it on sale for 25% of the regular price, so it was a no-brainer.

Gluten free all-purpose baking mixes can be pricey themselves. This mix costs about $10 to make and produces almost five pounds of flour (4.9375 pounds for the sticklers among you). In comparison, Pillsbury's Best all-purpose flour costs about $7.50 for five pounds, while Bob's Red Mill's gluten free all-purpose flour costs $8 for about half as much. One of the things detractors of gluten free eating point out is that you pay three times as much for something that doesn't make a difference (absent a celiac diagnosis). I'm not here to debate the merits of gluten free food, but I sure as hell don't want to pay three times as much for flour. If this particular formula works as well as the last batch, I am sold.

In addition to the cookies I will be baking this afternoon, I plan on making pizza crust and bread in the bread machine this weekend. I am sure a batch of scones or biscuits will happen, too, as the test much be thorough and well-documented.

And bread is dee-licious. So there's that. Stay tuned...

Part 2: The Cookies.

Food Blogs: How's This Gonna Work?

So every now and then this blog will shift its focus.

This goes against all traditional recommendations about building blog traffic and gaining followers and blahblahblahblah. Apparently once you decide to write about life after the sudden death of your husband, you are locked into that for life (no pun intended).

Good thing it's not part of any income stream and that it's my blog and I can do what I want with it.

This is a courtesy notice to those of you who couldn't care less about food blogs. That's totally cool. I'm not offended.

So when you see the tag "Food" you can just keep movin' on if you'd like.

Although you might miss something. Something delicious.

I can tell you right now that you probably won't be missing any gorgeous food photography. I know that you can take delicious photos with iPhones, and I can haz one of those, but every picture I take turns into a food photography fail. They are too yellow, or the shadows are weird or the styling is dumb or something else. So as I learn how to do that better, pictures will be present but minimal. I hesitate to add them at all right now because even seeing the thumbnail might make you want to scroll on by.

But.

This is a learning experience for me, so hopefully things will get better. And every now and then I do accidentally snap a scrumptious photo, so there's that to look forward to.

I can also tell you that I make some crazy good food. And if you are local you might be getting some of it. And if you are gluten-free, then this is the place for you.

In fact, starting tomorrow, I have an experimental gluten-free all-purpose flour mix and chocolate chip cookies.

Might as well go ahead and prepare yourself for bad pictures of delicious cookies.

(The above image is not mine. So don't get used to it.)

Food

I love it.

All kinds.

I have a particularly fussy belly, though, so it has been problematic, this love of food. I also am not able to physically eat very much, so quantity is also an issue. I will never be able to sit down to a 35-course tasting menu. That might amuse my bouche, but not so much my belly (Anthony Bourdain writes about the gastrointestinal perils of large tasting menus in graphic and amusing fashion at the beginning of his second book, Medium Raw, right after he tells the story of eating ortolan, an illegal albeit delicious activity in most of the world. But I digress.).

But I. Love. Food.

Real food. Sweet, juicy peaches from the local orchard that taste like the sun has been captured in their warm, fuzzy flesh. Sandwiches from Parts & Labor, tender and succulent thin slices of pit beef drenched in tiger sauce and stacked with thinly sliced red onions, or an epic BLT with bacon that is neither too fat nor too thing, too crispy or too flimsy - Goldilocks bacon, if you will. Spicy chocolate gelato, with a dusty brush of cayenne on the finish. Pizza with fresh tomatoes and homemade mozzarella. Basil-honey-lemon salad dressing that is like tangy velvet on the tongue.

Oh, my.

Recent freelance writing opportunities have included recipe development, food blogger, and food website content writer. When you are a freelancer, one of the things you do is apply to everything that is interesting, send it out into the universe and hope that something comes back. You can't get too invested in the outcome because so many people are doing the same thing.

Still.

I would very much like to broaden into food as a writer. I need an excuse to try new things and an expense account to help me do that. I am still planning to make everything on my Pinterest Food board and everything I have reblogged to Tumblr once we get settled into a permanent house, but that could be awhile.

So I humbly petition the universe to throw me a bone (with warm marrow and toast points) and let one of my food freelancing jobs come through in the meantime.

Bon appetit.

 

Food Stadium

An old, previously unpublished blog on the wonder that was the food stadium Sicily and I created for this past Superbowl. Serious World Cup food stadium potential this summer!

Enjoy...

Food stadium. Depending on who you are these two words either strike terror in your heart or fill your soul with bubbles. Either way, these marvels of modern food architecture area paeans to gluttony at the height of sports indulgence, but I like to do things a little differently. For Superbowl XLVIII, I constructed a politically correct, Seahawks-focused stadium complete with gluten-free snacks, plenty of sugary treats and humanely raised chicken wings (well, chickens humanely raised and processed into, among other things, wings). Our veggies were organic, our dips varied, and, with the exception of our “cars,” “bleachers,” and “attendees,” everything was house-made.

Construction

I started with a firm base. Every stadium in the NFL has four corners, and ours were green peppers filled with two dips, black olives and sweet fire pickles. Okay, so the olives were from a jar, but the buffalo cheese dip, garlic goat cheese spread, and sweet and spicy bread and butter pickles were 100% my own.

The Field

The field was, of course, guacamole, because more avocados are sold on this day than any other day of the year so it honors a tradition, but also because any other dip that’s green has probably been in your ‘fridge for too long. Sure, you could go spinach, but in mixed company who wants to worry about what is stuck in their teeth? I lined the field with sour cream and was ready for kickoff.

The Stands

Did you know that you can buy both organic crispy rice cereal and organic marshmallows? Welcome to the first level of the stands: crispy rice treats. Piled on some brownies in a stair-step pattern, added a few Kit-Kats for step definition (wouldn’t want any drunken patrons falling into the guac), and I had a stadium constructed on time and under budget. I used mint chips for the fans (Go, Seahawks!), but feel free to use those nasty pumpkin-colored chips you have stashed in the cupboard from two Halloweens ago if you are a Broncos fan. You already made one bad choice; why not make another?

Goal Posts and Players

Pretzels tend to melt in moisture, and the last thing I needed during a clutch 54-yard game-winning field goal was soggy goal posts. I used nitrite-free sausage sticks (sounds a little dirty, but that’s a whole different blog) to construct the uprights and anchored them in cheese, cleverly hidden in the guac of the end zones. John Madden provided inspiration for player design (olive X’s and O’s), but you could use mini carrots with little helmets. If you had that much time on your hands, you could also paint the team logos in each end zone and solve world hunger. Keep it simple.

Tarting the Whole Thing Up

The rest is just beautifying your stadium. We hung the 12^th man flag, used broccoli for bushes, added pretzel and potato chips, and made a parking lot out of mini candy bars. Time expired before we could get to the celery stick walkways and carrot stick metal detector/turnstile combos, but that’s in development for next year. Also a cotton candy blimp. Might make the aerial shots a bit clearer.  Our chicken wings didn't make it in time for the big game, but they provided the half-time entertainment, slathered in Carolina barbecue sauce (vinegary tang) and dressed in bleu cheese.

Whether you buy your construction materials or make them yourself, a food stadium is a spectacular twist on a Superbowl feast!

Food = Love

Saturday The Child and I ate our weight in food. I think this is perhaps normal, but we have gotten in the habit of snacking and not much else. On my personal menu was bratwurst, four cookies,  a million marshmallows, two chocolate bars, half a bag of salt and vinegar chips, and 1/4 of a watermelon. Oh, and some kale salad and a yogurt drink.

I love food. I love making it, reading about it, writing about it, and eating it. I do not count calories, grams of fat, or sugar. It all evens out in the end, and I do yoga every day. So I eat what I want to eat, and what my sensitivity to gluten will allow me to eat (and plus I found an amazing gluten-free flour mix recipe that you can sub cup-for-cup in recipes which means CUPCAKES AGAIN which makes me SO HAPPY but I digress).

We have gotten out of the habit of sitting down to a regular meal. Even though we spend massive amounts of time together every day, there is something about sitting down to a meal that is different, especially if you have made the meal together and set the table nicely. I believe all the hype about the family meal. I believe the research that shows kids who eat with their families at a table on a regular basis are sexually active later and less likely to abuse drugs.

Plus, as noted previously, if I cook for you, it means I think you're swell. It's a very Jewish grandmother-type thing (of which I had one), but food=love for me. So yesterday's gorging sort of counts; La and I went to the farmer's market together and bought the brats together, then she packed all of our supplies in a picnic basket while I started the fire outside. We started with a s'mores appetizer (she set up the rig - chocolate on gluten-free cookie - and I roasted the marshmallows), and moved on to our brats. Something about the fire and eating outside, but we talked about some pretty heavy stuff while we ate, stuff that needed to be talked about, but because our bellies were pleasantly fully of chocolate and marshmallows it seemed a little lighter.

When we move to Baltimore and settle into a permanent house, I am going to be making every recipe I have pinned on Pinterest, and everything I have reblogged in Tumblr. I will adapt everything to be gluten-free (if it isn't already) and then take pix of the final product (for better or worse). I am not sure if it will be on this blog or not; I may link it to an old blog where Sicily and I tried to bake 25 days of Christmas cookies (hint: we didn't quite make it), and I invite you to play along, either in the cooking or in sending me a recipe you pinned/reblogged/otherwise saved and are just too damn lazy to make yourself. Post a recipe in the comments if you want to play.

Baltimore peeps, get ready to eat!!