Sesame Quinoa Gluten Free and Dairy Free Bread

Get ready for a barrage of beautiful pictures! This bread is just so photogenic I couldn’t stop taking them!

HEAVEN, this bread is utterly ridiculous! Want to know one of the best things about it?? It’s DAIRY FREE! Wooooo, I know some of my friends who are GFCF are going to be happy about this one 🙂

So, it’s delicious, gluten free, dairy free and has healthy ingredients? What alternate universe did I fall into? Beth Hillson’s universe, the author of Gluten-Free Makeovers. She is so brilliant, I can’t take it. Maybe she has super powers or is a wizard or a witch or something magical; so anyone who cooks her recipes falls under her spell.  OMG, it’s mind control! Aahhhh. No, really though. She is amazing. I have LOVED every single thing I have made from this book and can’t wait to find out what other gems are in there! Here is a link to it on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Gluten-Free-Makeovers-Recipes—Goodies–Made-Deliciously/dp/0738214612/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1332123445&sr=8-1 (I don’t make any money off of this, just want to share the wealth of deliciousness.

This is the second time I have made this bread, and somehow it is better than it was the first time. I can’t express how much I LOVE this bread. The texture is perfect, the taste is unique; and I will bite your arm off for trying to take some of it. Not advisable.

It takes a bit longer to rise than the other bread I blogged about, so you definitely need a little more patience for this one.

Recipe for Sesame Quinoa “Wonder” Bread:

1 to 2 tablespoons sesame seeds

1 1/8 cups quinoa flour

1 cup cornstarch

1 cup plus 1 tablespoon tapioca starch/flour

3 tablespoons brown sugar

3 1/2 teaspoons xanthum or guar gum

1 1/2 teaspoons salt

3 large eggs, lightly beaten

1 1/8 cups warm water (105°-110°F)

3 tablespoons olive or vegetable oil (I used canola)

2 1/4 teaspoons instant active or active dry yeast

*Lightly oil a 9×5 loaf pan

*Heat a skillet over medium heat. Add sesame seeds and stir until they begin to brown. Remove and cool.

*In a large mixing bowl, combine sesame seeds, quinoa flour, cornstarch, tapioca starch/flour, brown sugar, xanthum gum, and salt. In a separate bowl, combine eggs, oil and water. Add the liquid ingredients and the yeast to the dry ingredients and beat for 2-3 minutes on medium speed until mixture is smooth. Dough will be thick.

*Scrape into the prepared pan, using a lightly oiled spatula to smooth the top. Cover with oiled plastic wrap and let rise to the top of the pan. About 40-60 minutes. (It takes longer for me, more like 90)

*Preheat the oven to 350°F. Bake for 40-45 minutes. Turn onto a wire rack and let cool completely before slicing.

*Slice and freeze any remaining bread after 2 days.

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Walnut Maple Chicken

I didn’t make this up, as per usual, this is the link to the original recipe. OK, OK I know I was supposed to be using pecans, but I have a bad habit about not checking what I have in the house and ASSuming that I have all of the ingredients on hand. I also didn’t measure the syrup or the nuts and had 6 chicken breasts to make instead of 2 or 3 as the recipe was calling for.

Anyway….Gluten Free cooking and eating has gotten easier and more second nature over the past bunch of months. I have been a terrible slacker and not posted anything. Some really good food has come out of that time too. I will try to post a blog with whatever pictures I can find of the food I have made in the recent past.

Babbling again…..so let’s get to what I think of the chicken I just made. Mine is a little dry probably because I don’t folow instructions well, but it is delicious. This is totally a win and I will be making it again, with walnuts, or next time maybe I will actually have pecans 🙂 Who knew light pancake syrup on chicken would totally rock my socks ? Not this chick….off to the next idea. Till then. xo

No pictures on this one until I find my card reader…..grrr – FOUND IT!

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Hanger Steak, Potato Skins and Twice Baked Potato Casserole….

Meat and Potatoes…..I think there was a mistake and I was supposed to be a guy. Look at this meal, in all fairness I only ate the steak, skins and some peas in that one sitting; the casserole I have saved for another time. I didn’t take any pictures while cooking but my final pictures are so awesome I can’t contain myself.

I had been craving potato skins for what seemed like weeks. It had to be done. They aren’t the most healthy thing I have made but I baked them so they definitely aren’t as bad as the ones you would get in a restaurant.

I used this recipe: http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/potato_skins/

Went by the letter of the recipe, so there are no changes or tweaks to post. They were, fabulous! Perfect texture, and mouth watering.

So now I had to figure out what I wanted to do with the scooped out insides. I followed along the same theme so I could split my supplies between the two recipes. Instead of having to buy additional other ingredients I just bought a larger amount of the ingredients I was already using. yay!

Recipe Link: http://www.food.com/recipe/twice-baked-potato-casserole-26043

I used way less sour cream, bacon, cheese and added dried chives to the sour cream layer.  I was using the scooped out insides of 5 large potatoes instead of 6 whole potatoes. I wasn’t sure how to alter the recipe for that but I figured recipe or not if I threw bacon, sour cream, chives, potato and cheese together it would be delicious no matter what. I haven’t tried that one yet because I had the skins and steak, but from the looks on M and Mom’s faces when they took their first bite it is pretty damn delicious!!!

I LOVE hanger steak. It is by far my favorite steak ever. I don’t have a knack for cooking steak especially when in a rush and in pan on the stove. I am for sure not giving any tips on how to cook meats, one day I hope to get to the point where I am way more comfortable with it. So, although it isn’t gorgeous it did still taste wonderful!!

Here is my whole meal together:

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Broiled Lamb, Roasted Potatoes and Veggies, Apple Chutney and Corn/Plantain Muffins!

Longest title ever for one of the most delicious meals that has ever come out of my kitchen!

During the day I started brainstorming about what I was going to make for dinner. I have to take injections of B12 vitamins weekly because I am B deficient but I am not exactly diligent about doing it every week. The benefit has now become when I DO take them I have a weeks worth of energy packed into one day.

Well, yesterday was that day. I decided that since I had taken my vitamins I may as well plunge into a large cooking undertaking….so it goes. I found the muffin recipe online yesterday at 12ish, daydreamed about lamb chops, roasted veggies with the little red potatoes and some other yummy thing that I created, yay for improvisation!

The most beautiful thing to me about this meal is that I embarked on making 4 things I have NEVER made before and was totally OK with fumbling around the kitchen and just flying by the seat of my pants.

So here are the rough recipes for what I did yesterday: (I don’t measure so I can’t provide measurements for the ones I came up with, the one I kinda followed I will provide a link and describe my changes to it).

Apple Craisin Chutney – I was about to throw out a decent amount of apples, three small and two large. I felt guilty about wasting them so I decided to make something a bit different from my normal apples, cinnamon and sugar. I was watching one of the cooking shows and they made a pear something something chutney. I got the general idea of how it works and what you put in it, from there I made my own version. I don’t know how I feel about nutmeg and I HATE cloves so I left those out and just used the cinnamon.

Apples
Craisins
Onions
Apple Cider Vinegar
Cinnamon
Organic Sugar
Brown Sugar
Grated Ginger
Orange Zest
and a pat of butter (I used smart balance 50/50 blend bar)

I put the vinegar in a pan, warmed it up a little, added brown sugar, ginger, orange zest and onions. Then I let the sugar dissolve and get whole mixture almost boiling. I added the apples, cinnamon, sugar and craisins, brought that to a boil and then set it to simmer. I let it cook covered for 40 minutes and then uncovered till most of the liquid had evaporated. At the end I had to add more cinnamon and sugar to cut the acidity of the vinegar (think I will use less next time) but it did come out very interesting and good. It was awesome to eat this and the lamb together, mmmhhmm.

>>>>>>>

Broiled Lamb chops were simple and fast, it was the perfect meat to add to this meal. Lamb chops were something that we ate growing up as kids. Mom made them the same way every time, just some seasoned salt and pepper and put the under the broiler to get all crispy and delicious.

I was expecting the same taste of what I grew up eating and I am happy to say that I nailed it! They were well done (which is how I wanted them and how I remember them) and that took about 7 minutes on each side on the setting High for Broil. I put a healthy dose of seasoned salt and pepper on each. They were AMAZING, I had this silly giant smile on my face when I was eating them because it was exactly what I wanted.

>>>>>>

Roasted Baby Red Potatoes and Veggies –

1 Bag of Baby Red Potatoes
2 small zuchini
2 small yellow squash
1 carrot
1 box of white mushrooms
I small turnip
Large Onion (I only used half, but next time I would use a lot more)
Roasted Red Peppers (I can’t eat the skin on the pepper because it aggravates arthritis, so I opted for the skinless roasted ones)
Onion Powder
Garlic Powder
Salt
Pepper
Fresh Thyme
Dried Rosemary
Dried Cilantro Leaves
Dried Oregano
Olive Oil
and I can’t remember if I used dill or not

I put the scrubbed potatoes (with some salt) in a pan in the oven to cook for the time it took me to chop up the rest of veggies. Then the veggies went into a large roasting pan followed by my olive oil and seasonings. I used a decent amount of rosemary in this one, where normally I wouldn’t do that for fear of overpowering it. Yesterday I was fearless in the kitchen. After those are tossed almost well enough I put the slightly cooked potatoes into the pan with the veggies. I roasted them for about an hour at 400˚. The one thing I would do differently next time would be to cook the onions, potatoes and mushrooms together only and the other veggies in a different pan. Some of the veggies got too a little too mushy for me, but they still tasted phenomenal!

>>>>>

The corn/plantain muffins were the show-stopper of the day! I needed something to bake, as I very much miss baked goods. I was thinking about corn muffins or cornbread and then remembered I had two plantains sitting on my countertop ready to be used or thrown out. Yesterday was a save all the garbage food day and it was more delicious than a go out and buy everything day! hahahaha.

So I searched online for corn and plantain muffin and what do you know? I found a recipe someone had created for just that. The only problem? Not GLUTEN FREE. I decided instead of trying to search the gluten free community (which really is amazing) to find one that was I would take my chances and try my hand at converting it over to gluten free with the Xanthum Gum and all purpose GF baking flour I already had at home. I’ll never learn if I am not willing to gamble with something new….trying to remember that.

Corn/Plantain Muffins:

Here is the recipe link to the original: http://allrecipes.com//Recipe/plantain-corn-muffins/Detail.aspx

Below is the altered recipe with what I changed in bold:

• 1 1/2 cups Bobs Red Mill gluten free all purpose flour (<– I am totally in love with this stuff!)
• 3/4 teaspoon xanthum gum
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup cornmeal
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup almond milk
• 1 cup mashed, ripe plantains
• 2 large eggs
• 1/3 cup canola oil
• 3 tablespoons melted smart balance 50/50 blend

1. Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F. Line 6 small muffin cups and 6 giant muffin cups with paper liners.
2. Stir the flour, xanthum gum, sugar, cornmeal, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl. Whisk the almond milk, plantains, eggs, oil, and 50/50 melted butter together in a separate bowl. Mix the flour mixture into the milk mixture until just combined; do not over mix. Allow the mixture sit at room temperature for 10 to 15 minutes. Pour into prepared muffin cups to about 2/3 full.
3. Bake in the preheated oven until golden and the tops spring back when lightly pressed, 15 to 18 minutes for the small muffins, 20-25 for the large muffins.

The muffins had the texture of regular muffins and tasted absolutely fabulous! I am so happy to have gotten a baking recipe to work the way I wanted it to on the first try! It gives me a lot of hope and know I don’t feel like I am missing out on anything. There would be no way someone could tell the difference between a regular corn plantain muffin and this gluten free one. Here’s to success! and eating dough like things that don’t all taste like rice! Wooohooo!!!!! These are desert and breakfast. We are using the large ones for breakfast muffins and the small ones for after dinners. I can’t wait to experiment more with this all purpose flour and the xanthum gum.

Here is a picture of my whole meal all together 🙂

and yes the measuring cup does say cat food in the batter picture….my boyfriend thought it would be funny if we ran that through the dishwasher (vet gave me a special scoop for the kitty food) and used it for cooking people food! I just realized it is in the picture, hahahahah. Fantastic.

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Polenta Fail

Lately I have been watching a lot of different competition shows. I used to rag on them all the time and still kinda do, but in truth I like a decent amount of them. Some I do watch for comic value show, but the others I actually like. Shhhhh, don’t tell anyone!

Staying on topic, I was watching America’s worst cooks, or some similar title and they had a recipe on there for polenta. I have never eaten polenta or cooked but was excited because I was pretty sure it was gluten free. So I go online, dig up a recipe and start cooking. The corn meal I have was moms that she had laying around in her closet. I am trying to work with ingredients I already have in the house in all of the cooking craziness. Budget, budget. In keeping with that, I find a recipe that calls for ingredients I have…here it is:

http://wickedgooddinner.blogspot.com/2010/07/polenta-cakes-with-roasted-mushroom.html

Picture from recipe : 

It looks amazing, right??? I’m sure it is when done CORRECTLY. I definitely did not do that correctly.

I found out after I began to cook already that the corn meal I had was NOT the coarse ground corn meal. Eh, so what, I think and throw it in. In this recipe like most of the other polenta recipes I have come across you are supposed to cook the polenta for 30 minutes or so. Mine cooked in oh, 5 minutes. So yeah, that was clearly wrong. It ended up just absorbing the chicken broth and tasted and smelled like the chicken broth and not corny at all. In addition, it was sloppy like and when I left it to set in the fridge and then tried to take it out, it came out, but the second I touched it and tried to position it, it fell apart in my hands. I was very very very very sad. This was the main part of my meal, so this night I ended up eating some ground chicken with sauteed mushrooms…..in a taco shell. I swear I put everything in taco shells lately!!!

So I messed this one up good. I now have the right corn meal (I think) to make it. I am going to try the recipe on the bag that the corn meal came in just to try and be way more simple with it this time. Next time though, I am going back and trying this recipe because it looks absolutely delicious!

So wicked good dinner, this is totally not your fault. I didn’t make sure I had all the right ingredients and just tried to wing it. It doesn’t quite work that way in my world of gluten free foods. I just suck at change, and this is a big one!

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The Gluten Free Experience

I have many food restrictions already and adding Gluten to the list has been mentally exhausting. I created this page to show which recipes I have made with pictures (most of the time), mostly to help myself remember which ones I like. I will link over to the sites to make sure proper credit is given to the author of the recipe. Unless I specify all of the recipes are created by someone else way more inventive and experienced than I am.

My other page is craftingforlyme.com which is where I sell my craft items to help raise money for Lyme Disease organizations who help promote education and awareness.

Since I am doing this primarily for myself please let me know if I have been able to help anyone else along the way! Also, if you have any ideas, tips, advice or anything you would like to pass along to someone very new in this area, I am all ears! 🙂

Add also, when the recipe is listed as failure, it means I most likely did not make it properly and has no reflection on the person who created the recipe or the recipe itself. I am not doing this to hurt or bash anyone, just to see what I am capable of cooking and giving my opinion if I have one about it. I am not a chef, nor do I have any formal kitchen training, just a lyme patient who has tons of food restriction. That’s my disclaimer, fyi.

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