Vegetable Medley with Brazil Nut butter Sauce

Vegetables with Brazil Nut DressingThis is just squeaking in under the wire. I was on Wheat Free, Meat Free’s site, and saw her entry for Food Blogga’s “Beautiful Bones” Osteoporosis Food event, featuring calcium rich recipes. Since finding out in my twenties that I have osteopenia, this has become much more important to me personally, and it meant a lot to me to participate. Osteoporosis and osteopenia are incredibly common among Celiacs especially, and it’s very important to get a DEXA scan. Nag your doctor if you need to, it’s better to know because then you can support your health!

So…I had a big container of shredded veggies leftover from spring rolls that I needed to use up, and I decided on brazil nut butter because it’s high in calcium. It’s a simple curry sauce that takes just a few minutes to whip up. If, like me, you have to avoid soy, sesame and vinegar, most commercially prepared dipping sauces are off limits, so this is a quick and easy substitute. If you wanted, you could add a splash of rice vinegar or soy sauce, or sprinkle with sesame seeds.

Food Blogga LogoPretty much anything would work for the veggie mix. I would definitely recommend adding the mint, cilantro and basil because it gives a nice dimension to the dish. The sauce also works well over steamed broccoli.

I have directions for making brazil nut butter here, although almond butter or peanut butter will work just as well.

Brazil nut sauce:
3 Tablespoon ground fennel seeds
1 Tablespoon ground coriander seeds
1 Tablespoon ground cardamom
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2-1 teaspoon cayenne, to taste
1/2 cup brazil nut butter
pinch of salt
2 Tablespoon oil
1 cup water
2 apricots, blended, or 1 small jar of pureed apricots

Veg mix
1.5 cups shredded carrots
about 1/4 napa cabbage, sliced very thinly
1/2 yellow, red or orange pepper, sliced thinly
1/2 cup bean sprouts
1/4 cup mint leaves
1/4 cup cilantro or basil

Toast ground spices in a dry pan over medium heat until aromatic, 2-3 minutes. Add oil and make a paste. Add nut butter and mix well to combine. Add warm water and apricot, heat and stir until everything is well combined. Simmer a little for a thicker sauce. Serve over a bed of shredded veggies and enjoy!

~from Cheryl’s kitchen ©2008. Please do not replicate without crediting/permission.

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Hazelnut Apricot Opéra Cake: A Daring Baker Challenge


I’m officially a daring baker!
I’m extremely proud of this cake. It’s more than a cake to me, it’s a milestone.

I’ve loved to bake since I was a little kid, but only really got into it in college. Due to a variety of medical issues, I was far too exhausted to cook or bake for the last 3 or 4 years, and I had so many allergies and intolerances that it seemed impossible to bake treats worth eating.

Slowly, things have changed, and I’ve gotten back to baking. Even when I can’t eat everything I make, I still have the joy of creating something new, the opportunity to experiment and the delight of returning to the things I love to do. And so here’s my cake, a beautiful gluten, dairy, egg, soy, corn and sugar* free creation. If you do agave instead of honey, it’s vegan, too. Not only was I able to do it, but it was delicious, too. It’s the start of things to come, and I’m grateful for one of many new beginnings. And we even got to have it for my birthday!

When I saw the Daring Baker Challenge, my first thought was to make a cake for other people. There were too many eggs, so much sugar, butter, cream…where to even begin to adapt it? Then I remembered Susan O’ Brien’s Almond torte from Sugar free, gluten free cooking (great book!!). I ended up changing most of the flavors, proportions, leaveners, shape, size, etc., but it reminded me that this mission was, indeed, possible.

My final creation was a Hazelnut Opéra cake, with layers of rosewater/honey “buttercream” and fresh apricots topped with a hazelnut white chocolate glaze. Obviously, due to my many restrictions, I ventured quite a bit from the recipe, though I kept the spirit as well as I could. The cake itself was marvelous, though I will reduce the liquid slightly when I make it next, as I have listed in the recipe below. The buttercream worked in the end, but oh my. I had to work and rework it so many times that I don’t quite know WHAT was in the final version. The base was coconut milk, with some honey, and rosewater, and it was thickened with sweet rice flour, coconut flour, chestnut flour, coconut oil and cocoa butter. Many thanks to Sheltie girl at Gluten a go go for her coaching.

The cake and buttercream were sugar free, but the glaze was not due to the fact that my hot bowl of cocoa butter took an impromptu flying leap across the kitchen. (I must say, btw, cocoa butter is surprisingly hard to clean off cabinets.) So I did use decorating chips, but I have no doubt that the cocoa butter glaze would have worked just as well.

I wanted to use blanched hazelnuts, so I roasted them. However, I discovered very quickly that hazels turn to butter very quickly…and now have a jar of super yummy hazelnut butter, so no complaints here. It’s probably much easier to use raw hazel meal or you have to be extremely careful and chill the nuts before grinding.

To see more gorgeous cakes from this amazing group of bakers, check out the Daring Baker Blogroll . And, of course, thanks to this month’s hosts Lis and Ivonne,for a great challenge.

Hazelnut cake
1 cup finely ground hazelnut meal (I used half roasted, half raw)
1 ¾ cup sorghum flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons baking powder
pinch of salt
1 cup apricot nectar
1/2 cup apple sauce
1/4 cup agave nectar + 1 T honey or all agave for vegan version
1/3 cup hazel nut milk
1/4 oil
1 teaspoon rosewater
¼ teaspoon cardamom
½ teaspoon hazelnut (or vanilla) extract

Buttercream:
Coconut milk, sweet rice flour, rosewater, coconut flour, coconut oil, cocoa butter. That’s about as much as I can tell ya.

Glaze:
.5 oz cocoa butter
¼ cup decorator (dairy free, but like white chocolate) chips*
A few drops of hazelnut extract
* these do have sugar, I would imagine cocoa butter with a little agave would work just as well.

Preheat oven to 350.

Line the bottoms of round 6 inch cake pans with parchment or wax paper (or for a non-opera cake, use an 8X8 square pan) Grease sides of the pans.

Combine dry ingredients and wet ingredients in separate bowls. Mix until just combined and put in preheated oven for 40 minutes or until a tooth pick comes out clean. You may need to cover the cakes if they brown too much on top.

Cool on wire rack for 5-10 minutes and turn out onto a plate. Cut the cakes in half for your layers (you will have one left over for snacking)

Make the buttercream: I can’t give great advice on this one, but allow your frosting to chill completely before figuring out if it’ll work for you. My original batch would have been fine if I was just patient…not one of my strengths.

Assemble the cake: first cake, then buttercream, then apricots, and repeat! I would not recommend putting the buttercream on top of the top layer, I did, and it ran a little.

Hazelnut glaze: Melt the cocoa butter and chips in the microwave for 30 second intervals, stirring each time. It should be melted in 1 minute or 1 and a half minutes. Add in extract of you choice. When slightly cooled, pour on the cake.

Enjoy!

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Monday Menu Swap May 26th

Gluten Free Menu Swap Monday

This week’s special food is one of my favorites, tomatoes! Thanks to Esther at Lilac Kitchen for hosting this week. Growing up, I hated tomatoes. It was only when I had them right off the vine that I began to appreciate them, and now I love homegrown tomatoes.

Regretfully, tomatoes won’t be in season here for a good month or so, so I’ll have to make due with canned. I start my tomato seeds in February, and some of the plants are outside, and some are going out next week. Above is one of my toe babies a month or so ago, and now he’s out chillin’ in the sunshine. As you can (maybe?) see in the picture, there is an itty bitty green tomato on one of my plants. Isn’t it cute?

Monday:
Out grillin’
Breakfast/lunch: leftover turkey garden burgers with roasted peppers
Dinner: Grilled salmon with thyme and grilled asparagus

Tuesday:

Tarragon chicken with roasted carrots (as inspired by Kalyn’s recipe, I haven’t figured out how I’ll adapt it yet.)

Wednesday:

Millet crusted turkey cutlets and braised spring onions

Thursday:
Vegan
Spicy puttansca-ish sauce (featuring tomatoes and kalamata olives) with brown rice pasta and broccoli
note: it’s much better with oil cured olives, but I can’t seem to find any that are vinegar and citric acid free. If you know of brands and where to get them, drop me a line por favor…

Friday:
Lunch: Tomato and caramelized onion soup (from my freezer) with avocado
Dinner: Leftovers!

Saturday:

Summer rolls and with Thai dipping sauce and spiced black rice pudding (teaching a GF and healthy class)

Weekly harvest:
From my garden:
Spring onions
thyme
oregano
mint
basil

From the Farmer’s Market:
Asparagus
broccoli

Dessert of the week: Spiced black rice pudding–recipe post up soon

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Grilling for Memorial Day

I love grilling for two reasons. First, grilling pretty much means we’re having marinated peppers, which are my favorite. Second, it means that my hubby is doing most of the work. I love to cook, but I love a break, too!

Our standard grilled fare is salmon, but we decided to do turkey burgers for a change. They’re full of a bunch of herbs from my garden, since parsley, spring onions and thyme are in season. Since I can’t have egg, I’ve had problems with them falling apart on the grill in the past. However, I started using chia seeds and it worked perfectly.

Chia are fabulous little seeds that form a gel. You can get them at your local Latino market, online, or you can order Salba seeds, which share many of the nutritional benefits. Not only are they wonderful binders, but they also are a great source of omega 3 fatty acids.

Spring onions are among my new favorite things. I love onions in any way, shape or form, but DH isn’t a big fan, so I tend to opt for milder options for dishes we share. I planted them last fall, and was amazed at how big my “garlic” was growing…until I poked around, and couldn’t find a bulb. I assumed I’d accidentally gotten leeks, but when I dug them up I was pleasantly surprised with spring onions, and am working on finding new uses for them.

I didn’t include a recipe for the peppers because I do them differently each time, but I’ll do my best to write it down next time!

This is my entry for Weekend Herb Blogging, as started by Kalyn’s Kitchen. This week’s kind host is Cate of Sweetnicks

Turkey garden burgers

1.3 lbs low fat* ground turkey (90-95% lean)**
1 cup parsley, packed
1/2 cup spring onions, shallots, or mild/sweet onions
1 tablespoon fresh thyme
1/2 teaspoon cayenne powder
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder

1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/2 teaspoon salt

chia gel:
1/2 cup water
1 tablespoon chia seeds

First, make chia gel by combining the water and seeds and allowing it to sit for 20 min.

Mince onion, chop parsley coarsely. Wash hands and combine everything together (you can mix with a instead, but it’s easier with your hands!). Make into patties.

Grill until done.

Serve topped with tomato, pickles, avocado, lettuce, etc. on a gluten free hamburger bun, or by itself. Or, of course, with a side of roasted peppers.

*note: It sounds strange, but most the turkey sold here is 1.3 lbs. I’m sure you can adjust to whatever you find at the market.

**I’ve had several email commentators on the use of low fat turkey. Yes, I know many kinds of fat can be quite nutritious. Quite simply, I feel poorly when I eat a lot of fat, of any kind, but particularly animal fat, so I don’t. Coconut, avocado, free-range turkey…my body is not a fan, so I do choose leaner options when I can.
~from Cheryl’s kitchen ©2008

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Black Sesame Whole Grain Bread


I’ll be honest–I don’t really do breakfasts. Well, I do breakfasts, but just not breakfast FOOD. My body functions better low carb, and so I have no issue with having last nights’ dinner as breakfast. But as the “Go Ahead Honey, It’s Gluten Free” for this month is for breakfast foods, I wanted to share a recipe I recently developed. It’s largely whole grain, allergen friendly, vegan friendly, healthy breakfast bread that I developed. May’s edition is hosted by the luscious Straight into Bed Cakefree and Dried.

I’m sure I’ll tinker a little more when I do this again, I am tempted to add in a little orange rind or sub OJ for some of the water. I’m sure you could also try a bunch of different whole grains. The possibilities are endless…if you experiment, please do let me know how it works for you.

Ingredients:

1/2 cup warm water
3 tablespoons of honey (or agave for vegan version)
2 teaspoons active dry yeast
1/2 teaspoon salt

¼ cup rice bran
1/3 cup almond meal
½ cup sorghum flour
1/3 cup amaranth
1/3 cup millet
1/3 cup arrowroot starch or corn starch
¼ cup potato starch
¼ cup tapioca starch
2 TBSP sesame seeds, white or black (I like how the black ones look!)

3 Tablespoons oil
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
½ cup carbonated water (can use regular water)

Chia gel:
¼ cup water with 1 T chia seeds

Directions:
Preheat oven at 250 for 5 minutes then turn off. Line a 8X4 inch bread pan with parchment paper.

Combine water with chia seeds. Let sit at least 30 minutes, but longer or overnight is fine. Combine all dry ingredients in a big bowl and mix thoroughly. Combine water, honey and yeast for 5-10 minutes or until fizzy.

Thoroughly mix dry and wet ingredients separately. Combine and mix vigorously for 1-2 minutes (or use your mixer on medium for about a minute).

Put dough in to pan lined with parchment in the slightly-preheated oven, or put covered dough in a warm place, like on top of the drying machine. Allow to rise for 45 min to an hour, or until the dough reaches the top of the pan.

Preheat oven to 375 (wait at least 20 min until oven is hot). Bake for 15 min, then cover with foil and bake for a total of 50-55 min.

Allow to cool for 5 minutes on a drying rack, then remove bread from loaf pan and allow to cool.

Delightfully gluten free, egg free, soy free, dairy free, corn free and sugar free. Yahoo!

~from Cheryl’s kitchen ©2008

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Menu plan May 19th

Gluten Free Menu Swap Monday
This week’s food is one of my absolute favorites: avocado. I grew up eating avocado sandwiches. Now I skip the bread and just get to the good stuff. Thanks for Cooking and UNcooking, this week’s host, for picking such a fabulous food!

I still have a stomach bug, and I made a huge vat of turkey soup with spring onions, carrot tops, ginger and allspice. I expect that’ll be quite a few of my meals.

And my birthday oat recipe contest is still up until May 31st if anyone is interested!

Monday:
Roasted salmon with an avocado “lemon” thyme sauce: I tried this Avocado Remulade recipe from Elise. We LOVED the creaminess, but the flavor didn’t appeal to us. So we’ve re-worked and it’s become a favorite, especially when wild salmon is only available frozen.

Tuesday:
Grill night
Marinated roasted rainbow peppers with buffalo burgers

Wednesday:
Vegan
Mixed veggies with a Malaysian curry sauce (we’ll see how/if this one works…)
Chocolate banana “pudding” (featuring avocado)

Thursday:
East Indian
Garam masala chicken with Broccoli with 5 spices and papadams

Friday:
my birthday. I’m trying to rope DH in going on a day trip with me, so who knows where we’ll be, or what we’ll be eating.

Weekly harvest from my garden:
spring onions
thyme
carrot tops
oregano

From the Farmer’s Market

Rhubarb (I hope!)
broccoli

Baked good:
the new Daring Bakers challenge, which looks quite promising!

Posted in menu plan | 3 Comments

Get yourself rhubarb, quick!

Rhubarb is one of those blink-and-you’ll-miss it foods. It’s really only in season the tail end of April through middle May, although I occasionally see it at the Farmer’s Markets in the fall. And I’m so jazzed that I saw it so many places at the market this weekend, because last year I couldn’t find it anywhere!

So here’s my ode to rhubarb. In my humble opinion, there’s nothing quite like it. I love the tart tanginess, the crimson color, and how it often cooks down to an unreal looking pink. It’s a fruit, but unlike most fruits, it’s very low glycemic (i.e. doesn’t affect blood sugars much).

You know when you think about lemons and your lips start to pucker? I could feel the same thing happening when I was cooking the rhubarb–you can almost smell the sour. This bunch cooked up more a yellowy-green color, as you can see in the picture. It must be another variety of rhubarb that is pink. And I’ll have to get my hands on some more, because I gobbled it all down and didn’t share with my husband.

You can, of course, add gobs of sugar to rhubarb and put it in a pie, or mix some into a strawberry pie. But I like making it simple and cooking the rhubarb down to a compote.

4-5 big stalks rhubarb
1/2 cup pineapple or chopped apple
sweetener, to taste

optional add ins: crystalized ginger, powdered ginger, cinnamon, etc.

Trim edges and leaves, discard. Slice rhubarb into 1/2 inch pieces (the smaller the pieces, the quicker it goes).

Combine 1/2 cup of frozen pineapple pieces or chopped apple. Add rhubarb and cook over medium heat. Cover partway, and stir every 2-3 minutes until the rhubarb dissolves.

Sweeten with a pinch of stevia, agave, or sugar.

This freezes very well, because it’s mush! Freezing is not going to change that any.

This tribute to rhubarb will be submitted to Weekend Herb Blogging, which was started by Kalyn’s Kitchen. This week’s host is Gay at A Scientist in the Kitchen


~from Cheryl’s kitchen ©2008. Please do not replicate without crediting/permission.

Posted in recipe, side dish, vegetables, weekend herb blogging | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments

Menu Plan Monday May 12th

Gluten Free Menu Swap Monday
 Our kind host this week is Faking it Gluten Free Style.  Love the name! This week’s theme is strawberries.  Boy do they look gorgeous, I got some for my husband at the Farmer’s Market last week. They were so beautiful it seemed silly to dress them up, they were perfect as is.

Also, I’m hosting a little recipe contest for creative bakers…I plan to try finally try oats for my birthday and am searching for good recipes!

So here’s the plan for this week:
Monday:
Market bounty:
Roast turkey with roasted asparagus (bumped from last week’s menu because of time)
Rhubarb compote-recipe to follow

Tuesday:

Simple and delicious:
Avocado and roasted tomato/caramelized onion soup

Wednesday:
East Indian/vegan
I’m hoping to convert this recipe for Aloo Dum into a Cheryl friendly dish by swapping a bunch of ingredients. It won’t be authentic, but hopefully will be yummy.

Thursday:
Tuna “steak” with steamed artichokes in a lemony thyme sauce.

Friday:
DH’s favorite:
Chicken with caramelized onions, rosemary, and garlic on a bed of wild rice with steamed broccoli

Saturday:
Carrot/coconut muffins…and probably real food, too.
wild and wonderful

Weekly harvest:
From my garden:
Rosemary
thyme

My herbs are growing out of control! This is my perennial patch (clockwise) thyme, oregano, sage, rosemary, and chocolate mint. The tarragon fades into the background and the marjoram is hiding behind the sage, I think.

From the Farmer’s Market:
Rhubarb!
Asparagus
Broccoli
Onions

Posted in menu plan | 4 Comments

A Birthday Oat Recipe Contest

NOTE: (added May 31st)
As fate would have it, May has been a month of almost non-stop GI distress. So I’ve come to the conclusion that I just can’t try oats now. The most important thing to me is taking care of my body, and there will be another time that is better for me physically

However, the first recipe I plan to make, whenever I am feeling better, are Carrie’s Apple Bars. I’ll be sending along your prize!!!

I’m turning 30 in two weeks. The big 3-0! And what I really want for my birthday… oats. Yep, oats. If that sounds totally bizarre to you, it is entirely possible that you aren’t gluten free. I know some people were never really into oats, but oatmeal was a huge comfort food for me before going GF. I had one (non GF) client tell me that she didn’t like boring health food, like oatmeal…and I did my very best not to glare at her. Hopefully I even succeeded.

Anyhow, as you all know, the oats controversy is alive and well. I understand and respect why many peoplethe object of my obsession... have chosen simply to eat other foods. I think it’s important to consider the decision thoroughly and talk with your doctor and all of that…however, I’m ready to take the plunge, because there are so many foods that I can’t have due to allergies or intolerances. If I can’t have oatmeal, so be it! But I do want to know, one way or another. I do have a bag of BRMs certified GF oats, and it has been sitting in a place of honor in my kitchen, receiving my loving and lustful glances for a few months now.

I needed to set a date, or I will simply stare at the bag until I decide to give it away, and I’ll go through this dance until I’m 40. (this is my second bag–I gave the first away). The question is, now what do I do with these beauties? A bowl of oatmeal is too simple, I think. And yes, I realize I am overthinking this, but it has been many years!

What is YOUR favorite baked creation using oatmeal? Specifically, I’m allergic and/or intolerant to gluten, dairy, eggs, corn, soy, grapes, bean flours, citrus, sesame, vanilla, etc. and am looking for low sugar/sugar free ideas. Impossible? Hopefully not. To sweeten the deal, I have a stash of totally unhealthy gluten, dairy, soy, egg and corn free goodies that I got during Passover (the brownie mix does have traces of corn). If you can’t have dairy or soy, you know as well as I do that M&M’s are pretty much just things to fantasize about. Here’s your chance to make it a reality! And if you CAN eat normal gf treats, I’d be happy to switch the prize to something else.

So…if you’d like to play, leave your recipe in the comments, and I will make one as my birthday treat! It can be anything, not necessarily cake.

The contest will go until May 30th. My birthday is the 23rd, but I have so many things going on that weekend that I can’t risk spending the week dealing with a gluten reaction if I get one!

Posted in dessert | 16 Comments

Toasted Quinoa Pilaf: Adoption time!

Gluten Free By the Bay was one of the trailblazers in the GF blogosphere. It was one of the first blogs I found, and it automatically appealed to me. The pictures, the variety, the traditional Jewish foods adapted to be gluten free…it’s a great resource. I also love the fact that she posts such a great variety of dishes, from yummy desserts to gorgeous veggie dishes. Her posts are all GF, of course, but she also caters to the multi-allergic set and has many dairy/egg/soy/sugar free recipes that are labeled as such, which is always such a help. She also periodically does “recipe roundups” which are fabulous for those of us who want our GF yummies to come right to us without even websurfing!

I finally got around to trying some of her recipes for Passover, and the mock matza was really quite tasty. It probably tasted too good to be matza, actually, and once my relatives discovered this, everyone wanted a taste.

For this month’s adoption, I made the Toasted Quinoa Pilaf with Garlic, Kale and Pine Nuts because it sounded wonderful, and I had an abundance of kale and was looking for a way to enjoy it. I also had a secondary mission: I’ve been working on reducing the amount of meat in meals without my husband noticing and/or complaining. Quinoa is perfect for that, since it’s the only vegetarian food that’s a complete protein.

I made the recipe as written, and we enjoyed it thoroughly. It was very filling and delicious. Thank you, Isaiah, for your recipes and inspiration.

For more quinoa fun, here are my two other favorite ways to have quinoa:
Southwestern Quinoa and Black Bean Salad
Quinoa Italiana

Here’s an intriguing looking recipe for a quinoa cake at Diet, Dessert and Dogs that I haven’t gotten to try yet, but it’s high on my to-taste list.  I’ll obviously have to modify it to make it GF, but it shouldn’t be hard.

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