Gluten-free Gourmand

  I have been struggling to fine-tune these pancakes for several weeks now. I had never used quinoa flour before, and wanted to feature it in a new recipe creation. I also wanted to give people who read my blog a taste of how I mix flours together for general-purpose mixes. These pancakes come out pretty thick and fluffy with a moist and tender yet resilient texture. The quinoa flour lived up to its reputation of having a slightly bitter flavor. I used Ancient Harvest brand. Does anyone have any tips for another brand to try? I thought the best way to work with this flavor was to use buttermilk instead of or in addition to milk. The sourness of buttermilk counteracts the bitterness of the quinoa. Update: I've made these pancakes several times since I posted this recipe and they have never failed.  I serve them to people who normally eat wheat with good results.   I have my flour arranged in my cupboard now so it's easy to mix everything together. ...

I heard about this technique called "The 450-degree oven" on the Splendid Table on NPR a few weeks ago. I tried it for the first time last week while I was bar-b-queing some steaks for a friend, and thought it was one of the easiest and most flavorful side dishes I had ever made. For this post, I decided to prepare it as a one-dish full meal. The whole thing only takes about 25 minutes to prep and cook, and it can be done with a wide variety of ingredients. If you're not into the meat aspect of the dish, omit that and make it vegan. The dish pictured was made with just potato, yam, onion, and bacon for main ingredients. It didn't occur to me until I looked at the pictures, but this dish could also be served with eggs at breakfast. The potatoes look a lot like home fries. First, turn on the oven to 450 degrees. Put a cookie sheet or a large cast-iron skillet into the oven as it's warming up. Cut into large pieces your soft vegetables: Onion Garlic ...

I have been spending the last several weeks working on a few new recipes: gluten-free vegan scones and gluten-free pancakes. I have now produced a scone recipe that I can't wait to share. This recipe is incredibly simple. I was resistant to the idea of vegan scones until I found a few recipes for cream scones, which don't take butter or egg. Therefore there is only one dairy product to substitute: the cream. In a cream scone recipe, the fat in the cream is the substitute for the fat in the butter that has been omitted. Therefore I couldn't use a low-fat substitute like rice milk. I have found that coconut cream is the best vegan substitute for regular cream, especially in cooking. I love coconut soup, coconut curry, coconut everything. It's the only non-dairy cream I've found that has somewhere close to the right fat content to substitute for cream. To make sure the coconut cream was really rich, I first scooped the dense part out from the top of the c...

The Deschutes Brewery is now going to have gluten-free beer on tap year-round! I heard about the brewery developing some new gluten-free beers a few days ago and went to the brewery to verify. My server, Jen, was extraordinarily helpful. Not only did she verify that they would be serving gluten-free beer year-round, but they also are working on various recipes. I had been in several months ago to try the Gluten-free Golden Ale , which I had really enjoyed. It was bitter and hoppy. The recipe included sorghum, brown rice and roasted chestnuts. At right is a picture of my friend Ben from Gluten-free PDX with that very ale. I asked Jen about gluten-free options on the menu, because at first glance there didn't seem to be a lot of clear choices. She clued me in to the fact that they have things that can be made gluten-free indicated with a little symbol of a head of wheat crossed out. Vegetarian options are noted with a green leaf. When she came back with our beers, J...

This weekend I'll be working on a few projects for the good of the gluten-free. I'll be making another attempt at my new gluten-free pancakes recipe. I have so far made several attempts , only some of which have been successful. (As you can see from the photo, I probably won't be recommending that you use this as a waffle recipe.) I am also working on a gluten-free vegan scone recipe which I have high hopes for. Does it sound impossible? Reserve judgment until you hear my idea! I'm relying very heavily on coconut cream for this one. What do you use? What other kinds of baked goods would you like to see a new recipe for? Do you have a favorite recipe of your own for gluten-free scones or pancakes? Do you cook with coconut cream, or have another favorite dairy-free substitute? I want to hear about it! Update: See my successful new gluten-free vegan scone recipe here .

For last week in my What's for Dinner? Wednesday post I made Pasta Carbonara on some Ener-G White Rice Spaghetti that I'd just found. I promised to write a review of that pasta, and here it is! For more ideas and recipes visit Linda at the Gluten-free Homemaker . The pasta size is more like spaghettini or thin spaghetti, which I have always liked. It's a difficult size to find gluten-free, so you can understand my excitement in finally coming across it. In addition, I've been trying to seek out more white rice pastas here in the U.S. - they have some really good ones in Italy. The only other white rice pasta I've found was the Tinkyada brand that I reviewed a while back. My very first blog post was a review of several different kinds of gluten-free pasta , but none of them was a white rice pasta. Overall, I liked the Tinkyada white rice pasta a little better, in spite of the fact that Tinkyada's pasta doesn't come in a thin spaghetti style. I foun...

Today was the Starbucks debut of the Valencia Orange Cake. I was surprised they hadn't sold out by 4 o'clock when I went there to pick up three to try. I thought my co-workers might help me taste-test them. Nate and Becca like to cook and eat - they are gourmands by my standards. I thought they might have some added input for my review since they are both gluten-eaters. I returned to work and distributed the surprise treats. Mine was unwrapped and consumed within minutes. Nate unwrapped his and took a bite. "Pretty good," he said. "Is that corn flour?" I checked the ingredients. No corn flour. "That texture might be almond flour," I theorized. Becca unwrapped her cake. "Yeah, pretty good!" she said. So there you have it. It's pretty good and we ate ours before I thought to take a picture, which means something around here because I work in a photo lab. I'm always thinking about pictures. Upon further prodding, N...

This week in preparation for doing my post on Pasta Carbonara I had a pancetta breakthrough: it's much cheaper to buy at the butcher shop! I'd been buying the packaged stuff that was shipped from Italy or who-knows-where. I saw some at Chop Butchery in the City Market on NW 23rd Avenue in Portland, ordered some, and was shocked at how inexpensive it was. Plus, they will slice it for you however you want. I always get it "very thin," which is how Italians do it. What is pancetta ? It's Italian-style bacon. Pancetta is a cured pork belly that has not been smoked. It is sometimes rubbed with juniper and herbs and it's often rolled and cased. How does pancetta taste ? Cooked, pancetta adds a savory flavor that infuses whatever you're cooking it with. Since it's not smoked, it's milder than American bacon. It's usually sliced very thin, and can give you a very crispy, almost flaky texture. Raw, it can be kind of chewy and greasy, but ...

Making your own chocolate sauce for dipping or for putting on your ice cream is very simple. It only requires a few ingredients: chocolate, cocoa powder, butter, and cream. Because I don't always like doing things the easy way, however, I'm going to give you a recipe that includes one more ingredient: chiles. As my readers may know by now, I love Mexican food. Chilies with chocolate is one of my favorite combinations from Mexican cuisine. I have made chocolate sauce many times before, but when my cooking partner Alex suggested one time that we make it with chilies I was really excited. The first time we tried it with some roasted ancho chilies. It gave a good flavor, but what we were looking for was a distict bite. To up the ante, the second time we tried it Alex procured some ghost chilies, supposedly the spiciest chile in the world. They looked like dried habaneros. Pick your chile by how you want the end result to come out, and keep in mind that the chile flavor w...

I used to have a roommate named Rosaria who is from Naples. She really enjoys cooking and she was nice enough to show me how to make a few traditional Italian recipes. Pasta Carbonara was one of them. Pasta Carbonara (also known as Spaghetti Carbonara) is a fast, easy, and extremely filling dish. It's basically bacon and eggs for dinner.  It's delicious. Rosaria and I went through a few tries before we got this dish to work gluten-free. The trick is to use a pasta that can withstand a lot of handling after it's cooked. I recommend using either a quinoa pasta, a corn pasta or a white rice pasta. Both fresh pasta and brown rice pasta gave poor results. I used Ener-G brand white rice spaghetti for this meal, and it worked rather well. I have a full review of this pasta in another post. Traditional recipes are very specific for Italians, meaning that if they call it pasta carbonara, they do not experiment with substituting ingredients or techniques when ...

I had a good weekend. Saturday morning I went to the Portland Farmer's Market , where I scored some great lamb steaks from SuDan Farm , ate some habanero caramel chocolates from Alma Chocolate , and bought some vegetable starts for my garden. Then I went to the Gluten-free Food Fair, which I heard about through the Gluten-free Portland website. New Cascadia Traditional was there, as well as numerous other vendors. The highlight was sampling the gluten-free pizza from Mississippi Pizza Pub , which I hadn't tried before. The crust was really good, kind of like an herby foccacia bread, but not too thick. I'll have to go down there and do a full review of the place soon. I hear they also serve GF beer there. After the fair I went to Bob's Red Mill for the first time. They have a good selection of GF pastas and other products in the store. I bought some Ener-G White Rice Spaghetti that I'm excited to try, as well as some Tinkyada spinach spaghetti that look...

This week for What's for Dinner? Wednesday blog carnival I'm doing a simple rice recipe and a review of some battered halibut and haddock from Starfish. For more dinner ideas go see Linda at the Gluten-free Homemaker . Eric over at Starfish asked me to sample his new breaded fish products and let him know what I think. That's right - he gave me free samples, meaning that I've been bribed . In spite of this I will try to give you the most objective review I can possibly muster. After all, if someone tried to "bribe" me with inedible food I'd have something to say about that. As my fair readers may know by now, I take food very seriously. There are two sets of instructions on the box: one for cooking in the oven, one for deep-frying. I appreciated the fact that there are no microwave instructions. Who wants to eat microwaved fish? In the name of science, I should have tried it anyway, but I couldn't bring myself to it. I'm more of an...

I'm not into gimmicks when it comes to scones. I like my scones simple and straight-forward, and I like to be able to taste the flavor of the grains in my four mix. This recipe is none of these things. Nonetheless, it is my finest scone recipe to date. This recipe gives you a very tart, flavorful, citrus-scented scone. It's not even difficult. Simply combine in a small saucepan: 6-8 kumquats, sliced, with the seeds removed the juice of one lemon 1 Tbsp water 3 Tbsp sugar Boil for 5 minutes, adjust the flavors to taste, then simmer until you are ready to top the scones. Use my scone recipe , opting for the lemon zest in the liquid component. You can go even heavier on the zest if you would like; the kumquat glaze will be very strong and will not be overpowered by the lemon zest. I made mini scones this time, which gives you a higher number of scones for the same recipe. I topped the scones with 1-2 kumquat slices per scone, then dripped a few drops of the glaze o...

How I often pick seafood is by what looks good at the fish market. I create my recipes and ideas from the ingredients rather than forcing my shopping list to bend to the will of my recipes. This method proves itself over and over when selecting fresh fish. This week I found some really nice bay scallops that were very reasonably priced at my neighborhood New Season's. I really like the taste and texture of fresh scallops. They really have a lot of inherent flavor that I like to accentuate in my scallop recipes. The trick to getting the texture right is to cook them with high heat, and not for too long. This recipe was surprisingly fast to make. For once, I actually made the whole meal, including prep work, in the time it takes to cook the quinoa - about 20 minutes. Start your quinoa fist then prep the other ingredients, and cook. The quinoa can sit for quite a while in the pot if necessary after it's done, but the scallops are really quick to make and should be served r...

On weekends, I like to have some kind of hearty egg dish for brunch. As my loyal readers may have gathered by now, I love Mexican food. Combine brunch and Mexican food, and what you get is chilaquiles. Similar to migas, chilaquiles is a traditional Mexican dish served in the morning using the leftovers from last night's cooking. It is pretty simple, and usually involves corn tortillas, enchilada sauce, cheese, and egg. I make it with tortilla chips instead of corn tortillas when that's all that I have around. If you do make it with tortillas, let them fry a bit in with the chorizo or in oil before adding the other ingredients. I don't really measure anything when I cook this, so all quantities are approximate. I tried to get a good photo of each step this time to give you a visual of the quantities. This "recipe" is one serving. The timing is more crucial than the quantities on this one, as you don't want the tortilla chips to be too cruchy or too so...