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MaryKate – Page 10 – surviving the food allergy apocalypse (archive)

surviving the food allergy apocalypse (archive)

Author: MaryKate

  • Kitchen Sink Soup, vegan, gluten-free, allergy-friendly

    Allergy-friendly Kitchen Sink Soup vegan gluten-free
    Kitchen Sink Soup

    One of the ways that food allergies have taken over my brain is that I’m always planning ahead — you have to. A lack of planning can mean not eating, which in my case leads to extreme crankiness or just a complete lack of functioning. I’m also completely incapable of deciding what to eat if I’m too hungry. So I usually know what’s for dinner — tonight and tomorrow night, maybe for the whole week, but certainly for any important dates or busy nights coming up.

    On the other hand, life with food allergies also makes you pretty flexible — again, by necessity. So when I had plans to make Winter is Coming Chicken and Kale, I had chicken, polenta, and kale on hand. Or, rather, I thought I did. Turns out, hey, winter is ending and the chicken I’d defrosted (properly — in the fridge, though for two days instead of one) was not good.I don’t really know if it was bad when I bought and froze it or what, but that left me with kale and polenta, which is a really sad meal.

    So I ended up making this soup. I’m just going to call it “kitchen sink soup” because that’s pretty much what went into it — everything but the kitchen sink. It turned out so well, though, that I thought I’d go ahead and share it. I wish that it were too late to post soup recipes, but it really isn’t. We’ve moved into cool and rainy, so soup is still all over my menu. If you live somewhere where it’s not soup weather? Yeah, don’t tell me about it, please. I love soup because it’s a one-pot, one-bowl meal that can be entirely balanced.

    The key to this soup, I think, is the *right* amount of really good hot sauce for you. Even if you “don’t like spicy things,” you need the hot sauce — you will just add less. GOOD hot sauce will give you tons of flavor and it doesn’t need to have a kick. I’ve written the version for the light end — taste and add more as you see fit.

    Vegan Gluten-free Soup
    Soup pre- and post- kale awesomeness

    Kitchen Sink Soup

    • 2 teaspoons oil of your choice
    • 1/2 an onion, chopped
    • pinch of salt
    • 8 oz mushrooms, de-stemmed and broken (I prefer crimini)
    • 3 carrots, chopped
    • 3 celery stalks, sliced thin
    • 15 oz of canned or cooked garbanzo beans
    • 1 teaspoon good hot sauce (or as much as you want)
    • 4 cups of vegetable broth
    • 1 potato, peeled and chopped small
    • about 4 cups of kale, de-stemmed and shredded

    Heat soup pot over medium heat. When the pot is hot, add the oil. When the oil is hot, add the onion and the pinch of salt. Cook, stirring regularly, until onion starts to brown.

    Add the broken mushrooms. Breaking mushrooms rather than chopping them gives you bigger mushroom chunks and reduces the shrinkage. Cook until the mushrooms have sweated and darkened.

    Add the carrots, celery, garbanzo, hot sauce, and vegetable broth. Stir well, and stir in the potato. Cover and bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook for 20 – 30 minutes — when the carrots and potatoes are cooked, you’re good.

    Add the kale, stir, and let cook another 2-3 minutes until the kale is brighter green. Do NOT overcook the kale! Taste and adjust the hot sauce and salt if you need to.

    Enjoy the warm veggies and dream of summer.

  • Chinese-Irish Baked Latkes

    Chinese-Irish Baked Latkes
    Chinese-Irish Baked Latkes

    Hey, here’s an ethnic mash-up for you. My Irish family always celebrated St. Patrick’s Day rather traditionally, in part because my grandfather’s birthday was the 16th and he loved the traditional corned beef and cabbage. Personally, though, I would survive just fine without ever seeing that again (there was an incident involving snow, Georgia, a cancelled party, and corned beef and cabbage for about 30 consumed by the six of us for, oh, about eternity. BLECH.)

    However.

    Potatoes in all their forms are one of my favorite things on earth. And I’m not actually all that Irish by blood. So I’ve been thinking of ways to mash my Chinese heritage and my Irish heritage into a dish, via midwest America, and I found it via Hanukkah’s latkes. Latkes are the best holiday food anyone has ever invented in the history of all things. Now the symbolism of latkes is focused on the oil not the potatoes, but for St. Patrick’s Day, it seems right to minimize the oil and focus on the potato, no? To hold everything together, instead of egg and flour, I’ve made a homemade sweet and sour sauce, with an added (optional) bonus of hot, and added broccoli for flavor and color (it’s green, right?).

    So I bring you the Chinese-Irish St. Patrick’s Day Latke. It’s possible that the story here makes sense to exactly one person in the world (me), but the flavors will make sense to a lot more of you. These are vegan, gluten-free, ethnically diverse, and baked, because frying is just messy. I hope you enjoy them.

    Raw latke materials
    Raw latke materials

    Chinese-Irish Baked Latkes

    • 3/4 cup water
    • 1/4 cup vinegar (cider or white, your choice)
    • 1/4 cup ketchup
    • 1/4 cup + 1 Tablespoon sugar
    • 2 Tablespoons tomato paste
    • 2 Tablespoons tapioca starch
    • 1/2 teaspoon salt
    • 1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes (optional or adjust to your taste)
    • about 1 inch of a chunk of fresh ginger, peeled and smashed (I just use the pot lid to smash)
    • 2 large baking potatoes, washed and peeled (1.5 to 2 lbs.)
    • 1 large head of broccoli, trimmed (1/2 lb.)
    • oil to grease pans

    First, make the sauce. Whisk all ingredients, water through ginger, together in a saucepan. Heat over medium-high heat until boiling, and cook, whisking regularly, to reduce to about 1/2 cup, total (a little less than half its original volume, and pretty thick). This takes 10-15 minutes. Strain out ginger and red pepper flakes (the taste of both stays in the sauce, I promise). Set aside while you prep the vegetables.

    Preheat the oven to 425ºF. Prepare two pans by spraying or brushing with oil.

    Wash the broccoli and potatoes. Peel the potatoes. Chop both into sizes that will fit in your food processor.

    Put the broccoli through the shredder blade and then empty into a large mixing bowl. Peel the potatoes and then shred them. Wrap the shreds in a clean kitchen towel and squeeze as much liquid out as you possibly can. Twist and wring — you will be surprised how much liquid is in them, and this makes your patties soggy. Squeeze a little longer than you think you should. Empty them into the bowl as well (and rinse the towel).

    Mix the broccoli and potatoes, then add the sauce. Mix. It seems as though it will not come together — but it will. I found a rubber spatula worked best for this, and I had already dirtied one scraping the sauce into the mix; so perfect.

    latkes ready for oven
    latkes ready for oven

    Scoop scant 1/4 cups of the mix onto the greased trays. Flatten these out and neaten up the edges. Don’t skip the neatening! Those bits will burn (as you can see in the photos). Bake on a center rack (not the bottom rack! Ask me how I know.) for 10 minutes, then flip all patties and bake for another 5-10 minutes (this seems to depend on the weight of the pan you are using).

    Enjoy hot.

  • Making Vegan Gluten-free Thin Mints

    Vegan Gluten-free Thin Mints
    Vegan Gluten-free Thin Mints

    My friend Corinne, of sparecake, decided to move out to Wyoming for a job. So I went down to spend a day hanging out with her before she left. We’ve cooked together a few times — Corinne isn’t gluten-free, but her mom is, so we’ve tried out some recipes. For this final attempt, we did a Frankensteined faux Thin Mint, using the cookie from one cookbook and the chocolate “frosting” or glaze from another because that’s what we had all the ingredients to do.

    The cookies were not exactly like the originals, but were still crisp and chocolatey and minty, so overall, I’ll call this a success. We did reduce the amount of mint extract in the chocolate coating by a lot, as it was almost dental cleaning strong the first time around. Interestingly, there is no mint in the cookie part of a thin mint. Who knew? It’s just in the chocolate glaze.

    The dough for these cookies was super dry, and we had doubts it would hold together for rolling or cutting, but it did both admirably.

    This dough is pretty dry. But it ends up tasting good.
    This dough is pretty dry. But it ends up tasting good.
    Cut out cookies.
    Cut out cookies.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    So this dough involves cutting in the shortening, “kneading” the very dry dough until it sort of holds together, and then rolling and cutting. After the cookies are baked and cooled, add chocolate mint coating. It is a few more steps than “regular” cookies, but, hey, this is re-creation. Miss Girl Scout cookies? This is the recipe for you.

    For the full recipe, I’m going to shoot you over to Corinne’s site, sparecake. For the allergic, you will need a non-dairy milk, a safe-for-you shortening, and a meltable safe chocolate.

  • Citrus-spiced Beef Short Ribs

    Citrus-spiced Beef Short Ribs with mashed potatoes and green beans
    Citrus-spiced Beef Short Ribs with mashed potatoes and green beans

    There are two times of the year when I want to eat like the midwesterner I am — dead of winter, and height of summer. And by that, I mean there are two times of the year when I think of meat, first, and then figure out what goes with it. In the summer, I just want to grill things. But in the dead of winter, I want hearty meat and potatoes and veg meals. When I was at the grocery store browsing the meat section, I found some beef short ribs that just looked good — I’d never cooked beef ribs before, nor short ribs of any sort, but trying new things is sort of the point of this blog. So I bought them.

    I looked up some things online — a few recipes for beef short ribs in particular, as well as some technique-focused posts on braising. I followed this post for the cooking technique, more or less. And I decided to go with a sort of sweet-and-spicy, braised in the oven beef dish. It was definitely a winner, and this is a perfect mid-winter dinner — it’s hearty and warm and sort of comforting. I highly suggest serving with mashed potatoes, and I added green beans for the vegetable. I’m thinking that bok choy might taste great with the sauce, though.

    A note on the sauce — the beef gets just a hint of the spice of the red pepper flakes. The sauce itself, which still contains the actual flakes, is a good deal spicier. Adjust the measurement according to your tastes.

    Ideally, use one covered pot or pan that you can do the stove top searing and then the oven braising in — fewer dishes is good for sanity and the environment, plus all the flavor stays together. If you have a Dutch oven, this is the time to use it. As soon as I sort out enough stuff in my storage area to create space to store one, I am buying one. I used my cast iron skillet and covered it tightly with foil as it doesn’t have a lid. This worked great, although I do need to re-season after cooking with an acidic citrus juice for a few hours. It was worth it.

    Citrus-spiced Beef Short Ribs
    Citrus-spiced Beef Short Ribs

    Citrus-spiced Beef Short Ribs

    • 1.5 lbs beef short ribs, bone in, separated into individual bones
    • salt and pepper to season the ribs
    • 1/2 of a medium (baseball-sized) onion, halved and sliced thin (I prefer sweet onions)
    • large pinch of salt (probably about 1/8 teaspoon)
    • 1 Tablespoon of minced garlic
    • 1/2t – 2t crushed red pepper flakes, adjusted to taste
    • 1 teaspoon sugar (optional)
    • 1 large grapefruit, juiced, with pulp in OR 1 cup of grapefruit juice
    • 1.5 inches of ginger, peeled and sliced into rounds
    • 2 Tablespoons coconut amino acids, gluten-free tamari, or faux soy sauce
    • 1/2 cup warm water

    Preheat the oven to 325ºF.

    Heat your chosen cooking vessel over medium high heat. If you’re not using a seasoned cast iron pan, brush or spray just a light coat of oil on the pan’s surface.

    Season your short ribs with salt and pepper, both sides. When the pan is hot, add the ribs. Sear well on both sides, and I also seared the edges of the few really thick ones. More flavor is always worth the effort. Remove the seared ribs to a plate.

    Add the onions with a pinch of salt, and cook until translucent. Then add the garlic and cook, stirring, until starting to turn golden. Add the pepper flakes and stir (but also, stand back and don’t breathe the steam right away!). Scooping all of this to one side of the pan, add the ribs back and then spread the onion-garlic-pepper mix over them.

    If using, sprinkle the sugar on the ribs. Scatter the ginger slices, add the coconut aminos, and then add the grapefruit juice and water. Cover your pot or pan, and slide it into the oven. Cook for 2.5 hours.

    After removing from the oven, let the dish sit for at least 15 minutes. I then sliced through the thin membrane holding the meat to the bones so I could just serve the meat. Serve topped with the pan sauce, but leave the ginger rounds out.

    As the post from The Kitchn suggested, if you find beef ribs to be fatty, you can either trim the fat (not all that highly suggested for this cooking method) OR cook them ahead of time and scoop the fat off the cooled sauce. I didn’t find them to be too greasy or fatty this time around, and enjoyed the richer sauce over mashed potatoes. Your tastes may vary, so know that this is an option.

    Enjoy with mashed potatoes and the vegetable of your choice.

     

  • Crock Pot Chicken Stock, a concept

    Crock Pot Chicken Stock in jars
    Crock Pot Chicken Stock in jars

    Here’s your thought experiment for this bright Monday: you live in New England. The snow piles are so high that you, in your sensible, fuel-efficient sedan, can’t see to turn corners. Another blizzard is predicted — the third in a few weeks — to last two days. But you live in New England, and you ignore it. Without really planning it, you get snowed in for two days. You could, were you industrious, brush the car off, shovel it out, brave the roads and hit the grocery store. Or you could scavenge in your own well-but-bizarrely-stocked kitchen and not bother to get dressed. Surely there’s enough food in there for two days.

    What do you do?

    You can start with soup. What I love about stock is that it’s a way to not waste bits and pieces — you get stock! This also means, though, that there is no real recipe for stock. I mean, you can write one. We have before. But this one is more of a concept than a recipe. I read something somewhere, likely on Facebook, about making stock in your crock pot. I think I may have linked it on a Friday. I mean, brilliant, right? So if you have a snow day, are not sure what to eat once you’ve demolished the leftovers in the fridge, and own a crock pot, this recipe is for you. Even if it’s not snowing. And even though this isn’t really a recipe.

    Stock full of ingredients
    Stock ingredients

    Basic technique: Fill crock pot with stock ingredients. Fill with water. Cook for about a day.

    But here’s what I do: I collect things in the freezer. When I roast a chicken or buy a rotisserie one, I keep any skin I don’t eat and all the bones — throw them in a bag in the freezer. Add other things you aren’t using — some leftover vegetables you don’t finish, mushroom stems, the quarter of an onion you don’t need for that recipe, the herbs you bought and don’t need all of. Don’t add celery — it just turns to mush in the freezer– and I’m not a fan of brassicas in stock at all (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage) because they are very strong. Everything else? Fair game.

    This stock I took photos of started with a chicken I cooked, leaving all the skin and bones and one whole thigh (I got sick of chicken that week). I also added a bag of “leftovers” from the freezer — mushroom stems, probably three quarters of an onion, and some peas. I did thaw these for a bit, but I’ll tell you my secret cheat for that in a minute.

    To this cache from the freezer, I added everything that was still good in the fridge — a few handsful of parsley, a small bunch of thyme, a few carrots, some sad celery with the brown bits cut off, and a tablespoon or so of salt. Sometimes, I add peppercorns. Sometimes, I’ll roast some of the veg first; this adds great flavor, but it’s not necessary for good stock. If you have no fresh herbs, add some dried. I usually add a bay leaf, but I was out this time around. Thyme, basil, oregano, dill — all are good in stock. Add what sounds good. You can also add a bit of tomato paste, but this time, I had just finished a jar of pasta sauce for lunch, so I rinsed it out and added that water to the stock, too.

    Pack all this in your crock. Then fill the crock with water. Put on the lid and cook. It really is that easy. Cook 4-6 hours on high (recommended if you started with anything frozen), or 8-12 on low. I’ve never overcooked stock, so I think this is a pretty forgiving recipe.

    IF you have started with some frozen or partially frozen parts, here’s how to cheat — generally, crock pots don’t do well with frozen foods. They just don’t get hot enough. I thaw things for a few hours or overnight in the fridge first, but then I add a few cups of boiling water. Not starting from cold seems to help. You can also run the pot on high for the first hour and then turn it down.

    When your stock is done, you want to strain out all the “stuff” you just extracted flavor from — I use a giant kitchen bowl with a colander in it. Dump the entire pot in, and then lift out the colander full of bones and vegetables.

    If you plan to use plastic to store your stock, let it cool to room temp first. If you’re using jars, it works fine to pour it in hot. Stock should keep about 5 days in the fridge, and a few months in the freezer. Or, hey, get fancy and make some risotto right away with the hot stock.

    Let us know if there are any particular ingredients you love in stock!

  • Blood Orange Broccolini

    Blood Orange Broccolini
    Blood Orange Broccolini

    Okay, as Denise and I raved on Friday, it is officially citrus season up here in New England, which means someone has trucked citrus fruit all the way up to the frozen north. After two years of just eating or juicing the citrus, I’m finally starting to try cooking with them beyond. I’ve been marinating and dressing and mixing and playing and it’s brilliant. Let me share my favorite side dish so far.

    Broccolini was kind of a cheat for me. I could happily eat broccoli every single day and not get too bored, but it seems like we should eat more than just one vegetable, right? So the other night when I was tempted to pick up more broccoli at the store, I decided on a bunch of broccolini instead. Turns out that broccolini is not just a different stage of broccoli’s growth. Broccolini is a hybrid of broccoli and another vegetable I’m not particularly familiar with (kai-lan, an Asian vegetable I’ve never cooked). A quick internet search tells me it was developed in the early 1990s and made it to the US in the late ’90s. It has tender stems and less dense tops, and it’s a nice variation on broccoli. The flavor is pretty similar, but greener and more mild.

    This recipe cooks both the long tender stems and the tops, but adding the stems first so they will be done when the tops are, with neither part overdone. It also takes two pans, but I think it’s worth it. I’ve cooked the sauce first and set it aside while cooking the broccolini. When chopping up the broccolini, I’ve pulled off all the “tops” that are on lower stems, too.

    From top left: whole raw broccolini, blood orange and squeezed juice, finished sauce, and toasted garlic in Earth Balance margarine
    From top left: whole raw broccolini, blood orange and squeezed juice, finished sauce, and toasted garlic in Earth Balance margarine

    Blood Orange Broccolini

    • 2 Tablespoons Earth Balance or other safe-for-you fat or oil (if you are not using a margarine or butter, add a pinch of salt to your oil)
    • 1 Tablespoon chopped garlic
    • 3 Tablespoons fresh-squeezed blood orange juice (about 1/2 an orange)
    • 2-3 teaspoons olive oil
    • 1/2 teaspoon salt, divided
    • 1 bunch broccolini, stems and tops chopped separately

    Melt your Earth Balance in a small skillet or sauce pan over medium low heat. When foamy, turn the heat a notch or two on your stove — you want basically the point between low and medium, wherever that is for you. Add the garlic, stir well, and cook over this low heat for about 10 minutes or so. Garlic should be caramel brown when you’re done. Remove from heat and set aside. When it’s no longer hot, stir in the blood orange juice.

    Heat a large skillet over medium heat. When hot, add the broccolini stems and about 1/4 teaspoon salt. I’ll be honest — I almost never remember to measure salt in cooking (baking is different). I just added a large pinch. When the stems start to get a little browned, stir in the tops and another pinch of salt. Keep stirring every few minutes until the stems and tops are just barely fork-tender.

    Add the sauce, stir well, and heat it all together for 2 or 3 minutes. Scrape the pan well to get all the garlicky goodness out and stir to coat all the broccolini well.

    Enjoy.

    blood orange broccolini
    blood orange broccolini

  • Cottage Pie

    Cottage Pie
    Cottage Pie

    This recipe comes out of a birthday request. In my family, tradition was that on your birthday, you pick what we have for dinner. This weekend was a birthday, and the request was a cottage pie. I’ve never made cottage pie, so I did a bit of searching.

    So, here in New England, a meat pie topped with potatoes is called Shepherd’s Pie no matter what type of meat goes into it. As far as I learned, Shepherd’s Pie is lamb and gravy topped with mashed potatoes and baked. You know, shepherds? Sheep? Cottage Pie is the same basic idea but using beef as the meat. The internet has a variety of ideas about what cottage pie should be, from a basic lamb-based shepherd’s pie to a tomato sauced ground beef topped with potatoes and cheese. The former is poorly named, and the latter just sounds like casserole to me.

    What I wanted for this was a ground beef, gravy, and vegetable pie topped with lovely browned mashed potatoes. Anything topped with potatoes is bound to be good, right? To add a bit of extra flavor, browned the onions quite well, and used mushrooms, arrowroot starch, and balsamic vinegar in the gravy. For veg, I’ve added corn, carrots, and celery. I think this recipe is pretty versatile — change up the veg for what you think you’ll like best, and make it your way — just let us know how it turned out.

    Cottage Pie is served, with garnish
    Cottage Pie is served, with garnish

    Cottage Pie

    • 1 lb. ground beef
    •  salt and pepper, to taste
    • 1 Tablespoon olive oil or reserved beef fat
    • 3/4 – 1 cup medium onion, sliced thinly
    • salt, to taste
    • 1 cup carrots, finely chopped (about 3)
    • I cup celery, finely chopped (about 3 outer stalks)
    • 1 cup corn, frozen (optional)
    • 2 Tablespoons fat of your choice*
    • 1/4 to 1/2 cup baby bella mushrooms, finely chopped (optional)
    • 2 Tablespoons arrowroot starch
    • 1 1/2 teaspoons fresh thyme leaves
    • 1 to 1 1/2 cups beef broth
    • 1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar (check to be sure this is “safe”)
    • 2 lbs potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped
    • 2 Tablespoons Earth Balance or other margarine or fat
    • 1/2 cup non-dairy milk of your choosing, heated to at least room temp, if not a little warmer
    • salt and pepper, to taste
    • fresh parsley, chopped (optional)

    Heat a large skillet over medium heat. If you have a skillet that you can use a whisk in (i.e. not non-stick), use it. Brown ground beef, breaking it up. Add salt and pepper to the cooking beef, adjusted to your taste. Remove beef, leaving any fat in the pan — I used a lean beef, so there was almost none, but if there is some, you can either use it to cook the onions or to make the gravy. If you want it for gravy, set it aside. Put the beef in a greased casserole that will hold all your ingredients.

    In the remaining drippings or in 2 T of olive oil, add the onion and brown to the point of caramelization. This takes some time! Probably close to 40 minutes. Be patient, stir occasionally, and know that this pays off in flavor. When the onion is almost done, add the carrots, stir and let cook a few minutes. Then add the celery, do the same, and finally, add the corn and just let it thaw. Add the cooked veg  to the beef, and stir it up.

    In the pot or pan you’ve been using, add the reserved grease OR 2 tablespoons of fat — margarine, oil, whatever — and heat. If you’re using the mushrooms, add them to the hot fat.Whisk in the arrowroot starch and cook this paste for a few minutes, and then gradually add 1 cup of the beef broth or stock, whisking continually. When you have a slightly liquid-y gravy, add the balsamic and cook until the vinegar smell dissipates. Add thyme, and cook a few more minutes, adding a little more beef stock if you need to thin the gravy. Taste, and add salt and pepper if needed. Pour the gravy over your meat and veg, stir and set aside.

    Make potatoes! Boil the potatoes in salted water until soft when pierced with a fork. Drain and mash with your margarine and non-dairy milk, adding the non-dairy milk gradually. You want a consistency that you can pipe, if you’re going to do that, so aim that direction while mashing. Taste, add salt and pepper if needed.

    If you are piping the potatoes, let the cool to just above room temperature, and then load your piping bag and make pretty designs on top of your casserole. Bake 25 minutes if you’ve just finished making everything, 30-40 minutes if you refrigerated the casserole, at 350ºF.

    Top with more of the optional chopped parsley, because it’s pretty, and serve.

  • WW: Philly reviews of Sweet Freedom bakery, Agno Grill, and Yantze Chinese

    Sweet Freedom's Samoa Cupcake
    Sweet Freedom’s Samoa Cupcake

    Courtesy of a holiday trip to the Philadelphia area, I’m so glad to bring you a few brief restaurant reviews. I am finally becoming somewhat comfortable traveling and eating out despite my food allergies. Frankly, it’s about time! I’m still not all that daring, as being sick when on the road is awful, but the Philadelphia area had a lot to offer. (I’ll admit — I also just brought breakfast: instant gluten-free oatmeal, tea, and an electric kettle. Starting off safe makes each day easier.)

    We had three notable stops on this trip, places worth sharing with all of you: the Sweet Freedom bakery in Bryn Mawr, Agno Grill in Philadelphia proper, and Yantze Chinese Gourmet in Lansdale. Sweet Freedom and Agno are dedicated, 100% gluten-free restaurants. But let’s go backwards and save dessert for the last, yes?

    Yantze Chinese Gourmet is a very nice Chinese restaurant in a very dull and mostly empty strip mall in Lansdale, a suburb north of Philadelphia, and the above link goes directly to their gluten-free menu. It’s a pretty decent menu with a lot of classic American Chinese restaurant dishes on it, and all lunches come with soup and ice cream. There is a chicken rice soup that is solely on the GF menu, which is what I had, and there is a lemon sorbet option for dessert (I did not try that). The staff seems well-versed in what it means to have a gluten-free menu, and I felt comfortable eating there. I ordered the cashew chicken, a personal favorite, and it may have been one of the nicest versions of that dish I’ve ever had.The chicken was moist, the celery crunchy, the cashews nicely toasted and the sauce was flavorful, but not too thick and there was not too much of it. There are a lot of dishes containing nuts, though, so if that’s one of your allergens, your mileage may vary on this review. No photos from this one — I wasn’t thinking of a review at the time, but it really was good enough to mention. This is upscale Chinese.

    Agno's Rice Bowl with chicken
    Agno’s Rice Bowl with chicken
    Agno's Steak Wrap
    Agno’s Steak Wrap

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Agno Grill in Philly is a Mediterranean “fast casual” kind of restaurant near Rittenhouse Square that I read about in Kaila’s review at GF Life 24/7. Actually, that recommendation is part of the reason I’m writing about more than just the bakery. Knowing that other people with food allergy issues had an experience worth sharing is incredibly helpful and reassuring. Agno Grill was staffed by two knowledgeable women who were able to answer all my questions about ingredients in their food. I only wish I’d remembered to ask what was in the wraps (I didn’t want one, so it didn’t cross my mind!). I ordered the rice bowl, topped with chicken, the roasted carrot mint salad, the tomato cucumber salad (which did not have feta in it, as the photo on the website shows), and some of the pickled beets, with the lemon oregano sauce. My dining companion ordered a wrap with the steak, the same carrot and tomato salads, and the quinoa tabbouleh, with tzatziki sauce. I also had an iced mint tea, which was excellent. The individual flavors of all the vegetable ingredients really stood out in this meal, even the beets (which I keep trying, even though, eh, I don’t love them). This was a great filling lunch, and if this was in my neighborhood, I would be there regularly.

     

    Sweet Freedom Cinnamon Roll
    Sweet Freedom Cinnamon Roll

    Ah, Sweet Freedom. The Sweet Freedom Bakery’s list of “free”s is long and very much like my own list of allergies, which means it was freeing for me — of everything in the bakery’s two cases, the only thing I could not order because of my own allergies was the banana chocolate chip cupcake. Because of this, I had trouble not ordering everything.The bakery is vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, corn-free*, wheat-free, peanut-free, soy-free, casein-free, non-GMO, kosher, and refined sugar-free. I admit, I skipped over the last few, and I had no idea until I was looking at the menu again that the place was refined sugar-free — you won’t notice, I promise. They do use a lot of coconut, so they are not “nut-free,” but this was not an issue for me.

    *you can read their corn information here, towards the bottom, but they do source vanilla and leaveners without corn. the xanthan gum is corn-derived. YMMV on that.

    My top choice was the samoa cupcake. We also ordered a coconut caramel doughnut and a cinnamon roll. We also ordered cookies to take with us — the double chocolate mint chip (good), oatmeal raisin (amazing), a pumpkin cookie (okay), and a snickerdoodle (good). The cinnamon roll was a bit more of a cake texture than a “normal” cinnamon roll, but it still had the outer “crust” and chewiness of a proper cinnamon roll and the taste was spot on. We took another one of these with us for breakfast. The doughnut was a moist cake doughnut with good crumb and rich flavor. The coconut on top neither added to nor detracted from the doughnut; I wish I’d had a chance to taste another flavor of doughnut. To compare, you know?

    The samoa cupcake, though, was truly amazing. The cupcake was a yellow cake with a good crumb and lacking the softness that sometimes undermines gluten-free vegan cakes. The cupcake was filled with a rich chocolate frosting and caramel sauce, topped with a vanilla (I think?) frosting, coconut, and caramel and chocolate drizzles. It was rich and decadent and quite lovely. I would try any other cake from this bakery, happily.

    It’s possible that Sweet Freedom is out of your way when you visit Philadelphia. It’s worth the detour.