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I wish I could claim credit for inventing the following recipe, but I can’t. My former neighbor told me, as we were all sitting outside one evening, that he made “the world’s best cauliflower.” I don’t know about you, but cauliflower is not a vegetable I’d ever considered for a “world’s best” anything nomination. As a child, we got cauliflower doused in cheese sauce on an occasional basis, and while it was fine, it wasn’t something any of us clamored for. Since then, I’ve seen it on raw veggie platters, had it in “California blend” frozen vegetable bags, and had it roasted once or twice. Again, not bad, but not generally exciting.
But Mukesh was not lying — this really is the World’s Best Cauliflower, and it will make a believer out of you, too. The usual name for this dish is “aloo gobi” (just “gobi” if you leave the potatoes out), and it’s amazing. The cauliflower is tender but not mushy, well-seasoned but not “hot” spicy, and the color is gorgeous (we eat with our eyes first, supposedly). This is shared with permission, a family recipe from Mukesh Singh. The only modification I’ve made is to cook it in the crock pot because my version never turned out as tender as his did.
I’d have given you more photos, but while this cauliflower tastes great, it’s kind of boring to photograph.
The World’s Best Cauliflower (Aloo Gobi)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 small onion, chopped
1 head of cauliflower, cut into bite-sized pieces
3 small potatoes, cubed
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon ground turmeric
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 teaspoon curry powder
salt to taste
2 Tablespoons water
Heat the oil in a medium skillet over medium heat.
Add onion and cook until lightly browned.
Mix in the cauliflower and potatoes, and then all the spices. Mix well to combine.
Scrape pan into your slow cooker. Use the 2T of water to “rinse” all the leftover spices out of the skillet into the slow cooker. Cook over low heat for 10 hours.
Serve with rice for a full meal, or serve as a side dish.
I know, you’re thinking that maybe a pre-holiday post should be cheerful or full of cookies or booze or something, yes? Well, instead we’re thinking more “tragedy prevention” and “preparedness.” We did name our blog “apocalypse,” after all. Being prepared lets me enjoy things.
As great as the holidays can be, they are also potentially dangerous for those of us with food allergies. Potlucks, family dinners, travel, eating out … so many places we don’t fully control our own food. As much as we work to mitigate our own risks, accidents happen. So while we hate to pull this gloom cloud into your holidays, wouldn’t you rather discuss what to do IF something happens than deal with the tragedy of being unprepared?
What is your plan for an accidental food allergy exposure? Do you have one? If you do, do the people around you know what it is and how to work it or help you? Do you AND the people around you know all the possible symptoms of an allergy exposure? It’s not just throat-closing sensations.
DON’T ASSUME. MAKE SURE. HAVE THE CONVERSATIONS.
FARE has an action plan you can use. Make sure your friends and family a) know your allergens, b) know your plan, and c) know where you keep your epinephrine injectors and/or your antihistamines. Make sure they know how to stab you if they need to, make sure they know what to do next. Don’t rely on the ER. You know you’re the only one who can properly advocate for your own care, but remember to do it before you need people to read your mind.
I guess I always feel that if I’m prepared for the worst (you know, like anaphylaxsis) then you can relax and enjoy everything else.
Modern gingerbread masterpieces. Photo by J. Andrews
One of my favorite things when I was about 12 was making this gingerbread village for the holidays. It was from the Southern Living cookbook, had two houses and a little church, and I’d make walls and a skating pond and generally took me a full day to construct. Gingerbread houses are generally not the tastiest cookies — in order to be structurally sound, they need to be rather hard and dry, and then you leave them out for a while, so they get stale. But they look so cool! I don’t know if we ever ate the village, given that I wouldn’t let anyone touch it.
Unadorned and decorating. Photos by J. Andrews
Last year, I made gingerbread cookies for the first time in years — gluten-free. They were good, but softer than houses. This year, I was more ambitious, so I tried a few different recipes until I got one that seemed like it might be structurally sound. THIS IS NOT MY RECIPE. I just slightly altered one from Fork and Beans, and then I overbaked the cookies slightly. But I did design the houses, made a “safe” frosting for Denise, and decorate them. Denise made the gumdrops, and we made the marshmallows together. It was an incredible labor of great artistic merit, and we destroyed it all within two days. As an adult, yeah, it’s awesome to build houses out of cookies and candy, but they then need to be enjoyed. Who wastes all that good sugar?
The blizzard-bound A-frame. Photo by J. Andrews
First up, make the candy and stuff you want for decorating. See the posts linked above.
Second, make the cookies. HERE are your designs, or design your own. Or check out Pinterest, as I am willing to bet there are tons.
2 1/2 cups gluten-free all-purpose flour (again, I point you back to Fork and Beans)
1/2 cup granulated sugar (choose corn-free if you need to)
1/2 cup molasses
1 chia egg (1 Tablespoon ground chia seeds mixed with 3 Tablespoons water, set aside to gel)
1 teaspoon baking soda (again, choose corn-free if you need to)
2 teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
Pre-heat the oven to 375ºF
Beat the shortening until soft and fluffy. Add half the flour.
Add the sugar, molasses, chia egg, baking soda, and spices and beat until combined.
Add the rest of the flour and beat well.
Divide the dough in two, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and refrigerate until cold. I just did it overnight.
Roll out the dough between two sheets of parchment paper until about 1/8-inch thick (or until it looks “thin enough” and you are sick of rolling. I am not patient). Put the rolled out dough on a cookie sheet and re-chill it in the fridge while you roll out the other ball. Then trade them out for cutting.
Using the patterns linked — or using your own — cut out the right number of pieces. Believe me, double-check your count! Try to space these out so that you don’t need to move them again. Peel the excess dough from around them — ball this up and re-chill it. (This is my favorite thing about gluten-free dough — you can’t really overwork it, as there is no gluten to get tough!)
Leaving the cookies on the parchment (and I’d suggest you use the parchment, not silicone sheets, as I don’t really advise cutting on those), on the baking sheet, bake for 15 minutes, or until pretty firm. Remember, these are now architectural building blocks you’re making. Drag the parchment to a wire rack and cool the cookies completely.
Mortar Frosting
1/4 cup shortening (butter, lard, Crisco, whatever you want. We used lard that Denise rendered, as that is safe for her)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2-4 cups powdered sugar (again, be safe — Trader Joe’s powdered sugar uses tapioca starch, not corn, so I used that)
Beat shortening until creamy and fluffy. Add the vanilla and beat more. Gradually add the powdered sugar. Depending on the temperature and your choice of shortening, you may need more or less powdered sugar. Remember, this is mortar. You want this to be stiff frosting. So I’d suggest more, not less, powdered sugar. (Tip: If you’re using Earth Balance soy-free, add a large pinch of xanthan gum or you will not have a room-temp stable mortar.)
Load this into a pastry bag or frosting gun and assemble your houses.
ASSEMBLE!
Tips for assembly — the A-frame is kind of hard to put together! Lay one roof piece down and frost both triangular walls onto it. Then add the other (put the frosting on the wall pieces), and then flip it upright. That seems to work okay.
With the modern shed roof, lay the tall wall flat. Add both end walls to that, then add the shorter “front” wall. Stand up your roofless house, and then add frosting all along the roofline before putting the roof on.
Now? Decorate with whatever you want. Use more frosting.
House On a Slant. Photo by J. Andrews
Share your masterpieces with people you like. And hey, if you make these, share a photo or two with us, too. We’d love to see what you come up with.
I have to admit, I spend a lot of fall jealous of people eating cider doughnuts and apple treats of all sorts. It’s part of a day out in the fall — stop at an orchard, get some fried appley things, eat bliss. Nowadays, I get cider, which is great, but somehow not as filling. Lucky for me, I think apple crisp is the pinnacle of baked apple dishes, as that’s super easy to take the gluten out of — it’s not meant to hold together. It’s meant to go in a bowl with ice cream and just be brilliant. But it’s not a fried apple treat of any kind, and I missed those.
So when Denise and I decided to have another day of frying everything, apple fritters were on my mind. I think it’s been years and years since I had one, so I’m not entirely sure these are “traditional,” but they were tasty, and they kept well in the oven (set down at 170ºF) while we made the rest of the fried things. I’d love to tell you how they did a day later or frozen, but I can’t. We ate them all. I’m not big on food guilt anyway, but I can say that if you fry things maybe three times a year, you can’t really feel bad about eating everything.
How many fritters you get will depend on how big you make them, and there’s really not a lot of measuring the mess into the oil. Just try to make them similar sizes so that they can be done about the same time. I’m not sure an exact count would be possible anyway — you’ll be eating them as soon as they are cool enough, way too fast to count, anyway, unless you have inhuman strength. The recipe is loosely based on the Chai-Spiced Pancakes recipe on The Canary Files, which is my go-to pancake recipe (my favorite thing about it is that you need to make it the night before and let it sit in the fridge overnight. I LOVE that. I don’t really do mornings so much as mornings happen to me.) For a fritter batter, though, I’ve altered it quite a bit, and then dunked it in hot oil; I’m just saying don’t expect health food.
Batter, Frying, Draining (and absorbing sugar)
Gluten-free, Vegan Apple Fritters
3/4 cup gluten-free all-purpose flour, blend of your choice (THIS is my go-to)
1 Tablespoon sugar
1 Tablespoon baking powder (corn-free, if you need it)
1/4 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/8 teaspoon nutmeg
2 1/2 cups rice milk, DIVIDED (if you make this by hand, add slightly less water than called for, about a 1:1 ratio of cooked rice to water, and strain it really well for a thicker texture that is so much better for baking)
1 Tablespoon of chia seeds, ground, mixed with 3 Tablespoons warm water to form a chia egg
2 Tablespoons light olive oil (regular will be fine, you just might taste it a bit)
1 1/2 teaspoons ground psyllium husk
4 medium apples, peeled, cored, and shredded (medium=baseball-sized)
powdered sugar for dusting. Really, don’t even bother to mention this, just sift or sprinkle it on.
Mix the dry ingredients (AP flour to nutmeg) together well. Add 1 1/2 cups rice milk, chia egg, vanilla bean, olive oil, and psyllium. Mix well, adding more rice milk if needed. Then put in the fridge for an hour. It will thicken considerably. Add the rest of the rice milk and stir in the apples. You want a thick dough, sort of like regular gluten-containing muffin batter would be, so pay attention as you add the liquids.
Heat a pot of oil to 370ºF. Drop the fritter batter in by spoonfuls, making sure not to crowd the fritters. If you use two spoons, you can sort of flatten or spread the fritters as you form them, making them more UFO saucer shape than rounds, and this will mean the insides cook better. They WILL stick together or stick to the sides of the pot, so bounce them around enough to make sure they don’t. Flip a few times, and see how they brown. You may have to test a few — I’m not giving you a cooking time as it varies widely based on how thick each fritter is, but after 3 or 4, you’ll have the hang of it.
When they are nicely golden brown, remove them to a paper towel-lined plate or tray to drain. Let the oil return to 370ºF, if need be, before doing the next batch. An oven turned down as low as it goes (170ºF on my oven) will keep them nicely warm until you’ve finished all of them.
Dust liberally with powdered sugar and no longer feel left out.
Looking in my fridge and freezer, apparently all I’ve made for weeks are soups and stews and chilis. It’s getting cold (maybe it just IS cold?) and soup is warming. This soup is based on a recipe title I read a year or so ago, possibly on a can. I can’t remember where, and I never could find it again. All I had was “lentil chestnut” and it sounded good.
I figured this would be a quick and easy soup if I used canned lentils and packaged chestnuts, both of which I usually have on hand, and my standard trio of soup vegetables: onions, carrots, and celery. I also used homemade stock, as I try to do, because frankly, mine tastes better.
This soup is hearty because of the lentils, a bit sweet because of the chestnuts, and full of vegetables for flavor, texture, and, hey, nutrition. I even had a lentil naysayer taste the soup, and it got a general approval. My vegetables were rather giant in relation to the chopped chestnuts and tiny lentils, and if that will bother you, consider chopping everything more finely. I kind of liked it, and it made for more interesting photographs (so did having a better camera to play with).
Vegetable Lentil Chestnut Soup
Vegetable Lentil Chestnut Soup
1 Tablespoon olive oil
1 cup chopped onion (about 1/2 onion)
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup chopped carrot (three small carrots)
1 cup chopped celery (2 larger stalks)
1 teaspoon chopped garlic (2 cloves)
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1/2 teaspoon dill
1/2 teaspoon tarragon
1/2 teaspoon dry mustard
5 oz cooked and shelled chestnuts, chopped (this is the size of package I can buy around here — cook and shell your own, if you like, but be warned, it’s more work than you think it will be!)
2 cups cooked lentils — any type you like except red, which will not hold their shape. I used black.
3 cups of vegetable broth, preferably unsalted. Add your own salt.
In a large sauce pan, over medium heat, add the oil to a hot pan. When the oil is shimmering hot, add the onion and salt; cook, stirring occasionally, until translucent (about 5 minutes). Add the carrots and cook for 2-3 minutes. Do the same with the celery.
Now season: Add the garlic and stir well. Then add the spices and stir again. Give it a minute to heat up — this seems to let the garlic really permeate this base of the soup.
Add the chestnuts and lentils, stir, and then add the vegetable broth. Cover and bring to a boil. There are two ways to do this. If you’re feeling patient, leave the heat at medium and let it come up to a boil slowly. This is great for flavor, but honestly, not enough to insist that this is the right way to do it. You can also just turn the heat up to boil it fast. Either way, after you’ve had a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for about 20 minutes.
I bought Cara Reed’s cookbook Decadent Gluten-Free Vegan Baking a few months ago. Cara is the genius/madwoman behind the Fork and Beans blog (the woman made her own Cheerios, seriously). I bought the cookbook because I’ve made a few of the recipes on her blog (starting with these adorable ghosts, although I made a lot of weird shapes instead), and I knew that they worked, so I was excited by the cookbook. I am not being compensated for this review — I bought the cookbook with my own hard-earned money, and then I spent the rest of it on gluten-free flours to bake with.
This is, hands-down, one of my top 5 cookbooks I’ve ever purchased. Only a few cookbooks capture my kitchen this way, where I keep picking them up and picking out something new to make from them. I love cookbooks, and I enjoy just reading them. But for the majority of cookbooks, they sit on my shelf a lot and I think about making things from them. This one? I’m baking from, nearly weekly.
THIS IS NOT A HEALTH FOOD COOKBOOK. For anyone who thinks “gluten-free” and “vegan” both mean some weird definition of “healthy,” um, yeah, this isn’t it. This cookbook is cookies and cakes and pastries and sugar and then some more sugar. It is awesome. Cara Reed’s goal in food seems to be bringing us all the cookies and things that we miss, living with food restrictions (chosen or not). She makes pop tarts.
Reed’s recipes are all based on one of her two flour blends. I’ve only made the standard one, and I’ve been through 3 recipes of it (it makes 9 cups. NINE CUPS.) I’m sure I’ll get to the second blend; I keep meaning to. But making flour blends is one of the *sigh* *so much work* BAH parts of gluten-free baking, so the fact that I have one on hand means I’m more likely to bake. The fact that this one is half sorghum was also a selling point for me; so far, I’ve had more luck with sorghum than any other gluten-free flour.
The one and only “problem” I’ve had with any of these recipes is that, in my oven, the cooking times are too short, by anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes. At the moment I’ve misplaced my oven thermometer, but it was good 6 months ago. Regardless, this is a pretty easy issue to fix. It is consistent enough that I’m adding 5 minutes of time to every recipe and then going from there, though. Different ovens.
So far, I’ve made the following recipes:
Chocolate Cloud cookies, which were quick, easy, and chocolate
Brown Sugar donuts
Cracked Pepper and Herb Drop Biscuits (but I made them plain)
Gingerbread cupcakes
Mexican Hot Chocolate cupcakes
Blackout cake
Whiteout cake
Chocolate “Soufflés” Individual cakes (more like lava cakes)
Cinnamon Streusel Coffee cake
Pumpkin Streusel bread
Dark Chocolate Quick bread
and several frostings for this
High on the list of things to try:
the Samoas
Cheese-Its
cheesecakes (Key Lime Bars, and strawberry cheesecake)
Chocolate Indulgence biscuits
the almond croissants and danish squares
Cinnamon Raisin loaf
Okay, does that list make you drool? If not, really? I’d offer photos, but it turns out that I’ve not remembered to photograph a single one of these recipes. They are *that good.*
When I had to start gluten-free baking, along with the vegan side (the egg allergy was new at the same time, but I was so good at vegan cake already that it didn’t matter), I failed so much. I made brownies that no one wanted to eat. The experiments that weren’t inedible just weren’t very good. I tried a few cookbooks, but honestly, I was disappointed, overall, with the results. Gluten-free failures are expensive, too! I have been a baker since I was 10 years old. I have always loved baking, especially cakes. I’ve gone through several obsessive baking phases — first Bundt cakes and then for a while vegan cupcakes. This is a less thematic baking cookbook to be obsessed with, which is nice. But the other thing that’s nice is that these recipes all work.
Slow Cooker Pork Roast with roasted broccoli and mashed sweet potatoes
It’s set-it-and-forget-it season! Actually, the crock pot is good all year, but because it makes pots of lovely hot food, I think people associate it more with winter than summer. I know I do. The first thing I thought when I saw pork roasts on sale was “slow cooker.” But I didn’t really want barbeque. Nothing wrong with it, but it’s a flavor I’m bored of before the leftovers are gone. Molasses is a fall obsession of mine — while the world goes crazy for “pumpkin spice” everything, I want to drown in molasses (not literally. That stuff kills. Science!). So I started with molasses and went from there. Balsamic vinegar and some spices add up to earthy and hearty.
This pork roast will make a lot of leftovers, if it’s just one or two of you, or it’ll feed a crowd. And it is quick enough to be made first thing in the morning. I served this with some roasted broccoli and sweet potatoes — I hope to share the sweet potatoes as soon as I work out some kinks with that recipe. Pork and sweet potatoes are great together, and broccoli goes with everything.
Slow Cooker Pork Roast with roasted broccoli and mashed sweet potatoes
Slow Cooker Pork Roast
oil to grease the crock
1 sweet onion, halved and sliced thin
1/2 teaspoon of oil
1/4 teaspoon salt
2-2.5 lb center cut boneless pork roast, fat side up
1 Tablespoon molasses
2 Tablespoons balsamic vinegar
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon celery salt
1/2 teaspoon turmeric
1/4 teaspoon mustard
1/2 cup broth or stock, whatever you have on hand
1/4 cup hot water
fresh ground pepper, to your taste (I used about 1/2 a teaspoon, not that I measured)
Grease the crock of your slow cooker. Add the sliced onion to the bottom, and drizzle on the 1/2 teaspoon of oil and the 1/4 teaspoon of salt.
Place the pork roast on top of the onions, with the fat side up (I do not trim this for the slow cooker — it’s good flavor).
In a small dish or right in a measuring cup, whisk or stir with a fork the next 7 ingredients (molasses through the broth/stock). Pour this over the roast. Use the last 1/4 cup of water to rinse all the seasoning out of the measuring cup, and pour this along the side (don’t rinse off the seasoning that landed atop the pork roast!). Grind the pepper right on top.
Cover and cook all day. Or, you know, 4-6 hours on high, 6-8 hours on low.
When this is done, take just the meat out. Attempt to slice it, and find out that it will shred instead. After breaking it up, put it back in the liquid you cooked it in, and stir well. This lets the meat soak up a little more of the cooking liquid to serve.
Alternately, you could also make a starch slurry (starch of your choice mixed with water, 1:2 ratio) and add that to the liquid for the last 30 minutes or so of cooking — this will give you more of a gravy consistency.
Serve with side dishes of your choice — roasted veg would be great, but go wild. You’re coming home to dinner almost done.
Apparently, I first made this recipe in September 2007 — I’m an historian, so I do tend to date all my notes. I never really finished it, though. Like so many things, I made it once, liked it enough to sketch down sorta kinda what I did and what I threw into the pot, and never looked back at it. But this is why good notes are important right?
For this time of year, when “cool” feels “cold” because of transitions in temperature, a nice soup with warming spices might be the most perfect dinner. Also, the house smells amazing. As a finishing note, I add coconut milk, just a bit, to give it a richer, creamier curry flavor, though this is not necessary. I am reasonably sure that most non-dairy milks would work here, though I’m not sure rice milk would add much (and don’t use “light” coconut milk — it adds very little). But I think it’s fine without the added non-dairy milk, too. Because of the optional coconut milk, I’ve confusingly tagged this with a “tree nut warning” as well as “nut-free.” It depends on how you make it; do what works for you.
I basically took my forever-perfect combination for soup (onions, potatoes, carrots, celery) and changed up the seasonings to a mad fantastic curry blend. The spice of this soup stays mainly in the broth, which is a nice play against the earthy vegetables and beans. When you taste it to adjust seasonings, taste the broth AND a potato or carrot; they balance.
Because this is a big pot, mix it up as you work through the leftovers. A handful of spinach added before re-heating is pretty awesome. I’ve also used a serving, with lots of broth, poured over fish and simmered until the fish is done. I like to get a little creative with leftovers.
Potato Curry Soup
Curry Potato Soup
1-1 1/2 Tablespoons olive oil
1/4 of an onion, softball-sized, chopped (between 1/2 and 3/4 cup)
2 cloves of garlic, pressed or chopped finely
1 good chunk of ginger, one inch around (size of a walnut), finely minced or micro-planed
1 Tablespoon curry powder (choose sweet if you like it mild, hot if you like that)
1/2 Tablespoon turmeric
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cayenne (optional, but I’d suggest adding at least a pinch)
1/2 teaspoon salt (if you’re using commercial broth, use 1/4 teaspoon then taste)
1/4 of a bell pepper (about 1/2 a cup)
4 stalks celery, chopped
3 carrots, chopped
3 medium potatoes, small cubed (smaller than dice, about 3 1/2 cups). If you want a super creamy soup, peel your potatoes. If you’re lazy like me, or want the fiber, leave the skins on. It’s up to you.
2 cups or one can of cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
6-8 cups broth or stock, vegetable or chicken
1/4 cup coconut milk, unsweetened and unflavored, optional
additional hot sauce, if that’s your thing, optional
Heat a large stock pot over medium heat. Add oil to your stock pot for a good thick coat (hence the range), and let that heat until shimmery. Add your onion and cook until translucent.
Add the ginger and garlic, stir well, and cook until fragrant. Add about 1/4 of a cup of broth and stir well, making sure to scrape up any of the garlic and ginger that stuck to the bottom.
Add all the spices and stir well.
Add the pepper, celery, and carrots, stir well, and cook for 5 minutes or so. Add potatoes, stir until completely coated with spices, then add the beans and stir again. Add the rest of the broth, covering your soup ingredients completely, stir well, and cover until it comes to a boil. Do this over medium heat. When you’ve reached the boil, turn the heat down to low and simmer until the potatoes are fully cooked and starting to break down a little — about 30 minutes.
Stir soup well, and taste. Add salt, if needed, and then add the coconut milk, if using (or use another non-dairy milk here) and hot sauce if everyone wants it. If you do like it really spicy, I’d recommend harissa here.
Enjoy. This soup reheats fantastically, but I’ve never frozen it.
