BBQ Chicken Pizza and another recipe!

So I wrote a while back about making the BBQ Chicken Pizza and how good it was, but then realized later on that I neglected to actually post a picture of said goodness. Well readers…worry no more! Above is a picture of the BBQ Chicken Pizza that I made over the weekend. Or was it before the weekend? Whatever…it’s the most recent one that I made (thanks for clarifying that).  It was, as it has been the other couple times, really good. Again, I used Gluten Free Mama’s Pizza Crust.

After talking with one of the attorneys that I work with about the recipe, I’ve decided I’m going to post the recipe for the lemon bread and call it my own. Why? I’ve changed it enough that it really doesn’t resemble the product created with the original recipe. As such…

Scott’s Gluten-Free Lemon Bread!

Ingredients Needed:

2 Cup of Softened Butter (margarine, whatever…but, let’s face it…nothing beats butter! Well, except for bacon, maybe…)

2 Cup of Sugar

3 Cups White Rice Flour (I used white rice flour because it gives it a better texture and doesn’t have the flavor issues that brown rice flour has).

1 1/2 tsp Xantham Gum

4 tsp Baking Powder (or 1 Tbsp and 1 tsp…same thing)

8 Eggs (yeah…8…but it’s good)

1/2 Cup Lemon Juice (about 2 lemons if you do fresh)

Mix all the ingredients together in a mixer and then put in the refrigerator for 2 hours or so (this solidifies it just a little more and it worked out better this way for some reason).

Grease and flour 6 small loaf pans or 2 bigger ones and measure out equal parts into the pans

In a 350 degree oven, place the loaf pans (I sound like Yoda here…but you know what I mean! Good it is…mmmm)

Bake for 35-40 minutes (or until done)

 

For the glaze, take 1 cup Lemon Juice (or 4 lemons) and 1 cup sugar and mix together and “drizzle” (rain…sprinkle…whatever precipitation word you like best) over the top of the loaves when removed from the oven and then let cool.

What comes next? Well the most important phase of any cooking process, of course…the EATING PHASE! Om nom…happy eating!

Pasta and Garlic Bread

Been a while since I wrote anything here. I would like to say that it’s because I haven’t had any more problems with gluten or products containing gluten, but, as we all know, that’s just not true. No…I’ve been busy at work a lot lately. Lots going on and, unfortunately, the thing that suffers is the one thing that helps me through the stress of those things happening. How’s that for irony, eh?

Made a double batch of both the lemon and pumpkin breads. I ended up changing 2 things on the lemon bread recipe to kind of make it “mine” (although, legally, I’m not sure what constitutes one person’s recipe and one that was just modified by another person…so I still don’t want to post the recipe, just in case). I substituted white rice flour instead of the brown and added 1.5 tsp Xantham Gum to it and the bread is MUCH better. It really resembles bread now instead of…well, whatever it was that it resembled the first couple times. I made some and brought it to work for a meeting we had Monday, and everyone that mentioned it to me after said they liked it. So…that was a win. *Note: if anyone reading this knows anything about recipe and recipe rights and what constitutes ownership, please let me know!*

Last night, Kate and I decided we were both in a pasta mood…and I, being the bread lover that I am, wanted some garlic bread. Mmm…oh how I miss you, my garlic-y friend! Anyway, I had purchased a french bread and pizza dough mix from Wal-Mart the other day by Gluten Free Pantry and decided that now (well, not now…last night…you know what I mean) was the perfect time to bake this. I got out my trusty stoneware (by a company that rhymes with “Smampered Sneff”) and mixed up the bread mix as instructed on the packaging. Honestly, it was really good. The texture was perfect…very much like french bread. The flavor was a little bland, so next time I may try to put some roasted garlic cloves or something yummy in there to see how it turns out.

Other than that, have just been plugging along and stuff. One of my co-workers has had stomach problems for a long time and I finally convinced her to go off gluten and now, surprise, she feels great. The more I read about this and talk with people, the more people I see really do have a problem, and just don’t know it.

Anyway, I’ll keep experimenting with cooking as long as you keep reading! And, as always, happy eating.

It comes in waves…

I’ve decided that this whole gluten free thing isn’t that bad, but when it gets bad…it’s bad. Take, for instance, this last week. Friday, I decided to make some more bread (as I had given most of it away from the last batch I made), so I made two batches of pumpkin bread (one with xantham gum and one without just to experiment) and two batches of lemon bread. Both were really good and tasty.

Then, Sunday I woke up and made buttermilk biscuits again simply because it was Sunday and I wanted them. I ate them (as did Kate and her sister) and enjoyed them a lot. We ended up making stir fry for dinner that night and it, also, was good.

On the way to work Monday, I stopped at a local coffee shop/sandwich place and talked with the owner for a bit. There were doughnuts on the counter and the one thought that flew through my mind at Warp 10 was “I want a doughnut.” Sure…I DID want a doughnut…but that was the LAST thing I needed. I don’t know of any way to MAKE doughnuts…so until that happens, I just have to look at them longingly. With drool running down my chin and evil…EVIL…thoughts running through my mind. Must control urge to DEVOUR doughnut!!!

Last night, I made sloppy joe’s again because, let’s face it, they are good. The following is the recipe I used so you, too, can make SJ’s from scratch (well, almost):

Brown 1 lb ground beef (turkey, chicken, elephant if you have it…whatever)

Dice 1 medium onion and saute’ it until it’s done (you know what I mean…I hope)

Combine onions and DRAINED beef along with:

1/2 Cup Ketchup

1 Tbsp Sugar

1 tsp Vinegar

1 tsp Mustard (anything, really, from Dijon to the hotdog kind)

1 tsp Salt (or a “pinch” as it’s easier and you don’t have to wash the measuring device first…hehe)

1 tsp Ground Pepper (or, you can do what I did…just add till you are content)

OPTIONAL: I added about 1 Tbsp Sriracha to this for an extra kick

Cook all the ingredients together for 10 minutes or so or until whatever else you are cooking (fries, in our case) are done.

Enjoy on your home made hamburger buns. As always, happy eating! (Edit: The picture of the steak above is, of course, unrelated…except for the fact that it, too, was om nom)

Mmm…Pumpkin Bread

I got to leave work early yesterday due to good behavior (hah…let’s face it, we all know THAT’S not true…) and wanted to try to find a way to use my time as wisely as I could. As I have stated before, cooking and baking are really good ways for me to mentally unwind…so, I decided I would make some sweet breads (the bread that is sweet, not the parts of animals…I wouldn’t know how to begin making those, but the bread, I have that down).

First, I made a double batch of the lemon cake/bread that I’ve written about here before. It’s getting to the point that I just dumped everything in the mixing bowl, attached it to the mixer and let it do it’s thing. VERY good eats.

Another sweet bread I’ve always enjoyed making, especially back in the “gluten days” (not like it was really all that long ago…heh…”Back when I was a youngster…”) is Pumpkin Bread. To me, the smell of fresh pumpkin bread wafting through the house when it’s cold outside (which it still is here)…nothing beats it. Well, perhaps taking that same bread, cutting off a slice while it’s still warm and putting butter on it and taking a bite…that might beat it, but just barely. The problem is, I’ve never made the recipe I’ve always made in the past gluten free…so where to begin? As an experiment, I just changed 2 things and I have to tell you…the results were awesome!

First, preheat the oven to 325 (350 for those in higher altitudes!).

Cream together 2 3/4 cup sugar and 1 cup butter softened (I said it was good, not necessarily good for you!)

Add to that 3 large eggs and 2 cups of pureed pumpkin (be sure NOT to use the pumpkin pie mix in a can…that won’t work as well)

Mix that all together in the mixer until it’s fairly uniform.

Sift together(or you can do like I did and just dump it all in the pumpkin mixture above)

3 1/2 cups Brown Rice Flour LESS 1.5 tsp

1.5 tsp Xantham Gum

3 1/2 tsp (or, 1Tbsp and 1/2 tsp…same thing) Baking Powder

1/2 tsp Baking Soda

1 tsp Cinnamon

1 tsp Allspice

1/4 tsp Cloves

Add this mixture to the pumpkin mixture (unless you did it the way I did above) and combine until it’s uniform. Put this mixture in greased and floured (or greased and sugared…for sweet breads, it adds a nice layer of crunchy sweetness on the outside…om nom) bread pan (or small loaf pans…it makes about 6 of the smaller ones and 1 big one) and bake for 1 hour.

You can ALSO add 1 cup chopped nuts and 1 cup raisins…but I’m a purist when it comes to pumpkin bread. If you DO add them…do it before you put it in the pans as that would just be funny.

SERIOUSLY good eats…I was very pleased with the results. If you try this out and like it, let me know…am interested to hear how it turns out for other people, or if you make changes to it. As always, happy eating!

Attempted GF Bierock (Runza)…and it was good.

Monday night, I decided that I wanted to try my hand at making Bierocks. For those of you that don’t know what Bierocks are…well, they are meat and cabbage all wrapped up in dough and then baked. Also called Runza (for those in the midwest) and are very similar to the Pasties (except with cabbage instead of potato) here in Montana.

First: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees (or 425 if you’re in the mountains).

Take 2 lbs of ground beef and cook it up with 1 medium onion diced.

Drain the fat off (this is an important step as anything you don’t drain off will be soaked into the dough and won’t be good eats).

Put back in the skillet, add salt and pepper to taste (I added A LOT of pepper…maybe 3 Tbsp and it still wasn’t enough).

Add 1 medium head of cabbage shredded to the meat mixture and cook it down until the cabbage is soft.

Put this to the side so it cools.

Now, we’ll make the dough!

Cream together 6Tbsp Butter (or shortening), 2 Tbsp sugar, and 1 tsp salt.

Proof 2Tbsp yeast in 1 1/2 cup milk (at room temp!) until it gets a little foamy and you can smell it.

Pour the milk mixture into the butter mixture and combine.

Then, add 3 1/2 Cups of GF All Purpose Flour, LESS 2 tsp and add 2 tsp Xantham Gum.

Let this all come together until it starts riding up the hook on your mixer and then let it rise in an oiled container until it doubles in size.

Cut the dough into 12 equal-ish pieces. Roll them out, one at a time, on a floured surface and fill them with the meat mixture and then pinch the dough together (it will make a pillow type thing when flipped over onto a cooking sheet). Do that 12 times (you should, assuming you count correctly, run out of dough at this point).

Bake in the oven for 15 minutes or so (until they are golden brown and delicious) and then put a little melted butter over the top of each one.

Dig in! Although, I would say you should wait a bit till they cool down, but in all honesty, who can do that?

 

On another note, I made a mistake last week and ate some breaded chicken in a salad (not knowing it was breaded) and felt bad all weekend. Also what went along with that was another bout of withdrawal symptoms (grumpy, lack of sleep, general “Meh” feeling). I’ve read just now that this is a normal thing as you are getting off gluten…but dang, does it suck. Feeling down with absolutely no clue as to why is NOT fun. This, too, shall pass.

If you make some Bierocks (or whatever you want to call them), let me know how they turn out and, as always, happy eating!

Biscuits…a REAL southern treat

This weekend, I was treated to a nice three day weekend (as I hope someone else out there was…wasn’t it great?) and I knew that the one thing I wanted to do during my time off was bake. I didn’t know exactly WHAT I wanted to bake, but dang it, I was going to do it anyway (it’s this kind of unfocused enthusiasm that has caused many of the world’s more stressful periods…such as World War 1, Bay of Pigs and pep rallies at my high school).

Biscuits. Does anything REALLY sound better than buttermilk biscuits slathered (isn’t that a great word?!) with butter and your favorite jam? Well, perhaps if bacon was involved…and maybe gravy of some sort, but I digress. That was my goal…to create a true southern style buttermilk biscuit. Did I succeed? Yes…and no…please read on.

A GOOD Buttermilk Biscuit is light, fluffy, flaky, a good buttermilk flavor and just reminds you of home…or grandma’s house…or some other place you could get buttermilk biscuits like Cracker Barrel. I actually don’t remember having buttermilk biscuits at home or at grandma’s house…but that isn’t the point of this, is it?

I did a quick search on the internet and found THIS RECIPE for Buttermilk Biscuits based on Alton Brown’s recipe (the guy happens to be a hero of mine), so I figured, correctly as it turns out, that the flavor would be spot on. I mixed up all the ingredients like it said and was surprised at how wet the mixture was. I mean…wet dough like you accidentally poured water over the top of a good dough…that wet. I re-read the recipe and saw that it said it would be wet…but surely this isn’t what she was talking about. Anyway, I followed the recipe as written…so if you try it and get different results, please let me know (I may have skipped one or five steps, who knows?).

After their brief stint in the oven, I took out the biscuits (or as I like to call them, “Flattened Buttermilk Bread-Like-Substance-That-Resembles-Biscuits”). After getting over how non-biscuit-like they looked, I put a dab (ok, maybe it was a tablespoon or something) of butter on it and then some homemade Cher-Berry (Cherry and Strawberry mixed) jam and took a bite. The texture and flavor were spot-on. Good buttermilk flavor. Light and fluffy. Not flaky, but who cares? All-in-all, a good approximation of a lot of the good things that buttermilk biscuits represent.

Hope your adventures in baking are as “interesting” as mine are. And…in the words of The Chairman’s uncle…a la cuisine! Happy eating!

Sloppy Joes…on hamburger buns!!

Yesterday, I kept trying to think of something to make for dinner that would be yummy to eat, as well as something that would be FUN to eat. There are a lot of things that are yummy to eat…but to me, there is nothing more fun to eat than Sloppy Joes! The only problem for me was the fact that I ALWAYS eat sloppy joes on some sort of bread and, having this whole GI thing, I needed a way to meet this requirement. What to do, what to do?

Kate and I were talking about this before I left work for the day and she found a link to a recipe for some buns that was linked a bunch of times from other places. So, I went HERE and started looking at the recipe to figure out what stuff I needed to get.

I already had rice flour (I had brown rice flour, but I figured it was pretty much the same and, as they came out great, I’ll stick to my assumption), tapioca starch, potato starch and most of the other stuff (having picked them up at the local Real/Whole Foods market), but was missing 3 key ingredients: Guar Gum, Amaranth Flour and Buttermilk Powder. Not knowing where to turn to, I went back to the Real/Whole Foods market to see if they had any of them. Imagine my surprise when they had all three!

Guar Gum is apparently a ground up seed that adds resiliency to dough and makes the texture better somehow. Amaranth Flour is derived from ground up Amaranth seeds (big surprise there!), and really is interesting as it adds a nutty flavor to the baked good…so I can see where that might be fun to use in other applications such as cookies or sweet breads. And Buttermilk Powder is…um…powdered Buttermilk.

One thing I realized AFTER starting to put everything together was something that I’m sure most people already knew…Instant yeast is not the same as Active yeast. I only had the active variety and, as such, it took a bit longer to proof the dough as I neglected to proof the yeast first (oops). Now I know…but if you end up doing the same thing and it says to proof for 35-40 minutes…I proofed mine for 1.5 hours. Like I said, it takes a bit longer (but the flavor….mmmmm).

After baking the buns (which, by the way, look NOTHING like their mass-produced brethren) for the allotted amount of time, I took them out of the oven and cut one in half to make sure it was done (it was…whew). Kate and I both generously applied the sloppy joe mixture (made from scratch also) to the opened buns (we both did open-faced versions) and then dug in.

Honestly, I don’t know why anyone would buy hamburger buns from the store. These are SIMPLE to make, MUCH tastier than the store bought versions, and have exactly the right consistency and “mouth feel” that one would expect. Oh, and the nutty flavor that I mentioned before went GREAT with this application of the buns. Give it a shot…really. It’s good, I promise!

Until next time…happy eating.

Valentine’s Day

Last night, Kate ended up making dinner which was really a nice treat (generally, I cook and she does the dishes and, while I know this isn’t really something that a lot of guys would like, I REALLY like cooking as it’s a good way to de-stress). We ended up having Chicken and Red Sauce over Penne Pasta with some GF bread on the side.

We ended up using De Boles Rice Pasta (from the De Boles line of GF products) and ended up making absolutely no mess as compared to the last time we tried to make pasta (I think the key this time was using a BIG pot of water, and lots and lots of stirring). The pasta cooked up well, wasn’t slimy or anything and had a good flavor and texture (honestly, if you thought about it, you would think it was something along the lines of whole wheat pasta instead of rice…it was that texture, but much better taste as whole wheat pasta always tasted like cardboard to me).

Kate cooked the chicken in the red sauce in the crock pot for an hour or so (maybe 1.5 hours? I don’t know…I didn’t make it!). The bread was the same GF bread mix I used one time from Gluten Free Pantry (they also apparently make pizza dough and corn bread mixes!) and again, it’s really good but has a little bit of a sweet flavor to it, so if you aren’t used to sweet breads (not from animals…I mean bread that is sweet), then you might not like it much.

In looking up what company made the Gluten Free Pantry stuff, I just happened across this site which may just happen to be one of my new favorite sites! I’ve made a bookmark (Ctrl D for those that aren’t geeks) and will be checking back there often.

Anyway…everything is going well with the GF diet thing. I’m losing weight now and am going to be in the market for a way to punch holes in my belt before too long, which is nice!

As always, happy eating!

Off Gluten, what’s normal any more?

A while back, when I first started this whole “no gluten” thing, I tried making Beef and Cheese Enchiladas but I tried using the corn tortillas instead of flour…well, for obvious reasons! The corn tortillas were, of course, gluten free, but as they were corn, they ended up breaking before I could even roll them (you know what I mean…you start to roll it and the thing cracks open thus spilling all the goodness out into whatever container you were going to place the wonderfully rolled versions into). Well, I tried not to get frustrated and ended up making something that was equally as good, but decidedly not enchiladas. I call it…Enchilada Casserole! (Please note, I’m fully aware that this existed WELL before I made it at my house…but I was rather pleased with myself for rolling with the setback and just making something yummy anyway.)

Make the enchilada filling as normal (1/2 onion sauteed, 1 lb beef browned and drained, 3/4 cup enchilada sauce and a good handful of cheese all mixed together).

Put a thin layer of the enchilada sauce into the bottom of the casserole dish (or whatever) and spread it evenly over the surface.

Put corn tortillas one layer thick over the whole bottom (overlap where necessary…and it will be necessary).

Put the meat mixture over this layer of tortillas and spread it out evenly.

Put some more cheese and more enchilada sauce over the top of this (who doesn’t want cheese…honestly?).

Put another layer of tortilla shells over the top of this, put even MORE cheese and the rest of the enchilada sauce over the top of this.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or so (you’ll know when it’s ready…the cheese will look like molten goodness and the smell…ooooh the smell…).

Other than trying to make things work with cooking, I’ve noticed some side-effects to this whole thing. Now…I’m not entirely sure that this is all related, but I can say that I wasn’t experiencing these issues before…so take it all with a grain of salt.

I’ve been having some really bad dreams. Like…BAD bad dreams. As in, wake up in the middle of the night and not want to go back to sleep bad dreams…and generally all revolving around the bad relationships that I’ve had in the past. After doing some online research, I have found that I’m not the only one with this problem (not the bad relationships part, although I’m sure that’s true as well, but the dreams)…the bad thing is, from what I’ve read, this could take weeks to months to get over. One person said that your body has gone without REM sleep for so long that it’s trying to catch up and making up for lost time. Stop already! I get it…I’ve had bad relationships…but they are all in the past. And nobody wants to relive bad memories. So…here’s to hoping it passes quickly.

Eat on, my friends.

You win some…you lose some…

Vince Lombardi, former coach for the Green Bay Packers, once said, “Dictionary is the only place that success comes before work. Hard work is the price we must pay for success. I think you can accomplish anything if you are willing to pay the price.” This quote, and the hundreds of others that came from him, is something that I need to keep in mind as I go through this process of learning how to cook once again. That sounds VERY fatalistic (sorry), but the growing pains I’m going through are, by definition, painful. It’s not as easy as I thought it was going to be. Quite frankly, it’s hard, but given the fact that I feel so much better both physically as well as emotionally…isn’t that a price worth paying? I think so…I just have to remember that.

This weekend was a weekend of experiments…both successful ones and total failures. I’ll talk about the failure first, then the success…simply because I want to leave you, dear reader, with a game winning home run rather than a epic failure.

Mardi Gras season is upon us. Well, I say “us” in the global sense as I no longer live in Louisiana. While you can take the man out of Louisiana, you can never take Louisiana out of the man…or something.  Anyway, I decided that I wanted to try and experiment and make a King Cake. I took a recipe by Emeril and made it Gluten Free by just substituting GF AP flour. Well…through a cascading series of mistakes, the King Cake ended up being something more along the lines of building materials instead of something that was yummy to eat (truth be told, I didn’t eat any of it and Kate managed to choke down a small piece). The mistakes I think I made: 1) While proofing the dough, don’t set it above the exhaust from the oven as it will (and did) cook some of the dough. 2) I think, but am not sure, that I need to subtract a little of the flour for each of the tsp of Xantham Gum. 3) The dough was dense…I’m not sure how or why, but I have to figure this out or will be doomed to repeat the mistakes.

So, on top of the King Cake experiment, Kate bought me a gluten free baking book and I picked one of the yummier (is that a word? Most yummy? Yummiest? Whatever) sounding recipes to make…Lemon Loaf Cake. If you’ve ever been to Starbucks (if you haven’t you must be from Mars), you may have seen their Lemon Loaf Cake there. Well, that was what I was hoping to be able to duplicate. I ended up making two batches of this because the first one came out tasting better than I had hoped…and, um…well…we ate it all. Oops! I made more and brought some to work today. It’s pictured above with some Strawberry Sorbet that just made everything taste awesome (well, it tasted awesome by itself, but awesome + awesome = awesomer…or something).