Apple Cranberry Crisp is Awesome!

Apples are the heart of this recipe but the cranberries add snappy flavor to it and some great color.

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If you can, get organic as the sprays they use on growing apples are not good for you.  I made this last weekend with some golden delicious apples from a local orchard.  South of Hellertown is Bechdolt’s Orchard which grows many apple varieties.  Go there if you want the freshest tastiest apples in this geographic area.  The variety is up to you but I would not suggest red delicious as they are for eating only.

This recipe is out of Gluten-Free Baking Classics Cookbook by Annalise G. Roberts with a few additions.  Her flour mix appears to be identical to that of King Arthur Flour’s gf mix. I am betting you can use any GF flour mix in this recipe, not like a cake or other baked goods that have very specific flour requirements.

I have made this recipe several ways.  But it works best in the melted version below. I have made it egg free but it really somehow needs that egg to pull it together to mimic a wheat flour based crisp.  The oats can be left out if you don’t like them. I personally love oats in my crisp.  I don’t like it too sweet so I use the lesser amount of sugar.  This is entirely a personal choice.

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For those who love a topping and want to go low fat, this recipe is absolutely perfect with a big scoop of lowfat plain organic yogurt on it.  I love crisp warm from the oven but it also is tasty cold the next day, if you have any left over that is!

Angie’s Apple and Cranberry Crisp

3/4 cup GF flour (mix below)

½ to ¾ sugar (I used ½ a cup)

½ cup dry old fashioned oats

1 ¼ tsp baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon

½ tsp xanthan gum

½ tsp. salt

1 lg egg

5 cups thinly sliced apples

1 cup fresh or frozen cranberries

1/3 cup butter, melted

Directions:

Heat oven to 350 degrees.   Put rack in center level of oven.  Lightly butter a 9 inch square pan or spray with cooking spray.

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Combine all the dry ingredients.  Add egg and stir to mix well.   Place half the apples in the baking pan, top with cranberries and then the rest of the apples.

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Sprinkle with the dry mix and sprinkle with the melted butter.  Bake 40 minutes until bubbly and the topping is browning.

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Brown Rice Flour Mix [you can use King Arthur’s GF mix; identical to this recipe]
2 c brown rice flour (finely ground)

2/3 c potato starch – Not potato flour!

1/3 c tapioca flour

Chicken Paprikash, Its For Supper!

Burrrr it is cold, too cold for anything but comfort food.  If you have ever had chicken paprikash at Elizabeth’s Diner here in Hellertown, you know it is really tasty.  I was very sad when I had to give up their mouthwatering paprikash for my new gluten free life.  Thinking back, I liked the dark meat version but their white meat was also yummy.  Still, what was important was the little dumplings and sauce: Best. Ever. tiny dumplings and great sauce, rich and flavorful.  Gosh I miss it.

So…no more eensy weensy dumplings but maybe some day I can have the chicken paprikash? A few months ago I got this new cookbook; “The Everything Gluten-Free Slow Cooker Cookbook” by Carrie S. Forbes.  Everything I make is delicious.  This chicken paprikash recipe I am sharing, I have made it both in a slow cooker and on the stove top.  So I added directions for both versions.

You can use full fat sour cream but it works fine with a name brand light sour cream. Do not use non fat; it won’t taste like it should. I like both Daisy and Breakstone brands of light sour cream.

I have had it with white rice, brown rice and with gf noodles.  All yummy.  All easy.  Just add a vegetable or salad and you have a well balanced, tasty gf meal.

This picture, was taken the meal I enjoyed it with some brussels sprouts sauteed with shallots, garlic and some olive oil.  Great combo.

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Chicken Paprikash

Ingredients

1 tbsp. butter

1 tbsp. EVOL

1 large onion, diced

2 cloves garlic, minced

3 lbs. of boneless skinless chicken thighs

½ tsp sea salt

¼ tsp. fresh ground black pepper

2 tbsp. paprika

½ cup gf chicken broth

¼ dry white wine or vermouth

1 pint light sour cream

4 cups cooked rice or pasta

In a large sturdy sauce pan add the butter and EVOL, heat, add onion and cook 3-4minutes, add garlic and cook 1 more minute.  Put in slow cooker or leave in sauce pan if you are doing it stove top.

Cut the raw chicken thighs into bite sized pieces; ½-1 inch chunks.  Add to slow cooker or sauce pan.  Stir and add the salt, pepper, paprika, chicken broth and wine, cover and cook on high 3 hours, or low 6 hours.  Or 45 minutes on low in covered saucepan.  For the stove top version stir it every 10 minutes and add more broth if it gets dryish.

Stir in the sour cream, cover and cook 15 minutes on low on stove top or 30 min more in slow cooker.  Serve over your choice of starch.  The sauce is divine; can sprinkle extra paprika on it when you plate each serving but I never need to do that.  The chicken comes out so tender; great both done in slow cooker or on stove top.  Do use a thick bottomed sauce pan; I have a double bottom one I like for such things.

Great winter fare and fairly healthy. Enjoy!

Fastnacht Day is Here!

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Happy Fastnacht Day! How ever you spell it; there are several versions out there: also spelled Fasnacht, Fausnacht, Fauschnaut, or Fosnacht. Anyway, today is Shrove Tuesday which is Fastnacht or donut Day in Pennsylvania.  A true fastnacht has some potato in it and the texture should to be light yet substantial and moist. It can have a hole or not but no filling or fancy sprinkly crazy donut flavors.  It is a basic old school donut and people around the Lehigh Valley love them.  I can guarantee you that hundreds, no thousands, of fastnacht donuts are being munched on as I type this!

I pretty much gave donuts up a number of years ago and only ate them on Fastnacht Day. They are so fattening and oinky plus I never eat many so making a batch, even a half batch, used to leave me with a lot of donuts to give away. When I went gluten free exactly 2 years ago today I gave them up totally.  It wasn’t the biggest food sacrifice I made (there are too many choices for that award to even mention here!) but I do miss that treat on this special day.

Yesterday I looked at recipes, wanting to find a donut recipe for which I had the ingredients and could make within the time frame of the day, meaning no 12 hour to 2 day rise recipes.  The best looking and sounding recipe had just that; a minimum twelve hour rise.  Nixed it and went for a version that was made from extra flaky buttermilk biscuit dough.  No yeast, no rising. Some freezing and a lot of folding and rolling was part of the deal. No sweat, just make sure you have two cups of the special gf pastry flour recipe made up plus some for sprinkling on your bread board.

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I can’t share the recipe; created by Nicole Hunn of Gluten Free on a Shoestring fame, she does not allow recipes of hers to be shared in blog posts like mine.  You can get it right from her website: http://glutenfreeonashoestring.com/gluten-free-biscuit-donuts/.  The dough goes together fairly easily.  I found it best to use my pastry cutter to blend in the flour properly.  I froze most of it rolled and cut into round and rectangular biscuits for later use.  I only made 4 donuts and 4 donut holes.  Containing my donut possibilities down to something manageable! I probably should have smoothed my dough more; it is a bit craggy, reminds me of sour cream cake donuts…. Next time….

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I made one change to my donut finishing; I added a good sprinkle of nutmeg to the granulated sugar and thus gave them some of the flavor of my mom’s lovely yeast donuts.

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Next Fastnacht Day I will create Nicole’s yeast raised donuts – just have to plan a few days in advance so her amazing dough has time to organize itself properly in the cold raising phase in my fridge. Do check that recipe out in her book, Gluten-Free on a Shoestring Bakes Bread, along with many other tempting breads.  It is not too late to whip up a batch of oinky donuts that are gluten free and yummy.

Happy Fastnacht Day to all my donut loving friends! Time for my fastnacht!

Italian Peasant Soup…Winter Tummy Warmer

Yet more snow, high winds, and frigid cold….perfect soup weather.  Yeap, I have another soup to share: rib sticking winter fare – on my menu today. I’ve been making this recipe for a long time; it is a favorite for me.  This Italian Peasant soup hits the spot. chocolate heart cake 016 It is full of flavor but is fairly cheap to make: doesn’t have any meat or pricey ingredients.  If you use vegetable broth your soup can be vegetarian. It isn’t tricky either to throw together and it is naturally gluten free.

Do make sure your broth is safe; most of the brands out there are not suitable for use by anyone with celiac; they somehow seem to have some small measure of gluten in it rendering the soup uneatable for those of us with celiac disease.

I strongly suggest that you make your own beans from dried ones; much more flavor than canned already cooked beans, cheaper and really not much trouble.  Savoy cabbage, located right next to the usual green cabbage: it is a bit pricey than regular cabbage but the green crinkly leaves are a big part of the flavor appeal of this soup so get a small head for this recipe if at all possible.  Oh and, you really need the Arborio rice as it won’t be right with regular rice; Arborio rice soaks up liquid and is creamy with a different texture than long grain rice.  arborio rice

This recipe makes a lot of soup and is great leftover for lunch.

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Italian Peasant Soup

1 cup dried navy beans

2 quarts chicken broth

1 bay leaf

¼ cup EVOL

1 cup red onion, diced

1 cup carrot, diced

2 garlic cloves minced

2 tbsp chopped fresh parsley; flat leaf

1 lb Savoy cabbage

1 cup Arborio rice

1-2 tsp. sea salt

Freshly ground black pepper.

Directions

Soak 1 cup dried white beans in water to cover; I use the quick method; bring to boil, boil 2 minutes, let stand 60 minutes.  Rinse really well and clean the pot too.  Then return the beans to the washed pot and cover with fresh filtered water.  Cook beans with the bay leaf for 1-2 hours until tender but not mushy. Puree half the beans in a blender or food processor.  I have used either; both work.

In a big, heavy bottomed soup pot heat the olive oil, add the onion and carrot, stir a minute, add the garlic and stir a minute.

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Add the parsley. Cook 5-6 minutes.  Add the cabbage which you have diced fine.chocolate heart cake 010

Stir well for a minute or two, add 1 cup chicken broth. chocolate heart cake 011

Cover and cook 10 minutes.    Add the rest of the broth, bring to a bubble; add the pureed beans and whole beans.

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Cook 10 minutes, stir 2-3 times as it cooks.  Add the Arborio rice and cook 12-15 minutes; until tender but al dente. Stir it 3-4 times so the rice stays blended and doesn’t stick to the bottom and burn.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Let rest 15 minutes before serving. Serve with a drizzle of EVOL on top.  Great with a slice of hearty bread, gf of course!chocolate heart cake 016

Sandwich Bread Worth Baking

Gluten Free bread is not generally known for rising high in the pan.  Nor does it often taste good enough to enjoy once the first day has passed.  Worse yet, it is mostly terrible in sandwiches, all crumbly and messy. I have tried a few recipes and, especially in the sandwich bread area, nothing was worth mentioning much less putting in this blog.  Until I baked the sandwich bread from the How Can It Be Gluten Free Cookbook, created by the America’s Test Kitchen team.  This cookbook promises “revolutionary techniques and groundbreaking recipes” right on the cover.  What I love about it is the discussion on how they came up with the final recipe; all the changes and reasons why things were added/subtracted or changed to create the best possible final result.  I guess it is the science teacher in me but those discussions are my favorite part of this book.

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A tall handsome loaf!

The bread recipes use one extra ingredient which put me off, I’m sort of getting tired of excessive ingredients and so many flour mixes after only two years of living gluten free.  Anyway, the ingredient is powdered psyllium husk.  The cookbook says psyllium husk powder is critical to building a stronger protein network that traps gas and steam, key to producing a taller loaf (pg171).  It took me a while but finally, I got a bag of it at Frey’s Better Foods right here in town, $6.75 in a twist tied baggie; bulk packaging lowers the price quite a bit from the commercially packaged versions.  It is a brown/gray powder.  Doesn’t look magical.  But apparently, it is!  My loaf rose and rose, to the top of my special tall sided 8 ½ x 4 inch pan.  And it stayed tall through the baking process, no shrinking or sagging either as it cooled.  It is found on page 171, classic sandwich bread.  I thought it tasted sort of like multigrain bread, not as white as I expected, which is fine by me.  The creating is typical of gf breads: mix the dry ingredients and in a separate bowl the wet ones, mix and beat well.  You do have to make up their flour mix: a blend of white and brown rice flours, potato starch, tapioca starch and non fat dry milk powder.  Not too fancy but yes, another big jar of flour mix to store somewhere…

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Cuts nice, lots of slices for sandwiches or toast.

Anyway, it was tall and handsome and sliced easily into individual slices to enjoy now and to freeze for later.  There are lots of other recipes in this book that I plan to try. If you are serious about gluten free baking this recipe and this book are well work a good look.  I am having a sandwich today for lunch and I am excited, bread that looks normal and holds together, no more crazy crumbling sandwiches!

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Still slightly warm, buttered and ready for my first taste!

Classic sandwich bread

2 cups warm water, about 110 degrees

2 large eggs, room temp

2 tbsp butter melted

3 cups plus 2 tbsp ATK flour mix (recipe below)

1 1/3 cup oat flour

½ cup non fat dry milk powder

3 tbsp powdered psyllium husk

2 tbsp. sugar

2 ¼ tsp. dry yeast

2 tsp baking powder

1 ½ tsp salt.

Directions:

Spray an 8 ½ by 4 inch loaf pan with cooking spray.

Wisk the wet ingredients in a small bowl.  Mix all the dry ingredients in the large bowl of your stand mixer. Slowly pour in the wet ingredients, mixing slowly; scrape bowl sides down as you go; takes about a minute.  Increase the beater speed to medium and beat for 6 minutes, it should look very thick; sort of like a cookie dough. Glop it into the prepared pan, trying to fill the corners well. Then, smooth the top with your dampened fingers and spray with a bit of water.  Make a foil collar for your pan; if you have the tall pan like I do such a collar is not necessary.  The recipe says you can use a stapler to secure it around the pan. Cover the dough with a piece of plastic wrap and let rise at room temp until doubled. I heated my oven to 100 degrees and turned it off – popped the bread in and this gave it a nice warm temperature as my kitchen’s room temp is much too chilly for bread dough.  It took about 55 minutes for mine to rise; recipe says an hour.

Spray the loaf lightly with water before popping into the oven to bake at 350 until golden and firm and it sounds hollow if you tap on it. Although how you can tap on a hot loaf of bread is sort of beyond me!  Try to remember to rotate it half way through the time, I forgot…. Mine was done at an hour and 15 minutes; recipe says 1 ½ hours.  Let cool in pan ten minutes, cool on wire rack for two hours before cutting.  So don’t be diving into this bread warm; not happening.  If you cut gf bread too soon it can collapse and or get gummy in texture.  I hate the gummies so I resist the temptation to cut early and so should you!  This makes good toast too and great gf crumbs.