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Rose’s Mallow Potatoes

November 30th, 2009

R Quayle

I was originally going to use a recipe from a book of Southern Foods I got from the library for Miss Alma’s best sweet potatoes (And I cant locate the exact title online to give it a link, sorry) but went off on a tangent and modified the recipe to get rid of a lot of the fat. (Yes I know, give me a southern slap for trying to undermine the cuisine). If you can find that book, it was heavenly.

Rose’s Mallow Potatoes

2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped small
1/3 c evaporated milk
good-sized knob (1/4 c approx) margarine
splash of vanilla essence
1/2c- 3/4 c marshmallow fluff
1/2 c lowfat soured cream (I always use Breakstone’s)
chopped pecans- optional

Place chopped potatoes in a pot with water and leave on the boil 15 min or until almost mushy. Drain and place in a small buttered casserole. Add the evaporated milk and margarine and mash together until very smooth. Bake uncovered at 350F for 20 min approx. and let to cool. Separately, mix together 1/2 c soured cream and 1/2 c marshmallow fluff. If you’d like the topping to be thicker, increase the fluff by 1/4 c at a time. Beat until pourable and pour over the potato bake, which will also be thick and creamy. Serve warm or refrigerate- this is great cold. You can also sprinkle chopped pecans over the fluffy topping just before serving.

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: baked yams, Breakstones, Butter, Casserole, christmas recipes, Cook, Cream, Fruit and Vegetable, holiday foods, Home, marshmallow fluff, Potato, southern food, Sweet potato, sweet potato casserole, thanksgiving recipes

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Mushrooms in tomato and onion sauce

September 25th, 2009

R Quayle

I’m still on my Indian food kick and tonight I made a simple vegetable side dish called Mushrooms in a Rich Tomato and Onion Sauce. Very easy recipe, gluten free and pretty darned tasty. This one is also from Cooking School: Indian from Barnes and Noble.

Mushrooms in a Rich Tomato and Onion Sauce

10 oz (280g) white button mushrooms
4 tbs sunflower or olive oil (I used about half the amount of oil)
1 onion, finely chopped
1 green chili, chopped
2 tsp garlic paste (I used garlic/ginger)
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp chili powder
1/2 tsp salt, to taste
1 tbs tomato paste (I used 2 tbs tomato sauce)
3 tbs water
1 tsp snipped fresh chives (I used chopped green onion)

Thickly slice the mushrooms.

Heat the oil in a pan over medium heat. Add onion and the chili and cook, stirring for 5-6 min til onion is soft but not yet browned. Add the garlic paste and cook, stirring, 2 more minutes.

Add cumin, coriander, chili powder and cook 1 more minute. Add mushrooms, salt and tomato paste and stir til everything is blended.

Sprinkle the 3 tbs water evenly over mushrooms and reduce the heat to low. Cover and cook 10 minutes, stirring halfway through. The sauce should have thickened (if not, uncover and cook another 3-4 min to the consistency desired).

Serve w/chives as garnish.

Tasty Rating: Could have been spicier. Great for the likes of Husband who hate spice but for myself, I would have liked to have had a little more hot. This recipe is great on rice.

Poopy Rating: just doesn’t look very nice – but it tastes great!

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: Chili powder, Cook, Fruit and Vegetable, Garlic, GF, gluten free, Home, indian cooking, Indian cuisine, Olive oil, side dishes, Tomato, Tomato sauce, vegetarian

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Kheema Matar- my first real Indian dish

September 22nd, 2009

R Quayle

I absolutely adore Indian cooking and a good deal of it is either gluten free or can be made gluten free easily if you’re good at it.

However. 1. I suck at cooking it mainly because it seems like I can make even a Lassi a mystery 2. Husband hates it because he equates all things hot-spicy with it.

So, I’ve always shied away from making ‘real’ Indian dishes, which is a complete shame because up til a couple of months ago I worked right up the street from Bombay Mart and a few blocks from Kohli’s. Since then Husband has bought me a lovely little Barnes and Noble book to experiment with: Cooking School- Indian. I made a trip back through Oakland to Kohli’s to pick up some essential spices I didn’t have on hand and got to work on Kheema Matar, veg-style. I halved this recipe and replaced the ground beef with lentils and we had more than enough for 2 w/leftovers.

Kheema Matar, for 4-6

2 tbs ghee (Clarified butter. The recipe says you can also use peanut or veg oil)
2 tsp cumin seeds (I used ground cumin)
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 tbs garlic/ginger paste (don’t substitute for this, it’s great)
2 bay leaves (I omitted)
1 tsp any strength curry powder
2 tomatoes, seeded and chopped
1 tsp ground coriander
1/2-1/4 tsp chili powder
1/4 tsp turmeric
pinch sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 lb 2 oz (500g) lean ground beef or lamb (I substituted red lentils)
2 1/4 c frozen peas (don’t defrost)

1. Melt the ghee in a skillet w/ a tight fitting lid. Add the cumin seeds and cook, stirring 30 seconds or until they begin to crackle. (Rose’s note: I cooked the ground cumin for the same amount of time)

2. Stir in onion, garlic/ginger paste, bay leaves and curry powder and keep stir-frying until the fat separates. (Rose’s note: Right after this step I added in 3 small peeled, diced red potatoes and cooked 2-3 min more)

3. Stir in the tomatoes and cook for 1-2 minutes. Stir in coriander, chili powder, turmeric, sugar, salt/pepper and stir for 30 seconds.

4. Add the beef and cook for 1-2 min. until browned and break up with a wooden spoon. Reduce the heat and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally. (Rose’s note: instead of beef I added 1/2 c. red lentils and 1/2 c water. During the 10 minute simmering I added approx. 1 more cup of water as the lentils started to cook but you can adjust this as necessary)

5. Add the peas and continue simmering for another 10-15 minutes until peas are thawed and warmed. Add more water if necessary to prevent sticking or if you end up with too much, allow to simmer until it absorbs.

I really liked this recipe and would serve it with rice or wrapped in corn tortillas. It’s spicy but not hot and was quite good with fruit chutney.

Tasty Factor: Thumbs up by all- mild enough for everyone but you could certainly taste the spice. Not a lot of complicated ingredients and was relatively easy to throw together.

Poopy Factor: This could just be user error but the recipe wasn’t very clear about how long it would be until the fat separated in step 2. I gave up after a while and went on to step 3 but I wonder if I was supposed to do something else….?

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: Chili powder, Cook, Curry, Curry powder, Fruit and Vegetable, GF, gluten free, Home, indian cooking, Indian cuisine, Stir frying

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Coleslaw w/peanuts

September 15th, 2009

R Quayle

When I got married a few years ago I felt I ought to be grown-up and own real cookbooks rather than a drawer-full of hastily scribbled recipe copies from friends and family. I ended up picking up one of those Barnes and Noble markdowns at the front of the store called simply Wok. I had put it away in a cupboard above the stove of all places and just found it again after cleaning the other day.

The easy, well-photographed recipes are divided into the following sections: Vegetarian, Noodles and Rice, Meat and Poultry, Fish and Seafood. Most of the recipes are gluten free (just remember to substitute GF soya sauce and check your other sauces for wheat/malt/yeast) and those that aren’t can be easily modified with rice noodles, etc.

Right on page one of the Vegetarian section I came to Coleslaw with Peanuts. I am an avid hater of coleslaw but the picture looks really good and there’s nothing creamy in this Asian take. Let me announce that this recipe was the bomb and even I liked it.

Coleslaw w/Peanuts- Wok, Barnes & Noble

1 1/4 c white cabbage
1 large fennel bulb (I omitted this)
1 red pepper
1 yellow pepper
2 tbs sesame oil (I just used olive oil)
2 red chilies
4 tbs soya sauce
4 tsp honey
salt
szechuan pepper (I used plain old black)
4 tbs roasted peanuts, coriander leaves

1. Wash and dry cabbage; cut or shred into fine strips. Wash and dry the fennel and shred finely. Wash, core and seed peppers and cut these into fine strips.

2. Heat a wok and pour in the oil. Stir-fry the cabbage and fennel for 2 minutes w.o browning. Leave to cool. (Rose’s note: the recipe actually doesn’t tell you what to do with the red/yellow peppers so I threw them in with the cabbage. Since I didn’t use a fennel bulb, I also tossed in a small piece of peeled ginger and discarded this at the end of the 2 minutes.)

3. Wash and seed the chilies, chop finely.

4. Make the salad dressing by combining the soya sauce, chilies, honey, salt and a pinch of pepper. (Rose’s note: I cooked this for like 1 minute over low to melt the honey)

5. Combine cooled cabbage and fennel strips with the dressing and leave in the refrigerator for 20 minutes to marinate. Scatter over the peanuts before serving. (Rose’s note: the book’s photo of the finished recipe included fresh coriander leaves but the recipe doesn’t call for them. I put them on- they rock.)

6. Variation to this recipe: you can omit the cooking steps and replace with cabbage with zucchini and the red pepper w/ a large red onion cut to strips.

Tasty Factor: yum, yum, yum in my tum. Goes great with the Vegetarian GF Beany Burgers.

Poopy Factor: None. It refrigerated well and stayed crisp and even trumped veggie-hating Husband

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: Barnes & Noble, Cook, Fruit and Vegetable, Home, Olive oil, Salad, Soy sauce, Stir frying, wok cooking

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Veggie GF Beany Burgers

September 14th, 2009

R Quayle

Though we’re not vegetarians, we’re also not big meat eaters in my house so burgers are a bit of a rarity. However, the other day I checked my inbox and sitting there in my BACN was a newsletter from eatbetteramerica with new recipes. The Spicy Chili Bean Burgers caught my eye and since I didn’t have any buns, gluten-free or not, in my house, I figured I’d just make up the patties and figure it out from there.

Then of course I looked around in my pantry and realised I didn’t have half the ingredients on hand. Undaunted, the queen of substitution soldiered on of course.

The main ingredients for this recipe are bran cereal, spicy chili beans and cooking oats. As always, I leave it to you, dear reader to decide if you’re going to chance oats or not but I had them on hand and added them in. I was not going to use bran cereal so I grabbed the end of a box of Corn Chex and spicy chili beans would have caused an uproar in my house even if I did have them laying about so I grabbed a tin of chickpeas instead and crushed those up.

There isn’t much else to this recipe really- since I wasn’t using already spiced chili beans, I was a little concerned about spice and added in some chopped fresh coriander, salt and pepper. You can mix up your patties any way you want but frankly I have an aversion to meatballs and meatloafs because of all that slippery, eggy-mess you end up palming into shape so I put my ingredients in a ziplock and mashed them up.

The patties came out ok but I would have liked them to be a little sturdier. Ah well, I fried them in olive oil and served on corn tortillas with sliced grape tomatoes, green onions and a drizzle of sweet chili sauce. Beware- if you’re going to use sweet chili sauce for anything make sure you check the label- some have yeast in the ingredients.

I was pleasantly surprised with this recipe even though I ended up taking all of the kick out of it. The patties browned up nicely and solidified and tasted awesome.

Tasty Factor: thumbs up from everyone!

Poopy Factor: just a little- the patties can be a little brittle and are definitely messy to make.

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: Beans and Legumes, Chex, Cook, Coriander, Fruit and Vegetable, gluten free, Home, Olive oil, Spice, vegetarian, veggie burger recipe

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Rose’s asian noodle wannabe recipe

September 11th, 2009

R Quayle

I say wannabe because I’ve been on an Anthony Bourdain No Reservations kick lately and was home sick the other day catching up on his adventures in the orient. So many yummy things to make! And of course those street vendors in Hong Kong and Singapore always make it look so easy. Let’s just say I did my own whipping up last night and I apologise for the lack of photos but I didn’t end up eating until 10 o’clock so I was more focused on stuffing my face than photodocumenting…!

Rose’s wannabe asian noodles

1/2 clove garlic
1/2 yellow onion
1/2 green chili pepper
sliced green onions
1/2 c sliced mushrooms
small knob of peeled ginger
1 1/2 c water
1/2 c thin rice noodles (rice sticks)
splash of: GF soya sauce, fish sauce, rice vinegar, sweet chili sauce
1 boiled egg
garnish- chopped fresh cilantro leaves

In a saucepan, skillet or wok (someone who shall not be named ruined my skillet last night and my wok is long gone so for this amount my saucepan worked just fine), coat the bottom w/olive oil pam or similar spray and cook peeled sliced garlic, onions, ginger knob and a handful of green onions til soft.

Add a tablespoon of rice vinegar and cook a little longer, then add sliced mushrooms. Cook on low 1-2 min til mushrooms start to soften and then add the water, equal parts fish sauce, sweet chili sauce, and soya sauce (about a tbs each or less to taste). Turn heat down and let simmer while you prepare the egg.

For the egg, bring water to the boil and boil your egg 8-10 minutes. When done, plunge in cold water to cool and peel. Slice into 4 equal slices.

Add your rice noodles to the broth and cover; cook 3-4 minutes til soft and translucent and transfer to a bowl. Top with chopped coriander leaves and the egg slices. If you wish, splash on a little more soya or sweet chili sauce for flavour.

As I said, these are wannabe noodles. The dishes I’m trying to teach myself to cook are Hainan Chicken Rice and Vietnamese Pho soup (I’ll let you know how that goes…. ;P) and honestly I can never quite get the water ratio right. So basically, this recipe is more like noodles in a sauce rather than an actual soup. Hopefully I’ll ge the hang of this soon but it was pretty tasty anyway!

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: asian cuisine, Chili pepper, Cook, Coriander, Home, Hong Kong, Hot sauce, Soups and Stews, Soy sauce, travel shows

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Rose’s Jewelled Rice

August 31st, 2009

R Quayle

Jewelled Rice is a nice meat accompaniment in eastern recipes but this is my own little variation on it I happened to whip up over the weekend. Hubby had this with sliced bourbon chicken he picked up from Costco.

Rose’s Jewelled Rice for 2

1/2 c short grain brown rice (you can use white or basmati too, just follow package directions for water and cooking times)
1 1/2 c veg or GF chicken broth (NOTE: I make my own vegetable stock- see below for recipe)
3/4 c diced sweet onion (vidalia or red)
3/4 c diced dried fruit (apricots, pineapple, papaya, sultanas- any mix of these works, I used apricots and pineapple)
chopped green onions to serve, GF soya sauce (optional)
sea salt and pepper (optional)

Bring the broth to the boil over medium flame in a small pot. Meanwhile, wash the rice and add to the pot with the diced onions. Cover and cook according to time on package, adding water if needed according to the type of rice you are cooking. Make sure to cook long enough to absorb most of the liquid and stir occasionally to keep from sticking to the bottom of the pot. When you are nearing the last 3-4 minutes of cooking, add the diced fruit and fluff up the rice (season to taste if you wish). Before serving, fluff again and divide between bowls. Top with green onions and a splash of soya sauce.

This particular version of the rice is mild in flavour- use a stronger stock or carmelise your onions first in a little butter before adding to the pot to bring out more flavour.

Rose’s Vegetable Stock

Vegetable peelings
Water to cover
Dried herbs- rosemary, coriander, seasoned salt, etc

I use fresh veg in cooking quite a lot so I save the peelings and add them to my crockpot on the weekend to make a basic stock for rice dishes. Any savoury veg works- the last batch I made I just put in green onion stalks, the tough bits of a small cabbage and a whole, peeled garlic clove. All I do is add a handful of herbs to this and just cover the veg with water. This is the easiest stock ever and it smells really nice- cook on high for a couple of hours in the crockpot and let it cool in glass jars. I usually forget I’m even cooking it until the smell permeates the whole apartment and it’s done. Can’t get any easier than that!

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: Broth, Cook, Costco, Garlic, Home, middle eastern cooking, pittsburgh, Rice, Scallion, Soy sauce, Stock

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Don’t scoff- baked tofu!

August 27th, 2009

R Quayle

I love tofu (there are shouts of protest in my house so I know I’ll be rating this one myself) and I usually fry it but have been looking around for a nice, savoury baked version to try.

Unfortunately I lost the name of whomever posted this but they credited it to the Sunday Moosewood Cookbook. Serves 4.

Ingredients
12 ounces firm tofu
For Marinade
2 tablespoons dark sesame oil   (I substitued Squid fish sauce)
2 tablespoons tamari soy sauce (I substitued La Choy GF soya sauce)
1 tablespoon rice wine or sake or dry sherry   (I substituted red wine vinegar)
1 tablespoon rice vinegar or cider vinegar
1 garlic clove, minced
2 tablespoons finely minced onions
1 teaspoon grated fresh gingerroot
3 tablespoons water
1/2 teaspoon hot chili paste, to taste (optional) (I used sambal oelek)

1. For best results, tofu should be “pressed” in order to remove excess liquid and absorb the flavors of the marinade. Press tofu block between two plates, weighted down with a cast iron pan, large bowl of water, or heavy cans, for about 30 minutes. Halfway through, you may dump the plate of water and flip the tofu block.

(I’m glad she was detailed about this because I have made many a soggy tofu dish not knowing exactly how to press it.)

2. To make marinade, simply whisk together the ingredients in a bowl. After tofu is pressed, cut the block into small cubes or triangles. Place pieces of tofu into baking dish, and cover with the marinade. The tofu can sit overnight in the marinade, or can be prepared right away.

3. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Bake tofu about 35-45 minutes, or until all the liquid is absorbed. Tofu can be eaten by itself, or added to stir-frys, salads, soups or sandwiches.

Tasty Factor: all thumbs up! Now that I know how to bake it properly, I’ll be doing this more often. Ate mine right out of the baking dish!

Poopy Factor: I would be remiss if I didn’t add in my husband’s ‘it’s poopy cos it’s tofu, duh’. I did try sneaking it into a soup for him and he walked right out and demanded to know what that ‘white stuff’ was. Okay, I lied, but he knew and decided to turn up his nose anyway.

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: Cook, Fruit and Vegetable, Home, Marination, Sesame oil, Soy sauce, Tofu, Vinegar

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Yummy quick broccoli fry

August 26th, 2009

R Quayle

We’re not big meat eaters (neither are we vegetarians) and I spied this quick little recipe on the BBC GoodFood site the other day and decided to try. BBCGoodFood is one of my favourite food magazines. I can skim out the GF recipes for me and practise making the heavy traditional stuff like pork pies and pasties for my husband.

The original recipe for Beef StirFry w/Broccoli and Oyster Sauce is right on the GoodFood site. I, of course, made modifications. If you’re looking to try other recipes on this site or from the magazine (I either get a copy from the library or buy the holiday edition from Barnes and Noble), you’ll need to convert some of the measurements.

ingredients for stir fry

These were my ingredients- nothing really fancy or complicated. I didn’t have a garlic clove laying around so I used powdered and I ommitted the beef. I also substituted fish sauce for the oyster sauce as Wal-Mart didn’t have any gluten free stuff. Oh heck, let’s face it, I just rearranged this entire recipe!

Since this is fairly easy and tasty fare, I added some sliced mini pepper (so cute! got them at Costco) and green onions instead of a white onion. I just followed the first couple of steps and softened the peppers first before adding the brocolli. Mine was frozen so I adjusted the cooking time a little and added the green onions last.

alltogether now! There were several suggestions in the comments on this recipe for small substitutions, serving on rice noodles, etc. I served mine over plain brown rice and it was DE-LISH.

Tasty factor: thumbs up from me- will try it next time with the meat.

Poopy factor: none (however, husband didn’t try it because it has something ‘evil and green’ in it.)

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: Brown rice, Cook, Costco, Fish sauce, Garlic, Home, Oyster Sauce, Wal-Mart

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Living Without’s Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

August 16th, 2009

R Quayle

I went into this recipe with some trepidation, dear readers, because I am a self-confessed cookie butcherer. Bear in mind I haven’t eaten a cookie, gluten free or otherwise in months and back in the day when I baked the tasty little buggers I nearly always burnt them to a crisp. I can make a 9 layered Doberge cake with no problem and pies from scratch but Lord help me if cookies don’t just hate me. But we all have to try try and try again so I grabbed the Best Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe from the June/July issue of Living Without and got to town.

This recipe calls for either quinoa flakes or GF oats. I am not a celiac patient so since I already had a drum of oats in the pantry I didn’t go buy GF specified oats. I’ll trust you’ll know yourself as to whether or not to risk it. The good thing which came out of this was that my dear husband discovered that oatmeal does not come from a paper envelope and in fact it is I, not the Quaker Elves, who puts the raisins and maple syrup and whatnot in his bowl.

Let me admit that I learned a lot with this recipe and am going to share my mistakes with you. I do not own a blender or food processor at the moment so it took a heck of a lot longer to get through this recipe than it would have had I had such a thing on my counter. As it is, I do have a mortar and pestle and so crushed the oats in little batches. The only difference I can ascertain is that my cookies came out more like oatmeal raisin cookies in texture rather than soft Tollhouse-like biscuits. That’s all right though; I like crunchy cookies better.

For heaven’s sake follow the directions. I’m not particularly good at that and I’m the substitution queen because frankly I never read the whole recipe before I start to see if I’ve got all the ingredients. I am slowly learning to get it together!

This is not a difficult recipe for anyone to master. There aren’t a ton of ingredients but I will caution you to pay attention to the amount of xanthan gum used. I used a blended GF flour which called for a lot less gum than the recipe itself called for so I went with the package directions.

The finished product here has 110 calories per cookie but a word of caution to those avoiding sugar: this recipe calls for quite a lot of sugar.

Since I didn’t use a blender to grind up my oats, the batter here is probably a lot more lumpy than what it should be. With all that sugar the actual dough doesn’t taste all that sweet so there wasn’t a whole lot of bowl-licking. Which is probably best for everyone’s hips anyway, lol.

HowStuffWorks advises to always chill your batter but the recipe didn’t call for this. As I’ve never made GF cookies before I decided to cook 1/2 of the dough and chill 1/2 of the dough for 1 1/2 hours before baking. The unchilled dough didn’t seem as thick as the recipe indicated it would be but again this might have to do with the oats’ consistency.

Now here’s the unchilled batter all ready to get baked into yummy yummy cookies. This is where I must reiterate to follow directions. I made these on a Saturday morning in my jimjams and wasn’t about to get dressed and get the parchment paper I should have been using on the cookie sheet. So this first batch was made with a cooking spray-coated dark sheet.

And apparently these cookies very much need the parchment paper to be a success. The edges burned right to the sheet and the middles didn’t cook.When I scraped them off I saved the edges to crumble up over ice cream.

Okay, just to be fair I adjusted the oven a little. I can’t really adjust the racks very much so the first batch I had baked on the bottom rack. This one I moved to the top rack and while they still didn’t rock like the magazine photo, at least I got them out in whole chunks from the baking sheet.

It was about this time that I dragged my butt out to the convenience mart and got a roll of waxed paper to try and save the rest of the batch so I wouldn’t waste the $5 blended flour I’d tried out in it. And no, I did not include photos in this post of the absolute wreck I made of the kitchen when I dropped an egg on the floor and burst open the bag of $5 flour all over the sink.

Ahhh-success! Here’s what I did differently: used the waxed paper like the recipe indicated to, chilled the dough 1 1/2 hours and dropped smaller portions of dough onto the sheet. These came out lovely and didn’t stick to anything; their texture was chewy and just the right blend of dough and chip.

Tasty Factor: even done wrong these are tasty cookies and would probably be even better using a blender

Poopy factor: Husband (a self-admitted gluten free hater just on principle) says: Not bad when you follow the directions (read: as good as he’s going to admit to.)

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: Baking and Confections, Cook, Cookie, Food, Gluten-free diet, Home, Ice cream

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Posts Tagged ‘Cook’

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