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Eat n Park’s the place for Gluten Free buns

September 1st, 2010

R Quayle

I love, love, love that Eat n Park has a clean, separated, easy to follow menu for just about everyone. Turn it over and you’ll find senior options, allergen-friendly items and calorie concious dishes in a cleanly designed, easy to read page that covers it all. I love it. Have I said how much I love it?

This said, Husband took me after work one day to the Waterfront Eat n Park so I didn’t have to cook dinner (how sweet

). I settled down for my usual perusal of the salad bar and saw some yummy looking soups on the bar. Unfortunately every one of them was packed with pasta. Husband urged me to ask if they had any soups included in the GF menu and eventually I did. The server went to fetch the manager and he appologised profusely but they did not have any GF soups and he would mention it at the next team meeting to see if something could be added on to the menu. I was impressed- enough to try the hamburger with GF bun.

Now the bun was more like a roll than a bun. Tasty, heavy, good with butter and probably some jam. Almost like a scone. With the hamburger it was just too heavy. So I’m wondering if Eat n Park could just bring some smaller versions of these buns to the table if requested just as they do their sticky buns. Perhaps they could serve them with coffee and jam as a breakfast offering. And perhaps Eat n Park could maybe maybe maybe bring out a GF version of the Smiley cookie. Get together with Gluuteny and whip some up for the holidays. They could even just be offered during the winter season when even wheat-free dieters want a little something warm and soft after skating.

Tasty Factor: Very tasty, soft and yummy– would recommend to everyone!

Poopy Factor: just a little heavy to service as a sandwich bun but there could be endless uses for these guys.

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: Breakfast, Butter, cooking, eat n park, Hamburger, Home, homestead waterfront, Pasta, pittsburgh, Sandwich, Soup

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Mrs. Leeper’s GF Pasta

September 1st, 2010

R Quayle

I had never heard of Mrs. Leeper’s and must admit my intense fear of gluten free pastas (I’m a pierogie hater too. Eat that, Pittsburgh). I had seen them nestling in far away corners of grocery stores and whole foods markets and I let them go their way and me go mine. Then Husband decided to treat me on vacation and I thought, well why the heck not? It won’t kill you to at least taste it.

So I brought home a bouncing bag of Alphabets pasta and gave it a try with regular old Ragu. One word to the wise- just like you want to pay attention to the cooking times with wheat pasta, most definitely pay attention to the cooking time for Mrs. Leeper’s. The Alphabet pasta is rice-based and only takes right around 4 minutes to cook in boiling water. Just under and it’s nearly crunchy; just over and you get a big congealed mess. Now some might like the big congealed mess and personally I like it a tad on the crunchy side but right at 4 minutes brings it out just right.

And just right it is! I’ve been scared all this time for nothing. The texture is just right- firm but not hard, soft but not squishy. The taste is as akin to pasta as anything you’d want and it wasn’t insanely expensive which is another plus for this product. There are other products in the Mrs. Leeper’s line which aren’t available in our neighbourhood store but I imagine they’re leading the way in GF pastas.

Tasty Factor: tastes pretty much like the real thing and holds shape after cooking.

Poopy Factor: cook it too long and even Oliver wouldn’t be asking for any more, sir.

Posted in Uncategorized

Tags: Boiling, cooking, Food, Gluten-free diet, Mrs. Leepers, Noodle, Pasta, pittsburgh, Shopping, Wheat

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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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Success! Betty Crocker GF cake mix

August 30th, 2009

R Quayle

My mother, who lives 2 hours north of New Orleans, pointed out to me one day that the local Wal-Mart had begun to carry gluten free cake mixes and pasta. The Wal-Mart near me has been a little slow on the draw but long before she mentioned it I exclaimed with a cry of joy that Giant Eagle in the Waterfront had a little row of Betty Crocker GF cake blends.

My first impression was thank goodness a big name like Betty Crocker has figured out how to make their mixes gluten free. My next thought was, holy crap that’s a load of money for a cake mix. And so I resisted picking one up until my comrades at work got a free double chocolate cake from the department down the hall and after watching them have second helpings I walked to the local Shur-Save and picked up the yellow Betty Crocker cake mix for $4.95 and counted the hours til I could get home and experiment. Actually I don’t know why I didn’t pick up the chocolate mix, or both for that matter. I did get some Pillsbury 50% less sugar chocolate frosting though.

image courtesy of Whisk Kid

Of course by the end of the day I’d browsed through my Google Reader and found this adorable creation by Whisk Kid and thought well I’d just go right home and whip up a rainbow-albeit-chocolate-frosted-cake, because I’m nothing if not all about creative diversions. Dear Reader, I hope you’ve stuck with me long enough to know that nothing I ever plan out goes quite to the directions.

Surely enough, as I sat down to my computer this morning to pull up the link I’d starred in my goofy reader, Gmail threw up all over the internet and I lost my patience and trouped off to the kitchen (about 8 feet away from my chair at the moment) and figure it out myself.

I must say I’m impressed with the packaging for the Gf cakes. I know, what does that have to do with the taste? But my graphic designer background demands I comment on the follow-through of the famous Betty Crocker branding yet distinctiveness of this new line of cooking product. Okay, that said, I can say as far as ease this was a treat to make. While most cake mixes call for 3 main ingredients plus the dry mix (usually oil-water-eggs), the GF version was no more complicated with add-ins (marg-water-eggs-vanilla).

Okay, I was a little skeptical at first because the mix seemed really thin to me and turned to glue as soon as I added the first liquid….yuck.

As I added more ingredients though, it turned into the tastiest, lightest pre-mixed batter I’ve ever worked with. TASTY. I could have cat there and ate the entire bowl right there.

I even tried to do the whole rainbow thing, which wasn’t as easy as I’d somehow envisioned it. I just basically divided the batter into 3 parts and coloured 2 of these before I ate any more freaking batter so it would at least make it into the oven.

I decided I was too busy to make the actual cake so I pulled out the leftover Barney cupcake papers to use those up (don’t ask) and decided the whole colour layering thing was probably best left to Whisk Kid. Instead, I thought perhaps I could marble the batter and still come out looking like I knew a thing or two about baking because after all, Betty Crocker can make anyone look like they can bake, right?

Let’s just say my marbling didn’t go like I’d envisioned it either. Note to anyone trying this mix- the package says it makes 12 cupcakes. I felt a little burned on that. Not that I needed to find room in my kitchen for any more cupcakes than humanly necessary for 2 people to scarf down but seriously, $4.95 for a box and then it makes half the cupcakes a normal mix would? Betty Crocker, you have betrayed me. I spooned it out to fill the tray up halfway, thinking I would swirl in my coloured batter and then topped them up on second thought. As you can see, I ended up just piling on the second batter and then ran out. I was thinking maybe I could stretch it to 2 batches but as most gluten free recipes for baked goods come out much denser, I filled them as close to the brim as possible to make them bigger.

And then Betty redeemed herself when I pulled open the door to the oven and was completely surprised at the tops of my little cakes. Look how high they rose! I was absolutely chuffed at these. They even look a teeny bit marbled How awesome is Betty?!

Taste Factor: Nom, nom, nom- huh? Fabulous. Light, airy, sweet and freaking delicious. What else is cool? They’re comparable to other yellow cake mixes from Betty Crocker in calories.