Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Gluten-free flours

Here is a link to gluten-free flours at the Celiac Sprue Associaton:  http://www.csaceliacs.org/recipes/FlourFormulas.php

The one with the chickpea flour sounds interesting.  Perhaps I'll use it to make another go at the chocolate chip cookies.

To Die-For Grilled Beef Salad

This recipe is much like the fiery grilled beef salad, but a whole lot better!  The first time I made it I used Thai Kitchen fish sauce and let the sauce marry for a couple of hours at room temperature.  The second time I used a different, saltier fish sauce (I will post the brand tomorrow) and didn't let the liquid ingredients marry.  The first dish was savory--really beyond delicious.  The second was pretty good, but saltier and a bit sharper.

2# flank steak marinated in a good soy marinade for about 4 hours at room temp
Sauce is 1/2 c. fish sauce, 1/2 c. fresh lime juice, 2 tbs kecap manis (recipe below), 6 tbs minced garlic, 6 tbs minced ginger, 6 tbs chopped cilantro, and 2 tbs sesame oil.  Give it a taste and adjust seasoning.

Grill beef until med-rare, let cool a little bit.  Mix in 1/2 c. chopped shallots and 1/2 c. chopped green onions to the sauce. 

Slice beef into bite-sized pieces, toss it in a bowl, and add 4 med tomatos (cut into wedges), 1/2 c. thinly sliced purple onion, and 1/2 c. sliced cucumber, and 1/2 c. sliced jalapeno pepper.  Mix all this well.  Pour in the sauce and toss to coat.  Serve over torn iceberg lettuce.

Kecap manis (Thai ketchup)
1 c. brown sugar
1 c. gluten-free soy sauce
1/2 c. H2O
2 slices galangal (blue ginger) or regular ginger (about the size of a thick quarter)
2 pieces of star anise

Put sugar in sauce pan and heat on med., stirring until it clumps together and then melts.  Stir until it's completely melted.  Be careful, it will cause a bad burn if you get any on your hand.  Remove from heat and let it cool slightly, and then stir in the rest of the ingredients.  The sugar will harden up.  Be careful as there might be some splattering--suggest stirring in the water last.  Return to heat and bring to boil and stir to dissolve sugar and reduce the whole shebang to a syrupy consitency.  I cooked it down to the consistency of demi-glace and that will work, too.  Strain, cool, and refrigerate. 

Gluten-free cookies

My lovely wife asked me to try my hand at some gluten-free chocolate chip cookies, so she bought the Betty Crocker mix and also found a recipe in a gluten-free baking book.  Suffice to say that the Betty Crocker recipe was pretty bad.  It uses only rice flour, which made the cookies gritty, not to mention the fact that they had zero body, plus the taste was ho-hum.  Mixing them up was like trying to make a sand castle without enough water.  About half of the batch went into the trash. 

The second recipe was from the CIA's Gluten-Free Baking by Richard Coppedge, Jr.  It used flour mixture #4 that combines white rice flour, tapioca flour, and soy flour.  The recipe was pretty close to the one I use with all-purpose wheat flour, except it called for twice the eggs, some water, and used only butter whereas I use half butter, half Crisco.  I mixed it up in the cuisinart (possibly a big mistake).  After blending in the dry ingredients, it was obvious that it was wayyyy too wet, but I blundered on.  The first batch of cookies ran together, plus they stuck to the non-stick pan, and they cooked way faster than indicated in the recipe.  I cooked the rest of the mixture in a brownie pan.

Results?  Well, they tasted better than the Betty Crocker cookies, but they just didn't have the body of a chocolate chip cookie.  Perhaps mixing them in the cuisinart added air that when combined with the water did something adverse to the mix.  Who knows? So what now?  I'm going to try it again w/o the water, mix them up by hand in a bowl, and cook them at a lower temp.  I usually cook them at 325 F.

Thursday, September 2, 2010

Gluten-Free Products

Saw a post in yesterday's Dallas Morning News saying that Natural Grocers at Preston and Forest in North Dallas have a boatload of gluten-free products.  Sounds like date night for the wifey and me!

Fiery Grilled Beef Salad Recipe

Here's the recipe for the grilled beef salad.  It's from Victor Sodsook's True Thai, w/ my touches.  Make the dressing first (let it set aside for an hour or so), prep the veggies, grill the meat, then put it all together.  Slice the meat on the bias into bite-size pieces, toss w/ veggies, then toss w/ dressing.  Serve over pieces of iceberg lettuce.

Dressing
1/2 c fresh lemon juice
2 tbs fish sauce
2 tbs brown sugar
5 cloves garlic, minced
1 serrano chili, fine dice
1/2 tsp white pepper
1/4 c cilantro stems, fine chop

Veggies
2 stalks lemon grass, bottom four inches, tough outer layes removed, fine chop
1 small red onion, halved, fine slice
1/2 cucumber, peeled, fine slice
2 tomatoes, sliced into thin (~10) wedges
1/2 c chopped mint

Beef--marinate 11/2# sirloin in soy marinade for 2-3 hr, then grill to med rare, sliced on the bias.