Maple Balsamic Marinade - By Popular Demand

This has been a real crowd pleaser since long before we dropped the gluten from the house. And it happens to be gluten free. So, here goes:

This will do about 2 1/2 lbs of chicken tenders.

Three finely chopped cloves of garlic
1/3 cup maple syrup
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup olive oil
zest of 1 orange
salt and pepper
1 tbsp rough chopped fresh rosemary

Whisk together all ingredients and pour over chicken tenders in a gallon ziplock bag. Refrigerate 6-8 hours or overnight.

Grill it up, and discard marinade.

It is fabulous. And it makes a GREAT leftover.

Gluten Free Pumpkin Ginger Muffins

After I made the batter, I thought these would be a total dud. But was I wrong. The batter tasted soy-like and nasty. But once cooked, they were VERY similar to the 'regular' ones I made a couple of weeks ago. They are a very moist muffin, but they do rise and hold together quite well. If you want to use cupcake liners for these, use the silver-foil ones. They will stick to the paper ones.

You can't put too much fresh ginger in these. So, grate as much as you have the patience to do!

Nonstick vegetable oil spray
1 cup Gluten Free Baking Mix (I used Bob's Red Mill All Purpose Mix for this)
1/2 cup brown rice flour
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp xantham gum
2 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup coarsely chopped walnuts, lightly toasted
1 1/4 cups canned pure pumpkin
1 cup buttermilk
2 large eggs
6 tablespoons (3/4 stick) unsalted butter, melted
3 TBSP grated peeled fresh ginger (fresh ginger is easier to grate if it is frozen first)

preparation

Preheat oven to 375°F. Spray 15 standard muffin cups (2/3-cup capacity) with nonstick spray. Whisk both flours, sugar, baking powder, spices, xantham gum and salt in large bowl to blend. Whisk pumpkin, buttermilk, eggs, melted butter, and ginger in medium bowl to blend. Add to dry ingredients and stir just until incorporated (do not overmix).

Spoon 1/4 cup batter into each cup. Sprinkle walnuts and some raw sugar over the tops if you like. Bake until muffins are golden and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 20-25 minutes. Turn muffins out onto rack and cool. (Can be made 1 day ahead. Store muffins airtight at room temperature.)

Gluten Free Homemade Bar-B-Que Sauce

1 (28-ounce) can tomato sauce
1/3 cup brown sugar
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce (The bottle of Lea and Perrins I have is gluten-free, but check the label, they change the formula from time to time)
1 tablespoon wheat free soy sauce (such as Tamari)
1 tablespoon chili powder
1 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Just mix it up and marinate. It's absolutely fabulous in the slow cooker over ribs.

Enjoy!

Gluten Free Turkey Florentine

This is a nice recipe that I adapted to be gluten free and I cut out a LOT of the fat from the original recipe (it called for 1.5 cups of cream). The cutlets come out crisp and delicious, and the sauce is rich and creamy. This recipe serves 2 adults, but can be easily adapted to serve more.


Gluten Free Lower Fat Turkey Florentine
By Margaret Sanford

2 large turkey cutlets
1/2 pkg. frozen chopped thawed spinach
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup half and half
1tbsp butter 1 tbsp. olive oil
1 shallot chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
Nutmeg, salt & pepper
1/3 cup gluten free chicken broth with 1 tsp cornstarch whisked in
1/2 cup rice flour
1/2 cup corn flour
1 tbsp dried basil
1 tbsp oregano
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp ground cayenne
1/2- c. grated Italian cheese (I use "quattro fromaggio" from Trader Joes)

Combine in large flat bowl flours, salt, pepper and spices (except nutmeg). Dredge cutlets in egg, dip in flour mixture. Really press it onto the turkey to thoroughly coat.

In a pan heat butter and olive oil on medium high heat. Brown 'breaded' cutlets in butter/olive oil mixture about 4-5 minutes on each side until crispy and light brown. Set aside to drain on paper towels. Saute garlic and shallot in same pan until shallot is slightly brown around the edges, then add spinach. Heat through. Add the cream and chicken broth/cornstarch mixture and about 10 scrapes of fresh nutmeg with microplane to spinach mixture; season with salt and pepper. Cook until sauce thickens slightly. ( about 5 minutes)

Place cutlets in 9 x 13 inch baking dish in a single layer. Spoon spinach mixture over top. Sprinkle with grated cheese. Place under preheated broiler for 5 minutes until cheese browns slightly on top and the sauce bubbles.

Woman Makes Muffins and Decides to Tinker with Recipe

Yesterday Kaylee and I went to the Oxford Spa for lunch and I ordered a pumpkin ginger muffin for her.

It was fabulous. The texture was perfect and soft, and it wasn't too sweet like most muffins and scones are around here. Most wonderful of all, each bite had the soft bite of fresh ginger. I asked if they give out recipes, and they did say that it wasn't their own recipe. But then the guy quickly avoided the subject and let it drop.

So, I did many google searches and came up with this recipe on epicurious.com. I made it this morning and I think I'm going to make a few more changes. I did not put the nuts in the muffin and I dropped the pumpkin seeds entirely. I sprinkled a few walnuts over the tops of half of them. The muffins came out lovely, but I want that almost crunch of the ginger, like the one I had yesterday. So, I think I'll use frozen fresh ginger. It grates a lot better than room temperature ginger, and I think I'll be able to get the shred size I want, and I'd use at least 1/4 cup instead of just a couple of teaspoons. The muffins (when eaten way too hot) were slightly custard-like in texture. I may cut down on the pumpkin to get a better crumb.

I'll experiment next week and post here.

Mmmmm.. Ribs

I made ribs again yesterday in the slow cooker. They were "Saint Louis Style." Next time, I'll definitely spring for the babyback ones, as the "Saint Louis Style" were very fatty. When I made the baby back ribs, most of the fat had melted into the sauce and the ribs were relatively lean.

The sauce was simple to make, a couple cans of plain tomato sauce, brown sugar, garlic, chili powder, cayenne, paprika, salt and pepper. Dump over ribs, turn on slow cooker in the morning and you'll have dinner in the evening. I served it with buttered rice and broccoli.

I made another cake today. (Somebody stop me, please?). This one was a chocolate sponge. My sister has a little ceremony for her masters program today and I felt it was an occasion that required cake. It looks beautiful and tall, so we'll see how it tastes later. It has no butter, just 1/3 cup of Canola oil, so it's relatively light and low in fat.

I'll let you know how it goes later...

Scratch Baking

I have been obsessed with cake baking lately. I long ago mastered the chocolate cake. The batter, is simple and the texture is usually soft and moist regardless of whether I followed the exact directions to the letter.

This is not the case with yellow cakes.

Last March, for my mother's birthday I tried to make a simple yellow 1 2 3 4 cake from the Joy of Cooking. It looked beautiful, but the texture was all wrong. It was dry and had the texture of cornbread. I used regular flour instead of cake flour and did not reduce it accordingly. I'm sure I did other stuff wrong, but that was the main offense.

Then I got some cake flour and made it again for my sister's birthday and was much more particular about the instructions. It was better, it rose, but ultimately it was dryer than I'd like.

I had no idea how difficult it was to make a scratch cake correctly. I've been doing it all my life, but only recently I decided I needed to do it right.

My fourth foray into the 1 2 3 4 cake was almost perfect. I used castor sugar, AKA super fine sugar and it improved the texture immensely. The cake was soft and moist. I think I should have cooked it an extra couple minutes. The cake doubled in volume in the oven, but shrank down about 25% while cooling. It was almost too moist, but I think an extra minute or 2 in the oven would have fixed that.

But. It. Was. Delicious.

Over the weekend I made a couple of recipes from "Great Cakes" by Carole Matthews. I think I've got this thing down, at least with the simpler butter cake recipes.

Basically what I've learned is this: "room temperature" butter is much colder than I previously thought. It should only sit out for a half hour before you start creaming. When the recipe says "gradually add the sugar" they MEAN it. It takes a good 8 minutes of sprinkling it in 1 TBSP at a time to properly aerate the butter.

Also, when adding the flour and the liquid alternately, do it really fast. Shut off the mixer between additions if you can't get it in fast enough. Once it's mostly blended shut off the mixer completely and fold it together. Even on low 'fold' speed, it will bring up the gluten in the flour and make the cake dry if you mix it too much.

I love baking cakes. If we could eat cake every day, I would make one every day.

I'm totally serious. I love to make cake.

And I love to eat it.

Very hungry at the moment... Didn't cook tonight. Waiting for take out.