Holiday Baking - Gluten Free

Starting with Thanksgiving and going through New Year's Day, we are all planning, shopping and creating dishes to share with friends, co-workers or loved ones.This is a heady time of year when everyone is in the kitchen either eating or cooking.

To help with your plans for holiday cooking, I've highlighted some of my favorite recipes from the blog. The recipes are gluten and soy free, most are nightshade free (tomato, potato, eggplant and peppers), and some are dairy free as well. If you are looking for other recipes that are in my archives, click on the link in the sidebar which reads, Cook's Log.


Breakfast

Sweet Potato Biscuits

Chestnut Coffee Cake with Chocolate Filling

Hazelnut Waffles

Buckwheat Almond Pancakes

Upside Down Pear Pancake

Banana Coconut Macadamia Nut Muffins

Lemon Chia Seed Muffins

Maple Bran Chia Muffins

Applewood Smoked Ham Scones with Maple Butter

Cinnamon Rolls

Cornbread & Stuffing

Cornbread

Cornbread Stuffing

Breads

Buckwheat Brioche

Soups & Stews

Old Fashioned Beef Stew (contains potatoes)

Split Pea Soup

Salads

Kale with Fig & Grape Must Vinaigrette

Orange & Fennel Salad

Vegetables

Red Quinoa Pilaf

Sweet Potatoes with Onions & Rosemary

Desserts

Cola Cake with Cola Frosting

Sweet Potato Cake with Maple Glaze

Coconut Carob Truffles

Buckwheat Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate Chestnut Biscotti

Rolled & Cut-Out Sugar Cookies

Mint Chocolate Cookies

Peanut Butter Oatmeal Sandwich Cookies

Peanut Butter Sauce Pan Cookies

Toll House Kookie Brittle


Happy Holidays to Everyone!

Sheltie Girl

Red Quinoa Pilaf - Gluten Free

My vegetable market closed for the season at the end of last week. I took advantage of their last day to stock up on different root vegetables and apples that would store for a while. Plus, I picked up the last of some of my favorite vegetables like leeks, celery, carrots and celeriac.

I wanted to use the last of these wonderful vegetables in a dish my family would enjoy. I chose to make a red quinoa pilaf and use a variety of spices to enhance the dish. I used garlic powder, onion powder, salt, pepper and file powder (also called gumbo file).

File powder is made from ground and dried sassafras leaves. It is similar in aroma to ground sage, although to some it is more like thyme and savory. Our first reference to the use of ground sassafras leaves comes from the Cajun's who arrived in Louisiana from Acadia in the 1600s. They noticed that the Choctaw people used the ground leaves in their cooking. The Cajuns began to use file powder in their cooking and it became a necessary ingredient in making gumbo.

If you'd like to make your own file powder, Nola Cuisine has instructions. Dr. David Reed at Horticultural Department at Texas A&M gives a step by step instructions with pictures on collecting sassafras leaves, drying them and then grinding them for file powder.

Recipe

1 cup red quinoa
2 cups water
1 chopped leek, white & light green parts
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped carrot
1/2 cup chopped celeriac
1 1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/4 tsp file powder (gumbo file)

1. In a large sauce pan (2 qt), pour in the quinoa, water and salt. Bring the mixture to a boil. Then reduce the heat to a simmer. Cook for about 5 minutes.

2. Add the vegetables, then cover and cook for about another 10 minutes or until the liquid is gone.

3. Dump in the spices and stir together. Serve warm.

What did my family think of my red quinoa pilaf? My husband and I loved it, but the kids weren't so sure about the flavor. Overall they thought it was okay, but this is the first time they had tried file powder. They agreed that they might like it more the next time they tried it.

Millet Pilaf - Gluten Free

Ancient civilizations relied on millet as their staple crop, because they thrive in arid and semi arid conditions. Several varieties of millet developed concurrently, broomcorn and foxtail millet in China and pearl millet in the Sudan. While millet's ancestors panic grass and barnyard grass developed in Japan. From these areas, millet slowly spread around the world.

The ancient Egyptians used it to make bread, beer and a beer bread. The people of India make a flatbread called roti with millet. The people of Europe ate millet mixed with water or milk in a type of porridge. Other cultures also used millet to make wine or beer, the Chinese used millet to make wine as much as 8,000 to 9,000 years ago.

In North America millet is primarily used for bird seed, but for the gluten intolerant it is a wonderful addition to the kitchen pantry. Millet grains can be cooked in water or broth to make a dish like mashed potatoes or into a fragrant pilaf. At Epicurious.com you can find recipes for Curried Millet, Shiitake, and Corn Salad Restey and White Bean and Vegetable Cassoulet with Millet Crust. I chose to make a simple pilaf with flavors my children like to eat. Deliciously aromatic the pilaf was delightful, filling your mouth with the delicate flavors of sage, carrot, celery and garlic.

Recipe

1 cup millet*
3 Tb olive oil
2 cups vegetable broth
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/2 cup chopped carrot
1/2 cup chopped shallot
1 tsp sea salt
dash black pepper
1/2 tsp ground sage
1/2 cup chopped apple

1. In a 4 quart cooking pan, pour in the millet and olive oil. Lightly toast the millet seeds for 3 to 5 minutes. Stirring constantly so that the millet seeds don't burn.

2. Pour in the vegetable broth, the chopped vegetables, salt, pepper and sage. Bring the liquid to a boil. Then reduce the heat to a simmer for about 25 minutes or until all the liquid has been absorbed by the millet. Remove from the heat.

3. Dump in the chopped apple and stir. The heat of the pilaf will lightly cook the apple.

4. Allow the millet pilaf to cool before serving.

What did my family think of millet pilaf? Neither of my children liked the pilaf, but they didn't like quinoa pilaf the first time they tried it either. Now, quinoa is one of their favorite grain dishes. My husband and I thought it was delicious. In fact, my husband enjoyed it so much he finished off the left overs for breakfast the next day.

* Note: You can purchase gluten free millet from the Glutenfreemall.com or hulled millet from Bob's Red Mill. You can purchase gluten free millet flour from Bob's Red Mill.

A Meme & The Vegetable Market

I was tagged by Gluten Free By The Bay for a meme. I'm supposed to include eight things about myself, but which items should I include? I feel like Winnie-the-Pooh as he sits on a log, tapping his forehead, saying "Think, think, think."

The pictures are of some of the produce from our local vegetable market, since I've been going there quite regularly this summer. I really enjoy going to the market, since everything is gluten free.

Here are a few tidbits about myself:

1. I took graduate philosophy classes with my dad, as we were enrolled in the same Master's program.

2. My husband and I were best friends, who fell in love with each other. We married and have been together nineteen years. We're still best friends.

3. We share our home with a 5 year old Shetland Sheepdog. She drops enough hair every year to make another puppy, but we wouldn't have her any other way. By the way for those of you who don't know it, Timmy is in the well...he falls in every day...

4. I won't share my home with any creature that might consider a member of my family a potential source of food.

5. My husband and I are from the Gulf Coast and we track hurricanes throughout the storm season (1 June to 30 November), because our families live along the coast.

6. I don't watch horror/slasher/excessive gore movies.

7. Most of the books I read for enjoyment are children's literature. In the last year I've read books from: J.K. Rowling, Dianna Wynne-Jones, Bryan Jacques, Holly Black & Tony DiTerlizzi, Patricia Wrede, Eoin Colfer, and more.

8. The worst job I ever had was serving over cooked and burned vegetables in my college cafeteria. After spending two hours serving and smelling the aromas from the food on the line each day, I couldn't eat any of it. I lived off of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that semester.

Now that I've posted some things about myself, I'm supposed to tag some others. Maybe these guys would like to meme along...

Nancy's Place

Never Trust a Culinary Student

Savoir Flair

The Well Fed Celiac

Gluten Free Mommy

Gluten-Free Artist