gluten free Archives • Page 5 of 6 • Ant & Anise

Pico de gallo

If you can handle a little chopping you can make one of the freshest tasting summer sauces ever, and one of my favorites: Pico de gallo.

I bought some prepared pico de gallo in July at Whole Foods. I was scurrying around getting groceries because I had house guests arriving and was running short on time.

Vacuuming up cat hair tumbleweeds trumped spending some time in the kitchen.

You would think with a dark brown/black cat, his clumps of light-as-air fur would blend right into the dark wood floor. But they don’t. It’s a disappointingly unforgiving surface that shows everything. (And while I am the family neat-freak I don’t follow the Unclutterer’s advice on taming fur tumbleweeds. I usually just try to ignore them for as long as possible. 4-5 days is as good as it gets before I’m yanking the vacuum out.)…

My favorite chocolate cake with coconut buttercream frosting

Could I bring the quinoa chocolate cake for dessert to a summer family dinner? It was already shaping up to be a busy weekend. My first thought was when am I going to possibly have time to do this?

But when I thought about it a little more, it made sense to make time for it. It is my favorite chocolate cake, after all.

And it gave me an opportunity to be more observant about what I do when I make it. Some recent feedback (I’m talking to you, Daphne) was that the cake didn’t turn out: The quinoa grains were lumpy and the cake didn’t rise very well. What?? Oh no!

I can’t let my favorite chocolate cake be a letdown to bakers out there. To me it’s practically perfect, with a moist texture, rich chocolate flavor but not overly sweet. Plus it’s gluten free, a bonus with our growing number of gluten-intolerant family members.

I’ve had such good success with this recipe, and I want it to become your favorite chocolate cake too. So on Sunday morning I was extra careful to note what I did. I zeroed in on three keys to success:

One: The quinoa needs to be dry.

If you use the absorption method, use a ratio of 1:1.5 quinoa to water when you’re cooking it (1 part quinoa to 1.5 parts water). Many recipes call for a 1:2 ratio (1 part quinoa to 2 parts water) but this will make the quinoa too wet. Wet quinoa will weigh the batter down and make it difficult to rise.

Two: Have the quinoa at room temperature, or slightly cooler.

If the quinoa is too warm it will tend to gum up into clumps, making it difficult for the food processor (or blender) to break down the grains evenly. If you’ve just made the quinoa and it’s steaming hot, spread it out on a sheet pan or two to cool it down before you start.

Three: Beat the eggs one at a time into the quinoa. And then beat them some more before you add the other ingredients.

Beating eggs in one at a time, for about two minutes each, accomplishes a couple things. It helps to break down the quinoa grains gradually and evenly, making it less likely that larger clumps of quinoa will make it to the final batter. The four photos below show what the batter looks like after each egg was beaten in.

Also, more beating helps incorporate more air into the batter, which helps the cake rise when it’s in the oven. Beating eggs enough is absolutely essential to provide structure to baked goods, especially with gluten- or grain-free recipes. So whirl those eggs and quinoa around for several minutes before you start adding the other ingredients.

The finished batter (see photo below) should be smooth. It will still have little quinoa grains that you can see, but the grains should be small and uniform in size, so that no one would know it’s actually quinoa and not flour.

It was good seeing everyone on Sunday. A summer dinner that was initially intended to be small ended up with 14 of us sipping bubbly, chatting and laughing on the patio.

It’s funny how we’ll plan a date to get the family together for a celebratory dinner and have to reschedule at least once or twice. But an impromptu invitation rolls around at the end of July and hey…just like magic, we all can make it.

The cake was a hit. I think I heard it called ‘outstanding’ at one point. Thanks, Kevin. I couldn’t agree more.

My Favorite Chocolate Cake (Quinoa Chocolate Cake - Gluten Free)

Yield: one 8-inch layer cake

This recipe is based on one in Quinoa 365: The Everyday Superfood by Patricia Green and Caroline Hemming. It's moist, rich and chocolatey, and I hope it becomes your favorite chocolate cake too. Buttercream, specifically Swiss meringue buttercream, has been my go-to frosting for cakes and cupcakes for decades. It has a rich, buttery taste and a silky smooth texture, and is endlessly versatile. It is a little involved, but don't be afraid to try it. There are great step-by-step instructions (with photos!) out there, like on Sweetapolita.

Ingredients

2/3 cup uncooked quinoa (*see cooking instructions below) OR 2 cups + 4 teaspoons (9.3 ounces) cooked quinoa
4 large eggs
1/3 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup (6 ounces) butter, melted and cooled
1-1/2 cups sugar
1 cup cocoa powder
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
Coconut Buttercream Frosting
4 egg whites
1 cup sugar
pinch of kosher salt
12 ounces (1-1/2 cups) butter, in cubes and softened slightly
3 tablespoons coconut cream
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-1/2 teaspoon coconut extract

Instructions

To make the quinoa:

Rinse 2/3 cup quinoa in a fine mesh strainer and drain. Place in a medium saucepan with 1 cup water and bring to a boil on medium-high heat.
When the quinoa boils, cover the saucepan and reduce heat to low. Cook for 15 minutes.
Remove from heat, leave the saucepan lid ajar and let stand for 10-15 minutes.
Spread the quinoa on a baking sheet and cool completely, about 10 minutes.

To make the cake:

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease two 8-inch round cake pans and line the bottom of each with parchment paper.
In a medium bowl, sift together cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda and salt and set aside.
Place quinoa in a food processor and add 1 egg. Blend for 2 minutes, then scrape down the sides of the processor.
Repeat this step another 3 times, blending in each egg for 2 minutes and scraping down the sides of the processor before you add the next egg. When all eggs are incorporated, blend for 1-2 minutes more.
Add milk, vanilla and melted butter and blend until incorporated.
Next up, the dry ingredients: Add sugar and blend until incorporated. Add the sifted cocoa mixture and blend until incorporated.
Pour batter evenly between the two cake pans. Bake for 35-40 minutes, or until a cake tester inserted in the middle comes out clean.
Remove cakes from oven and let cool for 10 minutes. Turn cakes out onto a cake rack, remove the parchment, and let cool completely before frosting.

To make the coconut buttercream frosting:

Fill a medium saucepan ⅓ full with water and bring to a simmer. In the bowl of a stand mixer, add the egg whites, sugar and salt. Place the mixing bowl on top of the simmering water and whisk constantly until the sugar is dissolved and the temperature reaches 160F. (If you don’t have a candy thermometer, whisk until the sugar has completely dissolved and the egg white-sugar mixture is warm to the touch.)
Remove the mixing bowl from the heat and move it to your stand mixer. With the whisk attachment, whisk on high speed until stiff peaks form, about 4-5 minutes. Scrape down the sides of the bowl continue to whisk until the mixture is glossy and cool, another 4 minutes or so.
Now you're ready to add the butter: Change to the paddle attachment. With the mixer on medium speed, add the add the softened butter one piece at a time. Mix well after each piece of butter added. Occasionally stop and scrape down the sides of the bowl. (If the butter is too soft, the buttercream may be too runny. An easy fix is to place the whole bowl in the fridge for 10-15 minutes to let the butter firm up a bit before you continue mixing.)
After all the butter is incorporated and the buttercream is silky smooth, add the coconut cream and extracts and mix until incorporated. Makes enough to frost an 8-inch layer cake.

Chimichurri sauce

¡Olé!

With this gorgeous summer weather the last few weeks (can you believe it?) my tastes have turned to south of the border flavors. Specifically, chimichurri sauce.

I’ve seen chimichurri pop up on several menus lately and it’s a taste I love, tangy and vinaigrette-y.

Okay yes, it’s true, I do like some creamy sauces. In fact, Béarnaise is probably my most favorite sauce in the world, ever. If I get a chance to order it out, I do. (I’m also very lucky that Bob makes a great Béarnaise sauce too.)

But mostly, when it comes to sauces and dressings, I’m a vinaigrette kind of girl. And that’s vinaigrette on the side, too. Yup.

Chimichurri is one amazingly tangy fresh herb explosion. I’ve been thinking of it as pesto’s bad-ass cousin that goes great with a simple grilled steak (no surprise) but it really shines when the whole meal has a Latin twist, like with steak tacos.

I could be saying this because I’m on a bit of a taco kick right now. Bob and I recently got around to trying La Taqueria on Cambie, and we’re officially hooked. Also, lately we’ve also been catching up on a lot of episodes of Breaking Bad, which is filmed in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

These tacos are far different from the ones I remember having as a kid. Mom would get a package of Old El Paso taco shells and we’d fill them with ground beef (probably seasoned with Old El Paso spice mix), tomato slices, shredded cheddar cheese and shredded lettuce.

And then, one or maybe two bites into it, the hard taco shell would explode into shards. The tomatoes would slide out the top and the ground beef would drip out the bottom, until all you were holding was a remnant of taco shell and a few shreds of cheese and lettuce. It was fun though. I mean come on, eating with your hands is always fun, right?

No, these are quite different tacos: Fresh, soft tortillas that don’t crumble. Steak instead of ground beef. And oh-so-tangy chimichurri sauce. They still are super messy, and leave us licking our fingers after every bite. A perfect summer dinner.

Aside from steak tacos, there are a lot of ways to use chimichurri sauce. Here are some ideas:

sauce for grilled meat, chicken or fish
sauce for grilled vegetables
dipping sauce for bread
spread for sandwiches, on its own or combined with mayo
sauce for pasta: reserve some cooking liquid from the pasta to thin it out a little

Chimichurri Sauce

Yield: 3/4 cup

There are a ton of variations on chimichurri sauce out there, but this is one I put together that we particularly liked. The cilantro and lime juice are less traditional, but go well with a Latin-themed meal. Feel free to substitute all parsley for the cilantro and use red wine vinegar for a more traditional chimichurri -- either way it still packs a punch!

Ingredients

1 cup lightly packed fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves
1 cup lightly packed fresh cilantro leaves
1/4 cup lightly packed fresh oregano leaves
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 shallot, minced
1/2 teaspoon red chili pepper flakes
3-4 tablespoons olive oil
3-4 tablespoons red wine vinegar or fresh lime juice
kosher salt to taste

Instructions

In a food processor with the blade attachment, place the parsley, cilantro, oregano, garlic, shallot and chili pepper flakes and process until combined.
Scrape down the sides of the processor with a spatula, then add 3 tablespoons of olive oil and 3 tablespoons of vinegar/lime juice Process until combined.
Add a little salt and taste for seasoning. If you want a little more tang, add the other tablespoon of vinegar/lime juice. If you want a runnier sauce, add the other tablespoon of olive oil.
Pour sauce into a serving dish.

Notes

You can make this the day you're serving it, but it also keeps well in the fridge for about a week. We found the garlic flavor intensified after a few days.

Carrot Apple Breakfast Cake

I’m on a quest to find a quick, nutritious breakfast.

Let me qualify that a little. There’s a few other criteria it has to meet, along with being fast and good for you: It has to have some protein in it, it needs to taste good alongside my morning coffee and, ideally, it should be free of gluten.

Seems simple enough, right? Well, not really.

On the breakfast-y protein front there’s eggs, cottage (or other) cheese and yogurt. I like eggs well enough, but I don’t want to eat them every day. I do like cottage cheese, especially with fruit, but it doesn’t match very well with my coffee. And yogurt? It’s never been my favorite texture, unless copious amounts of granola are mixed into it.

Fussy, I know….

Hard to Beet Hummus

What a brilliant idea it was to split a community shared agriculture box from Cropthorne Farm. And I think the strategy of alternating weeks, rather than splitting each box is going to work out just fine too.

In fact, when I read the CSA’s email about this week’s box, and saw garlic scapes in the mix again, I was delighted on two counts: it’s your week for the box, and it’s the last week of garlic scapes.

There’s the rub with eating local: if you want the joy of saying “that came from our farm,” then you have to like what grows there.

As satisfying as they are to look at – curvy green snakes! how cool is that? – I can easily wait a year before eating garlic scapes again. They’re okay, just underwhelming.

Ah, but the beets, that was another story.

I roasted them – four medium sized beets – the day I picked up the box – and served one still warm from the oven as the delicacy it was, cut into segments, and sprinkled with a little salt.

We could have just eaten them like that. But I wanted to expand my repertoire of beet recipes. Remembering your parsnip hummus, I searched for beet hummus recipes and found the Minimalist Baker’s – just one beet, and a 14-ounce can of chickpeas, but still proof-positive that someone had made beet hummus and liked it enough to post it.

We agreed that more beets would be better and ditched the chickpeas. There was a lot of tasting – at first I put in too much tahini, which had to be balanced with more lemon – but in the end it was very good indeed.

Three medium beets turned into what seemed like a very large quantity of hummus. We ate all but half a cup before dinner, with fancy carrots and cucumber, both from the CSA box, and tonight I finished off the last of what was left, making pretty canapés with a Cropthorne cucumber and mint from the back deck.

And yes, I’m happy to say that the beets came from our farm.

Hard to Beet Hummus

Serving Size: 6-8 people

Bob, your best beloved, made so many puns, so steadily all night that I can’t remember if “Hard to Beet Hummus” was his best line or not. As a recipe title it is, indeed, hard to beet. Allow at least an hour for roasting the beets – even better, roast them the day before.

Ingredients

3 medium beets
1 teaspoon olive oil
2 tablespoons tahini
2 to 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon lemon zest
Juice of 1 lemon
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
Black pepper to taste
2 fresh mint leaves for garnish (optional)

Instructions

To roast the beets: Preheat the oven to 375 F. Scrub the beets and trim off greens and long roots. Toss the beets in a teaspoon of olive oil, enough to coat, and season with salt.
Cut a large piece of aluminum foil, enough to make a sealed package that will hold your beets. Place the beets on a baking sheet, and roast for an hour, then check for doneness. A knife should easily penetrate through the beet.
Set aside to cool. when the beets are cool enough to handle, remove the skin. It will rub off easily.
In a food processor or blender combine beets, garlic, tahini, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper. Blend until you have a smooth paste. Taste and adjust for seasoning.
Transfer the humus into a bowl, and garnish with mint leaves cut into chiffonade

Quinoa porridge: comfort food with the power to soothe

Mom’s breathing, which had been labored for several hours, got shallower, and the space between breaths took longer. With my hand on her forearm, I watched her face and listened as her breathing slowed even more. In, out, pause. In, out, pause. Then in, out, longer pause. In, out, longer pause.

And then, just like that, she stopped breathing for good. I waited a few more seconds, but that was it. The last breath. And the end of a very long, incredibly painful journey through Alzheimer’s disease.

That was on March 29, Good Friday. And that is why you haven’t seen much going on at Ant & Anise lately. My mom, Ann, is Eve’s sister. Or was, I should say. I’m not used to the past tense with her just yet….