I was so excited that the authors created a gluten free book for this series (there are several books in this 5 minutes a day series). Good quality gluten free dinner bread is really hard to come by. Store bought bread is fine for sandwiches, but sometimes I really miss French bread, challah, and Italian bread.

First, let me say that the bread from this book is very good. It’s not exactly the same as gluten bread, but it’s incredibly close. I’ve made several recipes from the book. I recommend it but suggest you understand what’s involved before jumping in.

Secondly, this is most definitely NOT 5 minutes a day. Here’s how it works. First you need to make the flour blend and you probably don’t have all the flours you need at home so you have to go buy them.

You need to mix the flour and have a place to store it because the mix is not used up by making one batch. Then you make the dough. It has to sit out for 2 hours, then you refrigerate it. The day you want to bake some, you have to measure a pound of it and let it sit out for an hour. You need to preheat the oven with a pizza stone and a pan of water. Then you bake the bread on the pizza stone. If you use parchment paper under it, you have to pull it out halfway through (I did this because I do not have a pizza peel and did not want to buy one). It bakes for 45 minutes. Then you are supposed to let the bread cool completely before eating (2 hours). To accomplish all of that for dinner, I would need to start right after lunch. Not really doable on most days.

That being said, the bread is really, really good. The basic artisan bread recipe makes a bread that has a wonderful crunch on the outside and a good texture on the inside. The flavor is good. It’s not gummy or sandy as some gluten free breads are. It’s also not too heavy and not too light.

I also made another recipe from the book for the challah bread and from that I made challah, cinnamon rolls, and monkey bread. All three were very good. That dough is very wet and sticky and hard to manipulate but I managed. It’s basically the same many step scenario with this bread as well, however it was really wonderful to finally have challah again after years without it.

The only book I have that rivals this is How Can It Be Gluten Free, which has hands down the most amazing dinner roll recipe you will ever taste in your life. Both books require their own flour mix, so now I’ve got two containers in my pantry, plus my containers of Bob’s Red Mill 1 to 1 Flour Blend and Cup4Cup.

I was so excited that the authors created a gluten free book for this series (there are several books in this 5 minutes a day series). Good quality gluten free dinner bread is really hard to come by. Store bought bread is fine for sandwiches, but sometimes I really miss French bread, challah, and Italian … Read more →

I’m a fan of America’s Test Kitchen. I subscribed to Cook’s Illustrated for several years and love that there is someone out there who takes a methodical approach to recipe testing. If you’re not familiar, they usually take one recipe and then try it dozens of ways to find the very best method and recipe. Their results are always trustworthy. When I heard they had a gluten free cookbook  (The How Can it Be Gluten Free Cookbook) coming out, I was skeptical. I have to say I am generally not a fan of gluten free cookbooks. I buy GF flour, pasta, and bread and I made regular recipes with them. I don’t usually want to have to use 5 kinds of flour to make one recipe when I can buy Cup4Cup and substitute it in most recipes.

So, I was reluctant. But I bought it anyhow. And I sat down to read it and I wondered why I doubted them. They do a very in-depth comparison of existing GF flour blends and also test GF pasta and breads on the market. I found the flour testing the most useful and I agreed with their conclusions, however they did not test my go-to brand, Cup4Cup. I found the pasta and bread evaluations less useful. I can’t find some of the brands in my store that they used and I also rely heavily on my store’s in-house brand for pasta. They offer really good advice about cooking with GF products and storing GF baked goods (in short, they get stale fast). This is a book where the writers thought carefully about what they were making and spent a lot of time figuring out what works and what doesn’t. It is the BEST gluten free cookbook I’ve ever owned. It covers breakfast items, bread (I haven’t tried making any yeast bread but I am definitely going to now), cakes, pies, cookies, and more.

The real gold in this book is that they give you a recipe for their own flour blend. After testing many on the market they create one that they found to be better than everything out there (except Cup4Cup which they did not discuss, sadly). I’m not going to reprint their recipe for flour here (you’ll have to buy the book), but it was easy to make and I found all the items on the shelf in my store – white rice flour, brown rice flour, milk powder, tapioca starch and potato starch. I mixed it up and kept it in a large plastic container. A few minutes of mixing and I had a flour blend I could turn to for all of my baking.

So far I’ve made three recipes from the book so far: pancakes, coffee cake and carrot cake. I’m giving all three a big thumbs up. The recipes use their custom flour blend, BUT they tell you how much to substitute if you are using their top store bought flour blends. I love that part of the book. I made the recipes with their flour and was happy with the results, for the most part.

The pancakes turned out perfectly. Their method makes pancakes that are fluffy and cooked completely. They have some great tips about how important it is to preheat the pan and what size makes the optimum pancakes.

I was worried about the coffee cake because the batter didn’t taste great to me at all, but it turned out wonderfully – moist and fluffy. The only complaint I have about the coffee cake is that the glaze was too thin and ran off the cake.

The carrot cake was fantastic (moist with a depth of flavor), however the baking time was not long enough. I took my cake out of the oven and it was still jiggly in the center. I didn’t listen to my own instincts and let it cool, then it was obvious it was just mush in the middle. I put it back in the oven for 20 minutes, starting with a cold oven. Once it was baked completely, it was delicious.

I’ll definitely be baking more from this cookbook. If you’re GF, you want this on your kitchen bookshelf.

I’m a fan of America’s Test Kitchen. I subscribed to Cook’s Illustrated for several years and love that there is someone out there who takes a methodical approach to recipe testing. If you’re not familiar, they usually take one recipe and then try it dozens of ways to find the very best method and recipe. … Read more →

When I heard that Melt: The Art of Macaroni and Cheese by going to be published by my friend Stephanie Stiavetti and her co-author Garrett McCord, my first reaction was to drool. Because an entire book about macaroni and cheese is possibly the evilest, most wonderfulest thing I could imagine. Then I started to wonder, what exactly could Stephanie be up to? How many recipes for mac and cheese are there? Well, it turns out there are more than you can imagine. Stephanie was kind enough to send me a book and then kind enough not to get mad at me when it sat on my desk for several months while I waded through an incredibly complex work and personal time. I’ve finally shoved some other things to the side and gotten down to enjoying this book.

First let’s talk about the concept of the book. This is not a throw a recipe together from your pantry kind of cookbook. You need to plan ahead to make these recipes. Each recipe specifies a particular artisan cheese (I cannot fathom how much cheese Stephanie must have tasted and how she can still fit in her pants).  The recipes revolve around these very special cheeses and are meant to highlight the amazing flavors of said cheeses. And although she has chosen the most perfect cheese for each recipe, she offers alternatives if you don’t have access to a wonderful cheese shop. Which I don’t.  At first I was kind of put off by this. I mean, it can be hard enough to source the ingredients in recipes, but to have to order artisan cheese? Well, it seemed a bit nuts to me. However, the recipes are exciting enough by themselves so even if you use grocery store cheese (which I do!), you will still find a lot of things in this cookbook you’re going to want to make. With your grocery store cheese. And they’re going to knock your socks off because the flavor combos are amazing.

Since I am gluten and lactose intolerant, I was hoping for a little recognition and there is one recipe that uses gluten-free pasta, however I am not one to stand on ceremony so I always make my own substitutions in recipes for my own dietary issues. Here are the recipes I can’t stop thinking about and will be trying:

Humboldt Fog with Grilled Peaches and Orzo

Paneer, Pineapple, and Cucumber Pasta Salad

Early Autumn Pasta Salad With Fiscalini Bandage Wrapped Cheddar and Fuyu Persimmons

Roaring Forties with Honey-Roasted Delicata Squash, Sage Butter, and Rotini

Raclette with Cornichons, and Sauteed Onions

Red Hawk Macaroni with Prosciutto and Raspberry Jam

Pumpkin Stuffed with Fontina, Italian Sausage and Macaroni

Chicken Breast Stuffed with Lenora Goat Cheese, Star Pasta, and Crushed Gingersnaps

Orzo Pudding with Poached Dried Fruit

As you can see, this isn’t blue box mac and cheese. And really it’s not a mac and cheese cookbook. It’s a cheese and pasta cookbook, done creatively with massive attention to detail. It’s filled with gorgeous photos and tons of info about cheese, so you can become a true expert just by holding it in your hands and breathing it in.

If you love cheese and love pasta, you want this book on your shelf. There are so many times when a pasta dish seems like the solution to my dinner dilemmas, but my repertoire is getting a little tired. These recipes will spice that up for me, giving me some new go-tos I can shop for in advance and have at the ready.

When I heard that Melt: The Art of Macaroni and Cheese by going to be published by my friend Stephanie Stiavetti and her co-author Garrett McCord, my first reaction was to drool. Because an entire book about macaroni and cheese is possibly the evilest, most wonderfulest thing I could imagine. Then I started to wonder, … Read more →

Thanks to Martha Stewart, I discovered Lucinda Scala Quinn. My blog began years ago as a one year experiment in which I unofficially apprenticed myself to Martha Stewart. I read her books, magazines, and watched her shows. Every single day I did a recipe or project from the land of Martha. It was insane, but I learned a lot (you can read about it here). Along the way, I became familiar with Martha’s peeps. She has a cast of experts that made frequent appearances on her shows and in her magazines. Lucinda Scala Quinn is an editor for MSLo (Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia) and regularly appeared on the Martha Stewart Show. She also has regular features in Martha Stewart Living Magazine. I’ve always appreciated her recipes and her approach to food. Lucinda is all about making really good food, but doing it without tons of fussing.

I bought her previous book, Mad Hungry, in which she offers the recipes used to feed her

crew of boys (3 sons and a husband). Although I have just one son, I really loved the book and a couple of the recipes from it have become part of my standard repertoire. Obviously I could not resist buying Mad Hungry Cravings, in which Lucinda offers recipes for making the foods you crave from take out at home. I sat down with the book and some post-its and marked plenty of pages.

I think the book is fantastic and it’s funny to see that she makes a lot of the same things at home that I make to avoid take out – fried rice, fried chicken, potato skins. What you must keep in mind when reading this though is that she lives in NYC. Every type of cuisine in the world is available for take out within blocks of her apartment. What she considers takeout, most of us would consider interesting and exotic food. So while there are lots of recipes that allow you to make your favorites at home, there are also recipes for things you’ve probably never had before also.

I tried out two recipes recently: Chicken and Chive Burgers and Italian Fries. The chicken and chive burgers were pretty basic chicken burgers (I don’t know ANYONE who gets chicken burgers as takeout, but whatever). They were good – I think the lemon juice is the secret – it did give it a very nice flavor. They were really gloppy though, so I stuck them in the freezer to give them some shape before I grilled them. I also dumped some chopped fresh parsley in them for a little more color.

The Italian Fries did not wow me. Lucinda talks about how this is a family favorite at her house and everyone goes nuts when they smell them. I’m confused by them. They’re like fries, but they aren’t really. And are you supposed to eat them plain or dip in ketchup? They have Italian herbs and cheese on them so it was hard to figure it out. I ended up dipping and the husband didn’t. They were crunchy, but not in a French fry way, more in an oven baked cheesy potato way. They were good, but they just weren’t fries to me.

That being said, there are lots of other recipes I will try from this book, like spinach zucchini lasagna, flautas, and chicken tikka masala.

Italian Fries

6-7 Idaho potatoes, peeled and sliced into 1/2 inch thick French fry style strips, soaked in cold slated water

4 tablespoons olive oil

1 tablespoon Italian herbs

2 cups grated Romano cheese

1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped

4 tablespoons butter cut into 6 cubes

salt and pepper

Preheat the oven to 400.

Drain the potatoes and pat dry. Spread 1 tbsp olive oil on each of 2 baking sheets. Spread the potatoes on it.

Sprinkle the herbs and cheese over the potatoes. Drizzle remaining oil on top. Scatter the cubes of butter around the potatoes.

Bake 45-50 minutes, rotating pans halfway through, until the potatoes are brown.

 

Thanks to Martha Stewart, I discovered Lucinda Scala Quinn. My blog began years ago as a one year experiment in which I unofficially apprenticed myself to Martha Stewart. I read her books, magazines, and watched her shows. Every single day I did a recipe or project from the land of Martha. It was insane, but … Read more →

No matter how much of a foodie you’ve become, I will bet there is at least one packaged snack you still love. As a kid, you probably ate more of these kinds of foods than you might want to admit now. As for me, I still have a thing for cheese puffs (although I now buy the organic, gluten-free version) and I have fond memories of Hostess cupcakes, mostly because I watched other kids get them in their lunches and I never did (as an adult, I found them pretty bad: dry and tasteless, but they remain as a symbol of childhood to me!). Oreos and Keebler Fudge Stripe cookies were other childhood favorite of mine though and I have a weird memory of taking an empty egg carton and putting one Oreo in each section and eating out of it while reading one of the Little House on the Prairie books.

Whatever your secret craving or childhood obsession, you probably never thought you could recreate that food at home yourself. Now you can. The fun new book, Classic Snacks Made From Scratch by Casey Barber (Ulysses Press) has 70 recipes for all sorts of foods you could only buy in a package until now. Nutter Butters, Oreos, Fudge Stripes, Mallomars, Entenmann’s Donuts, TastyKakes, Twinkies, Cheez-Its, Pop-Tarts, Doritos, BBQ potato chips,  Klondike Bars, Funyuns, Fudgsicles, fruit roll-ups, and even Peeps made it into the pages of this book of 70 recipes.

This isn’t a cookbook you’re going to cook from every day or even every weekend, but it is definitely a fun resource to have on had, particularly if you have kids, or if you just like to challenge yourself to recreate foods.  Barber calls for some ingredients that might be harder to find (like cheese powder or buttermilk powder), so plan ahead for your binge. The recipes are all rated for difficulty level which is a nice feature, but there is no nutritional information (probably a good thing!). This book is simply pure fun. Just paging through it will give you a thrill as you slip past all the stuff you used to eat (or still eat on occasion) or dream about eating.

I made the tater tots recipe from the book. I had some trouble grating the potatoes, but it may be that my potatoes were cooked longer than they should have been. When I mixed it up, it just looked like mashed potatoes – it lost the texture of grated potatoes (again, I think this was my bad). They fried up nicely though and looked good. My kids both liked them. They tasted like potato balls to me, mostly because it didn’t have the right texture, but it got a thumbs up from the people who really matter. I probably wouldn’t make this again – I make fried food very rarely as a special treat and I think I would rather have French fries! But if you’re looking for a good tots recipe, I would definitely try this one.

 

No matter how much of a foodie you’ve become, I will bet there is at least one packaged snack you still love. As a kid, you probably ate more of these kinds of foods than you might want to admit now. As for me, I still have a thing for cheese puffs (although I now … Read more →

I recently received this cookbook as a birthday gift. The authors, Jilly Lagasse and Jessie Lagasse Swanson, are Emeril Lagasse’s daughters. Definitely intriguing. One of them has celiac and the other is gluten intolerant. They grew up with their dad’s food, but then had to learn to make their own gluten-free versions.

The book is broken down into appetizers, salads, soups, sides, entrees and desserts. It begins with some explanation about gluten, gluten allergies, and food that contains gluten.

There are several things I like about this book. First of all, it’s not one of those books that just takes old favorites and changes them to gluten-free. These are recipes anyone would make, not just people with gluten issues. Many of the recipes have nothing to do with gluten (salads, veggie sides, etc.). It’s just good food that happens not to have any gluten. This makes you feel like you’re eating real food and are not so restricted in your diet.

Secondly, what I really appreciate is that the recipes rely on all-purpose gluten free flour. I am not a fan of cookbooks that have you using 5 ingredients to compose the flour part of the recipe. I want to buy one good all-purpose GF flour and be able to use it in everything.

The recipes are a nice mix of creative with traditional. Wilted Chard with Walnut Pesto and Balsamic Reduction  and Baked Halibut with Creole Tomato and Vidalia Onion Vinaigrette  are included as well as Spaghetti Bolognese, Carrot Cake, and Crab Cakes.

The book has lots of photos and each recipe has a little note from the authors describing it.

I recently made:

Stewed Butternut Squash with Apples and Smoked Bacon

4 strips bacon, diced

1 1/2 cups small diced onion

1 tbsp minced garlic

2 tbsp butter

1 apple, peeled, cored and diced

1 butternut squash (about 2 lbs), peeled, seeded, diced

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1 tbsp chopped fresh thyme

1 1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

1/4 cup maple syrup

2 cups chicken stock

Set a medium sized saute pan on medium heat. Add the bacon and render, stirring until crisp, about 6-8 minutes.

Add the onion and cook until slightly caramelized, 4-5 minutes.

Add garlic, butter, apple, and cook, stirring until the apple is tender, about 5 minutes.

Add squash and increase heat to medium high. Cook undisturbed, about 3-4 minutes then stir in nutmeg, thyme, salt and pepper.

Cook another 3-4 minutes and add the syrup and stock. Bring to a boil, then cover and reduce heat to medium. Cook until squash is tender and most of the liquid evaporates, about 15 minutes.

Remove the lid, stir gently and re-season as needed.

The authors suggest serving this as a stand alone stew. I served it with rice. It has a nice rich flavor and is a great alternative to a meat-based stew. Very hearty and perfect on a cold night.

This is a great book for someone recently diagnosed with a gluten issue, or for someone who has been cooking gluten free for a long time.

I recently received this cookbook as a birthday gift. The authors, Jilly Lagasse and Jessie Lagasse Swanson, are Emeril Lagasse’s daughters. Definitely intriguing. One of them has celiac and the other is gluten intolerant. They grew up with their dad’s food, but then had to learn to make their own gluten-free versions. The book is … Read more →