Cake and Commerce

Burns Night Vegetarian Haggis - wheat free, nut free, and vegan

My friend Alex of Feed Me Like You Mean It loves Burns Night, the annual celebration of the life, works, and loves of Scotland's 18th Century bard, Robert Burns. Burns night falls every January 25th and, in some places, is accompanied by a ritualized supper featuring haggis and haggis stabbing, Burn's poetry, toasts, singing, hand-holding, and, for the lucky, dancing and live music.

We were the lucky. Alex's friend and cohost of the event is a fiddler named Catherine who graced us with her playing throughout the meal and instructed our crew on the finer points of a Ceilidh dance.

Before the dance, however, we ate our ritual Burns meal: Haggis (traditional Scottish dish made from lamb variety meats, oatmeal and herbs and cooked in the stomach of a sheep) , tatties (potatoes) and neeps (turnips) accompanied by plenty of lactofermented vegetables. As a non-meat eater, I was asked to bring the vegetarian Haggis, something I'd never tasted nor experienced before.

I set out to make it two days before the event so that the flavors could marry a bit. This is unnecessary - you can make it and serve it right away, though it does get a bit better with time. While I cooked, my friend Dwayne provided flavor profile feedback - until a few days ago, he's the only friend of mine locally who had any prior experience with haggis. I just tried to make it tasty, and he gave me feedback on texture and spice. In the end the haggis was exactly what I wanted to eat, with different textures and flavor mimicking a 'real' haggis (minus the stomach).

This is a rather ingredient-intensive recipe, but it is quite delicious and worth the effort. It looks remarkably similar to haggis when side-by-side on a plate. It can be made ahead, though I didn't try to freeze it.

Cake and Commerce's Vegetarian Haggis

This serves a large group...12 or more! Cut recipe in half for smaller parties

yield: 5 lbs of Haggisy goodness

• Olive Oil - approximately 1/2 cup
• 2 Medium Onions - finely diced
• 3 Medium Carrots - finely diced
• 6 Cloves of Garlic - minced
• 2 lbs of mushrooms, assorted varieties (I used white button, trumpet, and a matsudake-like mushroom) - mince up boring white mushrooms, coarsely chop interesting ones!
• 2 cups of red wine
• 3 cups of oats, toasted (reduce quantity to 2.5 cups if you are using thick cut oats)
• 1 cup dry red lentils, washed (only substitute lentils or beans without skins)
• 2/3 cup sunflower seeds, toasted (half should be crushed up a bit)
• 1 piece of packaged fried tofu - aka "tofu cutlet" cut into strips
• 10 cups of vegetable stock (recipe to follow)
• 1/2 t sage leaves, dried and ground
• 1 T Thyme leaves, fresh, chopped fine
• 1/2 t Rosemary leaves
• 1/2 t cayenne or Piment D'Espelette
• 1/2 t smoked paprika
• 1/4 C lemon juice or similar (I used Kombucha, but feel free to use sherry vinegar etc)
• Salt and Pepper to taste
• Optional: 3 oz cultured butter, to be added at the end

Vegetable Stock

• 3 ea 5" strips Kombu (kelp)
• 2 large carrots, peeled
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1 onion, peeled and halved
• 1 rib celery
• peppercorns and bay leaves

Procedure:

Make quick vegetable stock: combine all ingredients except Kombu in a pan and cover with about 10 cups of water. Simmer for 30 minutes. Reduce heat, add kombu and allow to cook - without simmering - for about 10 minutes. Remove Kombu from stock and set aside for another use. Allow stock to simmer for 5 minutes. Strain. Lower heat and keep warm until needed.

Cook Lentils: cover red lentils with hot water. Cook until lentils are soft and water is absorbed, about 25 minutes. Do not season.

Make Haggis Heat 1/2 of the olive oil in a large stock pot with a heavy bottom. When hot, add chopped onions, garlic and carrots and cook until translucent. Set aside in a bowl. Add more oil to pan and when hot enough, add only enough mushrooms to cover the bottom of the pan. Allow to brown without moving mushrooms around pan. Sprinkle a little bit of salt over the top of the mushrooms. Once they start sticking to the pan, stir with a wooden spoon to loosen. Add rest of mushrooms and continue cooking. Sprinkle all spices except fresh thyme over the mushrooms and stir. Stir in the cooked carrots, onions and garlic. Allow mixture to continue cooking. Once mushrooms have given off much of their liquid, stir in wine. Allow wine to cook down and mushrooms too brown slightly. Do not burn!

Add in thyme and lentils and tofu. Stir. Add enough vegetable stock to cover the mushrooms. Bring to a boil. Once boiling, add oats and stir. Reduce heat to a simmer. Stir frequently, making sure mixture does not stick to the bottom, as if it were risotto.

When oats are cooked, stir in sunflower seeds. Check salt. Add salt to taste - don't skimp, you've got a lot of haggis here. Stir in enough acid (kombucha, vinegar, lemon juice) to brighten the flavor and make it pop. Add butter if you plan to make this dish vegetarian rather than vegan. Make sure the dish is not runny like a soup, but not as dry as stuffing. It will gel a bit when cooled, thanks to the oats in the recipe.

When finished, place it in either oiled tins, oiled loaf pans, or a haggis-shaped plastic bag. You could also wrap it in banana leaves (it will steam up well) if you prefer. Bake right away or store in the refrigerator up to 48 hours before serving.

Reheat in an oven in a covered dish and uncover for the last few minutes of baking once heated through, on pan in the oven for a drier haggis, in the tins  or molds or on the stove top with more broth or water added. 

Enjoy!

Oaty Cheddar Cheese Crisps - wheat-free and egg-free crackers

I like crackers. I like their snap and crunch. I like spices on my crackers - chilies and herbs. I like cheesy crackers, crackers flavored with sharp cheddar or Gruyere or Parmigiano-Reggiano. Crackers are comforting.

I don't eat crackers often, and I would never eat a cracker with cheese. That's just me. When I was a cheesemonger and still wheat-friendly, a crusty baguette or a thick-cut slice of pain levain was the accompaniment I needed.

I don't eat much cheese now, though my love for it has hardly abated. I'm a little light in the wallet and I can never eat on my own the amount of cheese I'd have to buy to indulge my cravings.

So a cheese cracker - a compact little treat loaded with sharp raw cheddar - seems like a pretty good compromise to me.

I realize not everyone reading this can tolerate certified gluten-free oats, but for those of you who can, I warn you to use restraint once you've baked them. I quickly polished off a batch meant for a friend and gobbled up half of another batch I was bringing to another. I caught my mom sneaking crackers off the plate while I was readying them for their close-up.

This recipe is made entirely in the food processor - bonus! There are a few steps involved, and the rolling out may be the most labor-intensive part of making these. But I assure you it is worth it!

Cake and Commerce's Oaty Cheese Crisps

• 4 oz Certified Gluten-free Oats
• 3.5 oz Sharp Cheddar Cheese, grated (I prefer white cheddar)
• 3 T Brown Rice Flour
• 1 T Flax Seed or Chia Seed, ground
• 1/4 t cayenne pepper
• 1/4 t baking powder, gluten-free
• 1/4 t agar-agar (you can substitute another gum if desired)
• 1/2 t salt
• 1 sprig fresh thyme, leaves only
• 1/4 cup water, cool
• 1 oz lightly toasted pumpkin seeds (about 2T raw pumpkin seeds)
• ground pepper, to taste
• sea salt for garnish

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 350 F (or 300 F Convection)

Combine ALL ingredients EXCEPT for water, pumpkin seeds, ground pepper and sea salt garnish in the bowl of food processor until it resembles corn meal. While running the processor, add water all at once. Stop processor once dough forms. Add in pumpkin seeds and pulse one or two times (alternately you can add them in later by hand to avoid breaking them up too much).

Place one half of the dough on a silpat or parchment paper, pat it down with your hands then and roll out to about 1/4" thick (or thinner if you want very wispy crisps). It should not be sticky. If it is sticky while rolling, place a piece of plastic wrap over the top while you roll it out.

With a crimped-edge roller slice into squares and bake as is (it will be easy to break up once it is cooled) OR cut with a biscuit cutter into neat rounds. If you opt for rounds, you will need to refrigerate the dough a bit before rolling it out in order to move the crackers easily. I've also used a knife to slide out the crackers. If you try it with your hands, you'll break up the dough.

Brush the tops of the crackers with a little bit of water and sprinkle tops with sea salt, black pepper, red pepper flakes, herbs, or anything else you like.

Bake on the center rack for 15 to 20 minutes, or until a cracker, when removed from the oven and cooled for a minute, is no longer soft in the middle. Note: you do not want these to turn golden; if they darken too much, the cheese will begin to taste bitter. If you use yellow cheddar, turning golden won't be an issue...you'll just need to watch it a little more carefully for telltale signs of burning.

Once cooled, these will keep for a long time (a month or more) if stored in a cool, dry place...emphasis on dry. Humidity is the enemy of crispy baked goods!

Enjoy!

Back to basics: mushroom risotto for my vegan friends

Thanks to a care package from Justin at Marx Foods, I found myself swimming in samples of dry exotic mushrooms. The haul included about a half-ounce each of dry porcini, shiitake, matsutake, maitake, chatarelles and black trumpet mushrooms. Although my mandate was to experiment, I was in a comfort food mood when the package arrived. And what better way to enjoy the mushrooms than to work them into a simple risotto?

Before I started the risotto, I reconstituted the dry mushrooms in water just off the boil (translation: I turned off the heat once it boiled and poured the water over the mushrooms to cover). I let the mushrooms sit for 10 minutes. I strained the mushrooms and placed the liquid in a sauce pan. I added a 5" strip of kelp (kombu) to the liquid (seaweed contains .27% glutamic acid and intensifies the flavor) and put the shiitake mushrooms in the sauce pan as well, along with a sprig of thyme and two more cups of hot water. I brought the liquid to a simmer while I prepared the risotto.

What I love about risotto is that it doesn't take much to make it, and make it tasty. A little stock, some garlic, rice, oil or butter. Herbs. And then whatever else your refrigerator is willing to yield.

Here's what I put in mine:

Cake and Commerce's Vegan Mushroom Risotto

Yield: approximately 6 cups

Mushrooms:

• 1/2 oz Dry Porcini
• 1/2 oz dry shiitake
• 1/2 oz dry matsutake
• 1/2 oz dry maitake
• 1/2 oz chantarelles
• 1/2 oz black trumpet

Other ingredients:

• 5" strip of kelp (kombu)
• 4 large cloves of garlic, minced
• 1/2 onion, diced (I don't really like onions, so feel free to add more)
• 1 small carrot, minced (you may omit this)
• 2 T olive oil
• 1/2 C red wine
• 2 C Arborio Rice
• 1 T lemon juice
• 2 sprigs thyme
• Zest of one lemon, finely minced
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Procedure:

Reconstitute mushrooms, as above, and strain. Place liquid in a large saucepan along with at least 2 additional  cups of water. Return shiitake to saucepan along with kelp and one thyme sprig. Simmer. Dice the rest of the mushrooms. Set aside.

Remove thyme leaves from remaining thyme sprig. Chop fine. Set aside.

Meanwhile, heat 2 T olive oil oil in heavy-bottomed sauce pan over medium heat. Add onions, garlic, carrots and saute for 1 minute. Lower heat if too hot and sweat until translucent. Add in 3/4 of mushrooms and turn up heat. Continue to heat until mushrooms have given up much of their liquid.

Add in arborio rice and stir until all rice grains are covered in a fine coat of oil.

Pour red wine over rice. Stir until completely absorbed.

One cup at a time, add in mushroom broth, stirring the rice until the liquid is absorbed. Continue to add stock until the rice is al dente, making sure the rice has not absorbed all the liquid. It should be soft and, when served, a ring of stock should pool around the rice.

Season to taste with salt and pepper. Stir in lemon zest, lemon juice,

Garnish with cheese (parmigiano-reggiano) if desired.

If you do not wish to make this vegan, you can always reconstitute the mushrooms in unseasoned (unsalted) chicken stock.

Enjoy.

Taking mom's potato pancakes to the sublime: latkes fried in duck fat

When I'm feeling naughty, I pull my gallon tub of rendered duck fat out of the freezer and cook something with it. Once it was french fries - crisp, gamey, duck fat fries. Another time it was pasta, when I ran out of my cultured butter. And tonight? Tonight my mom and I ate the best potato pancakes we can ever remember, thanks to that tub of duck fat. They were crispy, so crispy and had a savoriness I cannot recall ever having tasted in a latke.

There really is a tub:

And the missing fat in the middle? Exactly what we used tonight in making the latkes.

First, the recipe:

Cake and Commerce's Mom's Potato Pancakes

• 4 large Russet or other starchy potatoes, peeled and chopped into quarters
• 2 small yellow onions, peeled and halved
• 2 medium-sized carrots, peeled
• 4 eggs
• 1/2 C flour of your choice (for my gf friends, choose tapioca, potato starch, or finely milled white rice flour. if you do go with rice flour, leave more liquid in the batter).
• 1 t baking soda
• 1-1/2 t sea salt
• pepper to taste

Procedure:

Soak potatoes, onions and carrots in cold water for at least 30 minutes, Using the coarse zesting side of a box grater, grate carrots, onions and potatoes into a fine paste. When finished, drain out liquid. Add in eggs, one at a time and mix until incorporated. Whisk in flour, soda, salt and pepper. In a hot fry pan filled with something delicious like duck fat, or less delicious such as vegetable oil, fry the pancakes until golden. Eat immediately. Pancakes do freeze well.

If you aren't sure if the pancakes are balanced, fry a little one up and test for flavor. Mom says it should be balanced in the following ways:

1. Strong onion flavor (but NOT raw onion flavor)
2. Salt level will hold up to applesauce (or, outside our house, sour cream)
3. Crispness. No soggy latkes!

Now my mom is going to show you how she makes her pancakes.

Grate the potatoes, carrots and onions:

Drain and place in large bowl:

Add eggs:

And flour, baking soda, salt, and pepper:

Don't forget the pepper.

Now heat up your skillet and add the fat (apparently my grandmother used Crisco!):

Once it is hot, add your batter. Make sure you have enough fat that your pan does not dry out. If the fat is not hot enough, your pancake will absorb all the fat. It will be delicious but stomach-ache inducing.

When one side is golden, flip it over:

Continue cooking until both sides are golden brown and the pancake has cooked through. Try it as you go. I find myself unable to resist the urge. If there's a broken-apart pancake in the pan, its mine. And even if it is perfect, the first one usually ends up in my stomach.

Keep ''em cooking, and add fat as your pancakes continue to absorb it. A dry pan leads to burning very quickly. A smoking pan is the telltale sign that you need to add fat, and add it now.

Soon enough you'll have a pan of pancakes cooked to various degrees of golden crispiness. Worry not - just keep the ones that need more cooking in the pan a little longer.

We drain our pancakes on brown paper bags, a commodity that is ever harder to find in our house thanks to recyclable bags. If you have no paper bags, you can also use tea towels or paper towels.

Tonight we ate ours with freshly made apple sauce. Mom left the red skins on and so the sauce turned a baby food shade of pink:

And I ate mine with some lactofermented celeriac:

Thank you mom, for letting me stalk you in the kitchen while you were trying to cook!

This blog post was part of The Food Renegade's Fight Back Friday on December 18, 2009.

Gluten-free holiday baking with Cake and Commerce: recipe index and links

In the last 12 months I've developed and adapted a few recipes that will make your gluten-free, allergy-friendly baking more sweet this season. This post links to those recipes that are appropriate for this time of year. Enjoy!

Cookies and Squares:

• Vegan Gingerbread Cookies - use these to make houses, gingerbread people, etc
• Chocolate Chip Cookies - moist, chewy and decadent
• Vegan Graham Crackers - eat them on their own, use in pie crust, or make your own marshmallow cookies
• Whoopie Pies - They're delicious. They're gluten-free. And there's no junk flour in them!
• Brownies - these contain eggs but no dairy. Very gooey.
• Double Chocolate Salty Oats Cookies - My favorite new recipe. Sea Salt makes these stand out!

Cake and Quickbreads:

• Banana Bread - A moist, dense banana bread that can be made in a master loaf, mini-loaves, or muffins
• Lemon Sponge Custard - Adapted from the Joy of Cooking classic
• Toasted Almond Semifreddo - a frozen dairy-based dessert made with...toasted almonds!
• Scones - tender, flaky and buttery. They can be adapted to your tastes.
• Rum Cake- based on a friend's family recipe, but without the wheat.
• Buche de Noel - the Christmas classic. Who doesn't love a chocolatey yule log?
• Caramel Cake - it took 4 tries to get this right - a layer cake with a hint of caramel
• Vegan Grandma's Chocolate Cake - A classic chocolate cake recipe
• Vegan Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cupcakes - Maple and Pumpkin together in a fall and winter treat

Pies and tarts:

• Vegan Pie and tart dough - an easy, rich dough that works well for  sweet tarts or pies.
• Savory Tart Dough - made with almonds, cheese, and butter. Very rich. Perfect for quiche and other savory tarts.
• Pizza Dough - not technically a holiday recipe, you can use this as the basis for holiday breadsticks, etc

Gluten-free Double Chocolate Salted Oats* Cookies

*That is, if you can eat oats. Or can tolerate certified gluten-free oats.

I've been loving a chocolate oat cookie made by Kayak Cookies, a small one-woman operation producing the salty, crispy, chocolately cookies on Cape Cod (according to this article, they were first produced in DC at a joint called Teaism). 

The cookie is different from your standard oatmeal cookie: it is plump and, when fresh, moist in the middle. It is a bit crisp and is more crumbly than chewy. There's a liberal dusting of sea salt on the top of the cookie (I use Maldon, from the UK).  But I can't eat these cookies, at least not often (probably not a bad thing) - the second ingredient on the label is wheat. So I set out to make a version that I could eat. Not a vegan version. Not yet. First I just wanted to get the texture right.

I experimented twice with the recipe. I didn't love the first version, a slightly-too-oaty cookie that was soft and chewy (oops). I gave up for nearly 6 months. And then this morning I tasted Kayak's cookie again. And decided to give it one more try. And finally it worked.

Unlike the last time, I decided to use no other grains except oats in the recipe. The flour is derived from coconut, something you can find on Amazon or in your local natural food retailer.

Usually I'd use organic oats in the recipe, but I had on hand a couple pounds of Bingo's amazing sprouted oats. The oats are grown in Quebec, unlike most oats that I believe are grown in Manitoba. Bingo, located in Brattleboro, Vermont, focuses on granola but also sells their organic, sprouted oats at the farmers market. They'll also ship some to you if you call them. They're a bit of a luxury, but I think they're worth it. After all, decadent chocolate oat cookies aren't an every day item, right?

 

Cake and Commerce's Gluten-free Chocolate Salted Oats Cookies

Yield: approximately 3 dozen 1.5 oz cookies

• 8oz (2 sticks) butter
• 7 oz bittersweet chocolate
• 8 oz chocolate chunks or chips
• 1 C Rapadura
• 2 eggs
• 1 T vanilla extract
• 3 C oats (I prefer sprouted oats; rolled oats will also produce a great cookie)
• 2/3 C Organic Coconut Flour
• 2/3 C unsweetened shredded coconut 
• 1 t Agar Agar powder (guar or xanthan gum may be substituted)
• 1/2 t baking soda
• 1 t fine sea salt
• Approximately 1 T Maldon Sea Salt (or other flat pressed salt)

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Melt 4 oz (1 stick) butter with the 7 oz of bitter chocolate (or 5 oz for a softer cookie). Allow to cool.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine rapadura, remaining stick of butter (at room temperature). Mix until lighter and creamy.

Add in eggs and mix until completely combined. Add vanilla. Mix.

Add in cooled chocolate and butter mixture. Mix for about 10 seconds, scrape down, and mix for 10 more seconds.

In a separate bowl, combine all the dry ingredients EXCEPT the remaining chocolate chips (you'll add those at the end). Note: if you want softer cookies that spread a little more, reduce oats by 1/2 cups.

Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients in bowl and mix until cookie dough comes together. Scrape down bowl and mix for about 5 more seconds. Add the 8 oz of chocolate chunks or chips. IMPORTANT NOTE: if you like chocolate chunks in your cookies, feel free to add more. It will make the cookies more...chocolately!

With a 1-1/2 oz ice cream scoop, scoop cookies onto parchment or Silpat. There doesn't need to be much space between the cookies, they do not spread much.  Push down tops a little, if desired.

Sprinkle tops of cookies with Maldon sea salt. Press down gently on salt flakes so they won't fall off after baking.

Bake for 12-15 minutes, or until shiny on top, crinkles appear, and bottom is slightly colored. Bake longer for a drier cookie. It will harden significantly when cooled, so try to avoid overbaking unless you love a more crumbly cookie.

Vegan, Gluten-Free Gingerbread Cookie Recipe (and it works for houses too!)

This crunchy cookie makes picture-perfect gingerbread people, stained glass cookies, decorations (you can make edible ornaments with the dough), and gingerbread houses. If you don't like palm shortening or Smart Balance, try this with butter. You can substitute xanthan or guar for the agar, but I strongly urge you to try the agar if you haven't yet. If you don't have rapadura, which is evaporated cane juice, you can substitute 1/2 cup firmly packed brown sugar. Just omit the maple syrup, too. If you don't have all the flours I recommend below, you can use all-purpose gluten-free flour. Make sure it does NOT have added xanthan or guar or leavening.

The dough is a bit dry at first, but rolls out beautifully and holds together well.

Cake and Commerce's Gingerbread Cookies

Yield: approximately 29 oz (822g)

• 1/2 C (4 oz) Jungle (Palm) Shortening or other trans-fat free vegetable shortening
• 1/2 C Rapadura
• 1 T Maple Syrup

• 1/2 C Unsulphured Molasses
• 1/2 t Vanilla Extract
• 1 T water, cool

• 2-1/2 t Ground Ginger
• 1 t Cinnamon
• 1/2 t Fresh Ground Nutmeg
• 1/4 t Ground Cloves

• 1-1/4 t Baking Soda
• 1/2 t Sea Salt
• 1-1/4 t Agar Powder
• 1/2 C Teff Flour
• 3/4 C Light Buckwheat Flour
• 1/2 C Brown Rice Flour
• 3/4 C Tapioca Flour

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 350 (or 325 in Convection oven).

Combine shortening, rapadura and maple in the bowl of a stand mixer. Mix with a paddle until light and fluffy. Add in molasses, water and vanilla and continue to mix.

Separately, combine all dry ingredients together. Add to the wet mixture. The dough will be crumbly at first but will soon come together. It may take a few minutes. Finish kneading by hand.

The dough can be rolled out right away and cut into cookies or it may sit, wrapped in plastic, in the refrigerator overnight. It may be frozen and stored up to a month.

The dough should be very easy to roll out - it does not need to be rolled out between two sheets of parchment.

Bake on a parchment-lined sheet pan for 8-10 minutes, or until slightly risen with a touch of color at the edges. Cool. Store in a airtight container for up to a month.

Almost Virtuous Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cupcakes with Maple Glaze (Vegan, Gluten-free & Whole Grain)

A few nights ago, my friend Kate C. won an "Iron Cupcake" competition with a recipe for Chocolate Pumpkin Ale Cupcakes with Spiced Caramel Icing. This, my friends, is not that recipe. But I was inspired by her recipe - and a tete-a-tete with Ellen of I Am Gluten-Free - to go and play with some *totally* in-season pumpkin puree. Since the idea to play with pumpkin came to me an hour before Ellen and I were to meet, I didn't have any time to look up a tried and true recipe, not even my own. Using ratios I had played with before, I put together a chocolate chip pumpkin cupcake that is full of whole grains, unprocessed sweeteners (honey, maple, rapadura), and is kept moist by a generous helping of pumpkin. I used canned organic pumpkin, but feel free to substitute your own roasted or steamed pumpkin puree. It will taste just as wonderful.

A note: this cupcake tastes best if it is slightly - oh so slightly - underdone. Not wet on top, but just set. Before it cools completely, top it with the maple glaze. It locks in the moisture and you'll love these cupcakes just as much on the second day as the first.

Cake & Commerce's Almost Virtuous Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cupcakes

Yield: 18 Cupcakes

Mix together dry Ingredients:

• 3/4 C Light Buckwheat Flour
• 1/2 C Sweet Brown Rice Flour
• 1/4 C Teff Flour
• 1/4 C Tapioca Flour
• 1/4 C Millet Flour
• 1/4 C Cocoa Powder (non-alkalized)
• 3/4 C Rapadura (or organic sugar)
• 1 t Baking Powder
• 1/2 t Baking Soda
• 1/2 t Salt

Separately combine:

• 1/2 C Cold Water
• 1.5 Cups Pureed Pumpkin (or 15 oz Can)
• 1/2 C Grape Seed or Sunflower Oil
• 1/4 C Maple Syrup, Grade B
• 2 T Vanilla Extract
• 1 T Raw Local Honey (or Raw Honey, or, for strict vegans, Agave Syrup or Rice Syrup)
• 1 t Lemon Juice

In the bowl of a stand mixer add the wet ingredients to dry ingredients and mix for 2 minutes.

To the mixture, add

• 1 C chocolate chips (or nuts...or nothing).

Bake in 350 F degree oven for 15-20 minutes, or until well-risen and firm to the touch.

Allow to cool so it is just barely warm to the touch. Once cool, ice with your favorite icing or use....

Maple Glaze

• 1/4 C Maple Syrup
• 1 C Confectioner's Sugar
• 1/4 t Salt
• 1/4 t Lemon Juice
• 1/4 t Vanilla Extract

Combine All ingredients together and mix until uniform. Dip tops of cupcakes into glaze and allow to drip off. When topping is set, it will be shiny. Serve.

Keep in an airtight container for up to 3 days. Freeze before icing.

I Love Cassis. So I made some at home.

I think I had my first Kir Royale in the early '90s. At Olives, the now ubiquitous restaurant 'chain' pirated by Todd English. We always ate there early. Olives was a single, tiny restaurant in its early days. It didn't accept reservations, and to avoid an hours-long wait for a table, we'd show up at 5 pm, the entire family, to wait in line until the doors opened at 5:30. With light streaming into the dining room we'd eat our meals, which, at the time, were nothing like those being dished up at other restaurants around town. Mom would break character and order a cocktail; we weren't much of a drinking family despite the presence of a wine rack in the basement holding dusty bottles of Chateau Lafite (an off-vintage, if I recall) and dustier bottles of port, which my parents did indulge in from time to time. The sweeter the better. The tawnys outnumbered the rubies by a factor of 2.

So a dinner out with the family at a white tablecloth restaurant in town was all the occasion we needed to step out and choose one of the seemingly sophisticated cocktails on offer at Olives (remember, this was before the cocktail revolution). We started with a simple Kir - Burgundian cassis, a fragrant black currant liqueur, coupled with a lesser white wine, priced at an extravagant markup. On truly special occasions, the Kir was upgraded to a Kir Royale, cassis coupled with Champagne, and not just a random sparkler. Mom always led the charge, and we, her obedient daughter, followed with our own identical orders.

In mom's  honor, I suppose, I decided to make a batch of Cassis de New England in her basement this summer. I drove my friends Melissa and Azusa to a scenic berry farm in the valley below Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire and spent a warm July day picking black and red currants.

The majority of the berry-pickers out that day were focused on raspberries and blueberries, leaving me alone to pick all the black currants I needed for a shareable batch of cassis, about 8 pounds. Melissa helped me pick berries after she and Azusa picked enough blueberries to make sorbet. Although we picked the berries ourselves, the price was still a heady $4/lb.

The haul:

I took them home, washed them and mashed them up with a few red currants and some lemon. I added about 4 lbs of sugar to the berries and covered the whole thing with vodka. It will sit in my basement for nearly 5 months. I'll strain and bottle it in December, just in time for the holidays. I will check it from time to time and add more sugar if it needs to be sweetened. It takes only a few weeks to dissolve, as long as I give it a stir every few days.

Some recipes for cassis on the internet  leave the berries to sit in the vodka for four months, and then in December, require the boiling of the strained juice/vodka mixture until thick. I think that's a poor idea. The alcohol in the vodka will evaporate as it boils and flavor will be compromised. A better idea - and an idea that does not jeopardize the shelf-life, alcohol content, or flavor is to add sugar when the vodka is added and allow it to dissolve over several months. If the viscosity is still not quite right, a heavy simple syrup (2 parts sugar, one part water) can be added once the currants/vodka/sugar is strained. 

Cake and Commerce's New England Cassis

• 8 lbs Currants, at least 85% black
• optional: about 10 currant leaves
• 4-6 lbs granulated sugar
• Vodka (or eau de vie or grain neutral spirits) to cover - about 1.5 1500 ml bottles
• 1 lemon, zest and juice
• 1 pinch salt

In large, non-reactive container (preferably glass) mash sugar and currants together. Add salt and lemon zest and juice and optional currant leaves. Allow to sit for at least two days at room temperature in the sun to allow sugar/berry mixture to ferment (you can skip this part if you don't have time/inclination).

Once mixture has begun to ferment, cover entirely with vodka. Loosely wrap plastic over the top or place lid over top. Store in a cool, dry place for at least 4 months (some say store in the sun...but I've always stored my liqueurs in the dark. Do as you like).

Every month, check flavor and sweetness and vodka level of cassis. Add more sugar as needed - it will need a few weeks to dissolve, so make sure all the sugar you will need is added at least one month before you will need it.

After four months, check for flavor. If it seems strongly flavored, strain first through a strainer and then through a jelly bag or cheesecloth. If it needs additional sweetness, add a little bit of simple syrup (2:1 Sugar:Water) until it is as sweet as you like it. Bottle and seal bottles. Give to people who you actually care about or whose favor you wish to curry.

Enjoy!

Heavy cream + kefir = Cultured Butter (or, how you, too, can make kickass butter at home)

It starts with heavy cream. Raw heavy cream. From a local farm. Raw cream tastes best but is hard to find. Substitute low-temperature pasteurized cream.

Two quarts of cream are gently heated in a water bath to 80 degrees (if you are using pasteurized cream, you will want to follow directions for the culture OR heat the cream to 165 and then cool it to 75-80 degrees before adding the culture). Five grams of kefir grains (or 1/2 C of yogurt or kefir) are added to the warmed cream and stirred. The top is loosely covered and the cream is allowed to sit out at room temperature for 24 hours. It sours.

It isn't ready yet.

You can do one of two things: cool the cultured cream down to 40 degrees in the refrigerator if you cannot churn it right away. It will take longer to turn to butter, anywhere from 10-20 minutes depending on the method.

Or you can immediately churn it. It will turn to butter in a stand mixer with a whip attachment in about 2 minutes - so don't walk away from it or you will have a very messy kitchen.

To churn buter, you can use, what else, a butter churn:

or the bowl of a stand mixer.

And mix.

And mix.

And mix.

And mix.

And mix. Until the buttermilk starts to seep out.

Cold cream takes 20 minutes in an old-fashioned churn. Or 10 minutes in a stand mixer. You will sweat if you use the butter churn. It is hard to crank that handle.

Pour off the buttermilk. And mix some more. Until it is smooth and most of the buttermilk is ready to be poured off again and used in a recipe.

And mix the butter until smooth.

And then you can knead it, if your hands are cool. If not, use a spatula. Sprinkle on some salt. I like Maldon - the shape is perfect and it melts in your mouth. Add only a teaspoon at a time.

And then pat it into a baking pan lined with plastic wrap, if you don't have an old fashioned wooden butter mold. And most of us don't.

Chill it. And slice it into sticks or squares or turn into quenelles. Or don't chill it, and use a piping bag to pipe it into the shape you like. Stars are an old-fashioned restaurant cliche, so give it a try, just for the irony.

Freeze the butter or use it immediately.

Basic Butter Recipe:

(note: your yield will be approximately HALF of what you begin with, ie if you begin with 1 quart of heavy cream, your yield will be 2 cups of butter, or approximately 1 lb).

• 1 quart heavy cream, preferably raw or low temp pasteurized
• 1/2 C yogurt with live cultures OR 1/2 C kefir with live cultures OR 5g kefir or yogurt culture
• 1t to 1T sea salt, coarse

Procedure:

If using pasteurized cream, heat it in a stainless steel pot to at least 165 degrees F. Remove from heat, cool to 80 degrees and add yogurt OR kefir OR culture. If using raw milk, place milk in pan of hot water and stir until temperature is 80 degrees. Add yogurt OR kefir OR culture.

Place a lid (not air-tight) over the top and allow to sit in a warm place for at least 24 hours to sour.

Check cream. If sour, place in refrigerator and allow to cool to at least 40 degrees. If not sour, leave out and check every four hours, up to another 24 hours.

Once cream has cooled, place in either a butter churn (if you have one) or the bowl of a food processor. If using a churn, it will take about 20 minutes. If using a food processor, using a whip, begin to slowly churn cream. When it finally starts to become butter, switch to the paddle. As the butter starts to form, it will give off buttermilk. Remove and save buttermilk (it will be very messy to use your stand mixer otherwise). Add salt. Mold. Freeze if not using right away.

*This post is part of the Food Renegade's Fight Back Friday link carnival where you can read all about real food.*

Gluten-Free Banana Bread with chocolate chips (and no soy, potato or corn)

I've been baking banana bread for a local cafe for a few months now. We took the cafe owner's mom's recipe and tweaked it until it tasted better than the original. It is packed with bananas and is both moist and flavorful and joyfully cinnamon-free (there's just way too much cinnamon in loaf cake recipes, but that's just me). Plus it holds up for a week - and flavor peaks around day 3 or 4.

I actually don't like banana bread. So in developing the recipe, I depended on the cafe staff to tell me how to tweak it. Bananas just...rub me the wrong way. Maybe once a year I'll eat a banana, usually in close proximity to that once-a-year ceremonial drinking of the soft drink. If I don't sleep through it.

Banana bread is an easy recipe to convert to gluten-free. Bananas do wonders in baked goods, adding texture and moisture without making the batter too wet. Because it is a high-fat cake, it does not need gums for structure.

If you'd like to turn this into a dairy free cake, I've included some conversions in the recipe. The cake will be slightly less fatty and delicate, but it should still be delicious.

You can watch me make the banana bread here, on How2Heroes.com:

Gluten-Free Banana-Chocolate Chip Bread

yield: 1 12" loaf or two regular loaves

• 1 C + 2T Teff
• 1 C Light Buckwheat
• 1/4 C Tapioca Flour
• 1/4 C Sweet Brown Rice Flour
• 1-2/3 C Sugar or Rapadura
• 1-1/2 t (corn-free) Baking Powder
• 1-1/4 t Baking Soda
• 1 t Salt

• 4 oz (1 stick) Butter (sub 4 oz jungle shortening or coconut oil)

• 1/4 C Safflower or Sunflower Oil
• 2-1/2 C mashed Bananas, about 4 large Bananas or 6 medium Bananas
• 1/2 C + 1/3 C Buttermilk (or 1/2 C + 1/3 C Water + 1T vinegar)
• 2 ea Eggs (or 2t ground flax plus 1/4 C water)
• 1 T Vanilla

• 1 C chocolate Chips OR Chopped Pecans OR combination of the two

Preheat oven to 350 F (325 in Convection oven). Prepare baking pan, either line with parchment or dust with butter and 'flour' (I use teff, though parchment is the tastier option. Trust me).

Combine all dry ingredients in the bowl of a mixer (or, if no mixer, in a bowl). Add butter and mix until butter/dry combination has consistency of cornmeal.  Add wet ingredients all at once and mix for about 2 minutes. Fold in Nuts/Chocolate or combination. 

Pour into loaf pan. Bake in center rack for about 1 hr, or until a toothpick inserted in the loaf comes out clean.

Allow to cool. Slice and eat or freeze right away. Will remain tender for at least 5 days, if kept in an airtight container.

Canning at home: Spicy Roasted Red Pepper Jam

The market at Verrill Farm is pushing out past its walls. Tables loaded with colorful produce multiplied daily over the last month: the harvest is peaking now, as summer and fall produce intersects for a few brief weeks.

One crop I've been waiting for - waiting because our cruel New England weather punished us for most of the summer - is the red pepper. For weeks we've had jalapenos and anaheims and all sorts of heirloom red peppers (lipstick, round of Hungary, etc) but three days ago, red shishito and a number of hot reds (of provenance unknown to me) suddenly appeared, coincidentally on the same day that I had tasted a truly sublime Red Pepper Jelly made by Bonnie Shershow.

So I knew what I wanted to make: Red Pepper Jam - with a refinement. Instead of using raw red peppers, which produce quite a bit of moisture and have skin with a texture I don't really like, I decided to roast the peppers. It adds flavor, reduces cooking time, and makes for a finer-textured jam. The results were delicious. "This will taste great on a bagel with cream cheese!" said my mom, though I'm more partial to using it as a condiment for cheese.

If you prefer to use pectin instead of thickening the jam by cooking it down slowly, you can use 1 bottle of pectin and use it according to manufacturer's directions after the jam has cooked for 10 minutes or so. I don't like using pectin, so I can't tell you exactly how this will come out. If you do use pectin, let me know how it works out for you - just curious is all.

Enjoy!

Cake and Commerce's Spicy Roasted Red Pepper Jam

yield: 8 4oz jars

• 3 lbs Sweet Red Peppers, any variety available
• 1 lb Hot Red Peppers, mixture of types, from mild to hot (don't overdo the hots or the jam will be inedible)
• 4.5 C Sugar
• 2 C White Vinegar
• 1/2 C Cider Vinegar
• 1 C Lemon Juice (substitute Cider Vinegar if lemon juice unavailable)
• 2 Apples, peeled (reserve peels)
• 2 t Salt
• 1/4 t citric acid (optional)

Wash peppers. Place in roasting pan and roast at 375 F until skins brown, about 25 minutes. Remove from oven, place peppers in plastic bag or plastic container and allow to steam until cooled. Once cooled, remove skins and seeds from peppers. Wear gloves for hot peppers unless you don't mind the burn on your hands.

While the peppers cool, combine sugar, vinegars, lemon juice and salt in large saucepan. Bring to a boil.

In bowl of food processor, combine peeled apple pieces and peeled peppers. Process until the peppers are a smooth paste.  Add to sugar/vinegar mixture.

As the mixture boils, stir to prevent burning on the bottom of the pan. Reduce heat to a gentle boil (a rolling boil will splatter too much).

Add apple peels - the pectin in them will help set the jam.

Skim the foam from the jam. You can eat this or throw it out, but keep it separate from your jam.

At the 30 minute mark, remove the apple peels. Continue to cook until thick -about 10 minutes more or 40 minutes in total. I prefer my jam a little soft and runny, so I heat it to only 218 degrees F. If you like a thicker, more set jam, heat to 220F, the temperature at which jam sets. If you don't have a candy thermometer, use the plate test or the flake test to test for proper set and gelling.

Process immediately in a hot water bath for 10 minutes (begin timing the processing time once the water returns to a boil). Remove from water and allow to cool for 24 hours. Check seals. Refrigerate any jams that have not sealed properly.

Store in a cool, dry place. Use within a year.

Gluten-free pie and tart dough with NO corn, potato or soy

Have you ever had a gluten-free pie that was visually promising but tasted like sawdust or cornmeal? I have, and it has made me not want to ever eat most commercially-available gluten-free pies. They just make eating pies...depressing.

So I pulled out an old pate sucree recipe from Sent Sovi, a restaurant I worked at more than 10 years ago under Chef David Kinch, now of Manresa. As a tart dough, it is fantastic. Not so much a pie dough, though. But when converted into a gluten-free dough, it performs miracles...and tastes great!

There's one trick to using this dough - a trick that cannot be skipped in order to make successful pie dough. CHILL THE DOUGH!  Yes, after the dough has been rolled out into a circle, it must be chilled. Once chilled, it can be handled and turned into the pie of your dreams. Enjoy!

Pie or Tart Dough - makes enough for 1 regular sized pie

• 4 oz COLD Butter or butter substitute
• 2 T Sugar OR Rapadura
• 1 Pinch Salt
• 1/2 C Glutinous Rice Flour (do not use conventional rice flour - too coarse!)
• 1/2 C Light Buckwheat Flour
• 1/4 C Tapioca Flour
• 1/4 C Teff
• 1 t Guar Gum
• 1/3 C Buttermilk OR water plus 1T vinegar
• 1/4 t Vanilla or Almond Extract

Basic Apple Pie Filling:

• 6 or 7 apples, preferably a mixture of varieties, peeled, cored and sliced
• 1/4 C sugar or rapadura
• 1/2 t cinnamon (plus any other apple pie spices you like)
  
• 1/4 t salt
• 2 T tapioca flour
• 1 t vanilla
  

Combine dry ingredients in bowl of food processor. Pulse for about 15 seconds. Add in cold butter and mix until dough resembles cornmeal. With the processor on, pour in wet ingredients.  Turn onto a lightly floured board and knead until the dough forms a ball. Since it is gluten-free, don't worry about over-working the dough. You can't!

Allow to sit for a few minutes so that the water can be absorbed.

Meanwhile, make the apple pie filling. Combine dry ingredients. Toss dry ingredients with apples. Add vanilla. Allow to sit for at least 20 minutes.

Roll out dough to desired shape/size between two sheets of parchment paper or plastic wrap. Place in refrigerator and allow to set for at least 10 minutes. NOTE: YOU Cannot skip this step. The only way to handle the dough is to chill it down.It will tear and be almost impossible to handle if you do not chill it first.

Here's a tutorial I did for How2Heroes.com on how to make the dough, and, if you like, use it to make a tart shell:

Once dough is chilled, remove one side of plastic or parchment and place on top of tart ring or pie tin. Leaving top plastic or parchment on, press the dough into the tin. Remove plastic/parchment and press in dough, making sure to fill in holes.

If you are going to use this as a tart shell for a no-bake filling, you can bake this now. Because there is no gluten in the dough, it can be baked right away - no need to rest. Bake in 350 degree F oven until golden, about 15-20 minutes.

If you are going to use this as a pie dough, place filling on dough lined shell. Take another piece of similarly rolled-out dough and lay over filling. Crimp edges. It is okay if there are tears in the dough - this dough is very forgiving! Pierce top with knife about 6 times to allow steam to escape.

Bake 30-45 minutes in 350 degree oven or until filling begins to bubble. Allow to cool. Dough maintains firmness after baking and holds together even better over the following two to three days.

If you cut it up before it cools completely, it gets a little messy. But it still tastes great.

If you want to watch how I do this in video (yay!) take a peek at the How2Heroes video:

How2Heroes: Toasted Almond Semifreddo

Watch me make it at How2Heroes.com or you can read how to make it here.

How2Heroes: How to make Japanese-style Egg custard

Watch me show you how to make simple egg custard cooked in its own shell.

For complete written instructions, go here to my previous post from April.

Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies: 2 new yummy recipes

Gluten-free chocolate chip cookies...held by mom

Gluten-free Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

Today: two new recipes - Gluten-Free Chocolate Chip Cookies and (certified!) Gluten-free Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies. And they are tasty.

(And the video from my friends at How2Heroes.com is there for all you A/V learners. It is embedded just past the recipe for the first cookie).

A few years ago I developed a recipe for gluten-free chocolate chip cookies that had a distinctly beany flavor. That's probably because I used a flour that I now generally avoid - garbanzo. The flavor is too overpowering and 'green' tasting. Great in hummus, not so great in chocolate chip cookies.

I've learned a lot in the last few years about gluten-free flours. As I've explained before, I don't use potato starch (nutritionally useless) or corn starch (I avoid using corn as much as possible) or sorghum (it makes me sick) or most rice flours (the texture is wrong). I've fallen in love with teff, the 'smallest grain in the world' that has a neutral flavor and a similar composition to wheat flour and a flavor similar to whole wheat. I also love light buckwheat flour because it has a slightly lighter flavor than regular buckwheat and the color is more attractive in baked gooods. I also use tapioca because it adds sponginess and crispness. And finely milled sweet brown rice flour absorbs moisture, adds a bit of starch and tastes more neutral than other flours.

I also wanted to improve the quality of sweetener I was using. Instead of using white sugar and brown sugar, I used a combination of maple syrup and Rapadura, which is granulated unrefined evaporated cane juice. Considered 'healthier' because it is high in dietary non-heme iron, it still spikes blood sugar.

I decided to keep butter and eggs in the recipe. I don't have an issue with casein, but if you do, you can substitute your favorite non-animal based shortening (margarine etc). You cannot substitute oil one-for-one or the recipe will come out very oily. Reduce oil by 1/3. Eggs can be substituted with 1 t ground flax combined with 2T water.

The key to success with this recipe is to make the dough and allow it to rest, in your refrigerator, for at least 24 hours. This isn't an option. This is a requirement. When allowed to absorb the liquid ingredients, the dough becomes firmer and drier and bakes up like a dream. The edges are crisp and the centers are soft and chewy. Apparently, according to this New York Times article, that's the chocolate chip cookie ideal.

I don't use gums in this recipe, but if you like using guar or xanthan, you can add a 1/2 teaspoon to the recipe.

You'll need a scale to execute this recipe properly. I use My Weigh KD-7000 Digital Stainless Steel Kitchen Scale.

I use certified gluten-free oats in my baking. To read more on oats and celiac, check out this great reference from Health Canada. Oats ARE gluten-free and are tolerated by most, but not all.

Here's what Health Canada says:

"...the safety/benefit evaluation for the introduction of oats in the gluten-free diet of patients with CD indicates that moderate amounts of pure oats are well tolerated by the majority of individuals with CD and dermatitis herpetiformis.The term "pure oats" is used to indicate oats uncontaminated with gluten from other closely related cereal grains, including wheat, barley and rye as detected using current test methods. Based on clinical trials in the published literature, the amount of pure oats considered within safe limits is 50 to 70 g/ day for adults and 20 to 25 g/day for children."

Enjoy!

Cake and Commerce's Gluten-Free Ooey Gooey Chocolate Chip Cookies
(recipe based on ratios from the New York Times recipe, 7-9-2008)

Combine dry ingredients and set aside:

• 3.5 oz Teff Flour
• 2 oz Light Buckwheat Flour
• 2 oz Sweet Brown Rice Flour
• 1 oz  Tapioca Flour
• 3/4 teaspoon Baking Soda
• 1 teaspoon Baking Powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt

In bowl of stand mixer or, if you don't have one, in a bowl combine:

• 5 oz butter (1-1/4 sticks) (substitute vegetable shortening)
• 7 oz Rapadura (you can substitute 5 oz brown sugar and 3 oz white sugar for the Rap & Maple)
• 1 oz Maple Syrup

Mix until uniform. Add:

• 1 egg (substitute 1-1/2 t egg replacer + 3 T water)
• 1 t vanilla

Mix until egg is completely incorporated. All at once, add the dry mixture.

When flours are incorporated, mix in:

• 12 oz chocolate chips or 1 bag of chocolate chips of your choosing

Once the chips are mixed in, spread dough out in roughly a straight line on a sheet of parchment and roll it into a cylinder.Alternately, individually scoop the dough into 1.25 ounce portions and refrigerate inside a plastic bag. Refrigerate it for at least 24 hours.

Once the dough has been refrigerated for 24 hours (it can spend up to 3 days in the fridge or be frozen for up to a month if wrapped in plastic) you can bake it off.

Preheat your oven to 350.

Place cookies (cut from the cylinder or whole 1.25 ounce scoops) on cookie sheet with about 3 inches of space between each cookie. Press each cookie down and flatten a bit for better baking.

If you are feeling trendy, you can lightly sprinkle the cookies with coarse sea salt (such as Maldon).

Place in center rack in oven and bake for about 10 minutes for a chewy, soft cookie up to 15 minutes for a crisper cookie. Allow to cool completely before handling.

Eat immediately, store in an airtight container for up to 4 days, or freeze cookies.

And then there's the video, courtesy of my friends at How2Heroes.

Here they are, working in the house:

And here's the video:

So let's just say you don't want to eat a plain old chocolate chip cookies. You want something with texture. For you, I have gluten-free Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies, made with certified gluten-free oats.

Cake and Commerce's Gluten-free Chewy Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

In the bowl of a mixer, combine:

• 5 oz butter (substitute vegetable shortening)
• 7 oz rapadura
• 1 oz maple (substitute 5 oz brown sugar and 3 oz white sugar for Rap and Maple)

When evenly mixed, add in:

• 1 egg (substitute 1-1/2 t egg replacer + 3 T water)
• 1 t vanilla

Add the following to the bowl and stir until evenly mixed:

• 1.5 oz Light Buckwheat Flour
• 1 oz dried unsweetened coconut
• 8 oz CERTIFIED GLUTEN-FREE rolled oats (NOT instant)
• 1 t baking powder
• 1/2 t salt

Once mixed, stir in:

• 1 12 oz bag of chocolate chips (10 oz bag fine too)

Portion out the cookies using a 1.25 oz scoop (small-sized scoop) and place each scoop on a parchment-lined sheetpan. Chill in a refrigerator until hardened. Place scoops in an airtight container and allow to chill for at least 24 hours.

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Press down and flatten the tops of each cookie. Place on a baking sheet leaving about 3 inches between each cookie. Sprinkle flat sea salt (like Maldon) sparingly on each cookie. Bake 10 minutes for a soft, gooey cookie. Bake up to 15 minutes for a crisper cookie.

Eat immediately or store in an airtight container for up to 4 days.'

Here's my 'scratch' pad. No disrespect intended, Edible Boston.

Blessed be she who makes clumpy granola without raisins

See that picture above? Do you know what is missing? I suppose, given the title of this post, it is rather obvious. But I wanted to clearly make the point: this granola is raisin-free.

And even better? It isn't too sweet or too nutty and it is gluten-free - well, as long as you consider certified gluten-free oats gluten-free (not everyone does).

I've been on a granola bender of sorts lately. A friend dared me to develop a recipe he liked. Given that lately I've had more than a little time on my hands, I took up his challenge with gusto.

I've never made granola before. I never had reason to. I'm not much of a morning cereal eater, and on that rare, blue moon of a day when I actually did crave a bowl of breakfast, I'd just buy Bare Naked Original Granola - until they sold themselves to Kellogg's for $65 million.

But this friend wanted his own custom blend, and he was specific about ingredients. As I jotted down his requested ingredients, I realized we were very simiilar in our mutual dislike of raisins, puffed cereals, and cloying sweet or overcooked granola.

The first recipe I pulled, from a Cook's Illustrated article from 1994, was all I needed to create a baseline 'good' granola. The recipe was more formula than prescription, something that allows for improvisation of all sorts.

The results? Delicious, crunchy granola that was completely unclumpy. Hmm. Had to fix that. My friend had specifically requested 'clumpy' granola.

I ended up trying out 5 versions until we hit upon the correct method/baking time/baking process/flavor/nut-to-fruit-to-oat ratio. The below photo is from versions 3 and 4, where we varied fruit percentage. In the end we went with something right in between.

The one thing I did struggle with was making the granola clumpy. After asking the Twittersphere and getting the same response I'd read in some other recipe ('use wet hands to squeeze granola into clumps" - what? Am I going to spend hours doing this when I have a five pound batch?) I decided to take matters into my own dry hands. Using two sheets of parchment, I pressed down on the granola and placed another tray over it for the first 15 minutes of baking and absolutely NO STIRRING the granola. Results? Perfectly clumpy granola, with some loose oats in there for textural contrast.

Here's the view inside the oven:

Basic Granola Formula with instructions for clumpy granola (adapted from Cook's Illustrated, September 1994).

(Forgive the vagueness...I want to keep my version to myself)

Dry Ingredients:

• 5 parts rolled oats (do not use instant)
• 1 part seed(s) of your choice (pumpkin, sesame, sunflower etc)
• 1 part coconut, shredded unsweetened
• 2 parts nuts of your choice
• Pinch of salt
• .1 part sweet spice (cinnamon, pumpkin pie spice, cardamom etc)

Wet Ingredients

• 2 parts natural invert sugar (maple, honey, agave etc in combination or alone)
• 1.5 parts sunflower oil (less if you want to omit fat. Can substitute coconut oil)
• 1.5 parts water (ONLY if you want clumpy granola)
• .5 parts (or less) Vanilla (or other flavoring such as almond, liqueur, juice etc)

Fruit

• 5 parts (equal to oat by weight) dried fruit of your choosing (including raisins, if desired. If you like a less fruity granola, reduce by half)

Procedure:

Preheat oven to 275F convection or 300 if using a conventional oven.

Weigh out all dry ingredients. Combine. Warm invert sugar until flowing. Add oil, water (if making clumpy granola), vanilla and stir (oil will float on top). Add to dry ingredients. Stir until completely mixed.

Spread out on baking sheet lined with parchment. Place another piece of parchment on top. apply pressure with your hands to granola to press down. Place baking sheet on top and repeat.

Place in oven and bake for 15 minutes.

Remove top piece of parchment and baking pan (you CAN do this without a top sheet pan, but you'll need to watch it more carefully - the edges will burn faster). Allow to bake until golden, about 30-40 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool. Break up and store in an airtight container. Keeps for several weeks - but I promise, it will not last that long.

Keep cool - the fats will turn rancid if temperature fluctuates too much.

To make un-clumpy granola, omit water. Stir every five minutes until golden. Labor intensive but remarkably un-clumpy!

Firing up the (Vintage!) 1974 Salton Yogurt Maker

About ten years ago I picked up a yogurt 'maker' at a yard sale for five dollars and stuck it in the storage space that had served as my room until I went off to college. Until two weeks ago, it just sat there, collecting dust on a shelf and waiting for its closeup.

Maybe it was the amount of money we were spending on yogurt, maybe it was my mostly failed attempt to make it without properly incubating the milk, maybe it was the raw milk that my friend Alex at Feed Me Like You Mean It kept buying for me that inspired me to wind up the ole Salton and see what she could do.

The 'machine' (little more than a low-energy warmer) is pure 1974.

The machine has five milk-glass jars and snap-on lids for each. There's something that looks like a timer at the top, but all it actually does is remind you what time you started to incubate the yogurt.

I followed the basic recipe for yogurt: heat milk just past 180 F, cool to 120, add culture, incubate 12 or so hours. There's also Harold McGee's recipe from the New York Times. It works. You can then drain the whey out (and reserve it for lacto-fermentation starter for coolers, krauts etc) and make yogurt cheese which is a great substitute for cream cheese or can be mixed with other spices and ingredients to serve as a dip.

Seriously easy. You'll never supermarket yogurt again - except when you need culture. And no, you don't need a vintage yogurt maker. There are a ton of modern ones available on Amazon, and if you make a water bath and keep the cultured milk warm-ish for a few hours, you won't even need a maker.

For those who want to see the instructions, I give you the instructions, in order, from the manual. If you want to see a bigger version, click on the photo and go to the Flickr page where you can see a larger copy of the page.

First page:

Second Page

Third Page

There were a couple more pages - mostly recipes that incorporate yogurt. Nothing special. You know what to do, right?

(Gluten-Free) Lemon Sponge Custard - A Joy of Cooking Classic that never gets old

This past weekend I put together a simple brunch for a family celebrating their son's Bar MItzvah. I recruited my mom to make noodle pudding and strada, a layered bread and egg dish. I made all the desserts - cookies, cupcakes and one of my favorite homey desserts, lemon sponge custard, a classic from the Joy of Cooking. In the above picture, it is the dessert on the bottom left, in the blue Le Creuset casserole.

What makes this dessert great is that in a single dish there is both a sponge cake (on top) and a smooth lemon custard (on the bottom). There's no dignified way to serve it unless you bake it in an individual terrine. One fine dining restaurant where I worked incongruously sold this as a dessert as a gloppy mess, dished out from a large hotel pan onto a dessert plate, until they (finally) invested in a pastry chef. 

Days after the brunch, guests were still talking about it. So I decided if it was that good, I better try to make the gluten-free version. The lower fat, dairy-free gluten-free version.

Here's my first and only attempt at the gluten-free, dairy-free version:

• 2 T Coconut Oil
• 2/3 C Rapadura
• 1/8 t Salt

• 3 egg yolks
• 1-1/2 T Tapioca Flour
• 2 T Teff Flour

• 1/4 C Lemon Juice
• Zest of 2 lemons

• 1 C Rice Milk

• 4 egg whites, stiff but still shiny

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Combine first three ingredients. Beat in yolks. Add flours. Beat in juices, followed by milk. Fold in egg whites, pour into greased pan or ramekins. Bake in water bath for 30 minutes or so.

And the results? Uhhh, cognitive dissonance would be an understatement. Butterscotch-colored sponge and custard (thanks to the rapadura) that tasted like lemon with a faint hint of molasses and a stronger hint of coconut. Not bad if you ate it blindfolded, but even blindfolded it wasn't quite right.

Even my mom, the diabetic sweets fan, told me, without prompting, that she would never waste her calories on this particular version.

For a 'healthier' version it wasn't bad. But for a dessert that could cross the GF/CF divide and appeal to a broader spectrum of eaters, this rapadura and coconut oil version wouldn't satisfy.

Back to square one.

So I repeated it, replacing the rapadura with organic sugar (still processed, still not so good), the coconut oil with butter (there goes the dairy-free, casein-free claim), and the rice milk with raw, local, unhomogenized milk (again, bye bye dairy-free, casein-free claim). I used tapioca flour and I found that the starch settled to the bottom and made a slimy crust on the pan. In a batter that is not a complete suspension, tapioca starch - and longer cooking starches like rice flour - should be avoided.

I eliminated the starch and used 100% teff flour. Results? Great!

The color was appealingly lemon yellow. The flavor was bright and clear. It was tasty. And almost identical to the original, thanks to the very low flour content in the Joy of Cooking version.

Here's the final recipe, less healthful, but cognitive dissonance-free:

Lemon Sponge Custard (adapted from the Joy of Cooking)

• 2 T Butter, soft
• 2/3 C Organic Sugar
• Pinch Salt

• 3 egg yolks
•  3T Teff Flour (or the flour of your choice EXCEPT rice or starch)

• 1/4 C + 1 T Lemon Juice
• Zest of 2 lemons

• 1 C Local, grass-fed milk

• 4 egg whites, beaten until stiff but still shiny

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Combine first three ingredients. Beat in yolks. Add flour. Beat in juices, followed by milk. Fold in egg whites, pour into a well-greased pan or ramekins. Bake in water bath for 30 minutes or until no longer jiggly when shaken.

Teff Flour

Daring Bakers April Challenge: Cheesecake! Made with Goat Cheese! Yeah!

The April 2009 challenge is hosted by Jenny from Jenny Bakes. She has chosen Abbey's Infamous Cheesecake as the challenge.

Cheesecake doesn't tempt me at all.

It never has.

Maybe it is the texture. Or the idea of a custard made mostly with cream cheese. Biting into a cheesecake, no matter how well-made, is not too far off from biting into a softened wedge of cream cheese that just happens to be sweetened.

For four years, I worked for a company built on cheesecake. I visited the plant that made our cheesecake and tasted the samples that were put out every day for quality control checks. I tasted new upscale versions at our meetings and helped give feedback on what our final commercialized version should taste like. I led brainstorming sessions where we developed new versions of our cheesecake, ones that were turtle or fruity or chocolatey.

And I never developed anything even approaching love. Cheesecake may have built our house, but it certainly wasn't welcome in mine.

The only cheesecake I ever really liked was something I recall eating in Japan in the 80s. Just down the street from my host family's home in the countryside outside of Nagoya was a small tea room called Mary Chantee. A big after-school treat for us was a selection of Mary Chantee's pastry and a cup of instant coffee (it was before the cheap fresh-brewed coffee revolution hit Japan). Their 'nama kurimu' (unbaked cream) cheesecake was my favorite. I couldn't really understand how it was made until years later when I learned about "French Cheesecake", an American favorite (it is what made Sara Lee famous), a cheesecake set with gelatin in the refrigerator instead of set with eggs in the oven. Mary Chantee's "nama kurimu' was a not-too-sweet, light-tasting and snow-white version of that cake (some French cheesecakes have a light yellow tint to better match the perception that cheesecake has eggs). It was irresistable.

In my last pastry job at the Four Seasons, I was frequently responsible for baking dozens and dozens of cheesecakes for large functions. There were several important attributes that the cheesecakes could not have:

NO:

1. lumps
2. cracks
3. color
4. fallen centers
5. evidence of boiling

To achieve an even bake (the lack of which caused the appearance of attributes 2-5), we baked our cheesecakes in deck ovens on top of inverted sheet trays (putting the cakes directly on the deck would have meant overcooking the cakes) at low heat in hot water baths. If we had more time to spare, we could turn down the oven to about 215-220 and skip the water bath but cover the tops with additional sheet pans.

I made a lot of cheesecake. I made a lot of cheesecake crust. And, the moment I left baking and the professional kitchen, I never made another one.

And then I spent a summer on a goat dairy in Northern California. We had an abundance of fresh goat cheese, goat milk, and fresh eggs. We also sold the cheese at a weekly farmers market. So once a week I made goat's milk cheesecake and sold it for $2 a slice. It was delicious. And since everything came from the farm, I felt good about eating it, thought I didn't eat much of it.

That was in 2002. Since then I haven't made cheesecake. Seven years. And I haven't missed it at all.

And then this month the Daring Bakers made cheesecake their challenge. Oh no. Cheesecake. My old frenemy. What to do?

Goat cheese cheesecake, of course.

This time, sadly, I wouldn't be able to use fresh-from-the-farm goat cheese or goat's milk, though I did find some from our local-ish Westfield Farm about 40 miles from my house. And I don't like using UHT milk, so I skipped the available goat's milk in the market.  Instead I used fresh milk and buttermilk.

The results are a tangy, bright cheesecake that is snow white flecked with white vanilla beans. It tastes even better drizzled with local raw honey, which takes the sour edge off the goat cheese.

And of course I just made up a new recipe. I'm really bad about sticking with recipes when they don't conform to my culinary, ah, peculiarities.

Cake and Commerce's Vanilla Bean Goat Cheese Cheesecake

Yield:  7" cheesecake

Crust

• 1 C Graham Cracker Crumbs (want to make your own graham crackers? here's my recipe)
  
• 1 oz  Coconut Oil
• 1 T Rapadura

Combine all ingredients. Into a prepared pan (see below) place mixture. Press down on crust and push some to the side and up the edge.

Bake in a 350 F oven for 10 minutes and allow to cool.

Cheesecake Filling

• 12 oz goat cheese
• 5 oz Agave Syrup
• 1/2 Vanilla bean, split and scraped
• 3 oz Egg Whites (about 3)
• 1/2 C Buttermilk (can be replaced with goat's milk)
• 1/2 C Milk** (can be replaced with goat's milk)
• 1/2 t Vanilla

Preheat oven to 275 F. If using convection, set oven to 235 F.

Line a 6" or 7"" round baking pan (or springform pan) with parchment. Cut a long strip for the sides and a circle for the bottom. If you are using a springform pan, wrap the bottom with plastic wrap then cover with aluminum foil. Prepare and bake crust  and allow to cool. I use a ring or a regular cake pan - I've gotten pretty good at flipping cheesecakes out of pans, but unless you have experience with it or aren't afraid of failure, I wouldn't do it.

Scrape out vanilla from vanilla pod with the blunt end of a knife and scrape into bowl of stand mixer.

In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine vanilla bean, goat cheese and agave syrup and mix with the paddle attachment until smooth. Add in egg whites and mix until combined. With the mixer on low, slowly pour in the buttermilk. Add in lemon juice, lemon zest, and vanilla and mix until combined.

Pour the batter into the pan that you have prepared with a crust. Place pan on sheet pan and place on center rack in oven.  Pour about 4 C of hot water into pan - either just off the boil or instant hot.

Bake until set - 1.5-2 hours. The cake won't be jiggly at all, and that's fine. For slightly less set cake, pull from oven when still a little jiggly like Jello. The fat from the crust may have seeped out a bit - also okay. Allow to cool completely before moving from baking sheet. I like to refrigerate my cheesecake overnight, and when I am ready to depan it, I warm the bottom of the pan with hot water and then depan it to make sure it comes out cleanly. Make sure when you place it in your refrigerator i is in your original pan or a cake circle or another perfectly flat surface or it will break when you move it.

Serve with local raw honey or the topping of your choice.

                **To make the cake a little more sour, replace milk with buttermilk

 

To see more Daring Bakers Challenges, check out the blogroll.

Making sausage with a food processor and a pastry bag - with surprisingly good results

Making sausage at home is actually quite simple - you don't need fancy grinding and stuffing equipment to make it work. As long as you have a food processor, a stand mixer (or the desire to stir a whole bunch with a wooden spoon), a pastry bag with a round tip and an elastic band, you too can make your own beautiful, professional-looking sausages. You'll also need hog or lamb casings, which you can usually get through your local butcher.

There are three easy steps to making sausage:

1. Grind seasoned meat in food processor

2. Develop stickiness by mixing it by hand or with a stand mixer (such as a KitchenAid)

3. Using a pastry bag fitted with a wide round tip, fill casings then twist into sausage portions

3a. Cook as you like

The basic ratio for sausage, according to Michael Ruhlman is 3 parts meat to 1 part fat (which means the ideal sausage is at least 25% fat, excluding any extra fat the meat you use has in it). The seasoning is up to you. As long as you stick with this ratio (and grind and mix the meat properly) you'll get a great result.

If you have time, season your meat and leave it overnight. Keep your meat as cold as possible, using frozen chunks if it gets too warm in your kitchen.

My basic recipe for all my fresh chicken sausages:

• 3 lbs Chicken Thigh, fat left on
• 1 lb Finely GROUND Chicken skin with fat intact (if you buy chicken thighs with skin on, what you have in the package should be enough. If you eat pork, sub 1 lb fatback)
• 1T + 2 t salt

PLUS flavoring - you can use liquor, beer, liqueur, spices, herbs, vegetables, cheese - really anything of your choosing.

Food Processor Method:

Twenty-four hours before you are going to make your sausage, cut your chicken into chunks and season with your spices and herbs and any liquid ingredients you are using. Allow to sit overnight in the refrigerator. About 2 hours before using, place chicken in freezer.

It will look something like this, except you'll want your fat held separate so you don't use too much (this duck meat was very fatty and before I used it I picked through and measured the fat. Sheesh):

1. Grind Chicken in food processor. Pulse until meat is fairly finely ground but NOT consistently sized. Remove half of the mixture and place it in the bowl of your stand mixer or, if you don't have one, in a bowl. Pulse the remainder AND the chicken skin in the bowl of the processor until finely ground. Add to the chicken already in the stand mixer.

2. In your stand mixer fitted with a paddle (see below) mix for 1 minute (just combined) to five minutes on medium speed to develop the myosin in the meat - the protein that promotes stickiness and creates a more desirable texture. If you don't have a stand mixer, stir vigorously with a wooden spoon for about 2 minutes. Just as effective though more messy, use your hands and knead the farce (the sausage filling) for a minute or two - make sure, however, that your hands stay cold.

This paprika sausage has been vigorously stirred and had a little hand kneading as well:

3. Whether or not you are using a stand mixer, you'll want to fold in your vegetables, cheeses, whole herbs, etc now. If you are using mushrooms, you'll see a rather speckled mixture, as below.

4. Mix on lowest speed  (or stir until all the ingredients are distributed evenly) until the veg/cheese/herb mixture is completely combined. And then...

TEST, TEST, TEST your sausage first. Saute it in a pan and make sure it is seasoned to your liking. If not, adjust.

5. If you are satisfied with your mixture, pull out your piping bag fitted with a round tip - it should be a WIDE tip (like an 808 Round Tip, which will work for hog casing but will be too big for lamb casing), but not so wide that your casing won't fit at least half-way up the tip as you'll need to push the casing up (beware, unintentionally suggestive photos follow). You don't need to fill the bag before attaching the casing, but it doesn't make a huge difference if you do. Remember, before using your casings, soak them in cold water for at least 30 minutes and then rinse them out completely inside and out as if they were hoses.

Half-fill the pastry bag (any size will do - I use a smaller bag because it is easy to handle) with the sausage mixture. Shake down the bag so the mixture gets a little more compact in the bag and push out the air. If some mixture comes out, put it back down into the bag.

You'll want to make sure you leave enough casing at the end to tie a knot once you have filled the casing.

6. Now. start applying pressure to the bag (try and keep your hand on the end of the casing near the pastry bag, just in case the elastic isn't in a mood to do its job). The meat mixture will start filling the casing. Hold the end of the casing and draw it out as it fills.

Don't overfill the casing - you'll want enough slack to be able to twist it into portions once your are done filing it. Once it is completely filled, tie at knot at one end, and make your first sausage twist about 4-6 inches up from there. Try to be consistent with your sizes. Twist the first one toward you. The next twist should be away from you. The twist after that should be toward you, repeating away/toward/away until you have no more sausage left to twist.

If your casing explodes while filling it, don't despair. It happens if you apply too much pressure. Just push the sausage down past the hole and cut the casing (a scissors will work) just below the hole or tear. And start over.

If you do not destroy your sausage, it will look like this, but probably more consistently sized (I made a number of different sizes for different uses...or something):

7. At this point the sausages should be allowed to air dry for about an hour in a COOL place - but only if you have time and inclination. It isn't a must. But if you have time, hang them up in a cool room and point a fan directly at them for 1 hour.

You don't need to do this step. Your sausage is ready to be cooked - the drying helps with grilling, roasting, smoking or frying but isn't that helpful if you are going to cook the sausage in beer, confit them in fat, or use another wet preparation.And your grill and friends will be very forgiving. Trust me on this. My friends were.

Raw, the sausage will only last a couple days (it is raw meat, after all). If you confit the sausage, they will hold under fat for up to a week. Cooking in an acidic medium (beer, wine, etc) and leaving them in the cooking liquid will also keep the sausages good for several days.

You can also make the sausage farce (stuffing) in advance, keep it cool in your refrigerator and use it only when ready, presumably within 24 hours:

If I have made too much, I'll cook the sausage and freeze them. They freeze well. They can also be frozen raw - just remember to label your bag properly to avoid cross-contamination.

If you aren't feeling inventive with the seasonings, just Google "sausage recipes" and you'll get a host of ideas.

If your guests or you do not wish to eat hog or lamb casing, you can make plastic casing from plastic wrap. Just spread some plastic wrap out,  spread a line of sausage filling across it in the middle if possible, and, using a straight edge like a small cutting board, shape it into a cylinder. Once it is made, you can let it sit overnight before you cook it, or freeze it. The first cooking should be steaming - gently steam the sausage in a pan. Once they are steamed, you can cook them any way you like, with the plastic removed, of course.

The sausages made in the plastic casing come out nicely, hold together, and do not need extra binding agents added unless they have not been mixed enough to develop a sturdy emulsion.

Sausages made with a pastry bag, made small so that guests could indulge in many types:

Though they are made without the assistance of proper meat grinding and stuffing tools, they still cook up beautifully:

These gorgeous sausages were made by Mary of Cooking 4 the week using a proper sausage attachment for the Kitchenaid:

Foodbuzz 24-24-24: Get Stuffed! A celebration of encased meats

According to some sources, butchers (and, presumably sausage makers) have three patron saints: St. Adrian, St. George and St. Peter the Apostle. Unfortunately for butchers, these saints have quite a large number of other constituents who may have once also wielded knives - including soldiers - who likely have priority over the lowly meat cutter.

For those who prefer their patron saints living and non-denominational, there is only one true patron saint of the sausage, or, more broadly, the encased meat:

Hot Doug:

Doug Sohn, encaser of the encased, feeder of the hungry

As Doug's t-shirts and website and wall of his restaurant read, "There are no two finer words in the the English language than 'encased meat', my friend." Taking this as a mandate for a spring dinner, My partner in food crime, Mary Reilly of Cooking4theWeek, and I set to work encasing meats, she tackling the mammals and I taking on fowl.

And as luck would have it, the first Red Sox-Yankees match up of the year was falling on the same day. Okay, so it would be the third game of the match up, but it was the first series. And for that reason alone, my friends and I - Red Sox haters and indifferent included - had a reason to get together, eat some encased meats and french fries cooked in duck fat, and watch a few innings of the game. Or at least listen to Rem-dog  call it on the radio.

Making Sausage

The real work of the dinner was the actual sausage making. Mary, armed with a sausage attachment for her KitchenAid, made quick work of the grinding and stuffing:

My methods were more primitive; I don't own a sausage attachment, and even if I did, it would have been boxed away in storage with the rest of my things three miles up the road in one of those pay-by-the-month places.

So I opted for the slightly more cumbersome and time consuming but equally effective pastry bag method.

Making sausage at home is actually quite simple - you don't need fancy grinding and stuffing equipment to make it work. As long as you have a food processor, a stand mixer (or the desire to stir a whole bunch with a wooden spoon), a pastry bag with a round tip and an elastic band, you too can make your own beautiful, professional-looking sausages. You'll also need hog or lamb casings, which you can usually get through your local butcher.

There are three easy steps to making sausage:

1. Grind seasoned meat in food processor

2. Develop stickiness by mixing it by hand or with a stand mixer (such as a KitchenAid)

3. Using a pastry bag fitted with a wide round tip, fill casings then twist into sausage portions

3a. Cook as you like

The basic ratio for sausage, according to Michael Ruhlman is 3 parts meat to 1 part fat (which means the ideal sausage is at least 25% fat, excluding any extra fat the meat you use has in it). The seasoning is up to you. As long as you stick with this ratio (and grind and mix the meat properly) you'll get a great result.

If you have time, season your meat and leave it overnight. Keep your meat as cold as possible, using frozen chunks if it gets too warm in your kitchen.

My basic recipe for all my fresh chicken sausages:

• 3 lbs Chicken Thigh, fat left on
• 1 lb Finely GROUND Chicken skin with fat intact (if you buy chicken thighs with skin on, what you have in the package should be enough. If you eat pork, sub 1 lb fatback)
• 1T + 2 t salt

PLUS flavoring - you can use liquor, beer, liqueur, spices, herbs, vegetables, cheese - really anything of your choosing.

Food Processor Method:

Twenty-four hours before you are going to make your sausage, cut your chicken into chunks and season with your spices and herbs and any liquid ingredients you are using. Allow to sit overnight in the refrigerator. About 2 hours before using, place chicken in freezer.

1. Grind Chicken in food processor. Pulse until meat is fairly finely ground but NOT consistently sized. Remove half of the mixture and place it in the bowl of your stand mixer or, if you don't have one, in a bowl. Pulse the remainder AND the chicken skin in the bowl of the processor until finely ground. Add to the chicken already in the stand mixer.

2. In your stand mixer fitted with a paddle (see below) mix for 1 minute (just combined) to five minutes on medium speed to develop the myosin in the meat - the protein that promotes stickiness and creates a more desirable texture. If you don't have a stand mixer, stir vigorously with a wooden spoon for about 2 minutes. Just as effective though more messy, use your hands and knead the farce (the sausage filling) for a minute or two - make sure, however, that your hands stay cold.

3. Whether or not you are using a stand mixer, you'll want to fold in your vegetables, cheeses, whole herbs, etc now. If you are using mushrooms, you'll see a rather speckled mixture, as below.

4. Mix on lowest speed until the veg/cheese/herb mixture is completely combined. And then...

TEST, TEST, TEST your sausage first. Saute it in a pan and make sure it is seasoned to your liking. If not, adjust.

5. If you are satisfied with your mixture, pull out your piping bag fitted with a round tip - it should be a WIDE tip (like an 808 Round Tip, which will work for hog casing but will be too big for lamb casing), but not so wide that your casing won't fit at least half-way up the tip as you'll need to push the casing up (beware, unintentionally suggestive photos follow). You don't need to fill the bag before attaching the casing, but it doesn't make a huge difference if you do. Remember, before using your casings, soak them in cold water for at least 30 minutes and then rinse them out completely inside and out as if they were hoses.

Half-fill the pastry bag (any size will do - I use a smaller bag because it is easy to handle) with the sausage mixture. Shake down the bag so the mixture gets a little more compact in the bag and push out the air. If some mixture comes out, put it back down into the bag.

You'll want to make sure you leave enough casing at the end to tie a knot once you have filled the casing.

6. Now. start applying pressure to the bag (try and keep your hand on the end of the casing near the pastry bag, just in case the elastic isn't in a mood to do its job). The meat mixture will start filling the casing. Hold the end of the casing and draw it out as it fills.

Don't overfill the casing - you'll want enough slack to be able to twist it into portions once your are done filing it. Once it is completely filled, tie at knot at one end, and make your first sausage twist about 4-6 inches up from there. Try to be consistent with your sizes. Twist the first one toward you. The next twist should be away from you. The twist after that should be toward you, repeating away/toward/away until you have no more sausage left to twist.

It will look like this, but probably more consistently sized (I made a number of different sizes for different uses...or something):

7. At this point the sausages should be allowed to air dry for about an hour in a COOL place - but only if you have time and inclination. It isn't a must. But if you have time, hang them up in a cool room and point a fan directly at them for 1 hour.

You don't need to do this step. Your sausage is ready to be cooked - the drying helps with grilling, roasting, smoking or frying but isn't that helpful if you are going to cook the sausage in beer, confit them in fat, or use another wet preparation.And your grill and friends will be very forgiving. Trust me on this. My friends were.

Raw, the sausage will only last a couple days (it is raw meat, after all). If you confit the sausage, they will hold under fat for up to a week. Cooking in an acidic medium (beer, wine, etc) and leaving them in the cooking liquid will also keep the sausages good for several days.

You can also make the sausage farce (stuffing) in advance, keep it cool in your refrigerator and use it only when ready, presumably within 24 hours:

If I have made too much, I'll cook the sausage and freeze them. They freeze well. They can also be frozen raw - just remember to label your bag properly to avoid cross-contamination.

If your guests or you do not wish to eat hog or lamb casing, you can make plastic casing from plastic wrap. Just spread some plastic wrap out,  spread a line of sausage filling across it in the middle if possible, and, using a straight edge like a small cutting board, shape it into a cylinder. Once it is made, you can let it sit overnight before you cook it, or freeze it. The first cooking should be steaming - gently steam the sausage in a pan. Once they are steamed, you can cook them any way you like, with the plastic removed, of course.

The sausages made in the plastic casing come out nicely, hold together, and do not need extra binding agents added unless they have not been mixed enough to develop a sturdy emulsion.

Party Preparations

For the party, I ended up making four kinds of sausage - Chicken  Paprika, Apple and Cheddar; Chicken and Spring Ramps, Shiitake Mushrooms and Garlic; Chicken with Taleggio and Tarragon; and Duck Sausage with Prunes in Cognac and Foie Gras. Mary, always ambitious, made three very different types of sausage: Gyro Lamb Sausage, Churrasco Beef Sausage, and Banh-Mi Style Pork Sausage.

We both designed our sausage presentations - the sauces and the breads and the condiments. The menus, which I placed around the house, made clear the purpose of our dinner: Sox and Sausages:

Along with the sausage, I made ketchup, mustard, sauerkraut, pickles, tapenade and cabbage and carrot salad. My mother made her famous (at least amongst my sister and me) hot clam dip. There's something just so 70s about hot clam dip. Mary and I made the sauces and condiments for our respective sausages. Mary even made a moist (and gluten-free) Brazilian-style pan queijo.

Here's my "Olive Bar Tapenade" - basically 3/4 lb of pitted olives and anything else that looks good on the olive bar at Whole Foods or similar upscale market, blended together - served with some homemade bread toasts dusted with Za'atar.

The 48-Hour Pickles (cukes + vinegar + salt + sugar + water + spices - no time for a nice fermented pickle, sadly):

And the cabbage and carrot salad (don't call it Cole Slaw - there was not a lick of mayo to be found anywhere):

Ambitions Nearly Thwarted: Duck Fat Fries

My one major ambition for the night was to make and serve hot, fresh hand-cut french fries cooked in duck fat. And this ambition, would, for me, prove to be my achilles heel.

Finding the fat was easy. My local butcher, Concord Prime, keeps duck fat in stock and was able to sell me 6 lbs of the stuff, enough for my evening of deep fat debauchery. 

But I was missing two keys to having my fries ready to go at the sounding of the dinner bell: time and a deep fryer. 

For fries to be crisp - really crisp - you need to blanch them in 325 degree F fat first and then turn the heat up to 375 and fry them until crisp and golden. But almost day-long event at Taza Chocolate in Somerville, ending just an hour before the dinner, would make advanced work impossible for me. That and the lack of a deep fryer.

At 4:15, 45 minutes prior to the arrival of the guests, Mary arrived with her sausages and her turkey deep fryer. 

At 4:45 we still had not set it up.

At 5:00  the fat was beginning to melt. Guests began to arrive. Hi Rich! Melissa! Adam! Bekka! Elliott! Seth arrived an hour later. Rebecca 2 and Amy arrived even later, thanks to faulty directions from Google Maps.

At 5:15 we were able to turn the deep fryer on at the base of the stairs on a slab of concrete. I would not be burning down my house today, thank you very much:

Meanwhile, at the top of the stairs on the deck, Mary started cooking some majestic-looking sausages (I went for tiny-sized with the hope that my guests would have the opportunity to try many. Mary went for the volume play).

While she cooked, I blanched and fussed with the extremely thick fries. I blamed my mutton-handedness on my aching wrists - I had been madly cooking for days and between the sausage fest and prepping and shooting a series of How-tos (for How2Heroes) and I just didn't have it in me to cut the perfect bistro fries.

They were sort of clunky:

Cooking took a long time. A very long time:

I had an audience:

Which broke up the monotony of frying batch after batch of slightly-too-large duck fat fries:

Meanwhile, Mary tended the grill and served up lamb, beef and pork sausages. 

My baked beans, which were actually stove top beans, sat unloved on the stove top next to the grill:

Turns out people really aren't into baked beans, even when they can locate them on the buffet table. Except for my mom, who ate them to humor me.

My sausages, which I'd placed on a sizzle platter on the grill, were slightly charred and  overcooked by the time I came up for air. The duck fat fries (and the fear of burning the fries, the dog, or the kid) kept me virtually a prisoner of the deep fryer.

Oops. I still managed to sample a few (they tasted good!) and dish out a couple more, dressed, to the hapless guests. Chicken Paprika sausage with Apple and cheddar, topped with Romesco and a yogurt and pickle sauce:

This plate had a little bit of everything - duck fat fries, 'baked' beans, duck foie gras sausage with apple slaw & pine nuts and grainy mustard, Chicken paprika sausage, and a lone banh-mi style sausage with some of Mary's not-so-secret sauce. Mary made a few composed salads, too, which were a big hit - chayote-avocado salad and white bean salad. Notice the baseball themed plates? Go Sox!

Mary's sausages were utterly gorgeous:

The hit of the party was Mary's Banh-Mi Pork Sausage. Here's how she put it together:

Banh Mi Sausage

Inspired by the flavors in a banh mi sandwich, this sausage is great on a baguette with traditional banh mi accompaniments.

For each pound of ground pork (Mary used ground pork butt), mix together

• 1 pound ground pork
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 teaspoons Sriracha
• 1/4 cup minced cilantro
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon lime juice

Accompaniments: baguette for sandwiches, shredded carrot, shredded daikon, pickled shallots, chopped cilantro, sliced cucumber, Mary's banh mi sauce (recipe follows) and fish sauce

Mix everything together well and then fry up a small portion (about a tablespoon) to check seasoning. Add more saltiness with additional fish sauce, more heat with Sriracha, etc. There should be a pronounced sweetness from the brown sugar: if not add more.

Stuff into sausage casings if you wish. Alternatively, as more easily, you can more handfuls into patties. Grill or pan fry until cooked through.

Serve on a baguette with your choice of accompaniments.

Mary's banh mi sauce

Far from authentic Vietnamese. This sauce provides a nice creamy, spicy addition to the sandwich. Stir together:

• 1/4 cup mayonnaise
• 2 tablespoons fish sauce
• generous squirt of Sriracha (depending on how much heat you want)
• squeeze of lime juice

Taste and adjust seasoning by tweaking the ingredient amounts. The sauce should be creamy from the mayonnaise with an earthiness from the fish sauce and a goodly amount of heat.

For dessert I served some gluten-free treats - whoopie pies and cupcakes, left over from my How2Heroes shoot:

and Mary made brown sugar & walnut marshmallows:

Oh yeah. And about the game?  Remember, the Sox-Yankees match-up? We won. Squarely.

Recipe: Gluten-Free Graham Crackers...and they're vegan, too!

I was never one of those tots easily mollified by graham crackers and apple juice. I don't even think I liked graham crackers. There were more enticing choices. There were always more enticing choices. Except when in combination with chocolate and marshmallow. I've always had a soft spot for the s'more.

Sometime in my 20s I began to appreciate the simplicity of a graham cracker. They were slightly sweet and crunchy and versatile. When paired with coffee or tea, they were a pleasant - and dunkable! - counterpoint. I bought a box of organic graham crackers from time to time but almost never finished them.

When I started making my own I developed a genuine love for the graham cracker. I didn't have cravings, but when a still-soft graham worked its way into a s'more, I became aware of its subtle pleasures.

During the summer I lived on a goat dairy, I'd make goat cheese cheesecakes and sell them at the local farmers market for a couple dollars a slice. The crusts were always made with graham crackers. Nothing beats a graham cracker crust for cheesecake. I've had nut crusts before but they never met my expectations for texture and sweetness.

Now that I'm gluten-free, I decided to convert a graham cracker recipe I developed about 11 years ago. I removed the butter from the original recipe as well as the honey. It is now completely vegan, gluten-free, nut-free, corn-free and potato-free. It is also packed with good ingredients (organic extra virgin coconut oil, whole grains, brown rice bran, rapadura - evaporated cane juice). I wanted the recipe to be delicious, made in the spirit of the original graham cracker, and crunchy enough to be easily ground down into crumbs that I could use in a crust. I think I've accomplished that.

Graham crackers may be one of the easier recipes to convert - an ideal graham cracker has little to no gluten development and is made with whole grains. There's virtually no need for starches and almost any flour combination will work.

A few notes about this recipe:

1. You'll need a scale to make this properly.
2. Although I recommend specific flours (which tasted great), if you have a favorite blend you like, feel free to use it UNLESS it has a leavener in it.  You'll need 12 ounces total.
3. If you like a slightly less leavened cracker, omit 1/4 t Baking Powder and 1/4 t Baking Soda

Cake & Commerce's Gluten-free Graham Crackers...and they're vegan, too!

Dry Ingredients:

6 oz Light Buckwheat Flour
2 oz Teff Flour
2 oz Sweet Brown Rice Flour
2 oz Rice Bran Flour
2 oz Rapadura Sugar (or Brown Sugar)
1/2 t Baking Powder
1 t Baking Soda
1 t Salt, fine

Wet Ingredients

3 oz Virgin Coconut Oil, melted and slightly cooled
1/3 C Amber Agave Syrup (Honey or Maple Syrup will also work)
1/3 C Water, slightly warm
1 T Vanilla

Preheat oven to 325 (if convection, preheat to 300)

Combine Dry ingredients in the bowl of a food processor or mixer. Combine wet ingredients together and mix until blended. Pour wet ingredients in food processor over dry ingredients. Pulse until well combined. The dough will be a slightly sticky mass.

Allow to sit for at least 30 minutes for the flour to absorb some of the liquid.

If the dough is still wet, knead in a little more teff or buckwheat flour. It should NOT be wet to the touch.

Roll out to about 1/8th of an inch on a sheet of parchment. With a knife, score dough into a graham-cracker-sized grid (or cut with round cutters if looking for another look). Dock dough (make holes in dough) with a fork or docker (if you happen to have one). Transfer to a sheet pan.

Brush surface with water and sprinkle with rapadura or sugar. Allow to sit for 5 minutes.

Bake in a 325 degree oven for 25-30 minutes or until dry. Do not burn - it gets VERY bitter if overcooked.

If you suddenly realize you want to cut it into shapes, when it is still hot, cut with a shaped cutter or with a knife.

Cool. And turn off oven. For drier grahams (you'll use them to make crumbs), place back in oven when it is cool and allow to dry out.

Eat, use for s'mores, grind and use for graham cracker crusts etc.

Store in an airtight container in a cool place. They will keep for a long time, several weeks, but if stored in a warm place the fat may oxidize over time and make it taste slightly 'off'.

If they get stale, place in 250 degree oven for about 10-15 minutes.

If you want to see how I do it, watch this video made by my friends at How2Heroes.com:

Passover cooking: Gluten-free Gefilte Fish

Until about 6 years ago, I turned my nose up at gefilte fish. I was repulsed by the anemic white snowballs masquerading as fish that came out of jars quivering with gelatinized stock. It was easy to say no to that course.

And then my mom brought home a piece of fish terrine - gefilte fish terrine - from a deli in Brookline that was bringing it in from a Russian deli in Brooklyn. It was a small piece of heaven. I was, at last, hooked.

Of course, I didn't go from terrine to jar after I finally learned to love the gefilte fish. I had to make my own.

The first few times I followed recipes. It worked. People liked the results. Then I started to improvise. Not a lot, but enough to make the recipe my own.

Let's get this out in the open: I hate raw onions. Not only do I hate raw onions, I hate onions that are still slightly crisp. They make me shudder. And cry. Traditional gefilte fish recipes use raw onions in the mix, and I simply can't take the risk that there may be some give when I sink my teeth into it.

That said, this isn't a traditional version of gefilte fish at all.I also have an aversion to lake fish (pike, carp and the like), from which gefilte fish is traditionally made. So I found a recipe online about 5 years ago called "Alaskan Halibut and Salmon Gefilte Fish Terrine" and improvised around it. I've changed everything about it except for the ratios of fish to onions and carrots.

Cake and Commerce's Gluten-free Gefilte Fish
Makes 10-11 patties

• 3/4 lb Salmon (wild/Pacific only) - pin bones and skin removed
• 3/4 lb Halibut (wild/Pacific) skin removed
• (or substitute 1.5 lbs of your favorite local, sustainable fish)
• 2 medium onions, diced
• 2 T vegetable oil
• 1 lemon, zest and juice
• picked leaves of one sprig of thyme
• 2 T  sugar
• 1 t salt
• 1/4 t white pepper
• pinch of cayenne
• 3 egg whites
• 1 T potato starch

Saute diced onions in vegetable oil. Cook until soft. Set aside and allow to cool

Make sure small pin bones are removed from salmon. Run your hands over the fillet. If it feels hard and bumpy in places, you will need to remove the pin bones. Since you are cutting up the fish, cut right near the bones and remove them with your fingers (or you can remove them with a tweezer). Keep cool!

Place fish, lemon juice and zest, thyme leaves, sugar, salt, pepper, cayenne in bowl of food processor and pulse 15 times.

Remove half of the mixture and place in medium sized bowl. Add to remaining fish in bowl of processor the  egg whites, lemon zest and lemon juice, potato starch and onions and run continuously until the mixture is light and fluffy, about 20 seconds.

Add mixture to medium sized bowl with rest of mixture and mix with a wooden spoon for about 2 minutes, or until consistent and a little sticky.

Form into palm sized patties and poach for 10-14 minutes in seasoned fish stock, below.

Serve cool, topped with onions and carrots from stock. Enjoy alone or with fresh horseradish.

Fish Stock for Passover
Makes about 1-1/2 gallons of stock, which freezes well

• 5 lbs fish bones from a non-oily fish (halibut, other white fish etc)
• 2 Onions
• 2 Carrots
• 2 Stalks Celery
• stems from 1 bunch of parsley
• 1 t peppercorns
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 sprig thyme
• 3 cloves garlic
• Water to cover
• (Optional - 1 C White Wine, kosher for Passover)

Combine all of the above ingredients in a large stock pot and cover with cold water. Bring to a simmer and allow to simmer for about 45 minutes to an hour. Strain and reserve (you will have extra, so freeze what you do not use). I left out white wine in this recipe out, although you can add kosher for Passover wine, which I did not have on hand. If you choose to use white wine, add about 1 cup to the above recipe.

At this point you can put the stock away OR, if you are ready to poach your gefilte fish, make:

Seasoned Fish Stock for Gefilte Fish

• 8 Cups Fish stock for Passover, above
• 2 whole onions, cut into rounds about 1/3" thick (as if for onion rings)
• 5 carrots, cut on the bias - diagonally - into disks about 1/4" thick
• 2 T sugar
• 2 t salt
• juice of one lemon

Combine all ingredients. Simmer until onions are soft. Reduce heat just below simmer. Add in patties one at a time.  After 10-13 minutes, remove form heat. Place gefilte fish patties in tall container and pour stock and onions over it to cover. Cool for about an hour and place in refrigerator with a lid, making sure all gefilte fish is below the surface of the stock. Serve chilled.

Japanese-style Egg Custard (chawanmushi) steamed in an egg cup

Another Recipe from my post, "The Humble Egg Dresses for Dinner".

This custard, made from a combination dashi broth (kelp and bonito) and chicken reduction with mushrooms, contained three surprises: tiny shreds of local storage parsnips and shiso leaf, and a sauteed cepe.

Chawanmushi steamed in egg cups with parsnip and shiso

• 10 eggs, topped (tops removed)
• 3 whole eggs
• 1-1/2 C stock (mine was 1 C dashi plus 1/2 C mushroom chicken stock)
• 1 t soy sauce
• 1 t sake
• 1 t sugar
• 1/2 t salt
• 1" parsnip section, finely shaved into thin slivers, raw
• 1 shiso leaf, fine chiffonade
• 10 pc mushroom of your choice, very small, sauteed (I used cepes)

Combine eggs, stock, soy sauce, sake, sugar, salt. Whisk together, do not overwhisk. Strain mixture through china cap, chinois, or strainer.

Prepare a steamer basket.

Using strips of aluminum foil, create egg holders. Make sure they are secure. Place eggs in egg holders.

Place a small pinch of parsnip, a piece or two of shiso, and one mushroom piece in the egg cup (feel free to change up your vegetables and herbs to reflect what is in season). Pour in egg mixture so it is almost, but not quite, at the top. Place in steamer.

Steam 10-15 minutes, or until custard is no longer translucent. Serve in an egg cup or edible cup holder (I use cooked potato cubes or Spanish tortilla) and eat.

This custard may also be steamed in a tea cup or other deep bowl of your choice.

You can watch me make it here: