Bitches I'm Beef!

Crikey I made a simply divine stew today. Remember when I said I bought 1/4 beef? I still have most of it. I have been trying to remove the ground from my small freezer so that I can get the turkeys for our Thanksgiving party, I need three of them. Anyhow, I have all this beef and thought, golly it's cold outside, perchance I shall make a hearty stew!

I like to make meals with a little bit of meat in them. I don't like to eat tons of meat all at once, and find that all I really need is about 3 oz of meat at once. Serving meat in a stew or soup makes me feel like I've gotten to eat a decadent thing, without over indulging and also keeping cost and health issues in check. So when I make a pot of soup or something, there's about six servings happening from one pound of beef. Works out well for everyone.

I had recently gotten the cutest butternut squashes from the market and was like 'ooh how adorable', because we all know that when food is small, it is much cuter. So I was looking to use those as well.

Anyhow, I found a lame recipe that I made much, much better and the stew turned out so good, I tried to take a picture of it. Turns out cameras need to be charged once in a while and wouldn't you know, my camera is out of batteries. I know there won't be any to take pictures of later. I don't think it will look as good later either. I have some ... other pictures to entertain you. I didn't take them.

But please, refer to the picture of the beef, it's informative and good to know your sides of beef.

I must tell you about this stew, I would be dis-not-loving my public if I did not.

I know my husband ate a good sized bowl, and texted me at my girls-night to let me know how good the stew was. That's how good it was. Also, you know it's a good meal when it watches after itself while you go out with your girls.

My husband almost never comments on my food, and I think this is because apart from my many, many success, I do have a lot of misadventures. But, if you don't adventure, how do you learn?

I also have another theory about cooking. If I always cook good food, the level of expectation in my home goes up, and eventually my really good meals are just the norm. So then when I fail, it's rather epic, and when I make something amazing, it's just ok. I should just make worse food, but that doesn't appeal to me either.

This episode is mostly so you can partake of the wonderment that is my stew.

Butternut Squash and Beef Stew
6 servings
7 WWPP

Ingredients:

1 tsp olive oil
1 lb. lean grass fed stew beef (chuck)
1 sweet onion, diced
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1 pound butternut squash, peeled and cubed*
1 Cup carrot chunks
1 Cup diced tomatoes
1 15 oz. can rinsed and drained garbanzo beans
2 Tbs Better than Bullion Beef Base
1 cup water
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
4 cardamom seeds (not the pods, the seeds)
2 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp garam masala
1 tsp red chili flake
1-2 tsp Secret Aardvark sauce
1 Tbs corn starch mixed with a few Tbs water

Salt and pepper as you see fit

Method:

Heat a dutch oven and put the olive oil in the bottom, spread around to coat and in batches brown the beef on all sides.

Add the onion and garlic and cook until the onion is clear on medium heat. Add the rest of the ingredients except the corn starch and secret Aardvark. Bring to a simmer and add the corn starch slowly and stir. Cover and let simmer over low heat for, at least three hours, but probably closer to four hours. Five hours is plenty, six is right out. Stir in the Secret Aardvark to finish, makes a hearty meal all on its own.


*Use a vegetable peeler to peel the squash first, then cut in half, remove seeds and cube. This makes the squash easier to cut up.

Even better than before!

I just made a new batch of my GF pumpkin muffins, and they are so good I realized I had done a disservice to you all by posting my previous recipe. I'm so amazed at the goodness created by the new flours I'm incorporating it's really hard to believe that I waited so long to expand my horizons.

When I started out GF it was very intimidating. There are so many flours out there that the lists go on, and on. I decided I would only start with a few alternative flours and learn those first, and the nature of non-wheat flours. I used rice, tapioca, potato starch, and a little oat, I also tried a bean flour mix. I worked on the rice mixtures and tried all sorts ways to recreate the protein structure of gluten. I tried eggs, gelatin (btw, that does NOT work), xanthan gum, guar gum, no gums, lots of gums, medium amounts of gums, all the gums, and I have settled on two options. I have some guar gum in my pantry, I will use it if I need to. Now I use Gluten Free Gluten, and that works really well. I also have xanthan gum and use that quite a bit. The thing about the GFG is that it has some of the gums you would normally use in it, it also has a few that are only available to commercial bakers. Perfectly measured out, you use 1 part of the GFG to 5 parts whatever flour mixture you use. I don't use it in quick breads, it's only intended for yeast breads, where you would have a higher gluten content.

Having been baking a lot this last two months, attempting to recreate bread for a sandwich (not easy to do), I am starting to branch out. I pulled out my mill today and milled up some quinoa. I have some milled oat flour and some teff on the way. I did this mostly because rice flour has a lot of calories in it. 550 calories a cup? Wheat flour only has around 400 a cup. WW says rice flour has 15-17 points in a cup of rice flour, wheat flour has 12 points in it. It's a big difference when you're really counting calories.

Let's talk about GF bread for a minute. I'm sure it would make great stuffing, because it's all so dry! Many of them taste fine, but they tend to be small, already stale, and expensive. I bought a local commercial loaf, thinking it would be great, however the slices are so tiny and thin it makes me wonder how they're packing 80 calories into a slice! Also when I toast them they turn into hard chunks of mouth ripping cardboard.

Tomorrow I'm making french toast.

I did find a local gluten free bakery, and I've had some items from them that are really quite good. I liked them so much I bought a cookbook written by the owner. I then went and bought a loaf of bread from the bakery. The woman loves bean flour. Garbanzo bean flour in this, garbanzo bean flour in that, making cookies? Add garbanzo beans why not? Can you make your baked goods more dense? You want to know why the cakes are so heavy and a loaf of bread from this place weighs two pounds, yet is the size of a bloated softball? Garbanzo bean flour is super heavy, and doesn't rise very well. I'm not saying her bread is bad. It's quite good, but not really what I'm looking for. It is tasty, but I'm not sure it's the best for sandwiches unless you slice your slices 1/4 pound thick. I am not a fan of her cake. It has garbanzo bean flour in it. Cake SHOULD NOT BE DENSE! The densest cupcakes known to man.

It also makes me think: she says she focuses on whole grains, but mostly she just uses garbanzo bean flour. Where's the variety? I have noticed that once chefs find a method that works for them, they stick to it. In cookbooks, they tend to have one basic blend, and that's what they use for everything. It's usually a rice blend, augmented with teff, sorgum or garbanzo bean flours.

I'm not sure where I'm going, but I don't want to have a 'generic' mix, and would rather use the freshly ground grains I have from my recent millings, so they stay fresh and use what is available rather than a standard mix.

Where is all this going? I removed a cup of rice flour from my pumpkin muffins and added to it 1/2 C quinoa flour and 1/2 C oat flour. I also ground my own rice flour, it took some time and I had to put it through the mill a few times. I thought they might turn out too grainy or gritty, but no! The mill worked really well for the rice, it ground up very fine and very little remained after sifting. Quinoa also mills into a nice fine flour on the finest setting. I have a heavy duty professional grade KitchenAid stand mixer, so I'm able to use the mill attatchment with that. I don't think you should use a mill if you have a smaller stand mixer, just buy a quality free standing mill.

Every time I make baked goods, I must try them. Especially muffins, or little items, I'm so curious to find out if it turned out good. I made up the new muffins and ate one (I had the WWPP for it, so no problem), so good. So much, much better than before! The nuttyness of the oat and quinoa together was very mild, but went so well with the pumpkin. I'm so happy with the new results that I plan on taking them to a ladies afternoon event with me.

Spurred on by my success I started working on my sandwich bread. I'm so close. The last loaf I made was almost as good as the wheat infested stuff. It just had a little too much egg in it. Also the book I'm adapting the recipe from, the lady likes to 'spread' her dough, and the loafs never look nice if you do this, so I have my own method. It came to me on my way to work. It's worked very well. You can spread if you want, but your bread will not look nice and round and it probably won't rise up as good.

Now I know I just got done saying not to have a 'generic mix' but I do have a basic mix that I keep around to help make baking easier and faster. This is for when I want to make up some rolls or pizza dough at night and I am tired. I just don't use it all the time.

Basic Gluten Free Gluten Rice Mix

6 oz. Thai rice flour
3 oz. potato starch
3 oz. tapioca flour
2.4 oz. OrGran Gluten Substitute

I would not recommend mixing home milled whole grains, as they need to be frozen and used quickly to prevent them from going bad. Just make up your basic mix and supplement as needed. Also, this is done by weight so the amount of gums in your mix will be the correct amount. I would recommend to any GF baker: just get a scale and quit whining.

Buttermilk GF Sandwich Bread

Ingredients:

1 C. GFG rice mix
1/2 C. oat flour
1/2 C. quinoa flour
1/8 C. tapioca flour
1/8 C. potato starch
.8 oz OrGran Gluten Substitute
2/3 tsp. kosher salt
2 Tbs. unbleached sugar
1 Tbs. dry active yeast
2 tsp. baking powder
1 large egg
3 Tbs. canola oil
3/4 cup + a little extra(about 2 tbs) warmed buttermilk
extra flour for dusting work surface


Method:

Grease a smaller bread pan.
Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a stand mixer. Even the yeast. Whisk the wet together and pour into your off stand mixer. Turn the mixer on low till the wet and dry are just mixed. Turn the speed up a bit and mix until you have a smooth mixture. It's not really a dough, and not really a batter. Prep your work surface with flour and put the mixture on the flour. Pat it into a loaf and coat in flour. Put into the pan and let this rise for about an hour. After 45 minutes or whenever the appropriate time is turn the oven onto 350 degrees and then bake your bread for about an hour. Remove from the pan and cool on a rack.

Slice and enjoy!

Look at the size of those muffins.

Having to cut wheat of your diet is really obnoxious. On one hand I do feel better and my blood sugar is at a constant level, on the hand I am having to learn how to bake again. This is very frustrating as I used to be able to whip up delightful baked goods without thinking about it. Now I have to research and test and hope and most of the time just fail.

I bought two gluten free cookbooks. They are clearly for beginners, which is what I am all of a sudden. Neither of them focuses on healthy cooking, just delicious cooking. I am all for that, and GF breads cannot be made just whilly nilly, as it turns out. However, I cannot be consuming giant sugar filled muffins if I want to fit into my pants!

I have had some triumphs: I can make pizza dough (hooray), rolls, cupcakes, muffins and hopefully soon: sandwich bread. I know you can buy these things, but honestly, they suck. They're dry and really expensive. They go bad quickly and they come in the smallest sizes. Five dollars for what is basically 2/3 of a loaf of bread, that's dry before you get it. Blah. I'd rather go without.

I made some pumpkin muffins today, based on a recipe in one of my cookbooks. As I was looking at the recipe I was shocked. It makes 12 muffins with like 1 1/2 cups of flours! I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but GFs go a lot farther, you need less of them to make the same amount of a wheat flour recipe. The recipe also had 2 cups of sugar in it! TWO! oof, they must be the sweetest muffins ever! I halved the sugar and they were plenty sweet, I think two cups would be over kill. Then the author goes onto say that these muffins are a 'snack'. Phhhhhffft! Snacks are not sugar- fat laden carb balls!

Now I don't know if I have the smallest muffin tin known to man, or other people are on purpose buying giant muffin tins, but whenever a recipe says it makes 12 muffins, I usually find that I can make 18 with that amount of batter. Who are these people and where are they buying their muffin tins?

I say to those of you who have to be gluten free - rise up! Make better for you baked goods. Just because something is GF doesn't mean it has to be bad! It also doesn't mean that it has to be super bad for you. We can have balance too! Force your gluten free prowess on others and make them tell you your GF products are delightful, without saying 'for a gluten free product'.

Gluten Free Pumpkin Muffins
makes 18 muffins
4 WWPP

Ingredients:

1/2 cup oat flour**
1 cup rice flour*
1/2 tsp xanthan gum
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
1/3 cup canola oil
1 cup unbleached sugar
2 Tbs molasses
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups canned pumpkin

Topping:
1/2 tsp cinnamon in a tea steeper

Method:
Heat oven to 350, and prep muffin tins with liners. Mix all of the dry ingredients together in a bowl. Stir well. Whisk together all the wet ingredients in a different bowl. Add the wet to the dry and mix well by hand, being careful to not over mix. Fill muffin cups 1/2-2/3 full and sprinkle the cinnamon sugar in your tea steeper over the tops of the muffins. Bake for 20 minutes or until just done. Remove from oven and cool on rack.



* a quick note about rice flours. If you want finely ground, non-gritty rice flour you must buy it from an Asian grocery store. The Thai brands are the best, they are very finely ground, more finely ground than any American product. I know it's not local, but you need a quality product for this. They aren't gritty at all. The brand with the elephant on the front is the best.

**Also a note about oat flour. If you want a more ... stone filled whole wheat like texture feel free to follow directions from the internet about using your blender to make oat flour. I found this to be gritty and horrible, though quick. I'm going to call that the quick and dirty method. If you want a finely ground flour that feels like whole wheat flour use a mill. I have one for my stand mixer, truly an investment for any cook who cares about the quality of their oat flour.

Super phat beets!

So, I've gotten off wheat, and this makes meal planning a bit more ... different. I think I'm dealing with it admirably, as i cook often and well. I think it must be harder for people to go wheat free if they don't cook at all. those people might end up eating even more processed foods, simply from a lack of knowledge.

I have purchased a few products, but they're so expensive that I'm really just inclined to make my own. I recently had success, making my own wheat free pizza, and it was quite tasty. I didn't need to do a thousand experiments, or purchase a special pizza mix. I also didn't spread mine with a spatula (seriously? you're spreading your dough out instead of making a real dough?). Anyhow, I also didn't make mine vegan or covered in gross frozen spinach. What it is it with people who are wheatards? Why is the only pizza flavor we can think of spinach? Frozen spinach is super gross, and you should never, EVER consider it.

Being the little gardener that I am, I have about a thousand green tomatoes, along with a whole ton of ripe ones. I grew several varieties of heirlooms, purple something or other, a big orange boom or such, several red types, green when ripe (so hard to tell!) really the point is, I have tomatoes coming out of my various ears. I decided that I would try fried green tomatoes, and they're SO GOOD! Amazing, why haven't I been eating these all along?

I've been pan frying mine with just a little cooking spray, and really the best directions I've got are to do it like meat: flour, egg, crumbs. I did some up for lunch with Bob's Red Mill GF flour mix (I know I did just say I don't want mixes, but this isn't really a mix, just a flour blend. We all know how I feel about specialty flours. mmmm. specialty flours), along with finely ground corn meal... fabulous. I think the trick is to brown them well and then bake them a little, I just popped mine into the toaster oven for 10 minutes. Oh, you must season your crumbs well; I suggest cayenne, salt, pepper, garlic and grated Romano cheese.

The whole lunch of my day centered around one of my favorite veggies to grow and then eat: beets. So amazing, cooked, raw, roasted, steamed, added to roast potatoes, in soup. This is my own new invention: grated beet salad. I did this initially because I wanted to make coleslaw and was low on cabbage and had a thousand beets, it works really well. I think you could use any dressing you like, but the balsamic is a favorite of mine.

So the whole lunch was a couple of large beautiful orange tomato slices, one fried green tomato with sour supreme dippy sauce (no, I'm not going to tell you how to mix garlic and sour cream together), and grated beet salad. I will tell you how to make this, but only so that you'll have the confidence to strike out on your own and make a make your own weird grated veggie salad.


Grated Beet Salad with Balsamic Reduction Dressing

Ingredients:

1 largish medium beet, or a few small ones - grated
3 organic scallions - sliced on the bias
some balsamic vinegar
honey or agave syrup
1 Tbs. organic olive oil - good quality
salt, pepper
a small knob of goat cheese
Thin cucumber slices

Method:

Grate the beets into a small bowl, add the white part of the onion to the beets, reserving the green for garnish. In a pan heat the balsamic vinegar with a little salt and some honey or agave, it works best to make a lot of this at once, so however much you want. Reduce by half on simmer. Add some pepper. Whisk over ice to cool and beat in a little olive oil, just about a Tbs per 1/4 cup reduction. Pour a little of the dressing over the beets and onions. Arrange the cucumbers on a plate and placed the beets on top. Put the goat cheese on the salad and garnish with green onions. Serve with fried green onions and a dippy sauce.

And we're back!

It's been a while since I've posted, but I got busy, and then I forgot, and then I felt it had been so long.

However, I have been thinking about it, and making really good food, so I thought I should share. Yesterday, after several days of ripping our patio to shreds, digging it up and moving all the cement and dirt away from our house, my parents in law and we had a delightful dinner. I had thought about this before hand and realized that I might be tired. I made a simple repast of sesame green beans, a garden salad with homemade cilantro dressing and burgers.

Two things about this meal 1: the peas I've grown this year are amazing. They are so crispy sweet and good I can't imagine growing a different variety. I've been growing Super Sugar Snap peas, I get mine from Territorial Seeds. 2: I made up the recipe for the beans out of my own little brain and I cannot think of a better thing to do with them. It's so mind blowingly good that I have been eating them for lunch with rice and calling it a meal. I can snack on them and I know they're super healthy for me. When you hear of people serving beans, or you go out to eat and order beans, it seems like everyone forgets that green beans already taste good. They're all trying to drown them in butter or canned soup (mmm ... gross) and mask the taste of beans, and I'm not really sure why! The big secret is to get a refillable mister. I got one and I love it. I've got some really good olive oil in mine, and I 'enhanced' it with a little sesame oil, because I love the taste of sesame. So, it's too much .... art... and no actual measurements to actually give you a recipe. Here's what you do: blanch a bunch of beans (a minute or two, depending on how thick your beans are) the main thing is they should be bright green. When they are done and still nice and crisp and plunge into an ice water bath. Spray a large pan with your sesame oil concoction, just like a tsp is plenty of oil, I use 1/4 tsp. throw in some salt, pepper, sesame seeds and fresh garlic into the pan. Turn the heat off and toss the beans in this until you can see the pepper coating the beans. I use lots of pepper, fresh cracked of course. I think this dish is perfect, especially for cook outs because it's really good cold or room temperature, I don't have to worry about those beans being hot or cold, they're just good.

When you make beans like this, you'll need a lot of beans per person as I think you'll find people will eat more of them like this. It's because they're like crack.

Other events: I recently purchased a quarter of a beef. Fans of the blog will remember that I started out trying to purchase a lamb, and there was much woe. I am now super pleased, and we have tons of beef. When you buy around 175 pounds of beef at once, the total bill seems quite high. However I've never had such good beef, and we like to go out to nice restaurants that 'hang their own beef' and all sorts of other things. My cow, lived on a field with access to a barn, ate grass and lived a happy life until it was humanly killed on the farm (no stress from being transported) and then butched by a master butcher.

Is that a verb? Butch, to butch a cow. Well if it's a verb, it can be passed tense. Never mind! The result: THE BEST BEEF EVER! And I know where my meat came from, however I'm not telling you, you might buy up all the home grown beef.

Find your own farmer!

Pictures in this blog are of random foods I won't tell you about!

Cook Book Drama

I only have 48 cookbooks. I feel kind of bad admitting that, and I'm not sure how to overcome this problem in a quick way. I use the internet a lot and look up recipes there, but the thing I find bothersome about cookbooks is that they only have the recipes they came with in them. While that can be nice, I crave constant reading material, and of the cookery kind.

A few years ago my husband bought me my first copy of the Joy of Cooking, and I have read it. I'm not saying that I have skimmed it and looked at the recipes, no, I have read it, cover to cover. The bonus of this kind of nerdom is that I know more about cooking than the average bear. Though you have to admit that not many bears cook...

As I was going through my cookbooks I realized that I am missing two. One is on loan to a friend, and I will be asking for it back. That is the gourmet slow cooker book. Full of good ideas and terrific technique. The other one I can't find is called Urban Italian, and it's OK. My husband brought it to me from his work. It's not the best cookbook and is full of snobbery and high ideas about humble food. Though many of the recipes are quite good, the rest of the book isn't worth reading.

There are three things that make a cookbook worth having: 1. Good recipes, 2. Good technique, 3. Interesting side reading or information about cooking/food. I like lots of pictures in my cookbooks. My mother prefers her to have lots of words, but I am a very visual person, and I find pictures and diagrams to be very helpful when explaining a tricky technique. This comes to mind from recent cooking adventures.

I know I haven't been blogging very much, but I have been mostly making cookies and then learning the wonders of Asian Dumplings. I don't need to recopy recipes for things you can find all over the place (cookies) and once I master dumplings I'll blog about those. The reason I bring this up is because folding dumplings can be tricky and the technique needs to be very carefully explained and diagrammed. The book that my husband bought me for Christmas is called Asian Dumplings by Nguyen. For the last three days dinner has been dumplings, fried dumplings, pan fried dumplings, steamed dumplings, baked dumplings, hand rolled dough, store bought dough, cooked fillings, raw fillings, meat fillings, vegetarian fillings, vegan dumplings, carnivorous dumplings, well you get the idea.

The point being, this book made it into the 'Good Cook Book Stack' TM, patent pending and I have only had this cookbook for a week.

It has everything on the list: 1, 2, 3. And the pictures and diagrams are good.

Now I also have cookbooks that I don't like. I won't get rid of them, mostly because I haven't thought about it. When I go through the list I see four of the five books were given to me, and that makes it less easy to get rid of them. The reason these books are bad are for a couple of reasons: 1. They don't have good pictures. 2. The recipes are lacking in depth and character. 3. The general information given isn't very interesting. 4. These books are lacking in good technique.

Not to say that the unmentioned canning book (from my husband's work, I actually feel sorry for the author, I don't think it will go very far) has basic canning instructions that are avaliable on the internet and the back of the jars you buy in the store. Another one is from a large Swedish furniture company, it has good pictures but the recipes are so boring. They lack imagination and technique. And flavor.

On another note, I do have cookbooks I have never used that are quite good. The Nero Wolf Cookbook by Rex Stout, it is full of goodness, but it's not a light way to cook and many of the ingredients are hard to find. It's also involved, and full of cream and butter and goodness. It has excellent ideas and technique, and the anecdotes are from some of my favorite books. All in all a good read, I've also read that one too.

What I will give you here is a short list of cookbooks that I have and have deemed really good. It is not complete. Mostly I was thinking you would like a smattering of what I regularly work with. I will also give you directions on how to pick out a cookbook in the store. Unfortunately many of them are probably out of print.

The Joy of Cooking
The Best Ever Curry Cookbook by Bahjekar
Korean Table by Chung and Samuels
Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child
Complete Comfort Foods by Atkinson
I Love Crab Cakes by Tom Douglas
Concina Mexicana by Cadena
an uncovered old book published by Ball, a home guide to canning

How to pick out a good cook book, in a short amount of time.

Open the book and look through the pictures, there should be pictures of the ingredients, steps and techniques as well
as many of the finished products. The pictures should look authentic to the recipes.

Look at the recipes, are they really different, or are they variations of the same thing? Is there a good prevailing theme to the book or is it too broad to really be helpful? A basic cook book should have a few basic recipes in it, with lots of technique. An ethnic cookbook should give examples of the different dishes, with good clear technique without trying to give too many recipes at one time. It should also have enough recipes to help you make several meals without repetition. A very specific book, like one for cookies or dumplings should have several basic recipes a few variations and very good technique.

Look at the techniques, are they clear or do you see directions that say things like 'place the filling in the center, now fold over and into a triangle!' These directions appear in a book I own on how to fold samosas out of a giant rectangle. You should have a good idea of what to do by looking at the pictures and reading the directions.

Lastly you should use your common sense. I have never bought a cupcake book. I own the Joy of Cooking and the interwebs. You are wasting your money buying a hundred cake recipes, they are all basically the same, cake decorations tend to be very simple and can be found on Martha Stewart's website. You don't need a book to tell you how to make chocolate chip cookies, you need a book that tells you how to make things you don't know how to make. I guess if you are looking for a basic cookbook any major book would work. If you you're looking for something specific, make sure it is something that really merits a book on technique, the techniques are worth purchasing, and it's not information that is easily avaliable from free sources.