Baking with Chocolate and Banana

 

School is officially in full swing, and that means that my time in the kitchen is rather limited. But I have resolved that I will bake every week. I made some chocolate muffins on Monday, one of the few days I have actually not stayed late after classes. There is so much to do on campus that I hardly want to leave and go home.



 

 

I also made banana bread from a recipe in Carol Fenster's Wheat Free recipes and Menus. I don't like her recipes as much, but I thought the banana bread looked good, so I decided to try it.

 

I started out mixing the sugar, brown sugar and oil in a bowl.

 

Then I added the wet ingredients.

 

For the flour, I used the all- purpose blend from Bob's Red Mill. Then I mixed in the other dry ingredients.

 

I like to use bananas that are at the peak of their ripeness because they are the sweetest at this point. The recipe I used called for two bananas. I like to mash them with a fork on a small plate or saucer.

 

Then it was time to mix it all up. The key is to add a little bit of the dry ingredients, combine, and then add a bit of banana. Eventually everything will be added and the batter is ready to go in the oven.

 

Just like regular banana bread; although the bean flour may seem overpowering at first if you're not used to it. I think the bean flour makes a loaf that is far less crumbly than typical gluten- free bread, so I like to use it despite the acquired taste of goods baked with it.

 

And what is banana bread without tea? I made a cup of my favorite chai tea from Teavana and then cut the first slice of banana bread. I put the rest in the freezer, and when I want a slice, I thaw it in the fridge the night before and return the loaf to the freezer after I cut a slice.

And in case you're wondering what I did with the gluten-free bread, here is a picture of a lunch I recently brought to work. I slathered on some roasted red pepper hummus, added some bell peppers, and that was my sandwich. A few grapes made the perfect complement.

Me versus Bread

On Monday I decided to take on the ultimate gluten- free challenge: bread. If you have ever tried to bake anything gluten- free, you know that gluten- free flours are anything but wheat flour. You have to use a mix of flours, and the dough is sticky rather than firm. Needless to say, that can make bread making a challenge.

So armed with The Gluten Free Gourmet Bakes Bread, I set out to make one of Bette Hagman's recipes. I chose the egg- free bean bread. According to Bette Hagman, the bean breads rival those of wheat, and after baking, I agree with her. I used the Bob's Red Mill All Purpose Flour in place of her bean mix and added the dry ingredients. In conventional breads, you usually make a well in the flour and then insert the yeast, but Bette says to add the yeast in the dry ingredients. I also had to add some unflavored gelatin (so unfortunately this recipe is not vegan) and some almond meal for protein.

Since this bread is egg- free, I had to add some Ener- G egg replacer and mix it with water to replace the eggs. Otherwise this recipe was pretty simila

You can use a Kichen Aid mixer or something similar to "knead" the bread, but I prefer using a bread machine. My mom bought one a few years back that was recommended by the American Celiac Society. The key with using a bread machine is making sure that it is programmable because you don't need the rise 2 and there needs to be a crust control since gluten free bread behaves differently than wheat bread.

 



 My machine has me put in the liquids and then the dry ingredients. Then I closed the machine, set the timer, and let the machine do the work. During the kneading phase, I had to add water so that the dough had the consistency of cake batter. Otherwise, the machine took care of the rising and baking, and all I had to do was take the bread out when it was finished.

I thought the bread came out very well for my first time. I let it cool on a rack before giving it a taste.

 

 

The bread tasted really good. Bean flour is definitely an acquired taste, but once you get used to the taste, it tastes amazing. It was even better than the gluten- free bread I had when my mom and I went on a cruise for my senior Spring Break.

 

 

So far the score is Me 1, Bread 0.

Spaghetti Bolognese

When I was planning this week's meals, the one request that my dad made was pasta. I then typed in pasta in a Food Network search, and found this recipe. I had never made a ragu sauce before, so I was willing to try it. I did, however, make a few modifications to Anne Burrell's original recipe. Anne has the pasta mix in with the sauce and a bit of the pasta water, but since I was making two different pastas (gluten free and non-gluten free), I couldn't go that far and decided to simply serve the ragu separately as a sauce. The recipe also called for ground beef, but I find ground beef to be way too greasy, so I used ground turkey, which is leaner.

 

 

I found that the Vitamix works wonderful for pureeing vegetables and makes for a lot less mess to clean up. The puree bubbled almost as soon as I added it, and got the sauce off to a great start.



 

After about fifteen minutes, the water had evaporated from the puree, making it look more like a paste that I could easily push aside to make room for the turkey.

 

The turkey was easy to brown, and at first the puree remained the paste it was when I first added the meat. However, it soon blended in with the turkey fat, accounting for the slightly orange color you see.



 

The tomato paste went in after the turkey had cooked for about 20 minutes. I let the mixture cook for about 5 minutes.

 

Next, I added three cups of red wine. I have been told that you should cook with wine that you would drink, but as I am only eighteen I leave that business to my mom. I let the wine reduce by about half.

 

 

I added a bunch of thyme from my garden along with two bay leaves. Then I poured water to about one inch. Here I let the sauce begin simmering for 3 1/2 hours. As the sauce simmered, the liquid gradually began to reduce, so I kept adding water two cups at a time, letting it reduce, and then adding more water.

 

Here the sauce is halfway done simmering. You can see the water at the top that has been reducing.

When the sauce had about half and hour to go, I began cooking the pasta. I let the sauce simmer a little longer than 3 1/2 hours in order to allow the water to reduce more.

 

After the wheat pasta finished, I set the table. I always make the gluten-free pasta first so that the pot doesn't get contaminated by the wheat pasta. The wheat pasta is on the left and the gluten-free pasta is on the right. I actually was able to make the gluten-free pasta just right and not sticky like it normally gets. The sauce was great, and the pasta was so filling that I could only eat one helping. I guess I know what I'm having for lunch tomorrow.

Veggie Chili Over Sweet Potatoes

Well hello... it's been what six months since I last posted. Phew with all the college visits, AP coursework and GRADUATION (Woot! Woot!) it sure has been a hectic few months. But as of a week and a half ago I am officially graduated from high school and now I can't wait until September when I'll be headed to Oakland University to study Spanish and Psychology! And did I also mention that I got a job? I'm working as a lifeguard at a local swim club and it is turning out to be a blast. As it turns out one of the perks to being a lifeguard is that when club members have a party at the swim club and they end up with a lot of extra food that they don't want, guess who ends up with it? The lifeguards. This is how I ended up taking home what was left of a veggie tray (also because none of the other lifeguards wanted it) and today I made some white bean hummus to dip the veggies in as part of my lunch.

The real star of the show, however, is the veggie chili that I made and served over  mashed sweet potatoes. Back in February I attended a scholarship competition at Albion College, and the night
before the competition there was a special dinner for the competitors and their families, and they had a mashed potato bar. I wasn't able to eat the mashed potatoes (or sweet potatoes) because they had butter, but they had a vegetarian chili and sautéed vegetables, and that was what I had. After the competition, I ended up staying overnight with a student host and attending a preview event the next day, and one of the things that I was particularly impressed with about Albion was their food. They actually put out signs that state whether or not the food is made without any particular allergens, what exactly is in the food, and whether or not it is prepared with any allergens. I really hope that other colleges consider this model because of the increased amount of students with food allergies. I remember the two summers that I went to a debate camp at Michigan State and how difficult it was to find food that I could eat (most days I was living off the salad bar and Jell-O). I did notice that MSU started to phase in some labeling of dishes as gluten-free or containing dairy during the second time I was there, but I still believe that colleges need to do more to ensure that students' dietary needs are met.

With that said, I want to introduce my spinoff on the mashed potato bar at Albion. This afternoon I peeled and then boiled some sweet potatoes. I used a potato masher to mash them and thinned them out with some almond milk, and that's all I added to them. Later I did a Google search for vegetarian chili, and a recipe from Whole Foods popped up. I made this recipe with a few small changes. I didn't have an onion, so I used extra celery and a scallion. I didn't have a red bell pepper and only half of a green bell pepper so I used the green bell pepper and also used and orange and yellow bell pepper. I didn't have any chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (not to mention the most adobe sauces contain wheat) so I used a dash of chipotle powder that my mom got at Penzey's Spices. I also only had cumin seeds so I used a coffee grinder to grind the seeds myself. Other than that I followed the recipe to the letter. I put a scoop of  mashed sweet potatoes in the bottom of my bowl and then topped it with the veggie chili.