Recipes – What The Fibro?!

Rustic fruit crostata

I hate fall. The only thing I hate more than fall, is winter. As long as I can see the beautiful, colorful foliage and blue sky I can tolerate the weather change that puts my body and brain into a weather shock. But as soon as it gets damp and cold and, hell no, it rains – I’m out. I’m out of this planet, please take me somewhere warm. Which is ironic, considering my recent lupus diagnosis and how avoiding sun is crucial in my condition. Nevertheless, I will still choose warm weather over cold rain even if I have to wrap myself in thick velvet curtain, head to toe, and stay away from the sun.

But back to fall. One of the few positive things about this horrible time (yes, I really hate fall that much) is the smell of a hot earl grey tea with lemon and honey and a fresh apple pie. Or basically anything with apples, as long as it doesn’t have a ton of cinnamon and sugar. I’m having really hard times liking American baked goods with apples, since in 99% of cases they are too sweet and have waaayyy too much cinnamon. It’s is supposed to bring out what’s best in apples, not overpower it completely. I find American cooking too sweet in general, but to each their own, I’m sure there are plenty of people loving it. When it comes to apple baked goods my math is simple: lots of apples (also mixed with other fruit) + a reasonable amount of sugar + dash of cinnamon. Less is more in this case.

Since my Celiac diagnose I obviously have been having hard time replacing my favorite goodies, whether from a store, or home made. I’ll never make a puffy and flaky apple turnover, or a deliciously soft apple strudel ever again. Yes, I can make those, just not the same way and the results will be quite different. But I’m not giving up. I’m actually determined enough to try and make a gluten free panettone cake this Christmas – call me crazy! So, long story short, this summer I came up with an idea for a gluten free crostatta and once again was proven wrong, because a gluten free baked goodie can be tasty!

This said crostata, being gluten free, will be a little tricky to shape and have its edges folded, but don’t worry – do your best and enjoy it, that’s enough.

Please, take note I recommend using vinyl gloves. They are crucial here, because a GF dough always sticks to your hands and is impossible to either roll or shape. Latex gloves won’t cut it, the dough will stick to those as well.

WHAT YOU NEED:

DOUGH

1 cup GF Bob’s Red Mill 1 to 1 Baking Flour
1/2 cup GF Bob’s Red Mill Oat Flour
2 Tbsp brown sugar
3/4 tsp salt
10 Tbsp chilled, unsalted butter, thinly sliced
1/2 cup ice water
vinyl gloves

FRUIT FILLING

1 ripe peach
1 ripe pear
1 medium sized apple (I prefer Granny Smith for baking)
6 ripe prunes or other plums – if using big plums, 4 will be enough
bunch of blueberries (optional)
1/2 cup brown sugar + 1 Tbsp
2 Tbsp GF Bob’s Red Mill oat flour
1 Tbsp unsalted butter, sliced
egg white, lightly beaten
dash of cinnamon

HOW TO:

Using food processor, process flours, sugar and salt for about 10-20 sec. Put butter slices into the mixture and pulse until broken in pea-sized pieces, about 8 times. Transfer to a large bowl and break up any bigger chunks with your fingers.
Sprinkle ice water over mixture and stir using a spatula until combined and no dry pieces are left. Transfer onto a counter and, using vinyl gloves, gently knead and shape into a 6″-wide disk. Cover with a plastic wrap and put in the fridge for at least 1h (and up to 2 days).
Preheat the oven to 400°F. Line you baking sheet with parchment, transfer the dough disk onto the sheet and, using vinyl gloves again, form it with your hands into a 16″ circle.
Halve plums and peaches remove pits, roughly slice.
Peel the apple and pear and thinly slice, removing cores.
In a large bowl, toss the fruit with flour, 1/2 cup sugar and salt and mix gently until fruit is evenly coated.
Arrange fruit on the dough, leaving 1″ border clean.
As carefully as possible, try to fold the edges. You won’t be able to overlap them, simply because GF dough doesn’t work this way. Just do your best to create some kind of edge, to keep the fruit from falling out.
Sprinkle the fruit with diced butter, brush with egg white and sprinkle with remaining 1 Tbsp of sugar and cinnamon.
Transfer crostatta into the preheated oven and immediately reduce heat to 375°F. Bake until fruit filling is bubbly and crust is golden brown, 45-50 minutes.

Let cool on baking sheet for about an hour before serving. Serve warm or at room temp.

Enjoy!

Very berry dumplings

strawberry-799597_1920 Summertime. Berries! This is my own recipe and I’m going to say no more except for the fact it doesn’t call for snails 😉 Here it is:

WHAT YOU NEED:

1.5 cup cooked white rice
200 g white rice flour
80g oat flour
80g ground golden flax seed
2 cups of strawberries and blueberries mixed together (strawberries should be sliced or chopped). My personal favorite are with plums, but apples would work as well
1 Tbsp sugar
big pot of boiling water

HOW TO:

mix the flours with flax seed and sugar
add hot cooked rice and, using a hand blender, mix it to create a consistent dough that will be elastic but not sticky. Tip: use corn or potato starch, if you feel like you need to add more flour and use gloves for the entire process of kneading and stuffing dumplings
take off pieces of dough, and creating a hole, stuff it with fruit, then close it, forming a ball. Remember not to put too much or the dumpling won’t close and will fall apart
bring water to boil and put dumplings in, about 6-8 at a time and stir
they’re ready when they have popped to the surface

Serve with sour cream mixed with a little bit of sugar and some fresh fruit. Enjoy!

Ode to simple foods

It’s the simple foods that make me (us?) happy – sandwiches, scrambled/fried eggs, pizza, guacamole. The simpler the better. But simple doesn’t mean bad quality. It means few ingredients, that combined together, make amazing food. I’ve never been a fan of the sophisticated, posh kind of restaurants and the dishes they serve – like one grilled shrimp with a piece of lettuce for $50. I’m not saying it’s not any good. But it’s not for me. I like stuffing myself to the point where I can’t move and I would have to eat 20 shrimp at least – that makes it $1000! Holy crap! 😀 And, btw, I hate shrimp and all the sea food, except fish – I could eat fish all week long.

As you know, I’m Polish and today is about my favorite simple Polish food – PIEROGI! And yes, it’s pierogi, not pierogies. Pierogi is already plural, since one dumpling is called ‘pieróg’. Now, here’s a tricky part – when I say simple, I mean it ingredients wise, meaning it doesn’t require a lot of them. But pierogi are not simple when it comes to time. They’re definitely time consuming and usually will take up to 3h to get everything ready, preparing the stuffing included.

Had I been writing this piece before March this year, I would have given you a recipe for the most delicious dough you could ever imagine. Velvety, soft, elastic and simply melting in your mouth. It’s like eating clouds, no joke here! But since I’ve found out I have celiac, I had to give up all my favorite foods, that happen to be full of gluten and learn how to live without them or substitute them with something else, not always successfully. I’ve tried few gluten free dough recipes and I haven’t found my favorite one yet. But the one I’m writing about today is the best so far. That doesn’t mean it’s THE best of all. Only best so far. I’m not discouraging you, you should still try it.. But I’m still looking for a perfect recipe, that will come out at least half as good as my original recipe. Today’s recipe is not completely mine – I’ve used someone else’s idea and modified it to my liking. The key ingredient in the dough is millet, as it provides glue to the whole structure, so if you don’t like millet, you might not like the dough – fair warning. All ingredients used here are gluten free.

Ready??? Here we go!

What you need:

DOUGH

200g white rice flour

80g potato starch

80g oat flour

100g uncooked millet

80g ground flax seed (I used the gold one)

400ml hot water

3 Tbsp of oil

1 tsp salt

STUFFING

2lb potatoes boiled and mashed

1.5lb farmer’s cheese

1 big Vidalia onion

salt and pepper

*for a non vegetarian version you can also add chopped and fried pieces of bacon

HOW TO:

combine potatoes with farmer’s cheese and mix well
chop the onion and fry until golden brown, then add to the potato and cheese mix
add salt and pepper to taste

cook millet according to the instruction on the package. The proportions should be 2 units of water to 1 unit of millet. 100g is about a half a cup of millet, so use 1 cup of water to cook it
in a bowl mix flours with flax seed. Add oil, salt, hot water and stir. Add cooked millet and use a hand blender to get a nice, consistent dough. Leave it in the bowl for 5 min to rest
sprinkle potato/corn starch on the surface where you’ll be kneading the dough. Take the dough out of the bowl and cover with the starch first, then start kneading and do so for about 2 minutes, adding more starch if needed. Dough should be elastic but not sticky.
using a rolling pin, create a not too thin circle
using a pint glass, or any other glass with a big opening, start cutting circles, trying to cut as close to each other as possible. Make sure to lift it from the cutting surface as soon as possible to avoid sticking.
put about a tsp equivalent of the stuffing in the middle of each circle and start forming them into pierogi shape
Meanwhile prepare a big pot of boiling water, put some salt in and some oil
put prepared pierogi in boiling water, around 12 at a time, to avoid sticking (again). They will be ready when they come out to the surface.

Serve with chopped onions, fried to golden brown and a dollop of sour cream as well as salt and pepper to taste. Personally, I prefer these gluten free pierogi the next day, when you can fry them in a pan or even deep fry, since the millet dough tastes better this way.

Again, this is a gluten free recipe, so you might not be impressed with the results. But if you don’t have to be on a GF diet, go for the original recipe, it’s so worth it, I cannot even express it! I can provide one, if anyone’s interested.

What?! Cold beet soup?

DSCN5581

Summertime calls for summer meals – hot soups and stews retire until late fall, when you can get the best out of them. The soup I have for you today might come as a shocker if you’re not Eastern European. Or if you don’t know what borscht (barszcz) is. If you do, and more over if you like it, you’re one step closer to liking this one. I would lie if I said it was love at first sight. Na-ah. As much as I loved hot borscht made by my grandma (served in a bowl with chopped boiled potatoes), I couldn’t stand a thought of swallowing a cold version of this soup. Boy, was I wrong all those years! They say people’s taste changes a couple of times throughout their lives and I guess my appetite for a cold beet soup had to wait to come out of its closet. Give it a try, really. If you don’t like it, no one is twisting your arm to continue eating it. But you might be missing out on one of the most pleasant culinary experiences of your life, if you at least don’t try.

This recipe calls for young beets, with all their leaves. You won’t be able to recreate this soup once the summer is over, since it just won’t taste the same and old beets leaves are not quite as appetizing as the young ones 😉

What you need:

2 bunches of young beets with leaves
vegetable bullion (depending on the size of your pot, anywhere from 1.5 -2.5lb). I use Swanson, since they have a pure vegetarian and gluten free option
lemon juice – to taste, at least out of 1/2 a lemon, but shouldn’t be more than 1 whole lemon
3-5 small cucumbers – you might want to use the small pickling ones, those are the best match here. But honestly, any fresh, green cucumber will do just perfectly. If you use one of the big guys, 1 will be more than enough
fresh herbs: chives and dill – half a bunch of each
radishes – 1 bunch
2lb (or 32oz, or 1 l) natural plain yogurt (not the Greek or Bulgarian one)- I use whole fat but you can use whichever you want. You can replace yogurt with kefir or mix it half/half, but the soup will have a more tangy flavor
2 small or 1 large pressed garlic clove
if you’re adventurous, make sure you have few hard boiled eggs on hand. Later I’ll tell you what for
salt and fresh ground pepper to taste
large size pot

How to:

Wash the beets with their leaves thoroughly, making sure to remove any bad ones. Chop finely
Put them into a pot and cover with bullion. You only need enough to cover the beets
Cook until soft – depending on how young the beets really are, this might take anywhere from 15 to 30 min
When beets are cooked, remove from the stove and set aside to cool off. Don’t pour out the liquid!
Meanwhile, peel and chop or shred your cucumbers. Do the same with radishes and herbs
Once the beets have cooled off, add the cucumbers, radishes, herbs and lemon juice
Add yogurt
Add salt and pepper to taste and put in the fridge for at least 2h

When the soup has chilled long enough, here’s when the hard boiled eggs come handy – simply halve or quarter them and place on op of your soup. Enjoy!

P.S. My picture is missing the eggs, since I ate my portion before I remembered to take pictures :), but I always eat mine with hard boiled eggs.

P.S.2 You will fall in love with this soup’s color!

My Own Gluten Free Olives&Feta bread

April 30th marked 7 years since I’ve left Poland and moved to New York. I had been here few times before the move, so I mostly knew what to expect. I wasn’t culturally shocked, even though it was very different. I knew the specifics of this country and what they would bring. 7 years in and I’m still getting used to a lot of things but one of the most favorite things in my life – Polish bread, will never find its replacement here. I am truly sorry to say that, but the typical American bread is simply terrible. The idea of wrapping a gummy-like miniature slices of bread in plastic is way beyond my comprehension. And the never-ending list of ingredients in those, and all the different types of sugars – goodness gracious! Why would you need honey, molasses, cane sugar and high fructose corn syrup, all in one piece of bread? The only amount of sugar bread requires is less than a teaspoon, to help the yeast rise. That’s all. This isn’t supposed to be a cake. It’s bread, a simple piece of dough made of as few ingredients as possible – flour, water, yeast, salt, pinch of sugar. Seeds or spices as you wish, when you make special breads.

But I’m not here to criticize. It was crucial though, to mention it, since that was the reason I started my bread making journey all those years ago. White breads, dark breads, yeast breads, no-yeast breads, rolls, baguettes, you name it. My first bread was the consistency of a brick and you could simply commit few murders with it – lethal weapon, I’m telling you…

For no-yeast breads I would make my own starters and failed miserably many times. Once I made a bread starter with addition of few green grapes, as I had read it was a great way to add some bacteria cultures to the starter to ferment better. For the next few days my husband and I couldn’t figure out the source of a foul stench of a moldy cheese left in the desert for a week. It smelled like death and it followed us wherever we went. Well, I guess whoever came with the grape adding idea didn’t take into their consideration the NY climate in the summer. Cause it’s simply a sauna. Take the hottest shower you can imagine, with closed bathroom door and no vent. And that’s what the summer feels like here (reason why I’m dreading visiting Florida, since it’s even worse there). So we bid farewell to the nose cringing grape starter and I had to start from scratch. I had many successes throughout the years, friends would ask me to make breads and rolls for their parties. I also had my share of terrible breads, but hey, that’s how you learn.

As my luck would have it though, suffering for years and not ever being diagnosed, I finally came face to face with celiac disease diagnosis. And it was only 6 weeks ago. My world collapsed. Just like I love potatoes, I love bread as much and I have had gluten free breads before and despised them with all my heart (and all my insides). I got so lost, the first time I stood in front of the Gluten Free isle in the supermarket. I got a panic attack, a real one – the type of panic attack where you can’t sit down in the middle of a store to wind down, so I had to call my husband and have him talk me through it so I could calm down. I’ve tried few store breads so far and I don’t wish to spend money on any more right now, hence I decided to start making them. I’ve made few, mostly successful ones, to my surprise. The only problem with those breads however is that they dry up extremely fast and taste best still warm from the oven. It’s a real challenge to make a homemade gluten free bread that will last for days without tasting like cardboard and crumbling all over the place. I’m still working on mastering that, but this particular bread is pretty close to ideal. Here it is, My Own Gluten Free Olive&Feat Bread:

What you need:

I mostly use Bob’s Red Mill flours and will refer to them here as BRM, to keep it shorter

100g BRM Gluten Free oat flour
175g BRM Gluten Free 1:1 baking flour
75g BRM Gluten Free white rice flour
25g BRM Gluten Free brown rice flour
50g BRM Gluten Free Sorghum flour
75g BRM All Purpose Gluten Free baking flour
3tsp BRM Xantham gum
13g dry active yeast (not the quick rise)
550ml warm water
pinch of sugar
1tsp salt – at least but some of you might want more. Gluten Free breads tend to be a little plain in taste, so adding too much sugar with not enough salt effects in a blend tasting bread. I use the pink Himalayan salt, which is less salty than the regular sea salt, so I have to add a bit more. You can always taste the batter beforehand and see if it’s salty enough.
Olives – I use kalamata and the big green ones. For this particular bread I used about 8 kalamata olives and 8 green ones, all halved
Feta cheese (anywhere between 0.20-0.40lb ) – I like Bulgarian or French, since they have a subtle flavor and are very creamy and simply delicious. I can’t stand the flavor of Greek or NY style feta – it just stinks too much and tastes like a rubber manure. Sorry!

Of course, how much feta or olives you’d like to use is up to you, just remember to not overpower the bread with their flavor.

How to:

Preheat oven to 445°F
Grease the loaf pan with a gluten free type of cooking spray, or light olive oil and dust with a gluten free flour
Activate yeast in 50ml of warm water and a pinch of sugar – gently stir together and let sit until it foams
Mix all the flour and salt
Add yeast mixture
Add the remaining 500ml of water
Using a wooden spatula or hands, or even a fork, mix together until fully blended and let sit under cover for about 20 min. I use a bowl with a lid but if you don’t have one, cover with plastic wrap
After 20 min uncover the bowl and stir the batter thoroughly. Add olives and feta. Pour into the pan and let sit for another 10-15 min

It’s crucial that you don’t’ let this bread rise for too long. It will cause cracking and will simply destroy the structure, causing bread to fall apart. Gluten free breads are nothing like the ones with gluten and that’s the first lesson you need to learn.

The batter shouldn’t be liquidy. It should have a quite firm consistency but still be pourable and gooey – something like cookie dough I guess.

If, after pouring the batter into the pan it has filled the entire pan already, put it straight in the oven – and that’s ok, it will come out just right 🙂

Bake the bread for 50-60min. Mine are always ready after 50 min, but it depends on the oven and overall rising conditions. To check if the bread is ready, don’t poke it with a skewer, since it’s a moist bread and will give you a false reading. Take it out of the pan, flip upside down and tap its bottom with your fingers. If you hear a hollow sound, the bread is ready! 🙂 If not, put back into the pan and in the oven and bake for additional 10-15 min, checking again half way through.

Take out of the pan immediately and cool on a cooling rack. It’s best to give it at least 3h to cool down before slicing. I know it will be hard to resist the temptation, but if you cut it too soon, you will cause it to crack and that means crumbling.

Enjoy!

BAKED POTATO PEELS

I love potatoes. I live and breathe potatoes. If potatoes were not gluten free, I would die out of misery for not being able to eat them. And of hunger of course. See, I come from the land of potatoes. To be honest, I’m pretty sure the name of my country, Poland, is short for Potato Land. It must be!

Now, who doesn’t like potato chips (besides my mom, who I think might be the only person in the world)? They’re one of my weaknesses, although I try to buy the ‘healthier’ ones. I don’t eat them very often but when I do, it’s like one of those Dos Equis beer commercials: I don’t always eat potato chips, but when I do, I make sure I stuff myself sick. Having that in mind, I recently came across a recipe I immediately fell in love and adjusted to my own liking and it simply is potato peels recycling in its purest form.

What you need:

peels from previously washed and brushed potatoes – depending on how many people you’re including, but 5 medium ones is minimum to be a semi-satisfactory snack for 2
EVOO (extra virgin olive oil)
salt
pepper
garlic/herbs – optional

How to:

Preheat oven to 430°F
Put peels in a bowl and cover them generously with EVOO
Add salt and pepper and mix all together
Add herbs and pressed garlic, if you’d like to. You can crush the garlic beforehand and mix with olive and a little bit of lemon zest/juice for more sophisticated flavor
Arrange peels on a baking pan lined with baking paper, preferably skins down
Bake for about 12-15minutes for medium crispness and up to 20-25 for crispier chips. Keep observing them in the oven, since ovens vary and one will need more/less time than another.
Take them out, garnish with fresh chopped parsley/basil/rosemary or whatever you think is suitable. Or just eat them plain, with salt and pepper. And don’t forget to enjoy!