Sunday meal

This past sunday, we had planned to go to the Farmers' Market under the JFK Expressway* and then make some soup with our finds.  Although neither of those things happened, we did patronize the Baltimore Food Co-op^ and proceed to create a 3-course meal!  Here's what developed:

(A) Several-layer Spicy Bean & Cheese Dip
     Ingredients:

• Black Bean Refried Beans w/ Jalapenos^, 1 can  (can't remember the brand, sorry!)
• Salpica jalapeño jack queso dip^ 
• Green salsa^ (can't remember this brand either *pout*)
• Red salsa (whatever had been in my fridge for a while)
• Organic Valley shredded mozzeralla cheese^
• Hot peppers (mixed variety), chopped

• Garden of Eatin' Blue corn tortilla chips^

     Directions:
     1) Put beans in dish --> Microwave until lukewarm --> Stir
     2a) Place half of beans in glass pan/dish --> Add layer of queso
     2b) Layer some more beans --> Add layer of salsa(s)  (we did one side green and one red)
     2c) Put on more beans or queso if you want --> Cover with shredded cheese
     3) Microwave dish until the top layer of cheese is melted
     4) Sprinkle hot pepper mix on top, to taste
     5) Dunk chips in dip --> Bring to mouth and chew

(B) [Pre-]Battered Cod, with Roasted Cauliflower

     Ingredients:

• WaterfrontBISTRO Cod fillets [frozen]
• Local Cauliflower^, 1 bushel (? is that even the correct term ?)

     Directions:
     1) Remove greens from + chop cauliflower
     2a) Place cod fillets on oven-safe tray
     2b) Place cauliflower on same tray + season w/ salt and pepper
     3) Follow directions on cod box (essentially: bake at 425ºF for a while, flip fillets)

(C) Reeses-infused Brownies à la mode
     Ingredients:

• Reeses peanut butter cups  (we used the slightly-mini but not mini-mini size--because they were on post-Halloween sale--but any composition would work)
• Gluten Free Pantry Chocolate Truffle Brownie mix^
• Eggs, 2 large
• Butter, approx. 3/4 of a stick (but don't quote me on that)
• Haagen-dazs Coffee Ice Cream 

     Directions:
     1) Chop Reeses cups
     2) Follow directions on brownie mix box
     3a) Stop following directions on box when it says let cool fully.
     3b) Instead, let cool as long as you can handle, but brownies should still be warm.
     4) Top with ice cream


Everything was awesome, obviously.  And everything was gluten free!!  Even though the bean dip says 'spicy' and has a lot of hot peppers in it, the 4 of us who ate it did not find it that spicy (but keep in mind, we all like spicy food).  I also highly recommend the waterfrontBISTRO-brand cod fillets; I've also had their panko-crustred shrimp, but thought the cod cooked better.  Pretty sure I got both from Safeway.


*open Sundays 7am-noon, thru Dec. 18th
^ Items with this symbol were purchased at the Co-op

September Guest Blogger recipe: Gluten-Free Gnocchi

This entry is the first of a new feature on this blog: every month we will have a guest blogger post their own tried and tasty gluten-free recipe!

This month, Laura of Domestic Sundays and PFOGF shares her foray into homemade gf gnocchi. Enjoy; I know I did!

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Don't Eat Anything You Can't Pronounce - Gluten Free Gnocchi

Let's talk about my love for potatoes.  And pasta.  And therefore potato pasta: gnocchi.  Let's also talk about my love of money staying in my pocket.  GF gnocchi can go for $10 a pack -- yikes bikes!  Luckily the basic ingredients are cheap and simple: potatoes, (gf) flour, and oil.

I know what you're thinking, "Make my own pasta?!"  It turns out the hard part is getting your mouth around the word.  Say it with me: "knee-OOO-key".  Never fear - you can still make bangin' homemade pasta even if you pronounce it wrong.

*Adapted from Vegan with a Vengance

The ingredients:

• 2 pounds potatoes
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 T olive oil
• 1 1/2 to 3/4 cups gluten free flour (we used Bob's Red Mill All-Purpose)

Scrub your potatoes, poke a few holes in them, and put them in the microwave until they're soft.  Wait until they're cool enough to handle and peel them.  (We learned the hard way that you definitely want to peel them after they're cooked, lest you get weird lumps in your pasta.)

Take your peeled potatoes, salt, and oil and mash them together in a bowl until they're un-lumpy.  Throw a healthy amount of flour on a (clean, non-glutenous) surface and get kneeding.  You basically want to keep working flour into the dough until it isn't sticky and it's still stretchy.

Then you get to the fun part.  Make sure you still have plenty of flour around and start making little potato-pasta-balls-o-joy.  If you want to get technical, put each ball on your thumb and roll a fork over the top so that one side has an indentation from your thumb and the other side has ridges from the fork.  If you look hard enough in the picture, you'll see that you can even make them cubes.  Or dinosaurs.  The world is your gf-oyster.

If you're not going to cook all of your pasta right now, just toss them in some flour and put them (single layer) in a tupperware container in the freezer.  They'll keep for a couple months and you can throw them straight in boiling water to cook later.

For the pasta that you're cooking, start some water boiling.  You're going to cook the pasta in batches of 8-ish.  When you put them in the water they should sink.  When they float to the surface, cook them for 60 seconds and pull them out of the water with a slotted spoon.

Voila!  You made your own pasta.  Don't you feel accomplished.

Don't forget the necessary toppings -- like hot sauce.

xoxo Domestic Sundays

Homemade Hard Cider Recipe

Homemade Hard Cider aka the easiest thing you've never made
by Domestic Sundays
 
[Editor's note: This recipe will be featured in our upcoming Hard Cider taste-testing on Sunday, September 4th and the event's Review to follow.]

You need:

1. Cider: the fresher the better, pasteurized is fine but NO preservatives (they cramp your fermenting style). I found this (in its brew-ready glass jar) in the juice isle in Safeway. Turns out people don't stock up with organic cider when preparing for hurricanes.
2. Yeast: I use champagne yeast, but you can go for lager or something else entirely (for those in Baltimore, you can find this at Maryland Homebrew in Columbia)
3. Food for the yeast: I like molasses for its rich flavor, but any kind of sugar will do
4. A good (one-way) seal: you can get airlocks for cheap at homebrew stores (and the cork to go with them - a piece I've obviously neglected, as evidenced by my saran wrap), but in a pinch, a balloon stretched over the mouth with a small hole will do. The basic goal is to prevent explosions by letting your carbon dioxide out while keeping bacteria from getting in.

If you're feeling fancy:

• Spices: cinnamon sticks, cloves, fresh ginger root, allspice, lemon juice, cardamom…go crazy!
• A hydrometer: also available at your favorite homebrew store; chemistry nerds especially love these because a quick dip in your brew before and after will let you know your alcohol composition
• A funnel: makes life way easier
• Bleach: people claim sterilizing everything is good for brewing. I'm ambivalent.

What to do:

1) On the stove, dissolve your sugar in about 2 cups of your cider. The sugar is mainly there so you can make it taste nice and ferment it a bit more. I added about 1 cup of molasses for my gallon of cider and the hydrometer told me it'll be about 9% alcohol if all goes as planned. Throw your spices in too!

2) Read your yeast packet and follow its instructions. For mine, I had to add 1/5 of the packet (because I was only making 1 gallon) to some warmish cider and let it sit for 15 minutes.

3) Dump it all in your big jug.

4) Seal that bad boy.

5) Let it sit in a closet for 5-15 days.

6) Throw it in the fridge overnight.

7) Put in bottles or just dig in! If you don't drink it all right away, you probably want to keep bottles in the fridge and drink them within a few weeks.