.

An important part of this dish is the texture: it should be smooth, almost like a gravy. So to that end, we’re going to do something a little special and actually blend this chopped onion into a fine pulp. Onions contain a fair amount of water, so you ought to be able to do this in a regular blender if you want.

.

Next, pour the onion puree into a large, deep pan and start sauteeing it gently. You can add a little oil if you want, but you may find it’s not necessary since we’ve gone and released all the liquid from the onion already. Incidentally, this trick will work for a wide variety of dishes if your kids don’t like onions.

.

Add in one Tablespoon of minced ginger…

.

1/4 teaspoon of cumin…

.

and 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon.

.

While your onion paste is cooking, chop up 2 medium tomatoes, then dump the whole cutting board’s worth into the pan, seeds and all.

.

Turn the heat up a bit and stir frequently for 10-15 minutes. The goal is for the tomatoes to disintegrate completely. Also toss in 1 teaspoon of McCormick garam masala when you get a second. Don’t be thrown off by the foreign name; it’s a common spice blend and you’ll easily find it in your grocery store. But like all blends, cheapo-brands may try to cut it with plain flour, so be careful. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

.

Stirring, stirring, stirring. This is a good cooking task to let a kid help out with, because it’s so shallow they’ll have a really hard time sloshing any over the side of the pan.

.

Okay, we got the “Indian” part, now for the “Kidney Bean” part. You can use two cans of drained and rinsed beans, or go all out and cook your own (starting with 2 cups of dry beans.) If you use canned, double-check that they contain nothing but beans, water, and salt. Most brands are going to be plain like this, but every once in awhile you’ll find one that includes “natural flavors,” or unidentified seasonings… all sorts of potentially-glutenous crap. Why? Beats me. Just sell us beans, for Pete’s sake.

.

Finally, add in roughly 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Canned beans will already have a certain amount of salt added, so go with your tastebuds on this one. It’s a very rough estimate.

You can serve this as a main dish with rice as is traditional, or make it a fantastic side. It’s especially good as a pot luck dish, if you ever find yourself attending that sort of thing.

.

Happy Eating!

.

Indian Kidney Beans (Rajma)

1 onion
1 Tbs minced ginger
1/4 tsp cumin
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp McCormick garam masala
2 tomatoes
2 cans (about 4 cups) cooked kidney beans
1/2 tsp salt

Of course, I eventually learned the error of my ways, under identical circumstances each time: I got invited on a date that involved said international cuisine, and I decided I liked the guy enough to suffer silently through a meal of torture. Come to find out, in both cases the food was much better than the gentleman after all! But that’s another story.

.

The point is, I defected to the other side, and became a staunch sushi advocate. And it turns out, sushi rolls are surprisingly easy to make at home. First, of course, you’re going to want to start a batch of sushi rice (minus the wakame, in this case.) While that cooks, prepare your other ingredients for assembly. I’m making a modified California roll, so we’ll need a cucumber, peeled and cut into long thin slices.

.

Make sure you cut the seeds off of each section, because nobody likes cucumber seeds.

.

Also, we’ll need a bunch of avocado slices. (See this post if you need a rundown on how to properly cut up an avocado.)

.

Now, traditionally, California rolls use “krab,” a substance that makes both foodies and English teachers cringe in unison. Those brightly-colored, perfectly straight sticks are not in fact made of crab at all, and more importantly, they are made of gluten. If you’re lucky enough to have a kid who will eat sushi, you must remember that all crab on a sushi restaurant menu is probably going to be the fake kind, even if they spell it like the real thing. But if you look in the right place in your grocery store, you will probably be able to find real, actual crab meat, and that’s something we can use.

.

This is a sheet of nori, or seaweed paper. You can find it at an Asian market if your grocery store doesn’t carry any, but check your ethnic foods aisle first, you might be surprised. It has a shiny side and a bumpy side, and the shiny side goes face down.

.

Spread out a layer of your sushi rice on top of the nori, leaving only a small space around the edge. The rice will be very sticky, so it’s easiest to do this with the back of a wet fork. You can also tell that I was too impatient and started spreading the rice on while it was still hot, thus partially steaming and shriveling my seaweed paper. Try to let it cool as much as you can. Then, line up your inner ingredients along the bottom edge.

.

The bamboo mat is an essential piece of equipment for this, by the way. If you try it barehanded, your fingers are guaranteed to stick to everything and tear the delicate paper to pieces. Also, the proper technique would be to use both hands to make sure you’re rolling it as tightly and evenly as possible, but a photography assistant is just a teensy smidge out of my price range, so you’ll have to bear with me. (Truth be told, if I were filthy rich I’d hire a real sushi chef instead and still take the pictures myself.)

.

As you inch forward, squeezing the roll tightly the whole way, peel the mat away from the front edge so it doesn’t actually get wrapped into the roll. I wouldn’t normally be doing this with one awkwardly stretched index finger, but again with the one-handed photography thing. Incidentally, there’s this pervasive idea on the internet that you should put a layer of plastic wrap on top of your bamboo mat to keep it clean. I’m here to tell you that’s ridiculous, and it just gets in the way. Use the bamboo mat the same way the Japanese have been using it for thousands of years, and wash it when you’re done; it’s not that hard.

.

Slice your roll with a very sharp, wet knife, and voila! (Sorry for the linguistic insensitivity, but I don’t know how the Japanese would say it.) You should get 3-4 rolls out of this quantity of rice, depending on how full you stuff them with other things. I ended up with a little bit of cucumber and a ton of crab leftover, but I’m sure I can find a use for the crab later in the week. And if we’re lucky, it’ll turn out to be something worth documenting and I’ll share it with you!

.

Happy Eating!

.

Sushi Rolls

1 batch of sushi rice
1 cucumber
1 avocado
1/2 cup 100% crab meat (not krab stick)
3-4 sheets of nori

.

All of which is to say, your onions need not be quite so thoroughly sauteed as mine are here. If you’ve got the luxury of leaving your diced onion on the lowest heat setting for upwards of 20 minutes (or if you, too, have bleeding offspring to attend to,) then have at it. But normally, you’d just want to sautee this onion in a little olive oil until it’s just starting to turn translucent, nothing major.

.

Meanwhile, warm up 3 1/4 cups of gluten-free chicken broth in a small pot. Pacific Foods is one safe brand. Just keep it at a simmer until we’re ready to use it. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change ingredients without warning. Always check your labels!]

.

After your onions get to somewhere between translucent and sauteed-to-death, add 1 teaspoon each of basil, parsley, and minced garlic. (That’s roughly two cloves for those of you who do your garlic the real way.)

.

Also, dump in an 8-ounce container of sliced mushrooms…

.

…And 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt.

.

While the mushrooms start to soften, measure out 1 1/2 cups of arborio rice. As you can see, my funny little measuring cup indicates this is approximately 16,000 grains of rice. The other side is even funnier, with things like “volume of the brain of a Tyrannosaurus Rex.” I don’t get to use it as often as I’d like because it has a hairline crack in the bottom and is no good for liquids, but I love it just the same.

.

Now, add 3 Tablespoons of oil to the pot. Because we’re putting in so much, I’m actually using grapeseed oil here, because it’s got a milder flavor than olive oil. Any oil will do, really, but a healthier oil is always preferable to basic cooking oil.

.

Now pour in your arborio rice, and stir everything thoroughly. This species of rice is what makes a risotto a risotto, by the way. Could you make this recipe with another kind of rice? Yes, but then it would be a rice casserole instead of a risotto, and that doesn’t sound nearly as impressive. If you do substitute, you’ll definitely want to use a short-grain, stickier rice rather than a long-grain dry rice.

.

Now, there is a type of chef out there who will tell you that in fact, to properly make risotto, you have to add the boiling liquid a tiny bit at a time, and stir quickly and constantly for as much as 45 minutes straight to get it all absorbed. But I firmly believe that this type of chef has only fooled himself into believing that his food tastes better just because he worked harder for it. Me, I can tell that it tastes just as good this way.

The reason they say you have to do all that stirring is that arborio rice is so soft, if you throw it in a rice cooker it will just congeal into one large mass. What we’re doing here with the oil is similar to what we do with Mexican Rice: we’re sealing each grain of rice by cooking it in hot oil before boiling it. With regular rice, this makes each grain dry and distinct. With arborio rice, this gets it to a sticky-but-separable consistency, without all the stirring.

.

After the oil in the pan has been mosty absorbed, pour in your chicken broth, which should still be happily simmering away in your side pot.

.

You can also toss in about one cup of frozen peas if you want. I love peas, so I always want to add them to things.

.

Put on the lid, and place the whole thing in a 350-degree oven for 30 minutes. If you don’t have any ovensafe cookware, you can also do everything up to this point in a normal pot, and then pour the whole mixture into a 9×13 glass baking dish and cover it with foil.

.

Doesn’t that just look so warm and inviting? If you can’t convince your family that a meatless item counts a main dish, you can also place some boneless chicken pieces right on top of the whole thing before putting it in the oven, and it becomes that great family classic, chicken and rice casserole. But you and I will know it’s really a risotto.

.

Happy Eating!

.

Easy Mushroom Risotto (aka Chicken and Rice Casserole)

3 1/4 cups GF chicken broth
1 medium onion
1 Tbs olive oil
1 tsp parsley
1 tsp basil
2 cloves minced garlic
8 oz. sliced mushrooms
1 1/2 tsp salt
3 Tbs grapeseed oil
1 1/2 cups arborio rice
1 cup frozen peas
boneless chicken pieces (optional)

You can get sweet rice (also sometimes called “sticky rice”) at Asian markets, but to be honest, I’ve never been able to taste the difference, myself. You could make this with any short-grain rice and it would work just fine.

Put one cup of it in your rice cooker, along with 1 and 3/4 cups of water. If you are using sweet rice, they say you should let it soak at room temperature for at least 20 minutes. I usually do, but only because I’m busy getting other stuff ready at the time.

This can of coconut milk was more separated than most. Yuck.

I had to actually dump the whole thing into a separate bowl to get it reincorporated without making a giant mess. But eventually it started looking like coconut milk again.

Now, pour 1/2 cup (or 1/4 of the can) of coconut milk into the rice pot, and set the remainder aside for a minute. Add 1 Tablespoon of brown sugar…

And 1/4 teaspoon of salt. Give everything a good stir, and begin cooking the rice.

Meanwhile, pour the rest of the coconut milk into a small saucepan on the stove.

Add 1/4 cup of sugar. I prefer brown sugar, but it does give the final sauce a slight beige color, so if you think your kids would prefer something frosty white, just use cane sugar instead. Useful tip: if your brown sugar has become hard as a rock in the container, microwave it for 10 seconds at a time, and it will loosen right up.

Also add 1 teaspoon of vanilla. Liquid vanilla extract is one of those things that might have gluten in it, because it’s distilled with alcohol and the manufacturer might use a grain alcohol. So you can hunt down a safe brand, or use this powdered vanilla that says gluten-free right on the bottle. Either way, it’s still one teaspoon.

While the sauce is warming, prepare your mango. I’m using a bag of frozen mango pieces, but you could certainly cut up a fresh mango or two if you want. But did you know that at certain times of the year, frozen fruits and vegetables can actually have more nutrients than fresh? That’s because when you’re buying something like mangos out of season, they’re most likely traveling to your store from a place where they are in season, like South America. The farmers know that the produce is going to take 2-3 weeks to get to its destination, so they pick the fruit early, letting it ripen on the trip over so it’s just right by the time it gets to you. But ripening on a truck is not the same as ripening on the vine; it’s not getting any additional nutrients as it develops, it’s really just dying slowly. If the fruit is destined to be frozen, however, the farmers leave it on the vine until it’s perfectly ripe, then pick it and freeze it immediately. Some nutrients are lost in the freezing process, but not as many as are lost by picking the food so many weeks early. Moral of the story: buying frozen fruits and veggies isn’t unhealthy, and might even be healthier than fresh depending on the food and the time of year. (Canned, however, is never going to be the best option.)

Okay, enough with the nutrition lesson. Let’s get back to our dessert that’s loaded with carbs and sugar, shall we? Whisk your sauce gently with a fork to make sure all the sugar is dissolved. You want the sauce to be warm, but try to avoid boiling it, otherwise all that sugar will start to carmelize.

Because we don’t want the coconut milk to reduce by boiling, we’ll need to thicken it just a bit with 2 teaspoons of corn starch (or potato starch, or arrowroot) dissolved into 1 Tablespoon of water. Once the corn starch is totally dissolved in the water, then it’s safe to add it to the pot without fear of lumps. Make sure to keep stirring as it thickens.

Round about this time, your rice should be done cooking. Gently fold in your mango pieces. (If you started with frozen, you will want them to be thawed before you do this.)

Serve with frosting — er, I mean, coconut sauce drizzled on top. Seriously, this stuff is sweet enough to put you into diabetic shock. But that doesn’t stop me from putting on way more than a drizzle, if you know what I mean. It’s just so delicious! You could also make this with bananas, or even pineapple, if your kids aren’t into mangos.

Happy Eating!

Mango Sweet Rice

1 cup sweet (or short-grain) rice
1 3/4 cups water
1 can coconut milk
1 TBS brown sugar
1/4 tsp salt

1-2 mangos
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2 tsp cornstarch

But wait, not yet! Save your caresses for when the meat is cooked, please. First, we need to build up a little tension, am I right? You can use anywhere from 1 to 4 chicken breasts for this, depending on how much meat you want in the final product, but always use the same amount of marinade, because it’s an integral part of the sauce later and you don’t want to throw the balance off. So start with one Tablespoon of sugar…

And 2 Tablespoons of Thai Kitchen fish sauce. This brand is common enough that you will probably be able to find it in your normal grocery store, and they’re generally really good about not hiding gluten in their various Asian food products. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change recipes without warning. Always check your labels!]

Add 1 Tablespoon of minced garlic, and 1 teaspoon of black pepper. Stir everything together thoroughly, cover the bowl, and stick it in the refrigerator for whatever length of time fits your dinner schedule. If that happens to be first thing in the morning before you leave the house, or no more than 10 minutes before you start cooking the rest of the meal, it’s all good.

Cut up about 1 lb. of smallish potatoes (I think I used 5 of them) into bite-size chunks. I leave the peels on, but you don’t have to if you don’t want to. I’d like to claim I do it because the peels are the healthiest part, but really it’s just because I’m lazy.

Chop an onion into similar-sized pieces (or smaller, if your kids don’t like onions and you’re hoping they’ll accidentally get a few on their fork without noticing.)

Heat up one or two tablespoons of olive oil in a large soup pot, and dump in the potatoes, onions, and a chopped up red bell pepper as well. Truth be told, that’s actually 2 red bell peppers in mine, because I adore red bell peppers (but I absolutely loathe the green ones; go figure.) You’ve got to go with your gut on how many are right for you. Once you’ve settled that conundrum, sautee everything over moderately high heat for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently.

Then pour in your chicken along with all the marinade. Stir rapidly until the outside of the chicken is opaque but it’s not cooked all the way through.

Now for the most important part — the love potion, if you will. (Did I just type that? I’m really having second thoughts about this whole “romance” metaphor I’ve got going on…) Thai Kitchen Green Curry Paste. It comes in a tiny jar, but you only need 1 Tablespoon of it at a time. Normally I’d give you an idea of what’s in it in case you want to approximate, but there’s really no substitute for this complex combination of flavors. Mix it into your pot and cook for one minute, just enough to get the fragrance going.

Now, add one can of coconut milk. Make sure you stir inside the can before you pour, because coconut milk will tend to separate.

Also add 1/4 cup of water…

And 1 Tablespoon of lime juice.

Cover the pot, and let it simmer until the potatoes are tender, about 7-8 minutes.

If necessary, let it simmer uncovered for another couple of minutes to let it thicken a bit.

This is best served over rice. Why is there no rice in my bowl, you ask? Because I’m a doofus and forgot to put it in there before taking the picture. It happens. The peppers and onions may intimidate some kids, but I promise you, they’re going to love this sauce if you can get them to give it a chance. Coconut milk is sweet, and you may also recall we added a Tablespoon of sugar way back when. After cooking in the sauce for so long, all the veggies have soaked up the flavor too, and the result is something you will want to embrace very deeply indeed.

Happy Eating!

The GFCF Lady’s Green Curry Chicken

2-4 chicken breasts
1 TBS sugar
2 TBS Thai Kitchen fish sauce
1 TBS minced garlic
1 tsp black pepper

1 lb. small potatoes
1 onion
1-2 red bell peppers
1 can coconut milk
1 TBS Thai Kitchen green curry paste
1/4 cup water
1 TBS lime juice

Of course ours isn’t truly Buttered Chicken, but Margarined Chicken just doesn’t have the same ring to it. I hope you can understand why I called this recipe decadent a second ago: the first step is to melt an entire stick of Fleischmann’s Unsalted (not Original) Margarine in a very large pan. Yes, an entire stick. Just remind yourself how glad you are that it’s not an entire stick of real butter going straight to your hips. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

As a side note, you could also use the traditional Indian butter known as ghee, which is what truly authentic Buttered Chicken recipes call for. While ghee is made with real dairy butter, the cooking process that makes it into ghee removes the casein. You have to balance how sensitive your kids are to dairy, and how much you trust the manufacturer to really process out every last molecule of casein. I have known families that use it with absolutely no ill effects, but we don’t bother with it.

Meanwhile, dice up two onions, and toss them in with the margarine over low heat so they can start getting nice and golden.

One of the defining features of Indian cuisine is the ridiculous number of spices (especially when you consider the fact that garam masala is a blend of spices in and of itself!) But if your family ends up loving this recipe as much as mine does, you can measure out a second little container of all these spices as you’re going along so you’ll already have one pre-made for the next time. We’re going to use 2 tsp garam masala, 2 tsp cilantro (also known as coriander,) 1 tsp cumin, 1 tsp chili powder, 1 tsp cardamom, 1/2 tsp black pepper, and 1 tsp salt. Whew!

You’re also going to add in 1 teaspoon each of minced garlic and ginger. If you want to do the extra work and mince it fresh yourself, be my guest. Me, I’ve got laundry to do. Among other things.

Just in the last year, the GFCF community has been granted a huge gift in the form of this new coconut milk yogurt by So Delicious. Of course, various soy yogurts have been around forever, and you could still use one of those in this recipe if you prefer. But can I tell you? I do not prefer. I really, really hate the taste of soy-based anything. I can smell that stuff across the room, and it is not my cup of tea. Plus, soy is one of the top 8 major allergens, so it’s really nice to have an alternative, or at least one that you don’t have to ferment yourself in your own yogurt machine. Conveniently, we need exactly one container, but if you happen to be working with a larger tub of yogurt, it’s going to be roughly 2/3 cup.

Then add 2 Tablespoons of tomato paste, stir vigorously, and your sauce is ready. See, that wasn’t so hard, was it? Do double-check that your tomato paste brand is gluten-free. There should be nothing in that can but tomatoes.

Cut up 4 chicken breasts, and combine with the sauce so everything’s nice and coated. Yes, this is kind of a large recipe. On the one hand, you could easily cut it in half. But on the other hand, it reheats extremely well, so leftovers are a great choice too.

By now your onions should be looking good, so you can go ahead and turn up the heat a bit and stir the chicken mixture into the pan rapidly. You don’t want to cook the little pieces all the way through yet, just get the outsides seared — maybe 5-8 minutes, max.

Then pour in 1/2 cup of water…

And snuggle two bay leaves under the surface. Let them simmer in their fragrant little hot tub for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally.

After your dish has been simmering for 30 minutes, it’s time to start your rice. (Do yourself a favor and buy a rice cooker, if you haven’t already. You can’t put a price on perfectly-cooked rice.) I usually prepare about 1 1/2 cups, but my plan is never to have leftover rice, just leftover buttered chicken. So if you’ve made peace with the texture of reheated rice — obviously I haven’t — you may want to make more so your leftovers are in equal amounts.

Stir in 1/3 cup of almond milk, and allow it to simmer for another 15-20 minutes, until the rice is done.

Don’t forget to fish those bay leaves out of the pot before you serve it though. The kids might think you’re trying to poison them if they find plants hidden in their meal.

Happy Eating!

The GFCF Lady’s Buttered Chicken

2 tsp garam masala
2 tsp cilantro (coriander)
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp chili powder
1 tsp cardamom
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
2/3 cup coconut milk yogurt
2 Tbs tomato paste

1 stick (8 TBS) Fleischmann’s Unsalted margarine
2 onions
4 chicken breasts
1/2 cup water
2 bay leaves
1/3 cup almond milk

Our sauce base today is this organic, gluten-free hoisin sauce by Edward & Sons. (They also make great instant potatoes, by the way, as well as all-natural GFCF sprinkles for cupcakes.) [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

Note that not all of the Edward & Sons sauces are gluten free, just this one and their teriyaki sauce. And if you look closely at the bottle, you’ll also learn how to say “gluten free” in French! Actually, that may be “without wheat,” I’m not sure. Either way, “bleh” is an appropriate syllable for it, don’t you think? If you want to have a go at making an approximation of this sauce yourself, it’s mostly soy sauce (make sure yours is GF!), apple cider vinegar, sugar, orange juice, sesame oil, and Five Spice. An Asian-y barbecue sauce, really.

So pour out 1/4 cup of the hoisin sauce, and add 2 Tablespoons of honey…

…and 1 1/2 Tablespoons of Lea & Perrin’s worcestershire sauce.

Now, cut up about a pound of beef steak into bite-size pieces, and mix them in the bowl with the sauce. Give them as much time to marinate as you can, but don’t sweat it if it isn’t that long. Usually I end up just letting it sit long enough for me to cook the mushrooms. What mushrooms, you ask?

These mushrooms! Sautee 8 oz. of fresh mushrooms in some olive oil until they’re mostly cooked, a good 8-10 minutes.

While you wait, get out 1/2 cup of dried cranberries, and soak them in some water. I know I use cranberries a lot, but if you don’t like the taste you could always use dried cherries or even golden raisins instead.

Meanwhile, start cooking your rice. 1 1/2 cups of rice is a good complement for the amount of stir fry we’re making, but of course you could do more or less depending on how many people you’re trying to feed.

Man, I always forget how much mushrooms shrink when you cook them. Dump in your meat-sauce concoction and let the meat brown, stirring occasionally. I know it isn’t truly a stir fry unless you have it over very high heat and are stirring constantly, but that’s a bad idea here because it will burn off the sauce too quickly. I won’t tell if you won’t.

And just for a little crunch, let’s toast 1/2 cup of almonds and throw them in there too. I always stock both almonds and cranberries in the pantry, not only for cooking but for sprinkling on salads as well. If your preference is for walnuts, or cashews, or pine nuts, those are all fine and dandy too. It’s a stir fry, do whatever you want! The easiest way to toast the nuts is to microwave them in a bowl one minute at a time, tossing them gently in between, until they crunch when you bite them (instead of squeaking.)

We’re almost there! Drain the cranberries (or other dried fruit of your choice,) and dump them in the pan along with the almonds.

And that’s it! Serve over rice, and sit back and watch the smiles on their faces. Well, don’t sit back too long, you’ll want to eat your own before it gets cold.

Happy Eating!

The GFCF Lady’s beef stir fry

1/4 cup Premier Japan (Edward & Sons) Hoisin sauce
2 TBS honey
1 1/2 TBS Lea & Perrin’s worcestershire sauce
1 lb. beef steak
8 oz. mushrooms
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup slivered almonds
1 1/2 cups rice

The secret is, instead of rolling it up in seaweed paper, I just sprinkle little bits of the wakame (seaweed shreds) throughout the rice, and the flavor is identical to eating a bite of sushi (well, a bite without any fish in it, anyway.) My health food store carries it, but if yours doesn’t you can certainly find it at any Asian market. This very much counts as a serving of vegetables, by the way. Seaweed is one of the healthiest vegetables out there–not only is it packed with vitamins and omega fatty acids, but it is a highly alkaline food. The human body is healthiest when it is slightly on the alkaline side of the pH scale, and being on the acidic side can lead to a variety of diseases. (Can you guess what the most extremely acidic foods are in the American diet? Bread products, dairy products, artificial and white sugars, and meat. Surprise, surprise.)

Watermelon is another extremely alkaline food, by the way.

Okay, okay, I’m sorry, back to the recipe. I’m getting there, I swear. Anyway, the thing is, even though this bag of wakame is in little shreds instead of big sheets, it still expands a ton when it’s cooked. I find that I have to pulverize it in the food processor before it even approaches a palatable “seasoning” size in the final dish.

My food processor is old and cheap, and it kind of makes a mess on the counter.

Do the whole bag at once and funnel it back in (this one has a little zip-top built into it, but any airtight bag will work,) and you’re set for months. I actually took these pictures forever ago, in anticipation of writing up this recipe someday. Look at my impressive foresight!

Alright, fast forward to today, when we’re actually making sushi rice. (We are, I promise. We’re getting there.) Keep in mind “sushi rice” is an actual kind of rice you can buy, that is shorter and stickier than normal rice. In my ricemaker, that’s one and a half cups of sushi rice, and two and a quarter cups of water, and then I add 1 teaspoon of the shredded wakame.

While the rice cooks, mix 1/4 cup of sugar with 1/4 cup of rice vinegar in a small pot.

Also add in 1/2 teaspoon of salt.

Slowly heat it, stirring constantly, until everything is dissolved.

Once the rice is done, pour in only about half of the liquid, and mix it thoroughly. Then add a little bit more at a time until you have a nice consistency and flavor.

I usually end up using about 3/4ths of the vinegar mixture, but it can cross the line into being too wet very quickly, so go slowly. See how the wakame turned a pretty emerald green once it soaked? These pieces are actually still kind of big, but if you grind them small enough, there’s no way the kids will be able to eat around them. And of course if you wanted, you could make the rice and vinegar mixture without the wakame shreds and then roll it up in nori sheets the proper way. That is, if your kitchen is as sanitized as a professional sushi prep station, unlike mine.

Happy Eating!

Sushi Rice

1 1/2 cups short-grain sushi rice
2 1/4 cups water
1 tsp dried wakame shreds
1/4 cup rice vinegar
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt

But in this recipe, it’s at least a reasonably fair moniker, because it does include some very Southwestern ingredients. If you’d rather call it Arizona Chicken Soup to promote diversity among the Southwestern states, that’s fine by me. We start with about one pound of plain old chicken. (And I do mean plain–stay away from broth-injected packaged chicken, unless you like to gamble with your gluten content, which I’d hope you wouldn’t, being on this site and all.) These are some extra tenders I had leftover in the freezer, but you could do any kind of light or dark meat, it doesn’t matter. Boil them until they’re cooked through, about 15 minutes depending on the thickness of your pieces.

Drain the chicken and set the pieces aside. In the same pot (it doesn’t have to be the same pot, but why get extra dishes dirty?) pour in 4 cups of gluten-free chicken stock. Pacific Foods makes a good one. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas at any time. Always double-check your lablels.]

While the stock is warming up, shred the chicken pieces with two forks.

Also, measure out 1 1/2 cups of gluten-free salsa. The spice level is entirely up to you (and what your kids will tolerate.) They make some salsas that are as mild as ketchup, and others that will take a few layers of skin off your mouth. Mine is a local brand, so you’re unlikely to be able to find it in your area, but Tostitos (All-Natural line of flavors only) is another option that’s sold pretty much everywhere.

Oh and look, this one even calls itself Texasalsa. In my defense, I used to prefer a different flavor of Jardine’s 7J Ranch salsa, but that one had gluten in it, alas. Just goes to show, you can’t mentally mark whole brands as safe or not, you have to verify each individual product.

Add the chicken and salsa to the pot, and toss in some frozen corn. I guess this is probably about a cup, I just give the bag a couple of shakes until it looks right.

Also add in 2 Tablespoons of lime juice. You can cut back on this if your salsa is already on the acidic side. Mine is, but I like the extra bite anyway. And yes, the GFCFBoy likes it this way too–he’s got sensory issues with his mouth, and loves extremely spicy or sour flavors. Used to eat wasabi peas as a toddler, no joke.

Chop up about 1/4 cup of fresh cilantro. If you don’t have fresh, just skip it, don’t even bother with the dried stuff for this. Chances are decent your salsa already has some of that in it anyway. Fresh makes all the difference in the flavor here. Plus, there is evidence that cilantro is a natural detoxifier, among its many other health benefits. Some even go so far as to suggest that in the right doses it can be as effective as chelation drugs at removing heavy metals from the body, which is a topic of interest to many parents of autistic children. (And if you’re looking for other places to sneak cilantro into the diet of you or your offspring, I’ve got a nice cilantro pesto recipe that I promise I’ll post sometime soon.)

Now, I know that cilantro is a very polarizing herb; people either love it or they hate it. There are even some scientific studies confirming that a portion of the population has a genetic variance in their tongues’ chemical receptors, which sadly makes cilantro taste absolutely horrid to them. If you’re one of these people, don’t worry, there’s a community just for you. Also, if you’re one of these people, just try using parsley in this recipe instead. It won’t be the same as my soup, but I’d imagine that’s kind of what you’re going for.

Jeez, enough with the cilantro already, eh? Just scrape it into the pot and get on with it! Okay, I hear you. We’re almost done.

Season with salt to suit your tastes. Again, this depends on the base flavor of your salsa. I use about a teaspoon or so.

At this point what we’ve got is pretty thin. If you like it that way, great, but I tend to like my soups to be just a little thicker. So I mix a Tablespoon of potato starch in the minimal amount of water needed to dissolve it, and add that to the simmering pot. Sometimes I’m impatient and add two, it just depends. Another thing you can do if you want to stretch the soup further is add a cup or two of cooked white rice.

Let it simmer and reduce for as long as you like. Me, I usually just barely get everything warm enough before I start greedily ladling it into my bowl. This goes great with tortilla chips (make sure they’re 100% corn,) and even better with a side of guacamole. I gotta tell you, guacamole absolutely saved me when we first started this diet. It had that perfect creamy texture I was craving–everything that used to get cheese or sour cream on it got a heaping glop of guacamole instead. I’ll spare you the details, but suffice it to say that no combination was too weird. I was a guacamole fiend for weeks on end.

Happy Eating!

Texas Chicken Soup

1 lb. boneless chicken pieces
4 cups Pacific Foods chicken stock
1 1/2 cups GF salsa
1 cup frozen corn
1/4 cup fresh cilantro

OPTIONAL:
2 TBS lime juice
1 tsp salt
1 TBS potato starch dissolved in water
1 cup cooked rice

Mexican food is one of the safer cuisines to eat on this diet, since so much of it is corn-based. But nonetheless, it turned out that our favorite pre-diet Mexican restaurant not only served tortilla chips made with wheat flour and whey, but even their rice was unsafe. The GFCFBoy absolutely loves to eat refried beans and Mexican rice, so I knew I had to find a workable recipe right away.

First, dice up 1/2 an onion. You can add other veggies if your kids will tolerate them, like some frozen peas or carrot bits. Unfortunately our old restaurant didn’t do that, and my kid has always been fixated on the look of his foods, rather than whether he actually likes the ingredients or not. So I can put carrots and peas in other dishes, no problem–but not his beloved Mexican rice.

Toss the veggies in a pan with some olive oil and 1 clove of minced garlic, and let everything sautee over low heat while you prepare the rice cooker. If you don’t have a rice cooker, you are really missing out, I’m telling you. This thing is the greatest kitchen appliance ever. We used it probably once a week even before we had to rely so much more on rice for our meals. If we had to start selling our personal possessions, this is the very last thing I’d get rid of. I’d be wearing a burlap sack and still happily cooking perfect rice with zero effort.

But if you insist on doing things the old-fashioned way, you can still use this recipe. It just won’t be as cool. Instead of cooking the rice in water, we’re going to boil it in the following concoction: first, 3 cups of Pacific Foods gluten-free beef broth (yes, I know the picture only shows two cups, I don’t have a measuring cup that will hold three cups all at once.)

1 tsp of McCormick chili powder (YES, I know that’s not the right measuring spoon, I use two scoops of the littler one because it fits inside my spice jar. I’m practicing my math skills while keeping my kitchen counters clean at the same time.)

1 1/2 tsp McCormick cumin…

And 6 Tablespoons of Contadina tomato sauce. Please note that the Contadina tomato sauce “with Italian Seasonings” is not gluten-free. But seriously, why would you want to put Italian seasonings in Mexican rice anyway? Ya weirdo. [As always, manufacturers can change formulas without notice. Always check your brands.]

Once all that is mixed up in your rice cooker, and the onions are translucent, add 1 1/2 cups of uncooked rice to the pan.

Sautee the rice lightly, stirring frequently. You probably want to use a larger pan than I did, I always try to get away with the pan that fits better in the dishwasher, and it doesn’t always work out. The point of cooking the rice like this is to sort of seal each grain before you boil it, which will result in that nice non-sticky texture that Mexican rice is famous for.

See how the grains are turning translucent, but there are still some that are mostly white? If all the oil in the pan has been absorbed, you can add another Tablespoon or so. You don’t have to get every grain translucent, but the more the better.

Now scrape the whole pan into the liquid in the rice cooker, and give it all a good stir. If you were doing this without a rice cooker, at this point you’d put it all in whatever pot you were going to use, bring it to a boil, cover with the lid, etc.

But all I have to do is push this button down and walk away. It will pop back up at the precise moment the rice is done, and not a moment sooner or later. No burned rice on the bottom, no accidentally checking your pan too early and letting all the steam out.

Ta daa! Just like at the restaurant. Except gluten-free, cheaper, and available even in the middle of the night if you get some sort of weird craving for it. Which you just might, you never know.

Happy Eating!

Mexican Rice

1 1/2 cups uncooked rice
1/2 chopped onion
1 clove garlic
3 Tbsp oil
3 cups Pacific Foods beef broth
1 tsp McCormick chili powder
1 1/2 tsp McCormick cumin
6 TBS Contadina tomato sauce