the Taco Spot...A great Little Eatery in Charleston, SC offering gluten-free options

Yesterday, a couple of the kiddos and I had the opportunity to check out The Taco Spot (http://www.thetacospot.com/westashley.html).  I had read online that they offered gluten-free fare and their prices weren't too exorbitant, we had a field trip, then a haircut and were leaving at 7:30am in the morning and I wasn't up to packing a lunch, so we went.  We were NOT disappointed.  The kids just got your run of the mill, seasoned ground beef in a cruchy corn shell.  They enjoyed it but it wasn't anything special.  My son actually missed having a little grease drip out (yuck!).  I, on the other hand, got the grouper fish taco with soy aioli.  I have never gotten a fish taco at a restaurant before (I have made them at home with fried fish) so this was me going out on a limb!  I'm not usually adventurous.  The fish was baked and so tender and succulent, I could have eaten a whole pan of that fish by myself!  No fishy taste whatsoever.  I made the kids try a bite and they couldn't believe it was fish.  Scrumptious!  This did however draw attention to an issue that I've been trying to ignore.  I got a headache shortly after eating it.  The individuals who worked there were very helpful as far as my gluten concerns and there doesn't really seem to be much margin for cross contamination since they do not fry any wheat products in their oil and each taco is prepared on a fresh sheet of paper so I wasn't overly concerned that this was a gluten issue, but I took a couple enzymes to be on the safe side.  As the day continued, the headache subsided and I didn't have any of my normal gluten reactions.  The kids also had no reaction.  I have been having issues anytime I eat soy (which is mostly only soy sauce, which I love).  I'm pretty sure the soy aioli was the culprit.  Regardless, we really enjoyed our experience at The Taco Spot and will definitely be returning.  They have a couple tacos I'm dying to try!  They also use local produce from a farm I happen to know does not use chemicals, all a plus, and a good reason why you should go grab a taco from the The Taco Spot right now!

Flourless Chocolate Cake

About a month ago, some friends were fixing us dinner and I wanted to take a dessert (mostly so I could make sure my kids would have a dessert they could eat).  I turned to my 1000 Gluten Free Recipes by Carol Fenster (http://www.amazon.com/000-Gluten-Free-Recipes/dp/0470067802/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1326503847&sr=1-1) and found a recipe for a Flourless Chocolate Cake.  I followed the recipe, increasing it by 1/4 since I was using a 9-inch springform pan instead of 8-inch.  I made up a batch of fresh whipped cream and assembled by squeezing out a pretty dollop of whipped cream from the corner of a ziplock bag onto the top of each slice and placing a fresh raspberry in the middle of the whipped cream.  As you can imagine, it was a huge success.  My dad, who is about as far from gluten-free as you can get, loved it.  So did my hubby, who is not completely on board.  This is a decadent, delicious and beautiful dessert but actually pretty easy to make. 

You can find the recipe here: http://celiacdisease.about.com/od/desserts/r/FensterChocCake.htm or in the book, which is definitely worth buying.

Here's a picture though by the time I got the shot, this was the last lone piece and all the delicious accessories were eaten up.  I couldn't keep my kids out of the whipped cream.  It may not look pretty, but trust me, this is one you want to try!

Don't forget to check out Carol Fenster's website at: http://carolfenstercooks.com/

Gluten-Free All Purpose Flour Blends...Which is the best?

Being new to gluten-free, I am still getting my feet wet with gluten free baking and testing the waters of which gluten-free blend is the best for baking and just anything, really.  I thought I would try to gather some of the different blends together in one place and do a comparison and possibly get opinions on what works best for others.  These are blends that I would and do use personally due to flour availability, ease of making, and best results.  Here's what I've come up with so far...

Ahern's All Purpose Blend (from www.glutenfreegirl.com)

 200 grams superfine brown rice flour
150 grams sorghum flour
50 grams potato flour
250 grams sweet rice flour
150 grams potato starch
100 grams arrowroot powder
100 grams cornstarch

This was from 2010...lately I'm seeing that she is using equal amounts of sorghum, sweet rice and potato starch.

Carol Fenster's Sorghum Blend (from www.carolfenstercooks.com)
1 ½ cups sorghum flour (or brown rice flour)
1 ½ cups potato starch (not potato flour) or cornstarch
1 cup tapioca flour/starch

Bette Hagman's Blends 
Gluten-Free Mix                                                     
2 parts rice flour
2/3 part potato starch

1/3 tapioca starch

Featherlight Rice Flour Mix

1 part rice flour
1 part tapioca flour
1 part cornstarch
1 tsp per cup potato flour 

Artisan Gluten-Free Flour Blend (from noglutennoproblem.blogspot.com)
1 1/4 cups (156g) brown rice flour
3/4 cup (88g) sorghum flour
2/3 cup (90g) cornstarch
1/4 cup (37g) potato starch
1 tbsp + 1 tsp (14g) potato flour
1 tsp (3g) xanthan gum

Gluten Free All Purpose Flour Mix (from www.glutenfreecookingschool.com)

3 parts brown rice flour
3 parts corn starch
2 parts soy, sorghum or garflava flour
1 part masa harina

Allergen-Free Cuisine Gluten Free Flour Mix (from www.cybelepascal.com)
4 cups superfine brown rice flour
1 1/3 cups potato starch (not potato flour)
2/3 cup tapioca flour (also called tapioca starch)

I've only tried 3 of these so far (Cybele's, Carol's and GF Cooking School).  I am going to try a single recipe with each blend and post back with my results.  I'm off to bake...  

Update: August 2012

Okay, since the days of mixing up these flour blends, I've gotten lazy.  I don't want to use more than 3 flours.  It's just too much work!  So, nowadays, I keep it simple.  I mix 48oz of Bob's Organic Brown Rice Flour, 24oz of Bob's Potato Starch and 16oz EnerG Tapioca Flour.  Occasionally I'll throw in some teff or sorghum for the added nutritional value, maybe 8 or 12oz.  Looking back now, this is the same combo as Cybele uses, just not quite the same ratio.  I just take the whole bags/boxes and dump them in my big container.  Much easier than measuring out or weighing cups.  I order all my flours through Amazon.  With the subscribe and save, the prices are dramatically lower than you would pay at a store.  This blend works well as an even exchange for AP wheat flour.  Depending on the recipe, you may need more or less.  I don't even add xanthan gum for pancakes but do for cornbread and biscuits.     
 

Gluten-Free Caprese Tartlets

While the kids and I were at Costco the other day, we saw some fresh mozzarella which got me jonesing for Caprese salad.  This is NOT the time of year for that, I know, and I am all about eating seasonally and locally but I couldn't help myself.  I bought some tomatoes and the cheese and headed home with visions of Caprese tartlets dancing in my head.  I first saw Caprese tartlets on Melissa D'Arabian's show on the Food Network.  I happened to have some hemp bread in the freezer (which was not white bread but it worked) and some basil from my garden that I had frozen for just such an occasion.  I found that if you freeze fresh herbs from the garden, they may not look pretty but they retain their flavor.  There is just no comparison between fresh basil and dried.  They don't even taste like the same plant to me!  Anyways, here's the recipe with the slight variation for gluten-free.  This would make a great appetizer but we just ate it for dinner along with a salad.  Please excuse the presentation in my picture.  My 6 year old was waiting her for food so I was a bit rushed. 
Check out the original recipe and comments here:  http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/melissa-darabian/caprese-tartlets-recipe/index.html.

Gluten-Free Caprese Tartlets (Recipe Courtesy Melissa D'Arabian)  

Total Time: 23 min  Prep: 10 min  Cook: 13 min Yield: 4 servings (2 tartlets per serving)

Ingredients

• 8 slices gluten-free white bread (I used gf hemp bread)
• 1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• 3 tablespoons cream cheese, softened
• 1 teaspoon garlic powder
• 1 teaspoon dried basil
• Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 2 Roma tomatoes, thinly sliced
• 4 ounces fresh mozzarella (approximately 2-inch ball), thinly sliced
• Balsamic vinegar, for drizzling, optional
• 8 fresh basil leaves

Directions

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees F.

Using a biscuit or cookie cutter, cut out a piece of bread to fit in the bottom of the muffin tin.  Brush both sides of the bread with olive oil. Press the slices in the muffin tin, to form tartlet shells. Set aside.

In a small bowl, using a fork to combine, mix together the cream cheese, garlic powder, dried basil, salt, and pepper until smooth and creamy. Drop about a teaspoon of the cream cheese into the bottom of each muffin tin. Bake the tartlets until golden and crusty, 12 to 13 minutes.

Meanwhile, liberally salt the tomato slices. Once the tartlet shells are golden, remove them from the oven and transfer to a cooling rack. Place a slice of mozzarella on top of the cream cheese, then layer on a tomato slice or two. Season with salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste and a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, if using. Garnish with basil.

Taco Bell Crunchy Taco's are NOT Gluten-Free

Nor do they claim to be.  Guess I should have checked here http://www.tacobell.com/nutrition/allergens before going there!  I thought "meat, cheese, lettuce, corn tortilla...these should be okay."  Wrong!

I guess as you have probably already guessed, I had a couple crunchy taco's yesterday and spent the afternoon sicker than sick.  It seems the further I get from my gluten days, the sicker gluten is making me (when I accidentally ingest it).  Gone are the days when I thought I might cheat to have a slice of pizza.  It is just not worth it.  Yesterday, I ate my tacos, came home and suddenly had a case of (what I thought was) pink-eye.  I immediately put colloidal silver in it (which works great for pink-eye) and laid down.  I fell into this sort of weird sleep where I was in and out and just felt kind of out of it.  When I woke up, I felt like I was going to throw out (as my dear little daughter used to say).  I gulped down an Emergen-C and later took a ginger, a couple milk thistle and some digestive enzymes.  I slept horribly last night, waking up often, which I do not normally do.  Even this morning my stomach is still churning and crampy.

Taco, you definitely were not worth it!  I would like to mention here that we actually very rarely eat out.  We rarely ate out before going gluten-free, so even more so now.  But yesterday my floors were being refinished and I didn't have time to pack us something to eat before we left because I was trying to get everything up and out of the way.  I spent my "gluten-drunk" afternoon sleeping it off in my camper where my little girls and I ended up spending the night (floor fumes).  Not my best day, but now I know and you do too!

Update: 2 days later and I still have that "just been over by a Mac truck" feeling.  I'm having pains in my legs, fuzzy head and stomach woes.  I once questioned whether a little gluten could really make you "that" sick.  Well, now I know...it makes you THAT sick!  I will definitely be exercising more caution in regards to what goes in my mouth!

Rosemary Focaccia

My passion for bread baking began when I stumbled across a recipe adapted from Jim Lahey's no-knead bread recipe.  I read Jim's book and tried out some of his recipes and I was sold!  I loved this no-knead thing.  I wanted a way of making up more than one batch at a time and eventually picked up a copy of Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day.  Here you made up large batches and stored them away for up to 2 weeks!  The only problem was that ABin5 used way more yeast (2 T per 6 cups flour vs. 1/4 t per 3 cups flour in Jim's recipe).  So I decided to combine the two techniques.  I would mix up a large batch using only 1 teaspoon of yeast, let it sit out out for 12 hours and then refrigerate.  It would be Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes that would lead me to gluten-free baking.  I had friends with Celiac so I tried out the gluten-free recipes on them.  Of course, I immediately began adapting them so I would have gluten and gluten-free versions of the bread I was offering for sale at the co-op. 

The focaccia above comes courtesy of HBin5's Gluten-Free Olive Oil Bread recipe.  I mixed up a batch last night and made 3 baguettes.  I had maybe 1/2 pound left over so we put it in the fridge.  I got it out tonight, flattened it out on a piece of parchment then sprinkled it with course salt and rosemary, let it rest for 30 minutes or so then popped it in a 450 degree oven for 30 minutes.  My kids could not believe it was gluten-free.  The only variation from the recipe was I used 1/2 cup of olive oil and used half tapioca, half Expandex where it called for tapioca starch.

Be sure to check out http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com for more tasty gluten-free recipes or read the book Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.

Gluten Free Hemp Bread

Today while carousing GF bread recipes and reading about the need for flours with high protein content, a light bulb went off.  I have some hemp protein powder sitting in my freezer from when my hubby was on an exercise kick and needed the protein for building muscle.  I browsed around for a hemp bread recipe and came across a recipe at http://fantastichemp.wordpress.com/hemp-recipes/gluten-free-vegan-hemp-bread/.  Although the recipe originally said gluten-free, it actually was not, as spelt is the primary flour used.  They have since changed the title of the recipe and I went to work actually making a gluten free, though not necessarily vegan, version.  So here you go, courtesy of FantasticHemp.
 
Gluten-Free Hemp Bread (adapted from FantasticHemp's Vegan Hemp Bread)

900 g all purpose gluten-free flour mix (I used 400g Bob's all purpose and 500g of my own blend)
50g hemp flour (I used hemp protein powder, 50% protein)
50g hemp seeds (or sunflower if you would prefer a larger, crunchier seed)
1 T xanthan gum (or physillum husk powder)
1 1/2 T kosher salt
3 1/2 C warm water
1 T organic sugar, agave or honey
2 T yeast
1/2 C olive oil
2 T apple cider vinegar
1 egg (or 1T flax + 3T water for vegan)

(My blend is: 4 C sorghum, 1 1/2 C brown rice, 2 C potato starch, 2 1/2 C cornstarch, 1 1/2 C tapioca starch, 1 1/2 C Expandex.  Brown rice and sorghum are interchangeable, as are potato and corn starch.  Regular tapioca starch can be substituted for the Expandex but you won't get the same results.  Thoroughly combine and store in air-tight container.)
Combine water, yeast and sugar in a bowl and let stand while you get the other components together.  Weigh out all dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.  Add olive oil, vinegar and egg to the water mixture and slowly add into the dry ingredients.  I use a stand mixer and let run for a few minutes (3-5 minutes).  Grease three 8x4 bread pans.  Divide the dough evenly among the 3 pans.  Dough will be wet, like a thick pancake batter.  Put in a warm, moist place to rise for about an hour.  (I heat a cup of water in the microwave for 2 minutes then put the pans in the microwave with the steamy cup and close the door.)
When the bread has just about risen to the top of  the pan, turn your oven on and heat to 350 degrees.  Put your loaves in the oven and bake for 45-50 minutes.  Remove from oven when done and allow the bread to sit in the pan for 10 minutes before removing.  After 10 minutes have elapsed, run a butter knife or plastic spatula around the edges and remove bread to a cooling rack.  Allow to cool at least 30 minutes before cutting (an hour is better, but it's so hard to wait!)  Spread with a little organic butter and enjoy!

Printable Recipe here: Hemp Bread