Ok, so we can’t eat Ramen anymore. But my local NPR station just interviewed David Chang, head chef at New York’s Momofuku Noodle Bar, and posted the most intriguing recipe for ginger scallion sauce. It looks absolutely divine. Amazon.com has reprinted it here. Substitute wheat-free tamari for the light soy sauce and you’re good to go. I can’t wait to try this over rice noodles, or 100% buckwheat soba! Hot dang!
Sorry for the recipe hiatus of late. Life has been lobbing lemons at me with an elephantine sling-shot. Back to recipes shortly, but in the meantime, check out this fascinating article from Science Daily about a research study published in this week’s Nature that shows a link between a healthy gut and a healthy you. The key is fiber (no new news), but the interest is in the mechanics of it all. Apparently the bacteria in your gut luh-uh-uhhhhve their fiber and if you heap it generously upon them, they will shower you with their one-of-a-kind, artisanal immune-boosting boosters resulting in a happier, healthier, less-sick you. So don’t deny your small fry the glory of gritty grains! (and fruit. and vegetable matter.) Gimme some roughage. Mm.
It’s been more than 10 days, but forgive me. I vacate. (Did I just turn vacation into a verb? Yes, I did. I kind of like it…) By now my little olivinas are brining happily and approaching deliciosity. But I have not revealed how they got from tasteless snoozefest to their current state of yum. So let me divulge.
Ingredients for Brining Homemade Olives
Once the olives are cured of their bitter madness, it’s time to add back some flav-ah-flave. It starts with a basic brine that can be spruced up to your heart’s content with lemon, garlic, fresh herbs, dried herblinas, food coloring (what? ew – totally kidding), hot hot peppahs, gin, vodka, you name it. If you’re unhappy with what you come up with, the beauty of brine is that you can always change the flavor. Either add more of the same to bump up the flavor, add new spices to change the flavor, or if you’re totally disgusted by your first creation, dump the existing brine and start over. Brining is more of an art than a science, so if you feel moved to add 5 cloves of garlic rather than 3, by all means, knock yourself out.
Once brined, the olives need to be stored in the refrigerator. They will be ready to eat in about two weeks. Typically, the longer they sit in the brine the better they taste, but let’s be honest; who can stand to wait longer than 2 weeks!?
Basic Olive Brining Recipe
- 3 ¼ c. water
- ¾ c. white vinegar
- 5 T salt
Some of my creations in past years:
Homemade Olives A la Gioco:
- 1x basic brine recipe
- 2.5 lbs cured olives (will fill 1/2 gallon jar)
- 4 cloves garlic
- 1 T fennel seeds
- 4 whole dried chili peppers
- 2 star anise
- rind of 1 orange
- 1 T black peppercorns
Homemade Speecey-Espicy Olives
- 1x basic brine recipe
- 2.5 lbs cured olives (will fill 1/2 gallon jar)
- 1 lemon, sliced
- 10-20 whole dried chilis
- 4 cloves garlic
Lemony Snicket Homemade Olives
- 1x basic brine recipe
- 2.5 lbs cured olives (will fill 1/2 gallon jar)
- 1/2 lemon, sliced
- juice of 2 lemons
- 4 cloves garlic
Herbaceous Homemade Olives
- 1x basic brine recipe
- 2.5 lbs cured olives (will fill 1/2 gallon jar)
- 5ish sprigs fresh thyme or rosemary
- 5 bay leaves
- 3 cloves garlic
- 2 T black peppercorns
I just read this in the New York Times:
To finish off the Smiths’ ground beef, Cargill added bread crumbs and spices, fashioned it into patties, froze them and packed them 18 to a carton.
The listed ingredients revealed little of how the meat was made. There was just one meat product listed: “Beef.”
Smith’s hamburgers have breadcrumbs in them and they are not listed in the ingredients! Not that I am a hamburglar, but you’ve got to think that if one company is being dishonest in their labeling, that a few more are. Yikes. I guess those celiacs who call the company to inquire about ingredients aren’t so paranoid after all. Sigh.
Gluten-Free Noodle Omelet
I can’t remember exactly how or why it occurred to me that noodles would be good in an omelet, but it happened one night and I’ve never been the same since. HA! The drama.
Truth is, I often find myself with half a pot of leftover noodles, having gobbled up the sauce in an imprudent way. And although I appreciate the merits of a bowl of plain noodles as a vehicle for olive oil and cheese, cold rice noodles just don’t cut the mustard. So sauceless leftover noodles tend to languish in my fridge… that is, until the glorious advent of the noodle omelet. Noodle omelet! Sounds fun, doesn’t it? I feel funner just saying it.
Noodle Omelet
- ~1.5 – 2 cups leftover Tinkyada brown rice pasta
- 5 eggs
- a pat of butter
- 1 T olive oil
- grated parmesan or romano cheese
- salt & pepper
Heat up your pasta in a large non-stick pan with the butter and olive oil. In a medium bowl, crack the eggs and beat with 1/4 t. salt. When the pasta is warmed through, spread it evenly across the bottom of the pan and grate the cheese on top (as much or as little as you please). Grind some black pepper on top (be generous – it adds kick). Slowly pour the eggs over the noodles taking care not to dump them all in one spot. Cover and turn the heat to medium. Cook until the eggs are no longer runny (unless you’re a soupy omelet person) and the pasta has formed a crispy crunchy bottom. Oh lordie, take me now!
On a whim I busted out the gluten-free flour today and started to make a loaf. Inspired by the ease of The Bittman/Leahey no-knead wonderloaf, I wanted to throw something together, give it a grand sweeping mixmix (for dramatic effect more than anything else), and then get on with life and leave it to work its magic. The gluten-free gods were smiling on me b/c it turned out surprisingly well. Future tweaks will make it positively badass.
A very respectable gluten-free loaf
Gluten-Free Wonderloaf To Be
- 2 c. tapioca starch
- 1/2 cup teff flour
- 1/2 cup millet flour
- 1/2 cup oat flour
- 2 T ground flax seeds
- 1 1/4 t. dough enhancer
- 1/2 t. salt
- 1 t. active dry yeast
- 1 T sugar
- 2 cups warm water
- 1 T olive oil
- non-stick bundt pan*
Directions: Do you have a coffee grinder dedicated to spice grinding? If not, it’s well worth the $20. Anywhoo, if you do have one, measure out 2 T of flax seeds and grind them finely. If not, I believe flax seed meal can be found at fancy pants grocery stores.
Where were we? Put 1 cup of the tapioca flour and all the other dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl. Add the warm water and stir. Let sit, covered, for 3-4 hours and watch with glee as it rise, rise, rises. Then grease a non-stick bundt pan with the olive oil. Add the remaining 1 cup of tapioca starch to the dough and stir to incorporate. You’ll end up deflating it, which is kind of heartbreaking, but you’ll make up for it soon enough. Spoon the dough into the greased bundt and let rise for two hours in a warm place. Preheat the oven to 350 and bake for 20-25 minutes. Let it cool for a few and then pop it out onto a cutting board. Admire your handy work. Celebrate by tearing off a chunk and dipping it in olive oil. Live fully once again!
* I chose to use a bundt pan b/c I thought it might offer a little support in helping the dough rise and not collapse in the middle. Worked well, but the bread seems to have enough structure that it might not be necessary. You definitely need a pan with walls b/c the dough is too soupy to rise like a traditional loaf, but I might try a springform pan next time to see how I fare.
Homemade Olives: The curing process
Olive night came and went and the olives are now happily eating up all my available counter space, curing their little brains out. Why must they cure? Olives in their raw state are seriously bitter (try one! It’s shocking), so they must be cured to remove the ick. There are three ways to do this:
1. Salt-Drying: I don’t know much about this method other than it uses a shocking amount of salt. But suffice to say, at the end of the process you get shriveled little uber-olives. Power-packed with flavor. Not for the faint of heart or the fair-weather olive friend. I love them.
2. Curing with Lye: Commercial olives are typically cured with lye. It’s the lower-maintenance method (barely) and has therefore won the hearts of olive manufacturers eager to turn out this year’s batch of olives and make a buck. Any olives you see that have not been cracked have likely been lye-cured. But everything I’ve heard about lye tells me it’s a nasty thing to work with in your home, so we’ll be curing with…
2. Curing with Water: Oleuropein*, the substance that makes olives bitter, is soluble in water (how lucky). So an easy, albeit more labor intensive way to remove the bitterness is to soak the little olivinas in water. To do this, first you must crack the olives (really well) to allow the bitterness to leech out. Then put them in a jar and cover them completely with water. At this stage there is no need to refrigerate them. Change the water every day for 10 days. Over the course of the ten days, you’ll notice the water you dump each day gets less and less stinky yellow. At the end of this process, the olives will smell faintly olive-like but will be almost tasteless.
How do you crack an olive?
I’ve experimented with several ways; faced with 20-30 pounds of olives, I alternate between two to avoid sore hands or amputated limbs (you think I jest…) The first method involves placing one olive at a time on a cutting board and either leaning on it with the flat side of a cleaver (any wide, stiff knife will work. A second, smaller cutting board will work as well). This works better if you’re tall or like to cook in platforms or stilettos. The second method is similar; you rest the flat side of the knife on the olive, but instead of leaning on the knife, you give it a swift whack with the heel of your hand. Sometimes the knives get slippery from the olive goo (careful, it stains) and you get scared that you’ll slip and chop off a limb. When that happens, you might consider switching to smashing the olives with that second, smaller cutting board I mentioned instead of the slimy knives.
*This is priceless – Wikinerdia’s explanation for what oleuropein is: “tyrosol esters of elenolic acid that are further hydroxylated and glycosylated.” In case you were wondering.
Raw Olives, oh joy!
The anticipation sets my little tastebugs atwitter. September is olive harvest month and I just got 40 (yes, 40) pounds of fresh green olives delivered to my doorstep. Saaaa-weeet! Bitter, actually, but we’ll fix that. Stay tuned for this three-part post:
- Blather on about the greatness of home-cured olives (you are here)
- T’aint no lye: Curing olives without the nasties (hint: use water!)
- Brining is the key to olive happiness. Oh, the places we’ll go!
Stay tuned. Olive curing happens tonight.
YUM!
Savory Pumpkin Sauce for your Fettucini Genie's Delight
I went spelunking in my freezer yesterday and found all kinds of interesting dried, shriveled tidbits I’d squirreled away years ago. Among the finds? Five homemade pesto ravioli from my gluteny past life, several forgotten end slices of gluten free bread, three bags of New Mexico green chiles (hooray!) and one bag of peas (anyone who knows me realizes the significance of this. Bagged peas do not last more than 24 hours in my presence. Breakfast, mid-morning snack, late-morning snack… peas to me are what cereal is to adolescent boys.)
Anywhoo, among these identifiable treatsies, there were a few plastic containers of _____. That is to say, *****. And by that I mean, ??????
How to find out their true identity? Defrost them, of course! One of these delightful little surprises turned out to be about a 1/2 cup of pumpkin puree I’d saved from Joe Pumpkin two Octobers ago. Unlike the rest of the puree, this bit didn’t make it into the pumpkin pie and sat lonely and alone in the back of my freezer… until now!
Fettucini with a Savory Pumpkin Sauce
- 3 cloves of garlic
- 8 oz. shiitake mushrooms
- 1 shallot
- 1 cup vegetable broth
- 1/2 c. pumpkin puree
- 1/2 cup dry white wine
- 2 heaping T tomato paste
- 1 T chopped fresh rosemary
- 2 T butter (replace with olive oil for vegan version)
- 2 T olive oil
- copious quantities of freshly ground pepper
- parmesan cheese (omit for vegan version)
Coarsely chop your garlic and shallots and fry in a pan with the 2 T olive oil until garlic begins to turn a light golden brown and the shallots look glossy. Cut the mushrooms into strips and add them to the saute with the 2 T butter. Saute for 3-5 minutes, stirring occasionally. Add the finely chopped rosemary and fry for another minute or two. Add the white wine and let simmer for 5ish minutes. Add the pumpkin puree and whisk with a fork until the paste is dissolved. Add the veggie broth and do the same with the tomato paste. Add cracked pepper, but no salt yet! Let simmer on medium low for 20ish minutes. Salt to taste. Serve on top of fettucini… all covered with cheese…
If beer’s your bag, baby, lament its absence from the celiac life no more. Gluten-free beer is on the rise! Last year I went to the fine city of Milli-walk-ay (known to most normal people as Milwaukee) and popped into the Sprecher Brewery. MUCH to my surprise, they had a gluten-free beer on tap (I was planning on tapping into my inner 8-year-old and drinking myself silly on their cream soda – HELLO!) I had no idea such things even existed. But apparently, they have two types of African brews, Mbege and Shakporo, that are made with sorghum and millet. I can’t tell you which one I tasted, but it was mild and sweet. Interesting for sure.
Sprecher has two Gluten-Free Beers, Mbege and Shakporo
Anyone else tried a gluten-free beer they like and recommend? Holler.
