Protecting Your Baby from Celiac Disease

I’m very lucky to have one of the nation’s leaders in celiac research right in my backyard. The University of Chicago’s Celiac Disease Center is a hotbed of research that has helped get celiac disease on the map. So naturally, when I had a question about how to introduce my daughter to gluten so she would minimize her risk of developing celiac disease in the future, they were right there with great advice.

To sum up:

1. Breastfeed for as long as possible. Try it for a full year. In addition to providing the best possible nutrition for your baby, breastfeeding has been shown to provide the best protection against developing celiac disease later in life.
2. Delay the introduction of gluten until after 4-6 months of age.
3. Introduce gluten while you are still breastfeeding.
4. Introduce small quantities of gluten at first. Don’t feed more than 1-2 teaspoons of gluten-containing foods per day.

Diddit! Gluten-Free Hoisin Sauce. Yeah-uh!

Woohoo! I did it! Very respectable gluten-free hoisin sauce is mine, allllll mine. And yours, too. If you want it. Let me share.

Gluten-Free Hoisin Sauce... one step closer to Gluten-free Mu Shu!

So some serious googling returned the results that hoisin is made from fermented soy bean paste, among other things. Armed with my new-found knowledge I hit Chinatown and found me some of this alleged fermented hoisin magic. The label said the only ingredient was fermented soy bean paste, but I was suspicious. Fermented with what? Wikipedia, oh great fountain of knowledge, says the soy beans are fermented using either wheat flour, pulverized mantou, rice, or sugar. Hmm… what are the odds… BAH! Until someone develops a quick and easy at-home gluten test, I’m going to avoid the sketchball Chinatown bean paste and go with what I know.

Luckily, what I know is pretty dern good.

Gluten-Free Hoisin Sauce*

• 1/4 c. sweet red bean paste (the smooth variety)**
• 2 T wheat-free tamari
• 2 t sesame oil
• 1/4 t garlic powder
• 1/2 t sugar
• dash of white pepper
• (optional) squirt of Sriracha chili (or “Freshred Chili” if you have it)

Combine all of the above ingredients in a small bowl and mix until smooth. Can be made in advance and stored in the refrigerator for a week.

*Before you get all sassy and tell me that Premier Japan makes a gluten-free hoisin sauce, I want to save you the disappointment of buying and trying it. Honestly, it tastes like orange-flavored BBQ barf. Not even close to hoisin. I’m not trying to be snobby here – bleeeeve you me, my heart skipped a thousand beats when I saw it on the grocery store shelf. But it really tastes absorootly nothing like any hoisin I’ve ever had. Sad, but less so because of the above recipe.

**If you can’t find smooth red bean paste in Asian specialty markets, sweet red bean paste is easy-po-cheezy to make at home. About.com has a recipe.

Gluten-Free Pizza a la Greca, with Spinach, Feta, & Olives

Gluten-free Pizza á la greca: with spinach, feta, tomatoes, and dried olives

Mmmm… zaaaa.

Gluten-Free Pizza à la Greca: with Spinach, Feta, & Olives

• One package Gillian’s Wheat, Gluten & Dairy Free Pizza Dough (available at Whole Paycheck)
• 1 small onion
• 2-3 garlic cloves
• 1 can crushed tomatoes
• 1 pint fresh cherry tomatoes
• 8 oz. chopped spinach
• 2 oz. feta cheese
• 1/4 c. pitted olives, coarsely chopped (try Penna’s Olivasecca – they’re amazing!)
• 1-2 T steel cut oats or corn meal
• oregano, salt & pepper to taste

This is a great quick meal if you have the foresight to thaw the pizza dough the night before. Of course, you can use a different pizza dough that doesn’t require thawing. Do a little exploring in the frozen foods section of your gross-hairy store and see what you can come up with.

Preheat the oven to 400° F. Slice the onion and garlic and saute in olive oil until glassy-looking. Add the can of crushed tomatoes and let cook down until there is very little liquid left. Add the cherry tomatoes and cook until their skins start to split – approximately 10 minutes on medium high heat. Add the spinach; saute another 5ish minutes.

Cut a large piece of parchment paper and set on a flat surface. Sprinkle 1-2 T steel cut oats or coarse corn meal (polenta works) in a circle about 6-8″ in diameter. Flatten the pizza dough into a 1″-thick disc and place on the oats/grits. Roll the dough out until it is 12-14″ in diameter. Pinch the edges so you have a little ridge all the way around. Spoon the tomato/spinach/onion mixture onto the crust and distribute evenly. Spread the crumbled feta cheese and chopped olives on top. Sprinkle with oregano, salt & pepper. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until crust turns golden brown. Ta-zaaa!

Silly Yak Bakery to the Rescue

Ok, I am such a dork. I’ve pondered for months now how the Silly Yak Bakery in Madison, WI came up with their name. Maybe they just like yaks? Inside joke perhaps? Or maybe, EINSTEIN, Silly Yak is a delightful little play on Celiac… and lord knows we need some humor in our wheatless-treatless world. Ok, it’s not that bleak, and thanks to dedicated gluten-free bakeries like Silly Yak, it’s positively BUMPIN’!!

Not being much of a sweet hound, I’ve mainly tried their breads and buns. The sweetest I’ve gone is their cinnamon swirl bread and I must say it’s deeeelish. Stay tuned for a french toast recipe made with it. HELLO! Hubba hubba.

Now go out and treat yourself to their goodies. And while you’re at it, convince them to open a bakery in Chicago. City of 3 million people got some ‘yaks who be HUNGRY!

Guilt-Free, Gluten-Free Chocolate Mousse

Folks, it don’t get much better than this. A dessert that you can whip up in 1 minute, 30 seconds. A dessert that doesn’t leave you lamenting the size of your thighs. A dessert to impress even the snob-von-snobbiest of gourmands. It’s chocolate mousse! And it’s easy as pie. Much easier, in fact.

Eat your heart out, glutards! Guilt-Free, Gluten-Free Chocolate Mousse!

Gluten-Free, Guilt-Free Chocolate Mousse

• 16 oz. (one package) of silken tofu, at room temp
• 4 oz. (one bar) semi-sweet Ghirardelli chocolate
• 1 t. vanilla extract

Yep, that’s it!

Dump the contents of the silken tofu packet unceremoniously into a food processor. Giver ‘er a whirl. In a double boiler, melt the chocolate. Pour into the tofu and process on high for 30 seconds or so, until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Add the vanilla. Split amongst four perty glasses and chill. Top with nuts or fresh berries or just down them straight-up. Huh, boy. That’s my kind of dessert!

Naturally Gluten-Free: Greek Potatoes with Lemon and Oregano

Greek Potatoes with Lemon and Oregano

Nothin’ like a little comfort food when you’re facing the possibility of lake-effect snow. Oh!

Greek Potatoes with Lemon and Oregano

• 5-6 reguh-luh old potatoes
• 1/4 c. olive oil
• 1/4 c. fresh lemon juice
• 1 T oregano
• salt & pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 400°. Peel the potatoes and cut into 1.5-2″ chunks. Coat in olive oil and place in a 8×10″ baking pan. Add the lemon juice, oregano, salt & pepper. Bake for 20 minutes, stir, then bake another 10-20 minutes until a fork inserts easily into the potatoes and the edges are nice and crispy brown.

Vegetarian Fare from the NYTimes: Mushroom Burgers

This recipe for Mushroom Burgers with Almonds and Spinach from the New York Times looks good for all you vegheads out there. Of course bulgur is a wheat-saster, but you could try substituting gluten-free quick-cook oats or gluten-free bread crumbs instead. If you give it a try, let me know how it turns out!

Gluten-Free Dim Sum: Warm Silken Tofu in Sweet Ginger Water

Sadly, my dim sum days are over. If we were living a Monty Python skit, the waiter would offer the day’s menu:

“We have gluten dumplings, gluten balls, gluten pancakes, glutinous gluten, wheat gluten, gluten hash, gluten sauce…”

“Have you got anything besides gluten?”

“Well, we have gluten buns, gluten blobs, gluten on gluten, soft tofu, gluten soup…”

What was that!? Soft tofu? Shyeaaah! This, peops, is the only dish remaining on the dim sum raster that we can eat. But it’s so damn good, it’s almost worth watching friends mow their glutenfest while you wait for the giant vat of tofu goodness to make its rounds. Here’s my take on the recipe so you can enjoy it at home, at will, glutenfest-free.

Naturally Gluten-Free: Warm Silken Tofu in Sweet Ginger Water

Silken Tofu in a Sweet Ginger Syrup

• 1 package silken tofu
• 2 c water
• 2-4 T honey
• 1 T fresh grated ginger

Pour water and honey into a small pan and heat over medium heat until honey dissolves. Empty contents of one silken tofu package into the pan. Grate ginger* and simmer on medium-low for 15ish minutes. When tofu is heated through, spoon out some tofu and pour enough syrup (like most Chinese desserts, this is no where near as sweet as what we think of as dessert, so it’s less syrupy, more watery) over the tofu to almost cover it. Serve warm. Have a little joygasm.

Now if I could only find a recipe for making homemade silken tofu, this would be insan-yah-good.

*do you know this trick? Wash your ginger root well (peel if you like, but I don’t bother) and stick it in a ziploc baggie in the freezer. When you need fresh ginger for a recipe, just pull it out of the freezer and grate it with a Microplane grater  – no need to defrost. You have fresh ginger at your fingertips whenever you want it, rather than letting it wilt and die in the fridge between gingery recipes… Niiiize.

Momofuku-Inspired Gluten-Free Ramen Noodle Soup

Gluten-Free Ramen Noodles, Inspired by David Chang's Momofuku

My Momofuku cookbook came today and it is lighting a little fire under my overworked tush to get back in the kitchen and start creating once again. Of course, you’d be right to point out that the only ingredient he uses more than gluten is meat. What could a gfveghead possibly get out of a cookbook full of porky noodles? Well, saysme, a lot. Pickled melon, for example. Cabbage kimchi or cucumber kimchi. Ginger scallion sauce. Or slow-poached eggs.

Slow-poached eggs, you say? So what? Sooooo, Chang says if you cook eggs in the shell at a low enough heat for a long enough time, you produce a perfectly poached egg neatly contained in its own shell. No stringy white floaters in your egg-poaching water and no accidentally broken egg yolks. Imagine the surprise when you crack an egg over your ramen and instead of a raw, gooey mess a perfectly poached egg slithers out!? I am intrigued. Let’s give it a whirl!

Gluten-Free Ramen Noodles

8 cups water

1/3 cup tamari

1/4 cup cabbage kimchi, coarsely chopped

3 cloves garlic

3 scallions

handful of stringbeans

4 oz. shitake mushrooms, whole caps with the stems discarded*

3 nests of mung bean thread noodles

2 slow-poached eggs

hot chili oil

soft tofu

Egg-Poaching for Turtles: I categorized this as a quickie and one-dish wonder, but admittedly, the poached eggs complicate things. So feel free to leave them out, or do them the normal way (in a shallow fry pan with an inch of simmering water and a teaspoon of white vinegar). To make the poached eggs the slow way, you’ll need a steamer and a thermometer. Put 2 eggs in the steamer and cover with water. Put on medium heat until the water is between 140 and 145 degrees. The more water you have, the easier it will be to obtain and maintain this temperature over the course of the 40 minutes it takes to poach the eggs. Turn your attention to the soup at about the 25-30 minute mark.

The quickie part: Put 8 cups of water into a medium pot and bring to a boil. While you’re waiting, chop your kimchi, garlic, scallions. Add the tamari to the water as well as the garlic, mushroom caps, and scallions. Put the mung bean noodles in the broth and turn the heat down to low. Check the noodles every couple of minutes for “doneness.” When they’re close, add the green beans and kimchi.

The plating: Cut your silken tofu and place a few large cubes in each of your serving bowls. Ladle the soup and noodles over the tofu. Crack one poached egg on top of each bowl of noodles. Top with chili oil and serve.

* I keep my mushroom stems in a ziploc bag in the freezer; when I’ve collected a full bag, I use them to make mushroom stock. Drooooool…

New Celiac or Old: Great Guide to Gluten-Free Flours

The wild and wacky world of gluten-free flours

If you’re a newly diagnosed celiac, the world can be a dark and scary place. Walk into any mainstream restaurant and the list of can’t-haves is flat-out depressing. Supermarkets that were once joyful smorgasbords of whatever your leetle heart desired suddenly have whole aisles knocked out from your weekly romp. Even your own pantry lets out a dry cackle when you open the door in hopes of a little sustenance. What in the world do celiacs eat?

We eat a lot, actually. Eyebrow-raising, envy-inspiring, attention-grabbing goodies, in fact. Soon enough, you won’t even notice you’re “deprived.” People will apologize as they bite into a pillowing billow of glutenous bagel and you’ll just smile, knowing that when you get home you will make a feast fit for kings.

But hold on a sec – you just got diagnosed and you are confused about cooking without all-purpose flour. Understandable. The gluten-free flour world is vast and largely uncharted in American kitchens. But fear not. The learning curve is steep, yes. But at some point you will emerge at the top of Mount Everest with gluten-free bread in one hand, gluten-free muffins in another, gluten-free cookies and cakes in the crooks of your arms, and a gluten-free chocolate chip bundt cake balanced like a wreath atop your head. And you’ll feel like a million bucks. True story.

Living Without, a magazine dedicated to those with food allergies, has a fantastic article on the different gluten-free flours, their properties and uses. If intimidating at first, bookmark it and come back to it every couple of months. See if anything new piques your interest. Soon you’ll be baking your way to Breadville. And Muffintowne. And Cakeykins. Buttah!