Craving something spicy but not too spicy I turned to Julie Sahni Classic Indian Cooking. I've no idea how classic this is but it was delicious, and very simple to make.



The recipe calls for 2 cinammon sticks, some cardamon pods, hot pepper, and about 2 tbs roasted cumin seeds. Put to one side



Brown 2 chopped onions (I learnt from The Cooks Cottage that really browning them is essential - I love the internet), then add 5 cloves garlic and some ginger, chopped!



Add the chicken pieces (soak in lime juice first), the spices, about 1 tsp tumeric cook for 5 minutes. Add 1 can chopped tomatoes along with some water so they don't stick. Simmer until the tomatoes have melted and the chicken is cooked.


Chicken in Tomato Gravy

En relación a este post de meses atrás, encontré un datito más en el libro Le migliore ricette della Cucina Italiana, Ed. Vallardi. En el capítulo sobre la Toscana (pág. 224) dice que tiempo atrás era característico del pecorino el cuajo con cardo.
Sigo buscando información al respecto...

English version
IMBB / SHF Virtual Cookie Swap
Uno de los oráculos más conocidos de la antigüedad era el del oasis Siwa en el desierto de Libia. En el templo de Ammon, el dios carnero tebano, asimilado con Zeus por los griegos y con Júpiter por los romanos.
Qué puede tener esto que ver con las galletas?
El templo del oráculo de Ammon es una de las primeras fuentes conocidas de sales de amoníaco, obtenidas de la descomposición de material orgánico rico en nitrógeno. De allí el nombre de este compuesto químico. Una de las sales de amonio más usadas es el bicarbonato de amonio. También se lo conoce como amonio carbonatado. Antes de la introducción del bicarbonato de sodio era uno de los principales agentes leudantes. Además de los otros muchos usos que se le ha dado a lo largo de la historia (en una época el harthorns salt, como se lo conocía también en inglés por su origen, se usaba también como gelificante en la cocina). Muchas recetas guardan el recuerdo de estos usos. Lo podemos encontrar en gingerbread, lebkuchen y tantas otras galletas tradicionales.
Tengo que aclarar que aquí, al menos en mi familia, no tenemos costumbre particular de hornear galletas en el período de fiestas. Tampoco ha sido costumbre usar bicarbonato de amonio en las galletas que ocasionalmente se preparan.
Pero si uno investiga un poco las etiquetas de casi todas las galletas industriales que se encuentran en el mercado, dulces y saladas, verá que en su mayor parte entre los ingredientes está el bicarbonato de amonio. Es que al contrario del bicarbonato de sodio (casi siempre presente también en el polvo para hornear), el de amonio se evapora completamente durante la cocción en condiciones adecuadas. Esto mejora el sabor de los bizcochos, que muchas veces debido a las trazas de sodio dejan una sensación algo pastosa en boca. Además con el uso de bicarbonato de amonio hay otras características favorables, en el leudado, consistencia (son más crocantes) y conservación.
Para mostrarles algo típico nuestro pensé en un dulce que es un poco más que una galleta: el alfajor. Ya publiqué mi receta de alfajores de maicena. Así que vamos con otra que lleva bicarbonato de amonio junto a otros leudantes. Los alfajores marplatenses, como los Havanna o Balcarce, están entre mis favoritos. Una masa con algo de cacao, dulce de leche repostero para el relleno y baño de chocolate o glacé de azúcar.

ALFAJORES MARPLATENSES



400 g harina 0000
100 g maicena (almidón di maíz)
10 g cacao amargo
4 g bicarbonato di sodio
7 g bicarbonato di amonio
7 g polvo para hornear
media cucharadita de sal

220 g manteca
110 g azúcar
40 g miel
30 g extracto de malta
esencia de vanilla
esencia de limón
esencia de1 almendra
1 huevo

500 g dulce de leche repostero

Para el baño:

chocolate cobertura

o

1 clara
100 g azúcar impalpable
1 cda jugo de limón
3/4 taza agua casi hirviendo

Se bate la manteca blanda con el azúcar, la miel y el extracto de malta. Se perfuma con las esencias y se agrega el huevo. Se agregan los ingredientes secos previamente tamizados. Usando una planetaria se pueden meter en el vaso de una sola vez, cubrir bien con film plástico y activarla. En carencia de este eletrodoméstico u otro similar se puede realizar a mano, con una espátula, trabajando sin amasar.
Se envuelve la masa en film y se lleva a la heladera por lo menos un par de horas. Generalmente la congelo.
Antes de estirar la masa se la saca a temperatura ambiente. Se estira sobre mesada de mármol ligeramente enharinada. Se cortan círculos de 5 cm de diámetro y se ubican sobre placas antiadherentes o enmantecadas. Se llevan a la heladera por 15 minutos.
Se prepara el horno a unos 170-180 ºC. Se cocinan las galletitas hasta que el olor de amoníaco se haya desvanecido. Esto es importante porque de lo contrario quedará algo de ese sabor en los bizcochos.
Se retiran del horno y se dejan enfriar sobre rejillas. Se colocan en latas que cierren bien.
Se arman uniendo de a dos tapas con generosa cantidad de dulce de leche. Después se bañan con chocolate o con glacé de claras.
Para el glacé seguí aproximadamente la receta de este sitio, con variación en las proporciones.
La semana que viene publico el paso a paso.

Otras galletas que preparo con bicarbonato de amonio son las de coco. En este caso es el único leudante. Se extienden bastante en ancho, así que hay que tener la prevención de ubicarlas bien separadas en la placa para horno. Son sumamente simples y rápidas de preparar.

GALLETITAS DE COCO



200 g harina 0000
1/2 cucharadita bicarbonato de amonio
200 g manteca
120 g coco rallado
100 g azúcar

Se mezclan todos los ingredientes hasta obtener una masa homogénea. Se envuelve la masa en film, se le da forma alargada para que esté lista para cortar y se lleva a la heladera. Se cortan rebanadas de la masa y se colocan sobre una placa bien distanciadas. Horno moderado, siempre hasta que el bicarbonato de amonio se haya evaporado bien. Generalmente huelo la base de las galletas para comprobarlo. :D
Se conservan por largo tiempo.


One of the greatest oracles in the ancient world was at the Siwa oasis, in the Lybian desert. At the temple of Ammon, the teban deity, identifyed with Zeus by Greeks and with Jupiter by Romans.
What has this to do with cookies?
This temple was an antique source of ammonium salts, obtained from decomposition of organic material rich in nitrogen. Therefore the name of the chemical compound ammonia. One of these ammonium salts is bicarbonate ammonium. Also known as baker's ammonia, hartshorn salt or Hirschhornsalz in German. Before sodium bicarbonate was widely introduced, ammonium was commonly used as leavening agent. Besides many other uses given to it along history (hartshorn salt was also used for example as a gelificant in cooking or even as smelling salts!).
Many traditional recipes, as gingerbread or lebkuchen or cavallucci to name a few keep memories of this old usage.

I have to say that here, at least in my family, we don't have a particular tradition of baking cookies during holiday season. Using ammonium bicarbonate hasn't been either a common use when we occassionaly prepare cookies.
But doing a little research, and looking carefully at the labels of industrial cookies, you can usually found ammonium bicarbonate among the ingredients. Contrary to baking soda (almost always present in baking powder too), baker's ammonia evaporates completly during baking in adequate conditions. This improves cookies taste, that many times due to traces of sodium leave an unpleasant aftertaste in the mouth. Furthermore the use of ammonium bicarbonate has other favorable caracteristics, in leavening, in texture and conservation.
To show you something tipical I thought of a sweet that's a little bit more than a cookie: alfajor. I've already posted my recipe for alfajores de maicena (starch alfajores). So here we go with another one, this time with baker's ammonia.
A dough with some cocoa, a filling of dulce de leche, and a chocolate or sugar coverture...

ALFAJORES MARPLATENSES



400 g all purpose flour
100 g corn starch
10 g cocoa powder (bitter)
4 g sodium bicarbonate
7 g ammonium bicarbonate
7 g baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

220 g butter
110 g sugar
40 g honey
30 g malt extract
vanilla essence
lemon essence
almond essence
1 egg

chocolate

1 egg white
100 g caster sugar
1 tablespoon lemon juice
3/4 cup hot water (almost boiling)

Cream butter and sugar. Add yolks one by one. Mix in essences. Add flour, starch and leavenings previously sifted. You don't have to knead or work the dough too much, just enough to get an homogenous mix. I usually do this steps in a mixer (well covered with plastic film to avoid flour all over the kitchen). Then wrap the dough in plastic and chill at least a couple of hours (or freeze it).
Roll the dough about 3-4mm high, cut 5cm diameter circles putting them on a clean baking sheet. Put it in the refrigerator for 5-10 minutes. Preheat oven to 180º and cook the cookies.
You have to check if ammonia is completly evaporated when they're done. I do this smelling the base of the cookie... :)
Let cool. Then match them by two. Put a good quantity of dulce de leche on the base of one cookie and close with the other one.
Cover with melten chocolate or meringue. Let them dry.

For the meringue beat egg whites, add sugar, and when it's stiff add boiling water. Continue beating for a while.


------

Other cookies that i love to prepare with baker's ammonia are coconut cookies. In this case ammonia is the only leavening agent. They tend to expand, so you have to be careful to put them apart on the baking sheet. I like them because they are simple and fast to prepare.

COCONUT COOKIES



200 g flour
1/2 teaspoon ammonium bicarbonate
200 g butter
120 g coconut
100 g sugar

Mix well all ingredients. Wrap the dough in film, refrigerate for at least an hour or freeze, cut rounds, and bake at 170-180º until ammonia evaporates completly (I use to smell the base of the cookies to be sure :D ).

A special thank to my dear friend Roberta who helped me with the translation.

You know, I had every intention of this being a gluten-free Thanksgiving. After all, I remember every Thanksgiving of my life before this one, laying around in the late afternoon with my stomach overly full, my throat constricted, my head pounding from the pain, and a general feeling of malaise invading my system. We all overeat on Thanksgiving, right? That’s why I felt like such a dragged-out, run-over specimen of a being for most of Thanksgiving day.

But that was years past. And this year, for the first time, I would have an entirely gluten-free Thanksgiving. After all, this isn’t a lifestyle choice, a whim, and certainly not an attempt to cut carbs. With celiac disease, even the smallest amount of gluten can make for miserable days. And of course, keeping this website, and doing the continuous research to keep myself up to date for all of you reading, makes me even more aware of where gluten may lurk. It’s funny, how many people write to me and admit, “You know, I cheat sometimes, and I always pay for it later.” I’ve never been tempted to “cheat,” just sneak a taste of that cake or a bite of that pastry. Who would I be cheating besides myself? After being so inordinately sick last year, I know exactly how gluten can make me feel. So I’ve lost my taste for it. Traditional pasta no longer looks good to me. No chance for this gluten-free girl to grow sick.

After all, I took great precautions. The night before Thanksgiving, I made the pumpkin pies at my house, in my own pie plates, so there would be no chance of cross-contamination. And I have to say, with more experimenting since September, I’ve developed a pie crust recipe I just adore. (Recipe at the bottom of this post.) It’s flaky, tasty, and just enough bite to feel like real pie. I love making pumpkin pie, tossing in the cinnamon. And this year, I ground my cloves fresh, which shone through in the pie. That was a triumph.



And I attempted to make my own gluten-free stuffing. For most of my life, my mother cooked the entire Thanksgiving dinner by herself. And every year, what I looked forward to most was her gorgeous, simple stuffing. (By the way, apparently the distinction between stuffing and dressing is that stuffing is cooked in the bird and dressing outside of it. But I don’t care. Even though we haven’t cooked the concoction inside the bird in years, for health reasons, I still refuse to call it dressing.) Just soft bread cubes, butter, onions, celery, sage, and plenty of pepper. That was the taste of Thanksgiving for me. I always felt sorry for the families with “weird” stuffing, with apricots or walnuts or sausages or pears. That’s not stuffing. So on Wednesday night, I baked a loaf of gluten-free bread. In fact, I made two. In the bread machine, I made a loaf with the Gluten-free Pantry French Bread and Pizza Mix, my old standby. And in the oven, I made a loaf of the Pamela’s Wheat-Free mix, a new addition to my kitchen. The Pamela’s loaf had the feel of real bread, and a slightly sweet taste I find wonderfully appealing for sandwiches. But the bread-machine loaf had that silky-white texture I associate with the bread for stuffing. So after making the loaf, I cut it into cubes and browned it in a 250° oven for another hour and a half. This gave it a little crust, a little crunch. Good for stuffing. So it took me about five hours to produce a little bag of bread cubes, but it felt worth it.



On Thursday morning, I loaded up my car with my box full of food (including the cranberry relish I had made, a butternut squash, scallions, apples and pears, and chicken stock) and drove to Vashon, one of my favorite places in the world. The same width as Manhattan island, this green swath of land in Puget Sound is actually two miles longer than Manhattan. And yet, only 9000 people live there. Imagine 9000 people on Manhattan. The fir trees and madronas buffet against the water. Driving down the main highway, you only stop five times, and that’s with stop signs. There’s not a single traffic light on the place. Having lived and taught there for five years, I know the place like the recipes I never have to look up in a book. I just drive, and smile. And of course, my brother, sister-in-law, and darling nephew live there. When I’m in their house, my cheeks hurt from all the smiling, and my stomach aches from all the laughing with Elliott. Time stops, in the best way. I live in the moments when Elliott and I are imagining together. And so, on Thursday as well. I had offered to cook half the meal, add some new dishes, to make sure we had fancy vegetables and more gluten-free food. But my brother insisted on cooking almost everything, since it was his house. So no real cooking for me. Just a quiet family time, which I loved. The rain pattered on the skylights after a week of low fog in the sky, and it sounded like home. When Elliott napped, we played ridiculous word games and laughed so hard we all leaned out of our chairs precariously and let the tears squeeze from our eyes. It was shaping up to be a lovely Thanksgiving.

But after all that work, and being as careful as I could be with the food, I still got sick from gluten contamination. How?

Well, my brother made his stuffing, then washed out the skillet for me to make mine. Did he wash out the pan enough? Perhaps. When he put the tinfoil on my glass pan of gluten-free stuffing, did he still have flour on his hands? Maybe. He made his own gravy, then cleared a spot on the stove for me to make mine, with gluten-free flour and Kitchen Basics chicken stock. (By the way, thanks to Suzanne from Indiana for that suggestion. It’s fantastic.) But was there still flour flying in the air from his vigorous whisking? Did I get all the flour off the whisk before I started making mine? I don’t know.



I do know that the last-minute details of cooking Thanksgiving dinner is often a bit of a frenzy. Everything finishes cooking at the same time. In the flurry of finishing my gravy, and laying out the cranberrries, and dumping a jar of green olives in a bowl, I didn’t notice that Andy had set my pan of gluten-free stuffing and his pan of regular stuffing side by side. Or that they were in the exact same glass pans. But I did notice, when I went into the kitchen to pile my plate with food, that someone had already used the spoon from the regular stuffing in mine, by mistake. There’s my contamination. I looked at it, in horror. I tried to take a spoonful from the other side, with a new spoon, but it probably wasn’t enough.

Why didn’t I just skip the stuffing? Well, I already had to skip the turkey. What? Turkey has gluten in it, you’re thinking? No. Of course not. Except....My brother and sister-in-law had bought a fresh turkey, and they decided to roast it in a plastic poultry bag. As I was finishing my gravy, I watched my dear brother take the turkey out of the oven. I remarked on how lovely and brown it looked, then stared again at the bag.
“Hey Andy, what’s that white stuff in the bag?” I asked him.
“Oh, it’s flour. The manufacturers suggest you throw a couple of tablespoons of flour in there to make sure the skin doesn’t stick,” he said, with no hint of recognition in his voice.
I stared at him. And stared at him.
And then he looked at me, his eyes growing wide, and said, “Oh shit.”

He and my sister-in-law had put flour on the turkey. The one part of the Thanksgiving dinner most likely to be gluten-free—and this one had flour on it.

Now, my brother and sister-in-law love me. They know all about the gluten-free thing, since they both read this site. (Hi, you guys.) And I know they never had any intention of shutting me out of the Thanksgiving turkey. But that’s how hard this is. Even the people who care about us sometimes just don’t make the connection. And then we gluten-free folks have to go without. Again.

They both felt bad, but I backed off from it immediately. No point in making a fuss. And for ten years, when I was a vegetarian, I ate entire Thanksgiving meals without turkey. But still.

[Don’t feel too bad for me, though. Today, when I left the island, I drove straight to the movie theatre to meet Francoise and her family. After seeing Pride and Prejudice, we returned to their lovely home for tea and conversation. When I told Francoise this story, she immediately pulled the leftovers of her enormous turkey from her refrigerator, and insisted on cutting me half. So I didn’t lack, in the end.]

An hour after dinner, I started feeling exhausted. Bloated. That horrible sinking feeling of eating too much, my stomach filling immediately. I had to lie down on the couch, while my sister-in-law’s brother played with my nephew instead. My face felt hot. I could feel the headache rising. And my gut began reacting, almost immediately. Somehow, I’d ingested some gluten, and now I was paying for it. How? I’m still not sure. I’m pretty sure it was the cross-contamination from the other stuffing. And it’s possible I ate one cube of regular bread. When I was putting the glass pans away in the refrigerator, I grabbed one more bite of my stuffing, flecked with pepper and infused through with sage, and thought, “Actually, that does taste pretty damned good.” But almost immediately, I thought, “Uh-oh. That didn’t taste right.” Why didn’t I color-code the stuffings? Why didn’t I insist on putting them in different parts of the kitchen? Why didn’t I make a fuss and make all my own dishes in spite of my brother’s wish to treat the entire family to food? Well, because I’m learning. And there are so many gluten-free lessons to learn. This is a path, a practice, a continually unfolding journey.

I didn’t tell my family that I was sick. I didn’t want to ruin the evening. There were so many beautiful moments besides it—talking with my parents, or basking in the gratitude of having my fabulously imperfect family, or giving my nephew a joyful splashing bath—that it felt small. Thanksgiving, after all, is about the being together, the moments of uncontrolled laughter, the board games, the rain on the roof, the imaginings of a two-year-old, the reminiscing conversations, the long hugs. Imperfect as the meal was, and as quickly as my gluten reaction rose, it was still a lovely day.

However, I’ve been sick all day. And I will be again tomorrow. I know the pattern. Terrible flashes of headaches. Enormous strains of lethargy. Foggy brain. Significant grumblings in the intestines, and more. The old pain in my side. A fullness in my stomach, rising up through my throat, almost choking me. Bloatedness in every part of me. Joint pain. And no appetite. This will be with me for most of the weekend. All this because of a possible errant bread cube. Or a cross-contaminated spoon.

This is hard, this being gluten-free. If you’ve been reading, you know how joyful I am about it, how much of an adventure I consider it, how much this has changed my life. Mistakes happen. And if I’m sick for one weekend, on a low level, it gives me enormous empathy for the person I used to be, the one who always felt like this, who suffered for years for no explanation. And for all of you reading who suffer with me on this. There are a lot of us out there. We aren’t just crazy.

The entire experience has set me thinking. About how careful we all have to be, when we eat in restaurants or go to friends’ homes. Because, if even my dear brother and sister-in-law put flour on our turkey without it occurring to them what that might do to me, how much damage can busy kitchen staffs do? I feel as though I am educating everyone I meet about gluten. And I have to be absolutely vigilant. No slipping.

But it also struck me how, in enacting old Thanksgiving traditions, I broke my own gluten-free rule. For months, I’ve been writing here, and living it in my life: don’t look for gluten-free substitutes of the same old foods. Branch out. Make sharp tastes and memorable bites from foods that are naturally gluten-free. I’ve been living that, in action, every night, with dozens of dishes made from amaranth or quinoa or fresh vegetables or rice. And after all this experimenting and throwing in spices, I’ve come to adore that food more than any other I ate before it. I don’t miss bread.

So why did I make a gluten-free stuffing, as close an approximation of the old stuff as I could?

Because of tradition. Thanksgiving means roast turkey, mashed potatoes, bread stuffing, gravy, and rolls. Right? Well, with the exception of the turkey (most times), everything else relies on flour. And it’s bound to be a problem for those of us who just can’t eat gluten.

So here’s what I’ve decided to do. Starting with this Christmas, and every holiday after it, I’m going to make celebratory feasts. Not the same old food as always, but rich, decadent foods with enormous bodies of flavor. Swiss chard gratin. Cassoulets. Braised lamb. Brussel sprouts in browned butter. Sweet potato puree. Crisp salads with goat cheese and pomegranate seeds. Cornbread. Roasted nuts. And, since I’ve mastered the recipe, pumpkin pie with a gluten-free crust.

I’m going to start a new tradition, not feel chained to the old ones. Because--and here was the biggest surprise for me--even if I hadn’t been glutenized, I just didn’t enjoy the meal. Not that my brother isn’t a good cook. He is. He did a great job. It’s just that the tradtional Thanksgiving meal is a plate of food that all tastes pretty much the same: starchy, mashed, salty, and full of flour. And after all these fresh foods and innovative ideas turned into moaning mouthfuls, I just wasn’t that interested. And in the end, the food I enjoyed most in the entire day was the butternut squash I roasted with sea salt and olive oil in the early afternoon, just enough to tide us over until the big dinner. That, and the piquant cranberry relish, is the taste that stuck with me. You never could have told me this before my celiac diagnosis, but Thanksgiving was far from my favorite meal of the year.

So once again, this experience teaches me. From now on, I’m following my own way home.

SWEET POTATO CRISP
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My dear and lovely people:

Here I am, the day before Thanksgiving, making a loaf of gluten-free bread for my first Thanksgiving without real bread. The cranberries are ready to boil soon. And the pumpkin pies are starting to smell like the cinnamon-ginger goodness they're bound to become. Outside, that clear blue sky beckons. We're all alive. And in the midst of the darkening winter, this light.

It's funny to me, how everyone grows caught up in Thanksgiving, as though it's all about the stuffing, or stuffing as many people around the table as possible. Even without bread, this feels like the season. It's not just the crisp air, the excitement of two days off of school without work, the heartbreaking thin light of winter. And it's not even about the food, which is quite the statement for me. Even more than ever now, I realize this national holiday is about the gratitude. This has been an extraordinary year for me. In a storied, hilariously full life, this year soars above the rest. The year I finally found health. The year I started this website, and everything good that spill forward from it. And the year I have felt most alive in my life.

Gratitude spills out of me these days, as easily as my laughter. And words can never express how deeply grateful I am to have you all in my life. Here is a woefully incomplete list of why I feel gratitude surging through my chest today:

--for friends who adore food as much as I do, friends who bring me organic potatoes from the farmers' markets spontaneously, friends who discuss recipes endlessly with me, friends who introduce me to pomegranate molasses and great olive oil and new brands of dark chocolate, friends who eat my meals with complete attention and grunting approval, friends who fill my email inbox with encouragement and love and stories, friends who are at the center of my life, my second family, my soulmates (all 128 of them and more). My beloveds.

--for my family, who play a mean game of Apples to Apples on the holidays, who offer me constant support and teasing taking the mickey out keeping me in place comments, who try all my recipes, who read this website, who gave me the DNA to exist, and who provided me with Elliott.

--for the internet, which keeps me occupied all day long, informs me on a daily basis about what can keep me most healthy, keeps me writing, makes me take photographs, and connects me to all of you reading.

--for all of you.

--for celiac disease, which has informed me my entire life, without once informing me of its existence until last spring. Without it, I wouldn't have this life, as it is, or this website.

--for quinoa, red peppers, garlic, goat cheese, organic polenta, mushrooms, soy milk, poached eggs, sauteed spinach, corn tortillas, cranberries, figs, oranges, cassoulet, roast chicken, bananas, dark chocolate, ice water, red wine, fresh-cut ginger, millet fritters, and for the fact that I still have so much more to taste.

--for the sunlight on my fingers as I type this right now.

--for right now.


Right now is enough.


I hope that everyone reading this enjoys a Thanksgiving filled with an extraordinary ease of mind, languid days, and a vivid sense of being alive. Oh, and board games. Those are important too.

All my love,
Shauna


CRANBERRY, CHERRY, AND PORT RELISH, adapted from Cooking Light, November 2005

There's nothing like the tart sweetness of homemade cranberry relish to wake you up and remind you to be grateful for having tastebuds. In a sea of lovely, mushy tastes of Thanksgiving, a good cranberry relish can be a life raft, a remembrance of the piquant tastes of previous days.

This year, I've made a cranberry relish with depth and bite. I've adapted a recipe from Cooking Light, but it's quite different. Expect photographs soon.

1 cup of sugar
1 cup of water
1/2 cup of port
1/4 teaspoon of ground allspice
1/2 cup of dried, tart cherries (I like the Trader Joe's dried Rainier cherries)
16 ounces of fresh, organic cranberries
1 teaspoon of grated orange rind
1 small capful of vanilla extract

°Pour the first four ingredients into a saucepan. Stir, on high heat, until it comes to a boil.
°Add the cherries. Cook for one minute. And don't cut it short.
°Pour in all the lovely, every-shade-of-red cranberries. Stir them about until it comes to a boil again. Reduce the heat to medium-low, then cover the pot with a lid. Preferably, you'd use a clear glass lid. That way, you can watch the cranberries simmer, then start to pop, then spread. It's a wonderful sight, particularly if you grew up eating cranberries with the can ridges along the side. Simmer for ten minutes.
°Take the pan off the heat. Stir in the orange zest and vanilla extract.
°Put the cranberries into a large plastic container and chill overnight.

Yum.

Es esta una receta que gira por diversos foros italianos de cocina, como Gennarino y Coquinaria. El autor es Adriano de Nápoles. A quien tuve el gusto de conocer, aunque más no fuese por unos breves momentos.
Es su versión de la pizza napolitana. Se prepara el poolish con una cantidad minúscula de levadura, unas 7-8 horas después se agrega a éste más harina para formar la masa y se la deja madurar en la heladera por lo menos 12 horas. El resultado es una masa de un perfume increíble, que se trabaja con facilidad y que en las condiciones adecuadas del horno resulta en una pizza que parece profesional.
Días atras compré una piedra refractaria para el horno. Y lo primero que quise probar fue la pizza. Así que allá fui... Preparé il poolish el viernes de la otra semana para hacer las pizzas el sábado a la noche. Pero claro, no conté con todos los errores que iba a cometer.
El primer intento fue desastroso. La pizza se me pegó a la pala (la condimenté allí, con la salsa caliente y tardé demasiado tiempo). Habiéndose pegado no podía transferirla a la piedra y con el golpe para que cayera, una parte se dió vuelta, quedando la salsa y el queso hacia abajo. Consecuencia de esto: a la hora de sacarla del horno, estaba pegada a la piedra, con una linda mancha de tomate y queso. En fin, que la piedra ya no es más virgen.
La segunda vez, el domingo a la noche, fue mucho mejor. Ubiqué la piedra en la zona de grill, debajo de la llama (tengo un horno a gas). Otra opción sería ubicarla en contacto con la chapa inferior, pero no creo que tome tan bien color por encima y esté lista tan rápido.
Este último fin de semana seguí intentando. Y los resultados mejoran de a poco. Pero tengo mucho que aprender todavía.
El condimento preferido: salsa de tomate, queso, alcaparras.

PIZZA DE ADRIANO



Para 6 pizzas de 230 g

Poolish:
500 g harina de fuerza
500 g agua
3 g levadura de cerveza
1 cucharadita de extracto de malta (opcional)

-----

270 g harina 000
80 g sémola
25 g sal
30 g aceite de oliva

Se prepara el poolish (en general la noche anterior). Se mezclan harina, agua, levadura y extracto de malta hasta obtener un compuesto homogéneo. Es bastante líquido. Se lo deja reposar bien cubierto con film unas 7-8 horas a temperatura ambiente (unos 21ºC). El poolish está listo cuando la superficie se presenta cubierta de pequeñas burbujitas, antes de que comience a "desinflarse".
Se mezclan la harina y la sémola restantes. Y se amasa bien. Yo uso la planetaria, que me ahorra bastantes dolores de cuello. Se deja descansar la masa cubierta a temperatura ambiente unos 30 minutos. Se divide en porciones de alrededor de 230 g y se forman los bollitos. Se coloca cada bollito en un contenedor hermético y se ubican en la parte más fría de la heladera (en mi caso 4ºC). Dos horas antes de cocinar la pizza se sacan de la heladera.
El horno, con la piedra en la posición donde se la usará, se calienta al máximo por lo menos 20 minutos.
Se tienen los condimentos y la salsa listos para el momento de armar las pizzas.
Cada bollito de masa se coloca sobre abundante harina y se aplasta en el centro con la palma de la mano. Después se estiran desde el centro hacia los bordes con ocho dedos de las manos. Esta parte requiere más explicación. Pero lo mejor es ver cómo se hace...
Después se coloca la pizza estirada sobre la pala bien enharinada (o mejor con sémola). Se condimenta rápidamente y al horno. En 5 minutos está lista.

Today, I realized, with a start, that it has been six months since I stopped eating gluten. Actually, it’s a little over six months, since it was April 30th when I officially started living gluten-free. It’s a marker of just how easily I have adapted to this, how joyfully, that I forgot to mark the occasion. I feel like a pro now.

This doesn’t mean that I stop thinking about it, ever. I have to check the label of everything I eat. I have to be a nuisance in every restaurant I visit. And keeping this site keeps me on my toes. Especially when so many of you who are newly diagnosed write to me for advice, or celiacs from the around the world write to share recipes with me. I’m daily grateful for these connections. And I feel a responsibility to research the latest details, cook more fabulous food, and take the most luscious photographs I can to remind everyone of this: living gluten-free is not a punishment. In fact, it’s a path to freedom.

On yesterday’s post, cookiecrumb left a comment that set me thinking: "It's so brilliant, reading your blog, to learn of the things you can eat that are gluten-free, yet carby and delish. Corn. Beans. Fruit. Bet you aren't really missing much with your new diet." Well, exactly. Thank you, cookiecrumb, for putting it into the words I had forgotten to find. I’m not deprived at all on this diet. I’m just alive.

So, in the spirit of sharing the joy, I’d like to show you a few of the meals and treats I ate in Los Angeles this weekend with my dear friend, Sharon.

SWEET CORN SALAD AT THE CASBAH CAFE

Sharon lives in Silverlake, just off Sunset. The hipster capital of the world, seemingly. Everywhere slouched tremendously slender young men and women, dressed in thigh-hugging pants, holey shirts that probably cost a hundred dollars, gigantic sunglasses, soft-soled shoes, and fabulously dissheveled hair. Oh my. And of course, everyone looked tremendously bored, suffering for perpetual ennui. All the while they furtively worked on screenplays, or talked to their agents on their cell phone. Ah, LA.

But one of the best parts about Silverlake is the Casbah Cafe. A small corner store on Sunset, this place is cool without trying too hard to be so. The back half of the shop is filled to the brim with Moroccan shirts, yerba mate cups, and glittery pink slippers. Filled with light and slow moving, the Casbah feels like an oasis of sanity in the midst of the throngs pressing against the inevitablity of aging and not being famous, just outside.

And their coffee is pretty great. That’s saying something for a Seattle girl in Los Angeles.

Since Sharon and I woke up late enough Friday morning (after talking and laughing well into the night on Thursday) that breakfast had blurred into lunch, we walked straight to Casbah. And even though the menu, written on the glass cases filled with dates and olive breads, was mostly off limits to me, I found what I wanted pretty quickly. A sweet corn salad, with black, wrinkled olives, fresh tomatoes, and tuna. It arrived in an enormous bowl, mounded with vegetables and a light vinaigrette that danced on my tongue. With the sunlight filtering through the bamboo blinds, and Sharon across from me, this was a deeply satisfying meal.

THE CHEESE STORE OF SILVERLAKE



Later, after strolling through small stores with hip clothes, intriguing antiques, and startling window displays, Sharon and I felt a bit peckish again. And she was eager to share her favorite food store with me. The Cheese Store of Silverlake is stocked from floor to ceiling with gorgeous gourmet foods from around the world. Vosges chocolates. Arborio rice from Italy. Apricot toffee. A local candy maker called The Little Flower Candy Company that makes sea salt caramels, vanilla caramels, and (my favorite) cinnamon-sugar marshmallows. Ah. Barrels of olive oils. Persimmons. And then, the cheeses. Sharon and I bought two small slices of two cheeses, each. I found some Drunken Goat, from Spain, which I simply adore, and Sharon had never tasted it before. She wanted me to try the Bar Durro, a hard cheese with a nutty quality. We stocked up on little gifts of food for ourselves, and we nibbled on them all weekend.

Have you ever tried the Vosges fire-red chocolate? If not, then you should. Rich, deeply textured chocolate, layers of taste, with a little zing of spice at the last. Heaven.

ANGELINA OSTERIA



Since I had been so richly treated to this glorious weekend by Sharon’s dear boyfriend, Matt, I wanted to give Sharon my own birthday present. What else could I give her but food? I decided, spontaneously, to treat her out to a lavish dinner at one of the best places in Los Angeles. (Well, the best within our price range.) But which restaurant? She likes one called Blair’s, in Silverlake, but it didn’t open for dinner until 6. And we had to be eating at 5:30, in order to make it on time to Matt’s sketch-comedy show at the Friars’ Club in Beverly Hills. (Yes, I do have a strange life.) Well, we consulted a charming guide book called Eat. Shop. LA, written by a charming woman from Portland, who writes a series of Eat. Shop guides for major cities on the West Coast. I love the Seattle book, so when I saw a copy of the LA guide at the Casbah, I convinced Sharon to grab it. After much consultation, and staring at the photographs of the food, we chose Angelina Osteria, ostensibly because the writer explained that her pickiest food friend in LA liked only one restaurant, and this was the one. How could we resist?

When I called in the early afternoon to make a reservation, the woman on the phone announced cheerfully, “I’ve got nothing open tonight.” Nothing? Not even at 5:30? Maybe she heard the disappointment in my voice and took pity, because after a beat, she said, “Okay, if you arrive exactly at 5:30, we’ll fit you in.” Hurrah!

And hurrah it was, because this was an extraordinary meal. Angelina Osteria is a warm, Tuscan place, with exquisite food based on what is fresh and in season. So many choices, including gluten-free choices. I told our ridiculously handsome Italian waiter that I couldn’t eat anything with gluten in it, and he looked a little confused, but we made our way through it. How to choose? Luckily, Sharon and I are sharers. Our entire time of knowing each other, 23 years now, we innately decide to order two separate meals and split them down the middle. So that night, we ordered two appetizers:

warm octopus salad on a bed of arugula, with baby cherry tomatoes (pictured above)

braised artichoke hearts with garlic, olive oil, and parsley

By the time these had arrived, Sharon and I were already wonderfully happy. To be in such a place, together, unexpectedly. And then we tasted our food.

“Oh god,” Sharon moaned. “This is really good. You have to try it now.”

She was right. The artichokes were deeply flavored, perfectly tender. And the octopus was better than I had ever eaten before, not a touch of rubber eraser texture to it. We ate a few bites each, then traded plates, back and forth, until we had cleaned our plates entirely. I would have licked up the artichoke marinade if I could have.



And the entrees? Well, you can see them on the table between Sharon and me on this table:

warm duck breast with balsamic vinegar, with a side of perfectly sauteed spinach

seared ahi tuna drizzled with parsley pesto, with a side of eggplant and wild mushrooms

Everything tasted wonderfully fresh, the textures outrageously dense and light at the same time, in season, just picked, made for us. We couldn’t stop cooing over our food.

And dessert? Ah, dessert. Well, Sharon had a simple panna cotta, topped with a raspberry. The best one she’s ever eaten outside of Italy, she said. And I had three small scoops of vanilla gelato, with a perfectly pulled espreso poured on top. We didn’t talk for awhile. We even stopped sharing. We just leaned over our food and ate intently. My god.

We walked out onto Beverly Boulevard, happy and humming.

MADAME MATISSE



The next morning, Sharon and Matt and I went to one of their favorite breakfast places, Madame Matisse. A tiny sliver of a restaurant on a corner of Sunset, this French bistro-style place had a red and white awning and little tables outside. Since this was November in Los Angeles, the air was about 74 degrees. Of course we’d sit outside. In the middle of the menu, I found what I wanted, immediately. An omelette, with spinach, mushrooms, goat cheese, and salmon. Sharon had one too, but with asparagus instead of spinach. Matt ordered the meat and cheese extravaganza. We sat and chattered happily, watching the hipsters go by, discussing the previous night’s show, sipping our coffee eagerly. The food arrived, and we all dug in. Not extraordinary. Just damned good. Everything fresh, again. And by this time, we were so hungry that I almost forgot to take a picture of it. I managed to save a small corner for the shot above.



And play with the reflections in my coffee cup.

SILVERLAKE FARMERS’ MARKET



I can’t visit a city without visiting a farmers’ market. Just down from Madame Matisse was the block-long Silverlake Farmers’ Market. Small in comparison to my local stomping grounds (Ballard or the University Farmers’ Market), this one was still sweet. Even sweeter for being in the middle of LA, somehow. Sharon stocked up on fresh corn and flowers. And I stopped to sample fresh bean curd at the Vietnamese Soy Cafe stall. Wow. I’d never tasted such supple, subtle bean curd, lightly flavored with ginger. I thought about ordering a glass of pennywort juice, since the woman running the stall told me it would clear out every toxin. But in the end, I chose more toxins: Vietnamese coffee, with sweet condensed milk. Ah, a small slathering of heaven.

BAJA FRESH

Sharon thought we were going to be making dinner together Saturday night. After all, she reads this site too, and feels jealous of all the other people coming over to eat. But Matt had told me there would be a surprise party, and I assumed that meant dinner. But we hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast. Still only 4:30 or so, too early for restaurants to open, where were we going to go? Matt insisted that he wanted to find us a snack, to tide us over for dinner. Sharon and I were both a bit confused——why a snack when we were going to eat a big dinner——but we trusted him. Of course, it turns out that he wanted to sneak out to fetch the Paul McCartney concert tickets he had bought for us, and slip into Sharon’s car to leave us further presents in the glove compartment. And he needed something fast. So he picked us up some food at Baja Fresh.

Now, it’s hard to imagine eating gluten-free, and eating well, at a fast food restaurant. All that batter and breading and dipping and oil. But this chain, which I really didn’t know well, specializes in fresh Mexican food. No preservatives or months-ago boxes of ingredients. Sharon suggested I try the bare burrito, all the ingredients of a burrito——spicy chicken, black beans, rice, pico de gallo, and cheese——without the tortilla. As we sat in the living room of their apartment, eating from the bags Matt had brought us, I was impressed. Fast food never tastes like this.

And then we shrieked when we realized the surprise.

So now, the taste of Baja Fresh will always be associated with the joy of knowing we were going to see Paul McCartney in concert, and Matt had given this to us.


You see? There’s no deprivation in living gluten-free.

[If you'd like to see more of my photographs of my trip to LA, click here.]


Casbah Cafe
3900 W Sunset Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90029-2242
(323) 664-7000

The Cheese Store of Silverlake
3926-28 Sunset Boulevard
Los Angeles, California
323.664.7511

Angelina Osteria
7313 Beverly Boulevard
Los Angeles, California
323.297.0070

Madame Matisse
3536 W. Sunset Blvd., L.A.
323-662-4862