This year, Valentine’s Day coincides with the Chinese New Year, providing a welcome distraction to those who would rather avoid a world that seems to have vomited up roses and expensive prix-fixe dinners at every corner.  On February 14, celebrate the beginning of the Chinese Year of the Tiger!

In its favor, Chinese cuisine hosts some of the most nutritious, calcium-rich veggies one can eat: Chinese mustard greens (aka Gai Choy: one cup chopped has the same amount of bioavailable calcium as a cup of milk!), bok choy and Chinese broccoli (aka Gai Lan) are among the highlights.  Alas, Chinese can also be among the trickiest cuisines to navigate for those of us who must avoid wheat and gluten.  Wontons and dumplings are wrapped in lovely little wheat-flour dough pockets… Lo mein noodles are made from wheat… fried dishes are battered in flour-based coatings…and the savory sauces and condiments used to prepare most every dish almost always contain wheat or a derivative thereof.

But do not despair.  As Confucius didn’t say but surely meant to: where there’s a will to partake in Chinese food, there’s a way to partake in Chinese food.  As such, I offer you my personal guide to Chinese food for those with rebellious intestines:

Gluten-Free Chinese Food: Eating in

It won’t come as a surprise to hear that cooking at home is the best chance you have at enjoying Chinese food without worry of wheat.

Build your gluten-free condiment pantry

A large (and growing) number of the staple condiments in Chinese cooking are available in GF versions.  After years of label-reading and searching, I am pleased to offer the following list of gluten-free condiments, many of which I stock in my own pantry for when the Chinese cravings hit.  Many of them are available for purchase online, and all of them are MSG-free.

• Soy sauce: Look for (reduced-sodium) wheat-free Tamari sauce by San-J, Eden Foods or Premier Japan.  La Choy soy sauce is gluten-free, too, but I don’t think it tastes very good.
• Dark soy sauce: There is no commercially-available GF version I’m aware of.  You can jerry-rig a passable version by mixing equal parts GF soy sauce (or wheat free Tamari) with molasses, and simmering over low heat until the molasses is dissolved.
• Oyster sauce: Lee Kum Kee Panda Brand Green Label Oyster-Flavored Sauce  (note: only the “green label” product is wheat-free and MSG-free.  The red label product contains both wheat and MSG); Ka Me Oyster Sauce
• Hot Bean Sauce: Lan Chi Black Bean Sauce with Chili
• Chili Garlic Sauce: Most brands will be gluten-free, but check labels to be sure.  Some sure bets: Lan Chi Chili Paste with Garlic, and Lee Kum Kee Chili Garlic
• Hoisin sauce: Premier Japan’s Wheat-free Hoisin sauce (its also organic, which means no GMO soybeans were used in its production); Y&Y brand Hoisin sauce; Ka Me Hoisin sauce
• Plum Sauce: Lee Kum Kee Gold Label Plum Sauce, Y&Y brand Plum Sauce

All brands of sherry, cooking wine, rice vinegar, chili sauce, sesame oil, chili oil should be naturally gluten-free.

Also, most home-recipes call for naturally-GF cornstarch to thicken soups and sauces, so you should be good to go on that front, too.

Plan a menu

• Our go-to Chinese cookbook is Dorothy Huang’s Chinese Cuisine Made Simple. My husband had the good fortune to take a class with Dorothy at a Whole Foods in NYC last year, and he claims she made the best Chinese Food he’s ever tasted in his life. Her

  

  If you can't find Chinese broccoli (pictured), substitute broccoli raab/rapini or broccolini

  recipes are authentic, simple, incredibly flavorful and way more healthful than anything you’d get at a restaurant.  If you’ve stocked your pantry with the GF staples above, you’ll be able to make a surprising number of her recipes gluten-free.  The cookbook has chapters dedicated to vegetables, tofu dishes and seafood for those of you who aren’t big into meat-eating, but her book, like Chinese cuisine, is chock full of meat dishes as well.
  

• Don’t forget the greens!  In this respect, Martha is a good place to start.  Chinese she is not.  But when it comes to recipes for healthful, Chinese vegetable side dishes, she delivers.  Try her recipes for Broccoli with Oyster Sauce, fiery Stir-Fried Green Beans, or Lily’s Baby Bok Choy with Dipping Sauce. (You’ll need those GF condiments for some of these if you’re making the gluten-free version…).  Beyond Martha, Epicurious offers this simple recipe for sauteed Chinese Broccoli.

• Eat like a local!  Fish dishes are traditional on Chinese New Year, like this recipe for Whole Black Bass with Ginger and Scallions.  (Worry not: wild, U.S. black bass is currently listed as a “good alternative” by the Monterrey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch from a sustainability standpoint.)  The vegetarian dish called Buddha’s Delight is also a common New Year’s offering.  Mandarin oranges are a healthy way to finish off the meal (in season now!).

Make your own Potstickers!

Feeling ambitious?  Glutenfreeda.com offers an online won ton tutorial where you can learn how to make your very own GF Pot Stickers from scratch.  The trick, of course, is that you need a pasta machine to do so (not exactly a staple in GF homes, and even if you do have one, there’s a risk of cross-contamination if it’s been used for wheat-based pasta previously.)  But if you’ve managed to overcome those two obstacles and have an afternoon to spare, I think this would be a worthwhile and terribly fun way to celebrate the Chinese New Year!  If you get really good at it, consider selling them to potsticker-less, lazy folks like me who would pay a pretty penny to partake of an authentic potsticker again someday…

Gluten-free Chinese Food: Eating Out

If you’re going to brave the restaurant scene, it’s best to be prepared.  Here are some options:

• In NYC, visit Lilli and Loo or Lili’s 57, two Chinese restaurants with  gluten-free menus.  Nationally, P.F. Chang’s offers a gluten-free menu, as does Pei Wei Asian Diner, though I refuse to vouch for the healthfulness of their offerings or appropriateness of their portion sizes.  P.F. Chang’s also offers gluten-free soy sauce for your table on request.  To find a Chinese restaurant near you that has GF offerings, you can scour one of the various national restaurant registries at this link.

• BYOS.  That’s Bring-Your-Own-Soy sauce.  Mini packets of GF soy sauce are available from a company called Kari Out.  You can order them online from glutenfree.com.

• Download the free “Gluten Free Restaurant Cards” app onto your iPhone. It explains your dietary restrictions and in both Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese dialects (and close to 40 other languages), which you can show to your server in hopes that they will help you navigate the menu appropriately.  Still, be very skeptical of saucy and savory stir-fried dishes, because it may not be apparent from the menu card’s translation that even soy sauce is going to be off-limits for you.
  

• If you’re willing to spend a few bucks ($19), Triumph Dining cards offers wallet-sized, cuisine-specific lists of off-limit foods that contain hidden gluten so you can more effectively interrogate your server.  The cards are written in Chinese and can be handed to the server and chef to help ensure your needs are clear.

• For a $7 investment, you can arm yourself with the Chinese Gluten-Free Passport to take with you on your next trip to a Chinese restaurant.  According to the marketer, it identifies the safest soup options, entree choices (chicken, vegetable and seafood) and dessert selections, as well as a list of questions to ask your waiter to determine whether a food is safe for you to eat.

• If good communication is not an option, stick to some of these ordering guidelines to help avoid the most common sources of Chinese restaurant gluten:
  • Among soups, there’s a good chance that Egg Drop soup will be safe (but try to double-check that it’s thickened with cornstarch, not flour.  It should be).  Ditto for Chicken and Corn soup.
  • Steamed seafood and vegetable dishes are usually your safest bet.  (Not terribly exciting, but who needs the kind of excitement than an accidental gluten ingestion entails, really?)
  • White sauce is the most likely to be safe, but again, double-check that they use cornstarch to thicken it rather than wheat flour (they probably will).  Other sauces (e.g., brown, black bean) are not going to be gluten-free.
  • Mei Fun and Chow Fun are rice-noodle pastas, which makes them safe if they’re not cooked with any gluten-containing condiments such as soy sauce.  Fried rice dishes can easily be made safe if you ask the kitchen to prepare them without soy sauce or oyster sauce.  (You can season them yourself with the little GF soy sauce packets you brought along…)
  • Avoid imitation (”vegetarian”) meat and seafood ingredients (including imitation crab or surimi).  These are always made with gluten.
  • Avoid anything deep fried (the batter and the cross-contamination in the fryer are a double-whammy).

Happy Year of the Tiger to you!

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While the universe of food bloggers readies its collective arsenal of chocolate dessert porn in anticipation of Valentine’s Day, I’ve decided to take a fashion risk and pay homage to a red-colored, heart-loving delicacy that gets notably less airtime at this–or any–time of year: Borscht.

Now, if the word ‘Borscht’ conjures up romance-quashing images of hardscrabble nineteenth-century Eastern European peasantry for you, then I’d like to make the case for why this beautiful potage has just as much right to kick off your Valentine’s Day meal as the Red Velvet cupcake has to finish it off.

Of course, if you’ve never heard of Borscht, then I’m delighted to introduce you to this versatile and time-honored beet soup.  You may find it served hot or cold, vegetarian or meaty, Ukranian style or Russian style, clear and magenta or spiked with sour cream to produce an opaque, creamy pink color.  However it’s executed, you can be sure that every self-respecting Borscht-lover will claim that their grandmother’s version is undoubtedly the best.

Borscht is heart-y

Borscht is made with beets, and beets are loaded with nutrients that nourish your heart and support cardiovascular health. (It’s not a coincidence our grandparents lived so long despite their habit of spreading chicken fat (schmaltz) on bread and eating chopped liver by the gallon.)

For starters, beets are an excellent source of folate and a good source of blood-pressure-lowering potassium.  Diets rich in folate-rich foods have been associated with a decreased risk of heart disease in multiple large studies, though researchers are still trying to figure out why.  (Folic acid supplementation has not been shown to have the same effect.  Go figure.)   1 cup of boiled beets contains about 75 calories, 16g of carbohydrate (of which 3.5g are fiber), ~35% of the daily recommended intake of folate, and 15% of the daily value of potassium. (Canned beets lose about 30% of their folate compared to beets you boil yourself, but remain a very good source despite that).

Betacyanins are the purply red pigments that give beets their rich, gorgeous magenta color, and they happen to be powerful antioxidants.  While antioxidants are used throughout the body to help prevent cell damage that can give rise to mutations, animal studies suggest a possible benefit in colon cancer prevention in particular.

Betaine, another compound found naturally in beets, has anti-inflammatory properties. Studies have shown that people with diets rich in foods containing betaine had lower levels of inflammatory markers in their blood–like C-reactive protein and homocysteine–compared to be people with diets low in betaine-rich foods.  These inflammatory markers are associated with an increased risk of heart disease, so it seems that the lower the level, the better.

Borscht is hip

Veselka, the venerable and hip Ukranian diner in NYC’s East Village, features Ukranian Borscht as the very first item on its menu, and reportedly serves 5,000 gallons of it every year.  A photo of the restaurant’s famous borscht adorns the cover of its recently-published cookbook, whose pages feature not one but FOUR separate recipes for their intoxicating magenta brew, including their Famous Borscht, Cold Borscht, White Borscht and Christmas Borscht.  (You can get their famous Borscht recipe here, but vegetarians beware that their version calls for pork butt and beef stock.  Try their Christmas Borscht version for a meatless option, and see below for some cooking tips.)

Borscht is so hip that I suspect its only a matter of time until Bobby Flay challenges Veselka owner Tom Birchard to a Borscht Throwdown.

How to cook and enjoy Beets

While beets can absolutely be eaten raw (usually you’ll find them grated in a salad), you’ll most often encounter them roasted or boiled. Beets cooked from scratch are a thousand times more flavorful than canned beets, and have a much lovelier texture, so if you’ve tried the latter and were unimpressed, you might want to give them another try!  Cooking beets is a cinch, but can be a bit messy.  Here’s how it goes:

If you buy beets still attached to their greens, trim the greens off, leaving about an inch on top. Leaving some of the stem helps keep the healthful pigments from leeching out during cooking.  Save the trimmed portion!  Beet greens are super nutritious and you can chop them up and drop them into any ol’ soup… they’re sort of like swiss chard taste-wise…a bit bitter.)  Just soak them a few times in cold water to remove all of the dirt before cooking.  Wash them if you’re going to boil, but really give them a good scrub if you’re planning on roasting them.  DO NOT PEEL the beet before cooking, or they will bleed more of their nutritious colorful pigments… and make a giant mess.

Nothing says 'I love you' like a bouquet of boiled beets

To boil: Drop trimmed beets into boiling water.  Let them boil until they are soft enough to be pierced easily with a knife, anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes, depending on size.

To roast: Rub clean beets with a little bit of oil (olive or grapeseed works well), wrap well in foil, and place on another foil-lined pan.  (The double-foil will make sure that the sugars from your roasting beet don’t drip onto the pan and burn).  Bake at 325 degrees for 40 minutes to an hour (depending on size).  Your beets are ready when they can be pierced easily with a knife.

To peel cooked beets: peel cooked beets while they are still warm (but cooled off enough to handle.)  Some people like to use gloves for this to avoid staining their hands.  My favorite way to peel a beet is by scraping the sides of the beet with a plain ol’ spoon while standing over the sink… the peel will slide right off and the mess will be contained.  I do it bare-handed ‘cuz that’s just how I roll.

One of my favorite ways to eat beets is cooked, in a composed salad, spiked with some sort of vinegary drizzle (a syrupy balsamic vinegar works great here) to cut the sweetness.  Beets pair beautifully with citrus fruits for a colorful, seasonal salad that injects some gorgeous color into your wintry food wardrobe. Try this classic (and easy) recipe for Beet, Citrus & Mint salad to take advantage of the amazing bounty of winter citrus available right now.

Beet Pee

Don’t be alarmed if, after eating a heaping serving of beets or borscht, your pee is tinted pink or reddish. It’s called “Beeturia” (I swear, I don’t make this stuff up), and it’s totally harmless.  Be forewarned that your number twos might also take on a bit of a rosy hue a day or so after you’ve gone on a beet bender…. once again, totally normal and totally harmless.  Consider it a post-Valentine’s Day treat for your colon.

Now, back to the Borscht

There are countless versions of Borscht.  Russian style tends to have more “stuff” in it: piles of cooked or pickled beets, cabbage and/or potatoes, making for a heartier soup.  Ukranian style tends to be brothier, but often features some meat or a mushroom dumpling or two floating around, which adds some heft. You can approximate the homemade dumpling effortlessly by tossing some store-bought mushroom tortellini or ravioli into your soup.  For a gluten-free version, look forDePuma’s (amazing) gluten-free Wild Mushroom Ravioli, or  Conte’s gluten-free Potato Onion Pierogis. Other common borscht accessories include lima beans, hard boiled eggs, meat, potatoes, or any combination thereof.  All borschts are generally garnished with dill and a dollop of sour cream, which can be swapped out for a fat-free plain, greek-style yogurt seamlessly if you’re looking to keep your borscht on the lighter side.

I made Veselka’s vegetarian Christmas Borscht (pictured to the left, recipe link above) and used the gluten-free Conte’s Pierogis instead of the (homemade, 2+ hour-prep time mushroom-onion dumplings) the recipe called for.  Considering my grandma used to serve store-bought Borscht from a jar, I figured she probably wouldn’t have disapproved of this little shortcut.  It was delicious, and the house smelled amazing while the beets were pickling on the stovetop and the aromatic vegetable broth was simmering.

A multi-culti V-day: Ukranian borscht with Polish pierogis (hidden) and Greek yogurt

However, in case you want to find your own Borscht beshert (that’s Yiddish for ’soul mate’) before committing to the recipe I used, here are some other attractive candidates for you to consider, both vegetarian and non:

Hot Beef Borscht: for the meat and potatoes man…and the woman who loves him.

Russian Borscht: vegetarian; served chilled, with hard boiled eggs.  To cool down after a passionate Valentine’s encounter, perchance?

Hot Borscht recipe styled after the version from the Russian Tea Room of old: A quicker version; uses store-bought beef broth and includes cabbage and tomato.  For nostalgic New York couples who can’t afford the new, $18-a-bowl version offered on the restaurant’s current menu.

Borscht with Beet Greens: for the frugalista and her coupon-clipping man, who love the idea of using every last bit of the beet…greens and all.

Happy Valentine’s Day to you and your Borscht of choice!

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A sweet potato pie that comes in both naughty (with crust) or nice (sans crust) versions.

These frigid days, I find myself seeking out excuses to keep the oven on in the kitchen to help warm up the ground floor of our chilly little house. And thus was the idea born to bake a Sweet Potato Pie, which would entail baking the sweet potatoes for a blessed hour, and then baking the assembled pie for another glorious 60 minutes. If your home has better climate control than mine and you need a different excuse to bake yourself a pie, perhaps you can make it in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday.  Admittedly, by all accounts, his favorite pie was actually pecan. But if he were still alive today, he’d be 81 years old and probably watching his sugar and fat intake. And being a reasonable man, surely he would have enjoyed a marginally less sinful, Vitamin A-rich wedge of Sweet Potato Pie just as much.

Having resolved to bake myself a pie, there was, of course, the matter of the crust. I’d suffered through enough of those godawful frozen gluten-free pie crusts from Thanksgiving. And I couldn’t bear the thought of playing around with a sticky rice-flour dough only to be disappointed. So I decided to experiment with my own version of a graham cracker crumb crust made with what I suspected would be a perfect substitute: Puffins cereal, pulsed through the food processor. I used the Honey Rice variety since it’s gluten-free, but the recipe below should work with your Puffin flavor of choice. If you are more virtuous than I was, however, and would prefer to go crust-free, feel free to bake this pie as a souffle-cake of sorts in a well-lubed springform pan. It will still be delicious, and leaving out the crust transforms this indulgent pie into a healthy, sensible dessert with almost half the calories and some very redeeming nutritional qualities (see below for the stats).

One last matter I’d like to clear up before the root vegetable police pounce on me about the whole sweet potato/yam issue. The bright orange root vegetables we tend to refer to as ‘yams’ in this country are almost always the so-called “soft” variety of sweet potato. (True yams, botanically speaking, come from Africa or the Caribbean, and are not related to sweet potatoes.  They are much starchier and lack the same levels of Vitamin A; see the description of Ñame from my previous post on Caribbean root vegetables to see the difference).   There are also “firm” sweet potatoes, which have a paler yellow flesh and bake up to be drier than the moist, soft, orangey soft sweet potato we call yams.  I used jewel yam sweet potatoes in this recipe–can you get over that gorgeous color?–to create the perfect soft, souffle-like filling.

Recipe: Tamara’s Sweet Potato Pie

Serves 8

For the (optional) crust:

1 and 2/3 cups of Puffin crumbs (will require about 3.5-4 cups of Puffins cereal pulsed in your food processor).  For gluten-free, use the Honey Rice or Multigrain Puffin cereal variety.

6 TBSP (organic) unsalted butter, melted

1/4 cup (organic) sugar

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Blend all ingredients in a bowl until well-combined.  Dump mixture into a 9″ pie pan and press it with your hands to cover the bottom and sides of pan evenly.  Bake for 7-9 minutes until set.  Remove from oven and cool before filling.

For the Sweet Potato filling:

2 to 2 1/4 lbs. sweet potatoes (”yams”), scrubbed clean.

3 large eggs

3/4 cup (organic) light brown sugar

2 TBSP (organic) unsalted butter, melted

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 tsp salt

2 TBSP rum

1. Bake the sweet potatoes: pierce them with a fork several times, place on a baking sheet and bake at 400 degrees for 45 minutes to an hour until nice and soft all the way through.
2. Split open the baked sweet potatoes and scoop out the orange flesh into a large mixing bowl.  (It should easily peel away from the skin).
3. Add the eggs, brown sugar, melted butter, nutmeg, cinnamon, salt and rum to the sweet potato flesh.  Mix all together using a large fork until ingredients well combined, but so that sweet potato flesh still remains somewhat textured and fibrous.  (Don’t beat it into a super-smooth filling… the somewhat lumpier texture is what makes a sweet potato pie so different than a silky pumpkin pie and gives it a characteristic heartiness.)
4. If you are using a crust, pour filling into crust.  If you are making a crustless souffle-custard-cake, pour mixture into a well-greased 9″ springform pan.
5. Bake for 60-75 minutes at 350 degrees.  The pie is ready when the filling is nice and firm and a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.

Approximate nutrition information per serving (assumes 8 servings):

With Puffin crust: 390 calories, 62g carbohydrate (5 diabetic exchanges…which will certainly blow your entire meal’s budget) of which 4g are fiber, 5g protein, 14g fat, and >100% of the recommended daily intake of Vitamin A for adults

Without crust: 215 calories, 40g carbohydrate (3 diabetic exchanges) of which 3g are fiber, 4g protein, 5g fat and >100% of the recommended daily intake of Vitamin A for adults

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No sooner do I have one holiday calorie-fest under my belt that I find myself preparing for the next one: the first night of Hannukah is Friday, Dec 11, and operation: plan menu is officially underway.

Which got me to thinking: In a country where french fries are the most popular “vegetable” consumed by Americans, are fried potato pancakes really such a special holiday treat for Hannukah anymore?  Besides, most latke recipes contain wheat flour or matzoh meal as a binding agent, rendering them off limits to me and my fellow celiac members of the tribe.

Maybe it’s time to branch out a little this year? While family tradition would lead us to believe that eating fried potato pancakes is some sort of divine creed, in fact, any food fried in oil fits the bill when it comes to commemorating the Hannukah miracle. (Pardon me while I go explain to my husband why deep fried Snickers bars are still somehow unholy.)  So why not try a fried something different for Hannukah this year?  After all, this holiday marks the one time per year that your favorite Jewish nutritionist (that’s me) will be plugging the fried foods, so make the most of it!  Here are some globally-inspired, naturally-gluten-free fritters that will add a little oomph to your family’s festivities. Of course, if you just can’t imagine a Hannukah without some sort of fried potato representation, I’ve included some globally-inspired, flour-free versions of the potato pancake as well.  Just do me a favor, bubbaleh, and blot them with paper towels before serving.

Latkes for Non-Literalists

A potato-less latke for the South Beach dieters at your Hannukah party

South Asian latkes: Indian Pumpkin Fritters

If my grandparents had emigrated to Mumbai instead of the Bronx, perhaps my Hannukahs growing up would have featured these delicious chickpea flour-based pumpkin fritters instead of the garden variety potato kind. (And if you have leftover chickpea flour from making this recipe, here are some other ideas of things you can make with them.) The recipe below is from Michael Krondl’s The Great Little Pumpkin Cookbook, and is re-printed here with permission from its gracious author.  It makes about 30 fritters.

1 lb pumpkin*, peeled, seeded and coarsely grated (about 1 3/4 cups)

1/2 cup chickpea (garbanzo bean) flour

1 small onion, peeled and grated (~ 1/4 cup)

2 TBSP fresh chopped cilantro

1 small jalapeno chile, stem removed, finely chopped (or to taste)

1 1/2 tsp ground coriander seed

1/2 tsp paprika

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp black onion seeds (you can find these in Indian groceries; if you can’t find them, use dried thyme or cumin powder instead)

1/4 tsp baking powder

Vegetable oil for frying

** for tips on selecting a good pumpkin for cooking purposes, consult my previous post, “The Great Pumpkin”

1. In a medium bowl, combine the pumpkin, chickpea flour, onion, cilantro, jalapeno, coriander, paprika, salt, onion seeds (or substitute) and baking powder
2. Cover bottom of a deep, heavy saucepan with oil and heat.
3. With a spoon, form the pumpkin mixture into small balls no larger than 1 inch and drop into the oil.  Cook several fritters at a time, making sure not to crowd the pan.
4. Fry 4-5 minutes until well browned, stirring occasionally.  Drain on paper towels.  Repeat with remaining batter.  Serve hot.
5. Note: you can keep fritters hot up to 30 minutes in a 200 degree oven or reheat cold fritters in a 300 degree oven for 5 minutes

Venzuelan Latkes: Arepas
I made this delicious and fabulous recipe for Arepas-- the traditional South American corn fritter– the same day it was featured in Mark Bittman’s column. I served it alongside bowls of Cuban black bean soup for a delicious vegetarian dinner. I suppose it wouldn’t have killed me to offer some mixed greens to lighten things up a bit, too. Hindsight is always 20-20.

Latkes for Literalists

Peruvian Purple Potatoes produce latkes with a festive purplish-blue tint to match  grandma’s hairdye

German-Peruvian-fusion latkes: Purple Potato Pancakes

OK, so you’re not ready to completely abandon potato pancake tradition, but you’re looking to shake things up a little this year.  Might I suggest my fellow dietitian, chef Lindsay DeJongh’s naturally gluten-free recipe for Purple Potato Pancakes with Caramelized Onions?

Swiss Latkes: Rösti

Rösti, a Swiss potato pancake, is a local specialty of Zurich. It’s like a giant, buttery hash-brown potato pancake.  Unlike latkes, rösti does not generally use egg or flour as a binder, which makes it a perfect gluten-free substitute. Among the recipes out there in webland, this classic recipe from Gourmet magazine (may it rest in peace) uses the least oil and butter.

Lazy Latkes: Hannukah in a box!

I reviewed a bunch of ingredient lists and found the packaged potato pancake mixes and frozen potato pancake products listed below to be gluten-free.  They can be used if you find yourself in a pinch (and by pinch, I mean you have too much TV to catch up on to be bothered grating pounds of potatoes for a houseful of ungrateful relatives). I can’t vouch for their tastiness, just the gluten-freeness of their ingredient lists.  Note that if you veer from this list, some brands of potato pancake mixes contain flour or Matzoh meal, so be sure to read those ingredient labels if you’re looking for a gluten-free product.

Gluten-free packaged latke products

1. Hero Roschti
2. Manischewitz Homestyle Potato Latke Mix and Sweet Potato Pancake Mix (they also come in reduced-sodium varieties)
3. Panni Bavarian Potato Pancake Mix (Knorr foods)
4. Kineret Latke Mix
5. Gefen Potato Panacake Mix
6. Dr. Praeger’s Sweet Potato Pancakes (frozen)   (note that the regular Dr. Praeger’s Potato Pancakes contain oat bran, so they may not be 100% gluten free)

Disclosure statement: I have not received any compensation or freebies of any kind in exchange for mentioning any of the products in this posting.  Nor have I ever accepted or received any such compensation or freebies in the past, nor will I in the future.  My reputation for providing honest, evidence-based nutrition information is worth more than all of the gluten-free swag in the world, thank you very much.

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Black Friday is just 5 days away, and while the rest of the country gets ready to stampede through shopping malls to pick up this year’s must-have what-have-you’s, I’m doing some stockpiling of my own at the local supermarket.  For the next six weeks or so, the once-a-year, get-em-while-they-last inventories of two of my most favorite winter treats are well-stocked and ready to be eaten. I’m talking about sweet, sunny and seedless Clementines by the crateful, and barrels of sweet, starchy fresh Chestnuts ready to be roasted.

In a season where centerfolds of over-the-top seasonal desserts beckon me from every glossy foodie magazine I encounter, there’s a lot to be said for finishing off a festive holiday gathering with communal bowls of clementines and chestnuts instead.  When the dinner plates are cleared and friends linger around the table over tea or wine, I find that slowly peeling away at a clementine or fresh chestnut is a calming ritual of sorts, preventing idle hands that might otherwise be tempted to make quick work of, say, an entire gooey pecan pie. Both of these low calorie treats finish off the meal with a hint of sweetness and lend themselves to being enjoyed slowly and shared among friends.

My Darling Clementines

Clementines are seedless citrus fruits related to mandarin oranges and grown mostly in Spain and Morocco (though increasingly, I’m seeing Clementines grown in Florida and California being sold alongside the imports).  Their appeal starts from the moment you effortlessly peel off their loose skins without encountering any sort of sticky mess…it continues on as you peel off segment after segment… and it culminates with that happy little burst of sweetness in your mouth.  Eaten segment by segment, you can savor one little clementine slowly, thus drawing out the pleasure of post-dinner pecking that much longer.

One clementine has about 35 calories, 9g of carbohydrate (of which 1g is fiber) and 60% of the daily value for Vitamin C. (2 clementines would be the equivalent of one fruit serving).  Which means that even when you reach for that third, fourth and fifth clementine, ’tis no reason for guilt.  (The same cannot be said with respect to bites of pecan pie.)

***

How to choose, roast and eat fresh chestnuts

Before I met my husband, roasting fresh chestnuts was something that I thought only happened in Christmas carols.  But he taught me the fine art of choosing the best chestnuts…

• squeeze fresh chestnuts before buying and and select ones that are nice and hard
• any softness or “give” means they’re not fresh and will be impossible to peel once you’ve roasted them

… and roasting fresh chestnuts:

• score a small “x” on the flat side with a paring knife (a MUST… this allows steam to escape and prevents a chestnut explosion in your oven)
• lay them score side up on a baking tray
• sprinkle them lightly with water
• bake them at 400 degrees in a toaster oven or 425 degrees in a conventional oven for 10-15 minutes
• Note that roasting times will vary by oven; look for the scores to start curling back as an indication that the chestnuts are done.  Alternatively, you can take one out and test its done-ness by carefully peeling it (use a dishtowel or gloves…it’ll be hot!) and seeing if the nutmeat is nice and soft.

… and eating fresh chestnuts:

• just peel off the hard outer shell from the open flaps created by your x-shaped scores–while they’re still warm.   (Get cracking on the peeling as soon as they’ve cooled just enough to handle.)
• Share!

If you want a demo of the process described above–or just a voyeuristic peek at the man who roasts my chestnuts and invented the Chana Saag recipe you all know and love– Alex prepared this handy little tutorial video for you:

I’ve written before about the unique nutritional composition of chestnuts (and chestnut flour), which are technically tree nuts but have swapped the characteristic fat of tree nuts for starch instead.  As a result, they’re much lower in calories, ounce for ounce.  If you haven’t had the pleasure of tasting a fresh-roasted chestnut, they’re sweet and slightly nutty with a soft and sometimes crumbly texture.  One ounce of roasted chestnuts (about 3 chestnuts) have about 70 calories, 15g of carbohydrate (one diabetic exchange), of which 1.5g is fiber, 1g of protein and <1g fat.  It also has 12% of the daily value for vitamin C, which makes it quite an oddity in the nut world.

***

As we enter into the crazed pre-holiday shopping period, I urge you not to omit these edible must-haves from your list.  By the time you’re scooping up deeply-discounted leftovers from distressed holiday retailers on December 26, these annual gems will already be in short supply.  And unlike this year’s Zhu Zhu pet that will soon wind up on the bottom of the toy box along with last year’s Tickle Me Elmo, the memory of happy times spent with friends and family in a room perfumed with the scent of roasting chestnuts and citrusy clementines is sure to be treasured all year long.  (Of course, if my friends and family were to buy me a Wii Fit for Hannukah, I’d treasure that all year long, too.  I swear.)

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Growing up, I never touched the cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving.  Back then, my mom served the cloyingly-sweet jellied version, straight from a can, and I never quite understood the appeal.

Fast forward to adulthood, when I had the good fortune to acquire a sister-in-law who is an expert maker of all things jelly and jam.  She has taken on the annual Thanksgiving cranberry sauce-making, using fresh cranberries, a hint of orange zest, and only half the sugar called for by standard recipes.  Finally, I came to appreciate the important role of this seasonal condiment on the Thanksgiving table beyond the gorgeous pop of magenta it provides on a plate dominated by brown-hued mounds of  comfort food.  When done right, a good cranberry sauce adds tart counterbalance to a meal dominated by earthy flavors, while the acid helps cut through the fat of those buttery mashed potatoes and gravy.  After all, there’s plenty of sweetness come dessert time; I want my cranberry sauce to be a bit more on the tart side.  If you’re in the market for a classic cranberry sauce that fits this bill and has 75% of the daily value of vitamin C to boot, here’s recipe #1: a simple Cranberry Sauce that’s just sweet enough.

But if you’re going to go through the trouble of making a cranberry condiment from scratch, wouldn’t it be great to make one with legs beyond its one-meal-a-year debut at Thanksgiving dinner?

It was this idea that got me thinking about making a hybrid condiment–part jam, part spread, part chutney– that could dutifully serve its function at the Thanksgiving table, but could continue on into the season to adorn the bread that holds together the leftover turkey sandwiches…to serve as a fruit filling to seasonal cookies…to accompany nutty, aged pecorinos on a holiday cheese platter… to spread on pancakes and waffles for winter morning breakfasts… to put into mini mason jars and give as gifts for the holidays…

The pieces fell into place this weekend at a cooking demo at Foster’s Homeware in Philadelphia, where Chef Greg Aversa of Smokin’ Betty’s restaurant prepared his recipe for Fig Jam.  (At the restaurant, they spread it on sourdough bread, add mozzarella and proscuitto and grill it panini-style.)  He encouraged us to consider the recipe as a template, and riff on it in all sorts of directions to suit our tastes.  Which I did.  The result is a jam-like, chutney-ish spread that tastes sort of like a cranberry fig newton filling and has me finding all sorts of excuses to spread it on foods both savory and sweet.  It’s a super-fast, beyond-easy and incredibly versatile condiment to have on hand as the holidays approach.

Recipe #2: Cranberry Fig Jam

Adapted from Smokin’ Betty’s restaurant, Philadelphia, PA

1 lb dried figs, stems removed, cut in half

1 cup 100% cranberry juice* (unsweetened; look for it in the 32oz jars in the unrefrigerated juice aisle of your supermarket by brands like Lakewood or R.W. Knudsen)

2 TBSP pomegranate molasses (Look for it among the Middle Eastern foods of your specialty market.  If you can’t find it, regular molasses will do fine, too.)

1 1/2 tsp dijon mustard

1 1/2 tsp sugar

1/2 tsp black pepper

1/4 tsp kosher salt

1/4 cup agave nectar or honey (orange blossom or clover honey are best)

1. In a saucepan over medium heat, combine figs, juice, molasses, mustard, sugar, pepper and salt.
2. Simmer ingredients, stirring occasionally, until figs are nice and soft.  If too much liquid evaporates and your figs start sizzling, add a bit more juice or water
3. When figs are soft, transfer them to a food processor.  Add the agave nectar or honey and pulse briefly until the mixture is an even texture.

* 100% cranberry juice is as tart as the dickens, but a 32 oz jar is a good item to stock in your pantry, especially if you’re female and prone to urinary tract infections (UTIs). Besides being loaded with vitamin C and antioxidants, cranberry juice contains a compound called proanthocyanidin that prevents E. coli bacteria from adhering to the wall of your bladder and urinary tract. Research has showed that these pathogenic bacteria can regain their adhesion ability once removed from their cranberry bath, however, so it would seem that if you feel a UTI coming on, a good bet to stave it off would be to keep a constant flow of 100% cranberry juice (diluted in water for palatability and hydration purposes) coarsing through your body throughout the day to flush the offending bacteria and prevent an infection from taking hold.  If you don’t catch it in time, however, you’ll need to seek conventional medical attention in the form of antibiotics to cure the infection once it’s full-fledged.  Research into whether drinking cranberry juice regularly can help prevent recurrent UTIs in healthy women has so far been inconclusive; if you can spare the calories, it won’t hurt, but it’s unclear whether it will help.  And one last caveat before you start pounding that cranberry juice: if you take the blood-thinning medication warfarin (coumadin), you should avoid drinking large volumes of cranberry juice due to a possible drug-nutrient interaction that could potentially cause excessive bleeding.

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T minus 17 days until Thanksgiving and the short-list of potential side dishes is already being negotiated in our family.  This year, my submission for healthy, gluten-free stuffing substitute comes from, of all unlikely places, the Executive Chef at the hospital where I work.  Now, while I’ll admit that hospital food rarely inspires much beyond a general sense of dread, the day that Chef George whipped up this delicious and autumnal Wild Rice Salad for a catering event, I found myself inspired to have seconds… and ply him for the recipe.

Wild rice is a whole grain variety of rice that’s even more nutritious than brown rice. It’s super high in protein– a standard serving (1/4 cup dry) has 6g of protein—ranking it right up there with king quinoa as far as protein content goes. Most people don’t like to bother with it once they learn of its 50-minute cooking time, but it’s not like you have to stand there and stir it while it cooks.  Just bring the water and rice to a boil, lower the heat to a simmer, cover, and go bake a Thanksgiving pie or something.  Or watch someone else bake a Thanksgiving pie on the Food Network.   Of course, if you feel like being productive during that 50-minute cooking time, get going on this addictive recipe for Koshari for dinner and put that wild rice to good use.

Since Chef George never did get around to detailing the exact quantities of the ingredients in his recipe for me, I was forced to play around with the inputs a bit until I landed on the proportions that suited my tastes.  By all means, add more or less of any ingredient to your liking.  However you put them together, the recipe is a cinch.

A Thanksgiving-worthy side dish that's a little bit chewy, a little bit sweet and a little bit tangy.

Recipe: Chef George’s Wild Rice Salad (serves 6)

1 cup wild rice/wild rice blend  (I used Lundberg’s Wild Blend)

2 scallions, thinly sliced (~1/3 to 1/2 cup)

1/2 cup fresh mint leaves, chopped

1/2 cup chopped pecans (if you have the time or inclination to toast the pecans before chopping, all the better)

1/3 cup dried cranberries

1/4 cup raspberry vinegar

2 TBSP olive oil

1. Prepare the wild rice according to package instructions (probably 2 cups water to 1 cup rice).  When finished, set cooked rice aside to cool.
2. Add the remaining ingredients to the cooked rice and mix until well-blended.
3. Salt to taste.
4. Serve warm, room temperature or cold.

Note: You can make the rice up to a day in advance and keep refrigerated in a sealed container.  Don’t mix in the rest of the ingredients until just before serving.

Nutrition info per serving: 225 calories, 29g carbohydrate (of which 3g are fiber), 5g protein, 11g (healthy, mostly monounsaturated) fat.

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Thai-inspired Black Rice Pudding with Mango

After last year’s unfortunate Halloween candy bender (guess who methodically worked her way through an entire 200-count econo-size bag of mini York Peppermint Patties when not a single Trick-or-Treater showed up?), I vowed not to let a single “fun-sized” candy anything pass through the doorway into my home this year.  And if the costumed neighborhood kids show up this year begging for treats, I will do what any self-respecting candyless nutritonist would do: dim the lights, ignore the doorbell, and be prepared to clean the eggs and toilet paper off my house in the morning.

Of course, this necessary act of self-preservation doesn’t mean that I won’t be treating myself to anything sweet, sticky and seasonably black-and-orange this week.  It’s just that my sweet treat of choice this year will be made from ingredients decidedly more wholesome than high-fructose corn syrup and partially-hydrogenated oils: I’m making a Thai-inspired dessert that’s part Black Rice Pudding, part Mango Sticky Rice.

Traditionally, Black Rice Pudding is made with Thai Black Rice (which is sort of more purple-brown than black); however, Chinese Black “Forbidden” Rice is easier to come by in mainstream supermarkets, so I used that.  (Bonus: it’s non-GMO and an heirloom rice variety to boot.)  Purists will argue that Forbidden Rice isn’t sticky enough to produce the proper effect, but my experience created a perfectly rice-puddingy texture just fine.  Black rice pudding is usually served with a savory-sweet coconut cream and toasted sesame seed topping, which is fine if you’re not going for a Halloween motif.  Which I am.  So I decided to take some liberties and borrow some taste (and color) inspiration from another popular Thai dessert, Mango Sticky Rice.  I also reduced the amount of sugar typically found in this recipe and swapped Lite Coconut Milk for regular.  The result is a delicious, sweet-enough treat that I will enjoy thoroughly as I sit in my darkened house with the blinds drawn on October 31st hoping the Trick-or-Treaters pass me by.

And if I may be so bold to suggest a pairing: since rice is the main event in this carb-centric dessert, I think it makes an excellent and satisfying finish to a light meal that’s more protein-and-vegetable-centric. Like an entree-sized bowl of soup.  How about: a tangy Thai Tom Yum soup, Rick Bayless’ Classic Tortilla Soup (swap the chicken out with baked tofu cubes and add a heap of baby spinach leaves to make it vegetarian), or a classic Miso soup with Tofu?

Recipe: Thai Black Rice Pudding with Mango (serves 6)

1 cup black rice

3 cups water

Salt

1/3 cup sugar

1 can unsweetened Light Coconut Milk (shaken before use to blend)

2 cups fresh mango, cut into cubes (Fresh papaya makes a fine substitute if you can’t find a ripe mango this time of year)

1. In a large saucepan (3-4 qts), mix black rice, 3 cups water and 1/4 tsp salt.  Bring to boil, then simmer covered for 45 minutes until rice is cooked.  There will still be some liquid in the pot.
2. Stir in the sugar, another 1/4 tsp salt and 1 1/2 cups of the coconut milk.  Increase heat to bring mixture to a boil again, then reduce to a simmer.  Simmer uncovered for 30 more minutes, stirring occasionally. Mixture should be thick and gooey and chewy
3. Remove pudding from heat and let cool for at least 30 minutes, stirring occasionally during cooling.
4. Serve in small dessert bowls drizzled with the remaining Light Coconut Milk (stirred to ensure well blended) and topped with 1/4 cup fresh mango cubes.

Approximate nutrition information per serving: 220 calories, 43g carbohydrate (of which ~2g are fiber), 3.5g protein and 4.5g fat.

…which is the caloric equivalent of 4 mini York Peppermint Patties, with decidedly more nutritional merit.  The black color of Forbidden Rice derives from phytochemicals called anthocyanins, which are natural plant pigments with strong antioxidant properties. In fact, there’s a bunch of research out of Asia investigating the promising cancer-quashing effects of these black rice-derived anthocyanins.  Which sadly, my beloved York Peppermint Patties can’t claim.  Sigh.  Not even the Pink ones.

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Bigger is not better: smaller pumpkin varieties have thicker and more flavorful flesh for cooking than the big varieties.

Three Octobers ago, I took a pumpkin cooking class taught by Michael Krondl, author of The Great Little Pumpkin Cookbook. While the web and magazine world abounds with ridiculously good sweet, desserty pumpkin recipes, there’s a surprising lack of good savory recipes that feature pumpkin.  (Frankly, even the vast majority of savory butternut squash recipes published online and in cookbooks are limited to soups and risottos in the same few flavor combos: with nutmeg, apple and/or sage).   Globally, pumpkin stars in savory entrees in a variety of cuisines, including Sichuan Chinese (our local place does an amazing shredded pumpkin with spicy green peppers), Afghan, Indian and Persian.

The unfortunate absence of savory pumpkin recipes in our country’s food circuit  makes Krondl’s book an indispensable (and cheap) little reference guide for those of you who have savory designs on your pumpkin: his fantastic recipes feature flavor pairings from pumpkin-chipotle to pumpkin-chestnut to pumpkin-pecorino.  With his permission, I am sharing his recipe (below) for Sweet & Sour South Indian Pumpkin to enable you to dip your proverbial toe into the savory orange waters.

Picking a pumpkin

When picking a pumpkin to cook with, you’ll need to use different criteria than when picking one for Jack-O-Lantern purposes.  The big ol’ carving pumpkins have very little flesh and lack flavor; however, you can most certainly save their seeds, toss them in a bit of oil and salt and toast them in your toaster oven for a resourceful little snack.  For cooking, look for the little round ones called “sugar pumpkins” or just “pie pumpkins.”  Alternatively, you can use calabaza squash/”cheese pumpkins”: they’re the beige ones that look like butternut squashes shaped like pumpkins.  In a pinch, a kabocha squash/”Japanese pumpkin” works great, too; that’s the one that looks like a dark green pumpkin. See the note below on how to peel a pumpkin; don’t be intimidated… it’s not as hard as you might think, so long as you have a good chef’s knife.

Hooray for Vitamin A

Pumpkin, like all winter squashes, is a stellar source of Vitamin A.  It also contains high amounts of Vitamin C and potassium, which helps control high blood pressure.  1 cup of (raw) cubed pumpkin, which will cook down to slightly less volume, contains a mere 30 calories, 7.5g is carbohydrate (of which ~1.0g is fiber), 61% of the daily value for Vitamin A, 17% of the daily value for vitamin C, and 11% of the daily value for potassium. And yes, even pumpkin eaten in the form of pumpkin pie is likely to meet most of your daily Vitamin A requirements, assuming it was made with 100% pumpkin puree instead of “pumpkin pie filling.”  Furthermore, since Vitamin A is a fat-soluble vitamin, you can tell yourself that the dollop of whipped cream on top of your pie is nutritionally expedient to ensure proper absorption of the vitamin.  While Vitamin A is best known for its important role in maintaining vision, it also plays an important role in immunity (arguably more so than does Vitamin C); dietary vitamin A is converted into an active form that can enter into the DNA of immune cells and positively influence their ability to produce antibodies–as well as the ability of certain infection-fighting white blood cells to replicate. So far, studies have shown that Vitamin A therapy in deficient children can reduce the severity of measles and diarrhea; alas, it has not been shown to have the same effect on respiratory infections like, say, the swine flu.

Recipe: Sweet & Sour South Indian Pumpkin (from The Great Little Pumpkin Cookbook, Michael Krondl, published by Celestial Arts, Berkeley, CA).  Reprinted with permission from the author.

1 TBSP ground coriander

1 tsp chopped fresh ginger

2 garlic cloves, chopped fine

Pinch cayenne pepper, or to taste

1/4 tsp ground black pepper

3 TBSP canola oil

2 lbs pumpkin, peeled* and cut into 1 1/2 inch pieces (about 6 cups)

Salt

2 TBSP lemon juice

3 TBSP light brown sugar

1 TBSP chopped cilantro

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees
2. In a small bowl, combine the ground coriander, ginger, garlic, cayenne and black pepper.
3. Heat the oil in a large ovenproof casserole over medium heat until hot.  Add the spice mixture and cook, stirring until it turns very aromatic, about 1 minute.  Do not burn!  Immediately add the pumpkin and stir to coat with the spices.  Sprinkle with about 1/2 tsp salt and cover.  Set in the oven and bake until the pumpkin is just barely tender, about 25 minutes.
4. Remove the pan from the oven.  Using a slotted spoon, remove the pumpkin pieces.  Set the pan over medium-high heat, stir in the lemon juice and cook, uncovered, for 1 minute.
5. Stir in the brown sugar and cook 3-4 minutes until the sugar dissolves and the juices are syrupy.  Add the pumpkin and toss.  Season with more salt & pepper to taste.
6. Sprinkle with fresh cilantro and serve.

Serves 4 (generously) as a side dish.

Approximate nutrition info per serving:  170 calories, 20g carbohydrate (of which ~1g is fiber), 10g fat.

* How to peel a pumpkin

Krondl further explains: “the easiest way to peel a pumpkin, or any hard-skinned winter squash, is to cut it in half and scoop out the seeds and all the stringy bits.  Then cut the pumpkin into 2- to 3-inch slices.  Place these cut side down on a cutting board and use a large sharp knife to cut away the skin.  Store cut-up pumpkin up to 4 days in the refrigerator.”

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The Jewish New Year, called Rosh Hashannah, starts this Friday evening, September 18.  It’s traditional to eat apples and honey in order to set the mood for a sweet new year, but every family seems to have their own food traditions beyond these.

This year, I’m making a special effort to produce delicious gluten-free holiday goodies.  As it turns out, my darling stepsister seems to have gone and acquired herself a gluten intolerance (no, it’s not contagious), and this will be her first year experiencing the holidays wheat-free.  I’m quite determined for it to be a happy experience for her, gastrointestinally speaking.

If you’re getting ready for a sweet, fabulous and gluten-free 5770 of your own, check out the reference list below for links to some of the best eats of the season:

Apples: I’m having Honeycrisps. Lots of them.

Honey: My favorite for apple-dipping is Tupelo Honey from the Savannah Bee Company; it’s got a buttery texture and unique flavor that’s best enjoyed right from the bottle, rather than wasted in tea or baking recipes.  To find a store near you that carries it, check out Savannah Bee’s online shop locator or order it online…and tell Ted the beekeeper that Tamara sent you.

Gluten-free “Matzoh Balls”: I’m making my original recipe for Quatzoh Balls, made with naturally gluten-free (and nutritious) Quinoa Flakes.  We road tested it at Passover time this past year, and it was a bobbing, spherical success.  Look for Quinoa flakes in the hot cereal section of your supermarket.

Flourless Honey Cake: This year, I tried out a recipe for a flourless honey-almond cake published in Eating Well magazine’s March/April 2009 issue.  (I clipped it 6 months ago for precisely this occasion!)  Save time and effort by substituting the freshly-ground almonds with 1 3/4 cups of almond meal (sold in the baking section or Bob’s Red Mill section of your local grocery store).  As if the recipe isn’t decadent enough (it actually is: 234 calories for 1/10th of the cake, half of which come from unsaturated fat), you can top it off with a warm apple-cinnamon compote to take the apples-and-honey theme from appetizer all the way through to dessert.

Gluten-free Challah:  After reviewing all of the available GF Challah recipes online, I chose this GF Challah recipe from “Gluten Free in the Greens” for its relatively short ingredient list which uses two whole grain flours (sorghum and brown rice) in addition to the usual litany of starches.  I did, however, make a few small tweaks (see below).  It’s very easy to make, so don’t be intimidated.  To make it dairy-free, use the almond meal instead of the powdered milk.  If you’re stumped by what “potato flakes” are, just look for instant mashed potatoes at your supermarket and be sure to buy a product whose only ingredient is  “dehydrated potatoes” (some of the national brands will be filled with all sorts of nonsense, including wheat starch).

The recipe’s developer cleverly uses a braided loaf pan to avoid the sticky mess that an attempt at actual braiding would produce; Lacking one of my own, I wound up using a small-ish loaf pan (4.5″ x 8.5″ x 2.75″) instead.  My first attempt, which was made in an 8″

Nothing says happy 5770 like a fresh-baked, gluten-free Challah bread for the Celiac members of your tribe

round cake pan, came out as a slightly sweet-tasting, delicious focaccia rather than a slightly eggy-tasting, delicious challah loaf.  After discussing the play-by-play with a very knowledgeable Williams-Sonoma sales associate, we decided that the fault lay in the cake pan (too much surface area), the rising strategy (inadequate rising time) and the skipping of the traditional step of ‘activating’ the dry yeast in warm water prior to adding it to the dry ingredients.  Plus, I felt the challah needed just a pinch of salt to bring out the bready taste.  Therefore, I made the following modifications to perfect upon a pretty great recipe:

• Add a pinch (or, 1/8 tsp) of salt to the dry ingredients to temper the honey sweetness of the bread
• Before adding the yeast to the dry ingredients as the recipe specifies, mix it with 1/2 cup of warm (not hot) water and let the mixture sit for a good 15-20 minutes until it starts developing filmy/bubbly patches (this is called ‘proofing’). Then, add the activated yeast mixture to the dry ingredients along with the wet ingredients as the recipe specifies.
• Cut down the amount of water you use to dissolve the potato flakes to just 1/2 cup (to compensate for the 1/2 cup you already used to proof the yeast)
• Rather than pre-heating the oven to 200 degrees, shutting it off and using the warmed oven to expedite the dough rising as the recipe instructs, simply leave the dough out, uncovered, for longer in a room temperature environment to give the yeast time to do its thing.  I let it rise for a good 90-120 minutes before sprinkling it with sesame seeds and putting it the 350-degree oven to bake.  As a reward for your patience, the extra rising time buys you a more developed bread-y (versus a sweeter, cakier flavor).  By the time I put my loaf it in the oven, the dough had risen to about double its original height, and it even gained a little bit more volume in the oven.
• Keep an eye on the baking time; mine needed closer to 40-45 minutes than the 50 minutes specified.  This will vary by oven and pan size, of course.

Of course, whether or not you’re Jewish, this recipe makes the perfect leftovers for a Sunday morning Gluten-Free Challah French Toast. I plan on slicing up any leftovers and freezing them for this very purpose.

Kasha Varnishkes: Using your favorite gluten-free short pasta (most brands are pretty good) and naturally gluten-free buckwheat groats is a great way to enjoy this traditional Eastern-European side dish.  Serve it warm for dinner and enjoy the leftovers cold the next day.  Get my stepfather Bill’s famous recipe for it by clicking here.

Happy New Year!

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