Gluten Free Livin' - Waffles Edition

9am on a weekend morning.  Early enough to be slightly conscious. Too early to be upright.

A poke in the ribs.

"Will you make waffles for breakfast?"

Well... ok.

Here's the mise-en-place:

1 Cup - Gluten-free flours (this particular example used 1/2 c. Buckwheat and 1/2 c. Millet flours)
3/4 Cup - Milk
1/2 Tsp - Baking Powder
1/4 Cup - Canola Oil
3 Eggs

The observant among you will note that this is very similar to the pancake batter described in a previous post.  It's not an accident - Waffles are basically just squared-off, crispier, toastier pancakes with dents in them for holding syrup.

Regarding the flours, feel free to experiment with different combinations.  I have had success with varying proportions of buckwheat, millet, rice and teff flours so far.  I'm not sure that I would recommend using only one flour, unless you're a really big fan of that flour's particular idiosyncracies.  I, for instance, am a big fan of buckwheat and can happily chow down on a 100% buckwheat waffle.  Others, however, may not share that sentiment.  Based upon feedback from Liz, I think that my best results for gluten free waffles have always come from batches that used at least two different flours.

Here's the drill, very similar to the pancake routine:

Step 1: Get Crackin'
Separate your eggs, and start pre-heating your waffle iron.  Liz and I have a sweet All-Clad Waffle Iron that we got as a wedding present that produces great results at a heat setting of 4 out of 7.

Step 2: Deal with the yolks
Yolks go into a bowl with the flour, milk and baking powder.  Mix them thoroughly.  Once they are well combined, stir in the canola oil.

Step 3: Whip It
Whip the whites until stiff peaks form.

Step 4: Combine
Fold the whites into the batter.  Don't try to get everything 100% uniform, you'll just wind up breaking down the air bubbles you're trying to introduce into the mixture.  Just get the egg whites incorporated to the point where there aren't big white chunks of foam floating around, and then stop.  Optionally, if you wanted to add berries, or chocolate chips, or other garnishments, this is where to do it.

Step 5: Prep your waffle iron
Having the canola oil in your batter greatly reduces the chances of sticking.  Our waffle iron works great without any oiling, but if your particular model does best with a spray of Pam or olive oil, by all means, do so.

Step 6: Make Waffles - Part I
Load the batter into your waffle iron.  Generally speaking, you should only need to fill the iron halfway or so - otherwise you are courting the risk of overflow upon closing the top.  Not the end of the world if it happens, just an annoying mess...

Step 7: Make Waffles - Part II
Pay close attention to the steam blasting out of the sides of your waffle iron.  When the steam output has decreased to a few thin, wispy strands, then your waffles are done.

If your waffle iron does not emit any steam, then go plug it in and start this step again.

Step 8: Eat Waffles

I am a bit of a waffle minimalist.  I don't like much besides maple syrup (and perhaps a piece of fried chicken) to touch my waffles.

Generally, my Canadian patriotism is going to have me leaning towards using syrup produced north of the 49th parallel.  But today, I'm going to name-check a great little Pennsylvania based maple syrup maker.

Langdon Wood makes a barrel-aged maple syrup that is aged in a used, rye whisky barrel to add an interesting little twist on the usual maple syrup experience.  It's incredibly delicious, and I highly recommend it!

If you prefer to trick out your waffles a little further, these waffles will hold up very well to whatever creams, fruits and compotes you may want to subject them to, so by all means, go crazy with it.  They're your waffles after all...

Tasting Notes:

Texture and mouth feel are always challenges with gluten free recipes.  As with the pancake recipe, the beaten egg whites really help with the texture, and keep the waffles from being too heavy.  The canola oil also helps the waffles toast up nice and crispy on the outside, and prevent the interior from getting too dry and crumbly.  I know you might be tempted to try to make a low-fat waffle by omitting the oil, but I really wouldn't recommend it...

CSA Challenge: Fennel!

Fennel is one of those vegetables that I like to refer to as a "CSA Special."  You're never (or rarely) going to buy it of your own accord, even though you really enjoy eating it when it shows up on your plate at a restaurant.  So, when it shows up in your CSA, your thought process goes something like this:

"Sweet!  We got fennel this week!"

"..."

"Aw, crap - I have no idea what to do with fennel..."

The first time you see it, you probably take the easy way out: You slice it real thin with a really sharp knife, and use it to garnish salads.  Delicious!  But let's be honest here - any chump can wield a knife.  There's so much more potential in that weird-looking, fluffy-topped bulb... isn't there?

Of course there is!  Fennel is a classic match with seafood, and since Liz had a pasta craving this week, I figured we could adapt a recipe for Linguini with Clams and Fennel to be gluten-free!  So here we go:

Adventures in Charcuterie - Episode II: Makin' Bacon

Bacon is one of the world's truly perfect foods.  So versatile, it can be eaten as a part of any meal.  So universal, some version of it is featured in every culture that has figured out how to grow pigs.  So delicious, there are entire religions built around not eating it.  It's also gluten-free, so Liz can eat it too!

It should go without saying that having tried my hand at making sausage, that making bacon would be the next logical maneuver.

Adventures in Charcuterie - Episode 1: This is how sausage is made

Every culture in human history that has achieved any kind of success has figured out a way to make some variation on tubular meat.  Much like humanity's eternal need to get a buzz (a post for another time), the need for delicious, preservable, and portable meat preparations is universal.

Having grown up eating a variety of different European and Asian sausages, I was very excited to receive Michael Ruhlman's Charcuterie cookbook for Christmas.

And so, after doing some reading and ordering some materials online, I set to work at making my first ever batch of sausage.

Mise-en-Place:

5 lbs  Pork Shoulder / pork butt / picnic ham / etc (this cut of pig has a lot of names)
3 tbsp Salt
1 tbsp Pepper
3 tbsp Chopped Garlic
1 cup Red Wine (ice cold)
Casings, rinsed, and soaked (optional)

Butchery:



You don't want the pork skin in your sausage, so trim that off.  It should go without saying to make sure you use a very sharp knife, but I'm saying it anyways.  Dull knives are dangerous!

Dice the pork.  I went with about a 1-inch dice, and to be honest, I should have gone smaller, as the bigger pieces required more effort to get through the grinder.

Season the pork with the salt, pepper and garlic.  It's easiest to just use your hands to mix all the ingredients and get everything uniform.

SUPER IMPORTANT: Chill everything in the freezer for 30-60 minutes.  Also, put all the pieces of your grinder in the freezer too.  The grinding process will generate a fair bit of heat, and if your meat heats up too much, the fat will melt, thereby killing your sausage's texture.  Warmer temperatures are also more conducive to microbial growth, and bacteria growing in your sausage is bad.

Grinding:

Grind your meat through the coarse die, into a bowl set into ice (again, temperature control is tres important).




This is a visceral process, so be prepared for that if you've never done it before.  I used the grinder attachment for our KitchenAid Mixer, and it worked pretty well, although there was a fair bit of what sausage geeks call "smear" going on, which isn't ideal.

Nonetheless, I managed to get everything ground without too much hassle.  I did have to stop and clear the grinder once during the process, which was every bit as gross as you'd think it would be.

Mixing:

Add the cold wine to the ground meat and mix to combine.  I used the paddle attachment on our KitchenAid for about a minute or so.

Chill and Test:

Pull a sample (2 tbsp or so) of the sausage mixture and put the rest into the freezer to chill while you do some quality control.


Saute your sample in a pan with a little bit of oil and taste it.

My sample tasted salty as all hell - you know, if hell were a salt flat that you were trying to eat.  In retrospect, I should have reduced the amount of salt to account for the amount of pork lost when I removed the skin at the start of the prep.  Ah well, not much to do about it at this point except press on to:

Stuffing:

Not strictly necessary.  It's totally fine to shape the sausage into patties at this point and call it a day, but I wanted to try our sausage stuffer attachment too, so away we went.

I bought pretubed, natural hog casings from thesausagemaker.com and soaked them overnight to make sure they'd be ready to go.

As with grinding, I made sure to chill all the stuffer parts in the freezer prior to use.

The stuffing process takes some getting used to, and my inner 12-year old kept wanting to make terrible, and juvenile comments the whole time.  I had some difficulty gauging how full to stuff the casings, and wound up splitting the casing at one point when I overstuffed one section, and also wound up with a few sections that were woefully understuffed.  But after a little while, I sorta got the hang of it, and after twisting the stuffed coil into links, wound up with this:



Not a bad-looking result for a first time, I figure.  Total yield was about 18 six-inch links.

Cooking and Tasting:

As noted earlier, this first batch was a fair bit on the salty side.  In an attempt to off-set that in the cooking process the first time I went to cook some of these, I did two things:

1. I blanched the sausages for a couple of minutes in simmering water to draw out some of the excess salt.
2. I sauteed the blanched sausages together with onions, peppers and mushrooms that had not been seasoned with any salt, allowing the salt from the sausage to do the seasoning for me.

That approach worked pretty well, and Liz and I enjoyed a couple of dinners the following week using this formula.

Other things we're looking forward to trying with this sausage include pasta sauce, and cassoulet, which also seem like good applications that can off-set a salty sausage.

A Few Other Notes:

There is a lot of garlic in this sausage.  Make sure you have a fresh box of baking soda in your fridge and in your freezer so that you don't wind up flavouring your entire food supply with garlic.  Not that it's necessarily a bad thing in all cases, but chilling a beverage with garlic-infused ice cubes probably isn't what you're looking for...

Gluten Free Livin' - Buckwheat Pancakes

About 3 and a half years ago, after a long, and arduous diagnostic process, Liz found out that she was gluten-intolerant / celiac / whatever other term you want.  After an initial process of "ZOMG!!! NO PIZZA!!! NO BEER!!! WTFBBQ!!!" we went about eliminating gluten from her lifestyle (which coincidentally meant eliminating gluten from many aspects of my lifestyle too).  It's kinda like how Samuel L Jackson puts it in Pulp Fiction:

 "My wife is a vegetarian, which pretty much makes me a vegetarian." (just sub "gluten free" for vegetarian)

But after doing some research, we found that being Gluten-Free wasn't nearly as onerous as we thought it might be.  There are certainly compromises that need to be made, but by and large, Liz has made the transition pretty well.

A big part of going gluten-free involves finding ways to keep your carby comfort foods in the rotation in a gluten-free form.  And when it comes to breakfast, that means Gluten-Free Pancakes!

Here's the mise-en-place:

1 Cup - Buckwheat flour
1/2 Cup - Milk (plus a little extra as required)
1/2 Tsp - Baking Powder
3 Eggs

Buckwheat flour has no gluten in it, and has a great flavour to it.  It's classically used in a number of French crepe recipes (usually from Brittany), but the goal here is not for a thin, rolled-up crepe - We're going for a thick, fluffy pancake, something that can be difficult to achieve without a gluteny flour. 

The Key to a thick, fluffy, gluten-free pancake, as it turns out, is something that I pulled from a Jamie Oliver episode many years ago: Separate your eggs, and whip the whites.  Here's the drill:

Step 1:
Separate your eggs.

Step 2: Deal with the yolks
Yolks go into a bowl with the flour, milk and baking powder.  Mix them thoroughly.  You can add as much as another 1/4 cup of milk if your batter is thicker than you like it.  Any more than that, and you're getting into crepe batter territory

Step 3: Whip It
Whip the whites until stiff peaks form.  What the hell does "stiff peaks" mean?  Good question.  Here's a picture:

Stiff Peaks - Got it?  Good.

Step 4: Combine
Fold the whites into the batter.  Don't try to get everything 100% uniform, you'll just wind up breaking down the air bubbles you're trying to introduce into the mixture.  Just get the egg whites incorporated to the point where there aren't big white chunks of foam floating around, and then stop.

Photo courtesy of Liz - And yes, I always wear a Metallica T-shirt when I make rockin' food

Step 5: Prep your pan
Put a skillet on medium or medium-low heat depending on how nuclear your stove is.  Melt a tablespoon or two of butter and WAIT for the butter to melt and get hot.  The #1 reason (Number ONE) for subpar pancakes at this stage is a pan that isn't hot enough.  Test your pan by making a miniature pancake, about the size of a quarter.  If you don't hear an immediate sizzle, then your pan is not hot enough.

Step 6: Make Pancakes - Part I
Spoon dollops of batter onto your pan.  If you've done it right, the batter should stand up a bit on its own, and you may need to shake your pan to get the pancakes to flatten out. 

Step 6a: Garnishment
Optionally, if you wanted to add berries, or banana slices, or chocolate chips, this is where to do it.  Just press your chosen accoutrement into the top of each pancake as it's cooking.

Step 7: Make Pancakes - Part II
When you see bubbles come up to the top surface of the pancakes, it's almost time to flip.  When you see the bubbles around the edges pop and they don't close back over, it's time to flip your pancakes.  Again, if you got your egg whites nice and stiff, you may need to pat your pancakes down with a spatula to flatten them out properly.  They should only need a minute or two to get brown on the flipped side before they are ready.

Step 8: Eat Pancakes

You'll note that the buckwheat flour yields a darker colour than conventional pancakes.  That is totally normal.  You may also have some contrasting bits of egg white on the interior of some of your pancakes.  That is also normal.  If you stirred the mixture enough to get the egg whites 100% uniformly distributed, you would lose a lot of the fluffiness.

Tasting Notes:

Going with 100% buckwheat flour does result in some inherent differences with respect to taste and feel.  I have seen buckwheat flour described as tasting nutty, earthy, grassy... I don't think earthy is accurate (mushrooms are earthy - buckwheat not so much), but somewhere between nutty and grassy sounds about right.  I like it a lot, but it is distinct, and quite different in flavour than wheat flour pancakes.  The important thing is that it goes great with Maple Syrup!

Texturally, buckwheat flour is pretty much always sold as a whole-grain flour.  That means it is high in fibre and very good for you.  It also means that it is going to be less luxurious from a mouth feel standpoint than refined wheat flour.

I'm sure that I can improve on this recipe by subbing in some chickpea, rice or tapioca flour to lend a little more smoothness to the mouth feel, but by and large, these pancakes are delicious as they are, and simple to prepare.  That egg white trick works great with regular pancakes too, btw.