Applesauce Blue Cornbread (Gluten Free, of course)

The cornbread obsession continues.  Today it's Applesauce Blue Cornbread. Sorry, no pictures.  But then, we're talking blue cornmeal.  Not exactly the most photogenic member of the cornmeal family.

The starting point for today's recipe came from one of Carol Fenster's books.  But, by the time you turn yellow meal to blue, sugar to maple syrup, canola oil to grapeseed, milk to applesauce, and measures to weights -- and said weights might not round trip to Fenster's original measurements.... (Let's not get into the whole your-mileage-may-vary nature of measuring!)  Then, you throw in stuff like cranberries, pecans, walnuts, and vanilla....  I guess at some point I get to call it my own thing, don't I?

So, here it is:  Applesauce Blue Cornbread with Cranberries and Nuts.  My own thing, sort of. Changes from Fenster's ingredients in blue.

Dry stuff:

·         1 ¼ cups blue cornmeal (120 g)

·         1 cup GF Flour Blend of choice (~124 g)

·         2 teaspoons baking powder

·         1.5 teaspoons xanthan gum

·         1 teaspoon salt

Wet stuff:

·         ⅓ cup maple syrup

·         2 large eggs, lightly beaten

·         5.5 oz applesauce

·         3.5 oz milk of choice

·         ⅓ cup grapeseed oil

·         ¼ tsp vanilla

Add-ins:

·         1/3 cup nuts (pecans and walnuts)

·         1/3 cup chopped dried cranberries

·         Extra nuts for topping (opt.)

Directions

1.     Preheat oven to 350˚F. Generously spray an 8- or 9-inch square pan. Set aside.

2.     In small bowl, whisk dry ingredients together until well blended.

3.     In medium bowl, whisk wet ingredients until blended.

4.     Mix dry stuff into wet stuff and whisk until blended. Stir in the nuts and cranberries.

5.     Pour into prepared pan and top with nuts, if desired.

6.     Bake until top is firm and edges are lightly browned, 25 to 30 minutes. Cool in the pan on a wire rack before cutting. Serve slightly warm or at room temperature. Serves 12 - 16.

Applecado Bread (Gluten free, of course)

It's no secret that I'm a huge fan of Roben Ryberg's books, especially You Won't Believe It's Gluten-Free.  And, a sane person might wonder, "Well, if you love Ryberg's recipes so much, why do you keep changing them???"

Good question.  All I can say is, there's something in me that must explore. Experiment. Try new (aka, "weird") things.  I just must.

Ask my sister. She's the one who was traumatized by a chocolate mint birthday cake when she was a child.  She recalls it being very minty.  It might explain why neither of us is much of a fan of mint these days.  It was not a successful experiment.

But, some experiments are.  Take, for instance, applecado bread.  This one is based heavily on a Ryberg recipe, so you know I'm starting with something good. And, I'm including avocado.  Also something good. And goat milk, ginger, cloves, bourbon vanilla, and more cinnamon.  All very good things.  As my sister-in-law says, "When you put good things together, you get a good thing."

Applecado bread: It's a good thing.

Wet ingredients:

• 6 ounces organic, unsweetened applesauce
• 100 grams organic sugar
• 2.6 ounces avocado (a little less than one small one)
• 1 ounce goat milk
• 2 organic eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla

Dry ingredients:

• 150 grams brown rice flour
• 1 tbsp. baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 3/4 tsp xanthan gum
• 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon plus an extra shake or two
• 1/8 tsp ginger, slightly rounded
• 1/8 tsp cloves
• 1/2 tsp sea salt

Topping:

• 1/3 to 1/2 cup chopped pecans

Directions:

1. Spray an 8" baking pan with coconut oil spray, then sprinkle a little almond meal on the bottom.  Or, line the pan with parchment paper.  Preheat oven to 350 (f)
2. Mix the wet ingredients in a medium mixing bowl until everything is nice and fluffy and uniformly green. I used my stick blender.
3. Whisk dry ingredients together thoroughly in a small mixing bowl.
4. Gently fold the dry into the wet until everything is nicely incorporated.  The batter will be fluffy and beautiful -- in a green sort of way.
5. Pour batter into the baking pan, smooth out a little, and top with pecans.  Gently press the pecans in so they'll stay put.  
6. Bake at 350 (f) for about 30 minutes, until the house smells lovely and a toothpick test tells you the bread done.

Orange and Black Cornbread

Today's cornbread obsession is brought to you by the colors orange and black.

I've been wanting to do a sweet potato cornbread. And, heaven knows there are plenty of recipes for sweet potato cornbread out there. Problem is, most of them are... sweet. And, sweet won't work with black beans. Because the other thing I've been wanting to do is a cornbread that celebrates the impending month of October.

Beautiful, glorious October. Month of changing leaves, mercurial weather, the return of pie pumpkins, and just about everyone's birthday. Oh, yeah... and that other holiday.

So... this calls for an unapologetically orange cornbread, speckled with black beans, topped with creepy black sesame seeds.  And, just like October in Southern Cal, a touch of heat.

It's too bad Spouse would rather die than eat sweet potato.  But, sometimes a girl's just gotta bake what a girl's gotta bake. Today, I had to bake sweet potato and black bean cornbread. 

Ingredients:

1 1/2 C. rinsed and drained black beans
2 ounces oil
280 grams organic yellow cornmeal (2 C.)
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp chipotle pepper
Dash or two of smoked paprika
1/4 tsp xanthan gum
9 ounces goat milk
7 ounces sweet potato puree
2 eggs
1 Tbsp. agave syrup
Black sesame seeds

Directions:

1. Put oil in 8" square baking pan. Turn toaster oven or real oven to 425 degrees. Place pan in oven while oven preheats. Pay a little attention to the oven as you're mixing up the cornbread. Oil left unattended at high heat: Bad things could happen. 
2. Mix cornmeal, salt, baking powder & soda, chipotle, paprika, and xanthan together.
3. Mix goat, potato, eggs, and agave together.
4. Mix dry and wet stuff together.
5. Take the pan out of the oven, swirl the oil around a bit, then pour it into the batter. Mix well.
6. GENTLY fold in the black beans.  If you're too vigorous, the black beans will smoosh and discolor the cornbread. Which could also be nice and disgustingly Halloweenish. But really, it's not what we're going for here. So, do be gentle.
7. Sprinkle black sesame seeds on top, then bake for about 20 - 25 minutes until the cornbread tests done.

Serve with organic butter. Just don't serve it to Spouse 1.0.

Cheese Toast a la Jared

A recipe for cheese toast? Really??  Who needs a recipe for cheese toast???

Well, it's not about the recipe, kids. It's about the ingredients.

And, no. Jared isn't an ingredient.

But, his delightful farm (http://jaredsrealfood.com/ ) produces delightful ingredients.

So, back to the ingredients....

You'll need a couple of slices of reasonably decent gluten-free bread.  Ramona Family Naturals and Windmill Farms sell a locally-made sourdough that toasts up nicely.  And, of course, Canyon Bakehouse rocks.  But, today, I had T-Jo's multigrain, so T-Jo multigrain it is.

Next, you'll need a couple of Jared's small golden tomatoes. These cute little guys are low acid, vine ripe, organic, heirloom, flavorful... And did I mention they're just so cuuuute!  Slice them up and place them on the bread.

Next, grab one of Jared's Marconi peppers.  Lovely sweet red pods of joy, they look like they should be hot, but they're not. Slice a few paper-thin slices and sprinkle over the golden tomatoes. 

Top all that with a few transparent slices of one of Jared's onions.  These bad boys are pungent, aromatic, and utterly onionicious!

Bake in the toaster oven at about 375 until the kitchen smells amazing.  In other words, until the onions have started to brown at the edges and the tomatoes are hot. Maybe 5 minutes or so?

Now add some raw pepper jack cheese.  Good luck finding it.  I got mine in Ramona.  If you can't find it, then just use your favorite goat cheese.  Pop it back in the toaster oven and continue baking just until the cheese warms enough to melt.  Probably another 3-5 minutes.

And, there you have it: Cheese toast a la Jared.

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I don't know what it is bread

Lately I've been obsessed with making variations of the Cherokee Bean Bread recipe on the War Eagle Mill web site.  (http://www.wareaglemill.com/recipes/cherokeebeanbread/)

The latest variations have involved using blue cornmeal, black beans, and green chili peppers.  But, today, I had some magnificently aromatic sage from Grebar Farm. So, what if I made the blue cornbread with sage instead of chilis? 

Well, that means I should probably use white beans.

And, if you're going to use sage, then you should definitely add fresh parsley, rosemary, and thyme. Or dried thyme, since I didn't have fresh.  And, some ground black pepper.

And, if you're going to do all that, then you should sauté a little carrot, onion, and celery for extra flavor.

And, if you're going to add all those extra vegies, then you probably need an extra egg and a pinch of xanthan gum to help bind it.  And maybe an extra pinch of baking powder, just because.

But, OH NO!!!  I only have about 70 grams of blue cornmeal, and the bag of blue cornmeal in the freezer turned out to be brown rice flour.  And the bread (or whatever it may be) is now half made!!!

Deep breath.  Millet flour.  I've been needing to use that up anyway, and it has something of a corn-ish taste.  Yellow cornmeal.  Spouse shouldn't have it, but it's nowhere near the top of his no-no list.  And, since it's organic...

And, with all that extra stuff, it's probably a good idea to use just a splash more oil than the recipe calls for.

So... Is it a bread? A pudding?  A stuffing substitute?  I have no idea what to call it.  I just hope that Spouse calls it, "It's good. I like it."

Hot Fried Corn: The Taste of Summer

Summer in Modesto in the late '70's.  Cornstalks tall and tasseled in platinum silk, tomatoes rich and tangy: Hot fried corn season.  Breakfast of champions -- or at least those of us lucky enough to have Kentucky mothers.

Cathy brought us a couple of ears of her neighbor's fresh corn. A bounty of Jared's tomatoes at hand. Creole garlic from the RSD Farmer's Market.  The only thing missing was a fresh jalapeno.  But this is a hot fried corn emergency.  Freeze dried in a jar will have to do.

Ingredients:
1/2 Tbsp butter
2 small cloves creole garlic - or one large clove of regular
1 small jalapeno, chopped -- or about a tsp of freeze dried
2 ears of fresh corn
3/4 to 1 cup largely chopped fresh organic tomato
Salt & pepper
Dash of cayenne (optional)

Directions:

1. Shuck the corn and rinse off the silk
2. Use a sharp, flat butcher knife to cut the corn off the cob. Reserve the cobs.
3. Heat the butter in a skillet
4. Add the crushed garlic and the jalapeno & give it a stir.
5. Add the corn and tomatoes & give it all another stir.
6. Use the knife to scrape the rest of the goodness off the corn cobs into the skillet.
7. Stir in a little freshly ground salt & pepper.
8. Add about 1/4 to 1/2 cup water.
9. Stir and cover, then cook for another minute or two until the corn is barely done.
10. Taste and add a dash of cayenne if needed.

Options:
Hot fried corn is amazing all by itself.  For a killer breakfast, crack an egg or two into the corn as it's cooking and cook until the egg is poached to perfection.  Alternatively, sprinkle some shredded raw jack or crumble some goat cheese on top of the hot fried corn and let it melt a bit before you eat it.

Transforming My Mom's Glutenacious Apricot Grape-nut Bread - Part 1

Some recent posts on facebook brought back summer memories of my home town: Swimming in canals, barbeques, and amazing tree fruit. 

Which got me to thinking about an apricot and Grape-nut bread my mom used to make. I still have the recipe. Handwritten 3 x 5 card, 35 years old.

I didn't have apricots, but I did have some Grebar Farms peaches.  Peaches are wetter than apricots. So, may have to adjust that with the flours....

Grape-nuts are gluteney. But, I did have some gluten-free granola. But the granola smelled stale. But, I did have some sliced almonds. (Ah, even better. My home town was pretty close to the almond capital of the world.)  But, almonds won't soak up liquid the way Grape-nuts do. So... may have to add more flours...

Sub goat milk for moo.

Mom's recipe used too much sugar, so I cut it by 25%.

And, of course, sub my gluten-free flour blend and some xanthan for the all-purpose flour. Except... I'm running low on my blend. So, a random assortment of brown rice flour, sweet rice, tapioca, and almond (yup, definitely got the hometown vibe going).

By the end of it all, what I made bore little resemblance to Mom's bread. But, it did earn Spouse 1.0's standard praise of "It's good. I like it."  Next time I want to tweak it to make it peachier.

Mom's
1 3/4 C flour
3/4 C Grap-Nuts cereal
1 C sugar
1 tsp salt
2/3 C chopped apricots
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
1 1/4 C milk
2 Tbsp oil
1 egg

1. Mix dry ingredients.
2. Stir in cereal and apricots.
3. Blend wet ingredients
4. Add flour mixture, stir until just moist.
5. Pour into greased loaf pan.
6. Bake at 350 for 1 hour or until done.

Mine
1 C brown rice flour (122 g
1/4 C tapioca starch (26 g)
1/4 C sweet rice flour (34 g)
3/8 C blanched almond meal (30 g)
3/8 tsp xanthan gum
scant 3/4 C sliced almonds (76 g)
3/4 C organic evaporated cane sugar (150 g)
1 tsp sea salt
2/3 C chopped peaches
1 Tbsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 1/4 C goat milk
2 Tbsp grapeseed oil
1 large organic egg

1. Mix dry ingredients.
2. Stir in almonds.
3. Blend wet ingredients
4. Add flour mixture, stir well.
5. Stir in peaches.
6. Pour into parchment lined 9" square pan.
7. Sprinkle a few extra almond slices on top, if desired.
8. Bake at 350 for 15 min., then turn heat down to 325. Bake about 15 minutes more, until toothpick comes out clean.

The batter was a lot more wet than most gluten free quick breads I've made, but surprisingly it didn't come out gummy or strange. And it was nicely moist.  My only complaint is, it wasn't peachy enough.

Sorry, no pictures.  I wasn't expecting it to turn out blog-worthy.