September 2010

The Gluten Free Husband Cooks Birthday Dinner – Asian Marinated Steaks

September 30, 2010
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Hi! The gluten-free husband is here again to share a special treat I made for you! My latest culinary achievement. Ok, achievement might be to strong, lets just call it a next step. So, Jenn and I have inadvertently started a tradition with our birthdays. If it’s your birthday, you pick your own dinner – exactly what you want, and then you make it for everyone (everyone being me and Jenn). I don’t know how this started, but it seems to be the way of things now and I like getting to flex my kitchen muscles from time to time. For my birthday, I wanted to stick to my carnivorous ways and make something Jenn doesn’t cook much of – a manly steak of beef with a rich Asian marinade.

18 comments

Galettes de Sarrasin (Buckwheat Crêpes) – The French Pancake

September 28, 2010
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Living in a French-speaking region (and not too far from France), crêperies are easy to find. Unfortunately, because crêpe batter is usually not 100% buckwheat, my husband and I have never been to one because we were never sure if he’d be able to enjoy them and still be gluten free. Back when we lived in the States, one of our favorite French restaurants would serve crêpes filled with chicken and mushrooms that were out of this world. Then, when we ventured off to Paris a couple months ago, I had the privilege of enjoying a crêpe filled with four kinds of cheese (au quatre fromages) – I think there was comté, brie, emmental, and chevre – and odd combo, but delicious. Little tiny hole-in-the-wall place by the Louvre that made them to order, I think with the café, my total came to something like only € 5!

52 comments

GF Substitutions Part XII: How to Handle your Flops

September 26, 2010
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This week is all about dealing with that one thing in gluten free cooking / baking that no matter what variety you try, you always have issues with, and how to keep moving towards progress and keep your spirits up. I am sure there is something that just never seems to work out exactly they way you want it to, no matter how many kinds you try or how many times you make it. For me, that thing is cookies. It seems no matter what type of cookie I try to make, there are always issues. Too thin and spreading, hard as a rock, or just plain old morphing into something almost unrecognizable at all. When I try to make cookies, there is always that sense of trepidation and intimidation that comes over me. Yet I haven’t given up on cookies completely, and keep trying! I think knowing how to deal with flops is an important issue – flops don’t necessarily mean you’re a bad cook! I think they can be a bit more frequent during gluten free cooking/baking because oftentimes when we are in the kitchen making gluten free deliciousness, recipes can be a bit experimental – especially if you are trying to make your own recipe or adapt a glutenicious one for the first time.

16 comments

Ticino

September 22, 2010
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My husband was going to give you a lovely guest post today on the awesome birthday dinner he made himself this weekend – Asian marinated steaks with mushrooms (maybe that makes up for all of the French fries he ate while I was gone? ha – he really can cook, just chose not to…). I think it rather amusing that lately we’ve been making our own meals on our birthdays…but it works – you can make exactly what you feel like, exactly the way you want it – because when you are celebrating cooking is not a chore, it becomes part of the festivities. But you will have to wait a bit, because unfortunately he is crazy sick and not doing any writing at the moment.

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Gluten Free Substitutions Part XI: Homemade Pasta

September 19, 2010
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Welcome to the next installment of Gluten Free Substitutions! How are all of your gluten free cooking & baking efforts going? In case you missed last week, I am currently accepting submissions for a roundup of everyone’s gluten free kitchen experiences, the good and the bad! Just remember only a few weeks left to email me (jenncuisine at gmail dot com) your submissions to be featured in the big roundup!

This week I want to talk to you about making pasta. Making pasta from scratch at first sounds like a daunting project, but really it’s not, and the results are more than rewarding. It can be complicated like a stuffed ravioli (because I always choose complicated first), or simplistic, adorned with a basic sauce with rich flavors. Trust me, once you try fresh pasta, you’ll be trying to make time for it every day!

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Copycat P.F. Chang’s Chicken Lettuce Wraps

September 17, 2010
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P.F. Changs may not have been the most authentic Asian restaurant we ever frequented in the States, but on our then extremely limited graduate student budgets we could go out to eat, be sure there was gluten free goodness, and get like 6 portions of food for $40 – a near steal for eating out. We would always order an appetizer, then my husband would get a fried rice and I’d get a rice noodle dish. Considering we were ordering as much for the leftovers as we were for the experience there, it was easier later if I also got a gluten free dish. One thing I can really commend them on, besides having a gluten free menu and system in place before most other restaurants knew what gluten free was, was their chicken lettuce wraps. I think they were our favorite dish out of the menu, and they certainly became a tradition of sorts whenever we went there.

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