These were supposed to be gluten free chocolate popovers.  Popovers are like muffins but rise more and have more air inside, hence they “pop over” the tin they are baked in.  As you can see, I didn’t quite get all the kinks worked out by the deadline for this month’s ratio rally

This month, Mrs. R from Honey from Flinty Rocks challenged us all to make popovers – and as Erin mentioned on twitter last week, this challenge is not for the faint of heart!  Whereas muffins are downright easy to make gluten free because they are dense and cakey, popovers depend on trapping air so that they can rise a LOT and be fluffy, which can be a bit difficult without that gluten in there to help keep the air locked in.

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I want to thank everyone who entered for such an amazing turnout and quality of entries – there were 61 – yes, 61!! – total submissions for this month’s DMBLGIT.  I had such a great time hosting this month’s event and getting to see all of your wonderful images – you all truly are so inspiring, thanks so much for entering and letting me host this month. And thanks so much to Sarka, Simone, Veronika and Alessandro for being such great judges and putting forth the time and effort to go through all of the entries.

Not sure what DMBLGIT is? Read my announcement post from earlier this month detailing the event.
You can also read about and meet the judges for this month’s event.
You can also check out the Picasa album to see all the 61 submissions. 

So without further ado, let’s see who won!

Overall Winners: 

1st Place: Monika from Sweet Sensation: Cranberry & Rosemary Shortbread Cookies

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Apricot Glazed Pork Chops by Amy of Sing for your Supper (used with permission)

Whenever anyone asks me for advice about going gluten free, the first thing I tell them is to look for naturally gluten free dishes that don’t require any alterations at all. You know, the ones that don’t have lists of a dozen different flours in them and other ingredients that the average person might consider a little “strange” if they are not the most familiar with gluten free cooking and baking. I also like to stress cooking naturally gluten free foods because I think it’s important to recognize that gluten free doesn’t have to be limiting. Yes, making pizza from scratch and baking cupcakes might get a bit trickier, but it’s important not to stress about “losing” one’s favorite foods in exactly the way they are remembered. And there are just so many wonderfully flavorful and exciting foods that already are totally gluten free. While I get just as excited as the next person about a successful recipe conversion to GF, I think we should also be excited about those dishes that require no converting at all.

So this year, I’ve been thinking about how many great naturally gluten free recipes get put out into the blogosphere all the time, and how they should be celebrated. Starting this month, I am keeping a running list of naturally gluten free recipes I come across that I think would be great to recognize – they may come from a gluten free blog, they may not – because many people already eat and make naturally gluten free dishes. I think this will be a new monthly feature here on Jenn Cuisine, to highlight some great looking naturally gluten free dishes.

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Cauliflower – a vegetable I grew up with, and wasn’t often thrilled about. Mom you know I love you, but I do not love the way you like most of your veggies cooked.

However, on my quest to enjoy more fresh produce this Winter season, I’m giving it a try again.  Cauliflower seems to abound in the markets right now and as fortune would have it, my friend Simone chose a lovely cauliflower recipe for this month’s Donna Hay Styling and Photography Challenge (DHSPC).  I enjoy participating in these challenges because they always make me reach and do something new that I might not otherwise try.  In this case, that meant not only the photo but also the recipe featuring heads of cauliflower! In fact, in the near four years that this blog has been on the interwebs, today marks the first time cauliflower has ever even appeared on Jenn Cuisine, let alone received a spotlight feature.

This month, Simone challenged us all to make a creamy cauliflower soup, which appeared in Donna Hay issue #51 (June/July 2010) and was photographed by Ben Dearnley. The soup was wonderful – cauliflower and potatoes cooked together in broth and milk and puréed until velvety smooth.  A perfect Winter bowl, better than plain boiled veggies. And even naturally gluten free!

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Thanks everyone so much for all of your participation! The deadline is officially passed and the album of entries is up on Picasa - there are some great looking food images! Today I am introducing to you the fabulous judges that will be evaluating all of the entries.  These judges are food photographers and food bloggers I look up to and admire for not only their talent but also their generosity and willingness to help others; I am sure they will take a great critical eye to pick out the winners for this month’s DMBLGIT

So without further ado, here they are! Go check out their portfolios of amazing work, follow them on twitter, facebook, etc. A great group and I’m super excited to announce them to you!

Veronika Studer - 

Portfolio: www.veronikastuder.com
Blog: The Kitchen Finesse
Facebook : Veronika Studer

I’m a Hungarian girl living in Switzerland with my hubby and my beautiful 5 month old little girl.  I always had a great interest in art. I learned how to draw and paint, but I really found myself through photography. I combine my two great passions in my work, food preparation and photographing. I also write both a Huingarian (Édes és Keserű) and an English blog called The Kitchen Finesse. If you want to take a look on my portfolio please visit my website: www.veronikastuder.com , and join me on Facebook. I’m really looking forward to see some wonderful photographs in this contest! Good luck!

Simone van den Berg - 

Portfolio: Freshfood Photos
Blog: Junglefrog Cooking
Twitter : @junglefrog
Facebook : junglefrogcooking or junglefrog
Google+ : Simone van den Berg

I’m located in Almere, which is in the middle of Holland and not one of the best culinary locations on the Netherlands unfortunately.  I started blogging about 3 years ago now and ultimately I think that doing that has made a huge difference in my professional career too. I knew virtually nothing about food photography (have a look at those earlier photos for a good laugh!) when I started blogging, even though I was already working as a photographer at that time. In fact I didn’t start out with a food blog, I think I named it something like Junglefrog Adventures. Can’t remember exactly. It took me only a couple of posts though to realize that I wanted to write about food. Doing that in the end let to my interested in food photography and a change in career plans too. Last year food photography has been roughly 50% of my total work, and so far the month of January has been food only!

Alessandro Guerani - 

Portfolio: Alessandro Guerani – fotografia
Blog: Foodografia
Twitter : @aleguerani
Facebook : Alessandro Guerani
Google+: Alessandro Guerani

Alessandro Guerani was born in 1969 in Bologna, Italy, where he still lives. He started using cameras at the age of twenty as a complement to his studies about medieval and Renaissance arts and history. His passion for the tastes and flavors of the traditional Italian cuisine, together with a period of assistantship in a professional studio, brought him to specialize in food and still life photography. His style is defined by the fresh and creative use of lighting, the careful choice of colors and contrast and the attention to the detail, which, together with a competent use of digital post processing techniques, create imagery with a very personal character. When the need arises he still uses traditional film, in medium or large format, especially when shooting lifestyle and street photography.

Sarka Babicka -

Portfolio: http://sarkababicka.com
Blog: http://cookyourdream.com
Twitter: @CookYourDream
Facebook: Cook Your Dream 

Sarka is a London based food, lifestyle and travel photographer  living in London since 2008. She was born and brought up in Prague, Czech Republic. Her passion for photography was ignited with the first photo she took for her blog Cook Your Dream. When not cooking, baking and taking mouth watering pictures, Sarka loves to travel and explore culinary art and traditions from other countries and cultures.

So there you have it, the ever talented judges for this month’s competition.  Winners will be announced on January 31st!

*DMBLGIT is a monthly food blogging competition started by Andrew of Spittoon Extra. If you are unfamiliar with DMBLGIT, I encourage you to check out my announcement post detailing this month’s contest.  If you missed the deadline for entering this month, I will be sure to link to next month’s host when I announce the winners, so that you can hopefully participate next time

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Croutons are one of those things that my gluten free husband usually has to deny himself.  And inevitably croutons cause him some of the most frequent problems for eating out, as they invariably end up on soups or salads when someone doesn’t understand that croutons are made of bread and thus fall into the “no bread, pasta, or flour because I am allergic to gluten” request that my husband is so well experienced in asking.  This also means asking the server “yes can you please give me another salad prepped in a clean bowl” and “no, it is not ok to just remove the croutons”.

This has always been more of a problem for my husband in the U.S. than in Europe it seems – in Europe, while there may not be many gluten free options depending on the country and their culture of cuisine, it seems everyone we’ve come across knows what gluten means.  In the U.S., explaining that he actually has a problem with gluten, isn’t doing it just for a diet, and yes gluten does include anything made with bread, pasta and flour (including to check the sauces) seems to be a more common occurrence.  It’s almost so laborious to make sure everything is ok dining out that it’s not even worth it.

And on top of that, in the U.S. gluten free is becoming so popular for reasons other than celiac or sensitivities (some even use the word “fad”, despite the fact that for many like my husband staying gluten free will be a necessity for the rest of their lives), that the seriousness of the issue often becomes diluted – it’s been more than once that my husband has dutifully explained his intolerance to gluten at a restaurant and his requests have been ignored or forgotten.  Sometimes I wonder if some restaurants think people use “gluten free” as an excuse to cover up being a picky eater, and thus don’t know to treat an allergy request as an actual health issue could affect the safety of their customers (really, should a restaurant be questioning the motives of the diner?).

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I have hit the ground running with my expedition into the land of root vegetables.  This week I have eaten celery root, parsnips, jerusalem artichokes, and there are even carrots sitting in my fridge.   My first foray of the year into root vegetables was to try them simply – I wanted to taste their flavor, with mere accents to the palate rather than covering them up by drowning them in butter or cheese (as tempting and always tasty as that may be).

I believe in understanding the true flavor of an ingredient before getting too inventive with it – after all, what is the point of a food that cannot be tasted?  How do you ever really know if you will like it or not if you cannot identify its inherent flavor?  I think roasting vegetables is a great way to try new ones, because it’s an easy cooking process and yet still preserves the texture unlike boiling something forever. I grew up with enough over-boiled veggies (well, at least I consider them over-boiled) in my day to know that boiling is not my preferred method for cooking vegetables – well except maybe beans.  So when I have no idea what I am going to do with something, oven-roasting is usually the route I tend to go.

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It’s a new year, everyone has new goals, how about entering one of my favorite photography food blogging competitions?

I am honored to announce that I am hosting DMBLGIT (Does My Blog Look Good in This) this month!  This has been one of my favorite food photography contests ever since I can remember falling in love with food blogging and photography online, and I’m so excited to announce it and this month and help to continue its awesomeness.  It’s the longest running online food photography contest, dating back to 2005, each month showcasing a wealth of talent from food bloggers all over the web, conceived by Andrew of Spittoon Extra.

The rules are simple – enter your photo by the deadline, and an amazing lineup of judges that I have chosen this month (who will be revealed later this month) will judge the photos and choose the winners, who will receive pretty shiny badges to put on their site

Details below:

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As a rule, I don’t make New Year’s resolutions.

New Year’s resolutions were made to be broken, or worse, completely abandoned.  Do you know anyone who has ever actually kept a New Year’s resolution throughout an entire year?   I don’t.  The problem is that in order to carry out a resolution, there needs to be a certain urgent and necessary motivation to sustain it.  Most of us create a resolution at New Year’s because it’s often a time of reflecting on our successes and trials over the past year, and so wanting to become better we say we are going to improve ourselves this year through “x”.  It all seems well and good, but if you really felt a need to alter your life in some form, would you have waited all the way until New Year’s to make that happen?

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Au revoir 2011!

This has certainly been an eventful year for us – my sister got married, had a gorgeous baby boy, and we are going to have a baby of our own next year! As I sit writing this currently sipping tea in Vienna fantasizing about what pastry delicacy I am going to enjoy today (or maybe just a steaming luscious hot chocolate  and whipped cream?), it’s pretty cool to reflect on how fortunate I have been in 2011.   I’ve been able to travel a bit this year and see some amazing sights – Germany, Spain, France,  Italy and the Alps of Switzerland!

I’ve met some amazing people this year, some of whom I’ve only recently gotten the pleasure to know, and others who I feel like I’ve known forever and finally was able to meet in person.  The Gluten Free Ratio Rally started this year as well, and each month continues to inspire me at the amazing talent in the blogosphere as well as the potential for fabulous gluten free recipes.  I’ve become ever more passionate with photography, and hope that continues to grow as well.

This blog has seen some changes, some evolution, and also some new features.  I have kept a running list of Food Blog Conferences and Events for well over a year now- which I keep as consistently updated as I can.  If you have information of conferences, tutorials, workshops, etc. related to food and/or food photography, please let me know to help keep this as complete and up to date as possible.  I also have a static page linking to various Photography Tips and Tutorials that I have come across on the interwebs, as well as my own blogging series which I have titled Amateur’s Food Photography – for tips and tricks that I, the amateur, have learned over my time ever fascinated with food photography.

But enough about ramblings of my life and blog this  year, let’s look at some food! Below are my eleven favorite posts and recipes from 2011, in no particular order – Hope you have also had a great year, and wish you all the best for 2012

Mountaintop Rösti with Ham, Potatoes and Fried Egg

This naturally gluten free dish was inspired by our trip to Zermatt to see the Matthorn, where we sat at 3100m elevation enjoying rösti, one of the most popular foods in Switzerland – comfort food at its finest, best after hiking or skiing outside on a chilly breezy day.

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