return of celiac boy.

I've written about it before here, but in case you don't hang on my every word: when I was little I had celiac disease. At some point it "went away" and I was able to eat like a "normal person".

Fast forward to now: after a year or twenty of unhealthy living, I am starting to notice that I don't feel 100% awesome. There are many obvious reasons for this.

But last year was more toxic than most, and right now I feel the need to tweak some of my inputs to see what if any difference they have on my output. And for a number of reasons, I'm a trifle suspicious that my body isn't handling gluten all that well any more. 

So, I'm trying some time without it. At least a month. This means, among other things, no beer, which is simultaneously tragic and awesome, more on this additional challenge later.

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Unsurprisingly, I will need some fun things to cook. In this space will be some suggestions from ze gluten-free community. Soonish.

Honey-Roasted Cinnamon-Walnut Butter.
Slaw.
Kale with Sausage and White Beans.
Sichuan Cucumber Salad.

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spanglutch.

Above: Cafe De Spuyt.

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Here in the Netherlands and maybe other countries, I don't know, they sell handy bags of de-shelled cooked mussels in the freezer, cheaply, less than 3 euros per pound. I never quite understood what these could be useful for until tonight. This was a José Andrés recipe (from the book I never cooked) but I went completely bachelorstyle on it and destroyed its technical integrity in the interest of speed and convenience. And it's something I'm now going to make all the time.

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mussels in escabeche.

500gr cooked mussel flesh from the freezer (so, no shells)
1/2 cup extra virgin olive oil
3 big garlic cloves, sliced thinly
1 tsp orange zest
3 tbsp orange juice
1/2 tbsp pimentón
1/4 cup cider vinegar
1 tbsp fresh rosemary
1 tbsp fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper to taste

You could probably do something smarter and/or safer given these ingredients, but here's what I did: I opened a bag of still-frozen mussels, threw them in a covered pot with two big glugs of olive oil then let them cook/steam for 10 minutes or so. This was apparently enough to defrost them, hopefully in a way that doesn't result in my imminent death.

Then I separated them from the liquid in the pot and reduced the liquid for a few minutes, then I threw all the rest of the ingredients in (except the reserved mussels) and cooked for like 10 minutes, and poured that whole mess over the reserved mussels and put the whole thing in the fridge overnight, supposedly they are better made the night before serving. Serve via toothpicks or grilled/toasted bread, I imagine...this would also be a knockout summertime double bill with the famous salpicon.

UPDATE: I served these, and though they were all eaten, mostly by Noops, the general reaction was skepticism, possibly b/c everyone involved had read the above description of how carelessly I'd prepared them with regard to food safety.

But also I think that maybe serving them with a stack of buttery crackers might have been more inviting than the toothpick option. I also thought they were totally excellent on a piece of buttered crusty bread.

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leafy green.

Tiny steps toward New Concepts in Dieting: kale and feta frittata with caramelized onions, smoked paprika and nutmeg. Based on this, pretty reliably great.

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pud'nhed.

I've seriously been living like a lazy retired person for the last month (versus an industrious retired person), and I really can't remember the last time I've enjoyed doing so little so much.

There's almost no guilt at all: I just kind of wake up whenever, usually around 11. I have one or two cups of coffee and shoot the shit with Mara, at which point there's often the first discussion of the day regarding what's for dinner.

Then I fuck around online for a bit looking for recipes and/or stretch some work-related task that should take 10 minutes into something like 2 hours. Throughout we will typically engage in some sort of advanced kung fu dancing or hallway battle or general horseplay to liven things up.

I usually threaten to work out at this point but never end up doing it. Sometimes I take a shower regardless.

Then about 50% of the time we've been taking a nap around 3 or 4. After which we get up and possibly play Scrabble and I go to the store and then we make dinner or we make dinner and watch a movie or some other combination of those activities.

Around 7pm I sometimes like to watch Eggheads or one of TLC's makeover shows (during which I am actually saying to my TV screen things like "Oh you're not going to put her in that, are you)?. Then we either eat or watch a movie or fuck around on the internet for a bit or whatever leisure activity we didn't do before dinner. Then we go to bed and read for a while.

It's about to end, but while it lasted it was AWESOME.

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When I was little, I wasn't really the ahem, bleccchhhhhhhh "foodie" I am today. I was a celiac kid, so I didn't eat the same way most other children ate until I "grew out of" my illness/allergy (more on this soon, I'm considering returning to a gluten-free diet for a while). I tended to fixate on sweet things more than savory.  One of my absolute favorite things was either Rice Krispies or Frosted Flakes with blueberries and/or bananas, I've been fantasizing about it lately (when I say fantasize, I mean in a wholesome way, like imagining a version of Momofuku's "cereal milk" with blueberries and bananas).

I also loooved lemon, just about more than anything except maybe chocolate. At some point in my adult life, lemon kind of faded away or receded into the background of my favorite tastes, but at some point over the past few years it's come back.

Tonight after a diverting won ton soup experiment and some Dun Yong gyoza, Mara whipped up a perfect lemon pudding topped with blueberries and we ate it. That's the whole story. Supersatisfying.

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lemon pudding.

2/3 cup raw sugar
1/8 cup cornstarch
1 cup milk
2 large egg yolks, lightly beaten
2 tbsp finely grated lemon zest
Pinch salt
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
2 tbsp unsalted butter, at room temperature

This will all happen superfast, so watch it. Whisk the sugar and the cornstarch together in a medium saucepan. Add the milk and whisk until smooth. Add the egg yolks, zest, and salt and cook, stirring frequently at first and constantly towards the end, over medium heat until thickened enough to thickly coat the back of a spoon.

Remove the pan from the heat and stir in the lemon juice and butter. Pour through a strainer into a large serving bowl or 2 individual serving dishes.

Let cool to room temperature. Chill, loosely covered, for at least 2 hours and up to 3 days, or until set and thoroughly chilled. Serve chilled.

buñuelos.

buñuelos de bagre con srirachaioli.

500gr panga/catfish filet
3 medium potatoes
3 eggs
3 cloves garlic, pressed
pinch saffron
1 onion, minced
1/2 cup celery leaves, minced
3 tbsp white port
1 to 2 tbsp smoked paprika
salt
pepper.
oil for frying

sriracha
mayonnaise

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the celiac kid.

A recent comment just reminded me that for the majority of my pre-teen life, I was a celiac kid. It's something I don't think about much these days, because I grew out of it, but I have quite a few crystal-clear recollections of those days.

My quintessential celiac memory is of a hamburger. Or many hamburgers, served on a bread that must have been made with rice flour (care to comment, Pitts?). The bread could probably be described as ethereal, but not at all in a good way. You could take two, maybe three bites of these burgers before the Styrofoam-like bread started to develop serious fault lines, and then seconds later the whole sandwich would come crashing down onto the plate in a rain of squeaky crumbs.

You'd then take the biggest sections of bread and try to make mini-burgers out of them, reapplying your ketchup and mustard for better adhesion, but those pieces would break too, and in the end you'd be forcefully pressing pieces of hamburger patty into piles of crumbs, trying to get them to stick to the meat so as to end up with a bite that had that burger-y taste...

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Oh, how times have changed. I also used to be stick-thin, quite possibly b/c I could never quite get my sandwiches into my mouth before the bread disintegrated. But I do wonder sometimes what my celiac diet would look like these days.

Mara's lemon meringue tartlettes from last night could almost be on the menu. The lemon filling is gluten-free (and the highlight of the whole dessert for me), made from sugar, corn starch, water, egg yolks, butter, and lemon zest/juice; the meringue is just egg whites, sugar, and cream of tartar; that leaves only the pastry to deal with.

We used standard frozen puff pastry, but I saw a gluten-free pastry here that looked good: corn starch, coconut, butter, and milk powder. But really? The pastry was the least important part of these things, you (or at least I) could totally skip it.

Oh, by the way, there's a new Gluten-Free category on this blog, I'll be re-tagging things slowly.

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lemon meringue tartlettes.

1 cup raw cane sugar

1/3 cup cornstarch

pinch of salt

2 cups boiling water

4 average-sized eggs, separated

2 tbsp unsalted butter

2 tsp finely finely minced lemon zest

1/2 cup lemon juice

pinch of cream of tartar

1/4 cup confectioner's sugar

(and here's the cop-out, which also makes it non gluten-free, unless you use a gluten-free pie crust like this one)

1 recipe flaky pie crust or 1 package frozen puff pastry

these two options will give you very different results...the puff pastry we used was pleasantly light and crunchy after baking:

But I can also see how the relative denseness of a flaky pie crust would be nice too. We also did two ramekins with the lemon filling and the meringue and no crust at all, and I liked these just as much.

Anyway, once you've figured out what you're doing for a crust, preheat the oven to 175C and make the filling: combine sugar, cornstarch, salt, and boiling water in a small saucepan and cook until smooth and thick, 10 or 15 minutes, stirring often. When you're not stirring, beat the egg yolks until smooth.

When the cornstarch mixture is thick, turn off the heat. Take half a cup of the hot cornstarch mixture and mix it into the beaten yolks, then immediately stir that whole mixture back into the hot cornstarch mixture until thick and nicely blended. Got it?

Put the whole shebang back on low heat, add the butter and cook, stirring, until smooth and quite hot, 5 minutes or so. Add lemon zest and juice, stir well, and remove from heat.

For the meringue: beat egg whites with a pinch of salt and a pinch of cream of tartar until foamy. Add confectioner's sugar gradually and keep beating until stiff peaks form.

Ja. Then assemble: you've got your muffin tin cups filled with a bit of crust or puff pastry, right? Now put something like a tablespoon of filling on top of each tartlette base, then something like a tablespoon of meringue on top...but your measurements will depend on the size of your cups (ladies?). Remember that the only part you're cooking by now is the meringue, and it will pretty much hold whatever shape you form it into, so...yeah. Once you're all assembled, bake for 7 or 8 minutes, until meringue is lightly browned.

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