Book Review: Bob's Red Mill Everyday Gluten-Free Cookbook

Doesn't that look good? It's a dish of Brussels sprouts, dried cranberries, pecans, and sorghum.

I've seen quite a few gluten-free cookbooks come across my desk recently, but none have been as comprehensive as Camilla Saulsbury's new Bob's Red Mill Everyday Gluten-Free Cookbook: 281 Delicious Whole-Grain Recipes. While 100 percent of the recipes in this book are gluten free, it reads more like a primer for incorporating ancient grains (oats, amaranth, quinoa, sorghum, etc.) into one's diet. The whole gluten-free aspect is more of a happy bonus. In other words, this book is a great kitchen tool for everyone who wants to switch up their diet a bit, not just for the gluten-intolerant.

Unlike other gluten-free cookbooks, Saulsbury doesn't resort to using gums and stabilizers to give her recipes more familiar textures. Instead, she sings the praises of whole grains, many of which are completely foreign to most Americans.

It's not a vegan cookbook, nor diet-y in any way. Every dish looks really terrific, so of course we had to try a few ourselves, just to make sure.

The first dish we tried is a dressing of Brussels sprouts, pecans, dried cranberries, and whole grains. We chose to use sorghum. Sorghum takes a heck of a long time to cook. Even after one hour, the little round grains were still on the chewy side. But the combination of flavors in the dish, while fairly simple, were really delicious. We ate it as a warm salad entree, but you can serve it as a side dish. It would make a perfect addition to a roast chicken dinner, and would actually work really nicely as a Thanksgiving side, too.

Next we tried spiced bar cookies made with oats and dates, because we had all of the ingredients on hand: dates, coconut oil, teff flour (left over from our attempt at Ethiopian injera), and oatmeal. The flavors were terrific - malty teff and cardamom played really nicely with the sweet and chewy dates - but the bars are a bit dry and crumbly. They're pretty good crumbled over a dish of ice cream, though, and would make a nice combination of flavors to top a fruit cobbler.

Though neither of us are gluten intolerant, we're really enthused about Bob's Red Mill Everyday Gluten-Free Cookbook overall. We've even invested in some amaranth and quinoa so we can try more whole grain eating.

If you can't find Bob's Red Mill products in your local grocery store (we've found some, but not all), you can order them online from Bob's, or even at Nuts.com.

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Jamie Oliver's Comfort Food

I received several cookbooks for Christmas, and hope to talk a little about each of them here. First up is Jamie Oliver's new one, Comfort Food: the Ultimate Weekend Cookbook.

The book is thick and heavy, so it might seem that there are hundreds of recipes included. Rather, the bulk of the book is food porn--lots of pretty pictures of the various recipes included. And when I say "various," I mean the recipes are all over the place. Oliver's idea of comfort food includes dishes from India and Indonesia as well as British favorites like toad in the hole, sticky toffee pudding, and beans on toast.

I've bookmarked several recipes to try, including the three mentioned above, plus one called Bloody Mary Beef, which seems like a good thing to cook up on a cold winter day, as it spends 5 or so hours in the oven.

The first recipe to strike my fancy, however, was for quesadillas made with brussels sprouts. Unusual? Yes. But also quite good. I would never have thought of this combination, but it worked very well.

The recipe is pretty simple. I can't share it exactly as written, but it's not rocket science.

Slice up a large onion and half a pound of brussels sprouts (I added a handful of sliced mushrooms, too, because I had them). Toss them in a large saute pan with a pat of butter, or, use a glug of olive oil, as I did. Sprinkle in 1/4 teaspoon smoked paprika, 1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds, the leaves from 3-4 sprigs of fresh thyme, and a big pinch of salt. Cover pan and cook over medium-high heat for about ten minutes, stirring frequently. Remove lid and cook for another ten minutes or so, until onions and sprouts caramelize nicely. Turn off the heat, hit with a squeeze of lime juice, and scrape into a bowl. Wipe out the skillet and spray it with release spray.

Lay a large flour tortilla out onto a plate or cutting board. Top with enough of the brussels sprouts mixture to cover almost to the edges. Sprinkle with a handful of grated pecorino cheese (as per recipe), or your favorite combo of melting cheeses. I added some shredded sharp cheddar, too, since I had some. Top with a second tortilla.

Heat pan and carefully transfer filled tortillas, making sure not to slop filling into the pan. Cook over medium heat until browned and crisp on the bottom, 2-3 minutes. Flip gently and repeat on second side.

Transfer quesadilla to a cutting board and cut into 6-8 wedges. Serve with sour cream, salsa, guac, chopped green onion, whatever floats your boat. I whipped up a quick sauce with ground chipotle pepper, a dash of agave syrup, pinch of salt, and a squeeze of lime stirred into sour cream.

A brussels sprout quesadilla might seem weird, but it was really very delicious. Both Mr Minx and I love brussels sprouts in pretty much any form, so this was a big hit. We made two quesadillas for dinner and had enough sprouts and onions (and mushrooms) left over to make another one a couple days later.

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Cookbook Review - Fusion Food in the Vegan Kitchen

I was sent a review copy of Fusion Food in the Vegan Kitchen: 125 Comfort Food Classics, Reinvented with an Ethnic Twist! by Joni Marie Newman some weeks ago and didn't get around to cooking anything from it until now. There were just too many interesting choices, and I couldn't make up my mind as to which recipes to try.

I'm a fan of fusion cooking--taking elements from different cuisines and mixing them in one dish--and have been doing it for years. The way I think about it, seemingly disparate cuisines have similarities: Italian ravioli and spaghetti and Chinese dumplings and lo mein; Slavic rice-stuffed cabbage and Greek rice-stuffed grape leaves; the spicy cumin and coriander flavors of both Mexican and Indian foods. To me, Newman's fusion concoctions make sense. And while I'm not a vegan, I'm not adverse to experimentation. In this case, it's easy--there are many cultures that don't consume the vast quantity of animal-based products that we do in the US. Combine two or three of them, and there's enough good stuff going on without adding meat.

Take, for example, Newman's recipe for Korean Barbecue Satay, which mixes elements from Korea (the sauce) and Indonesia (the technique). The sauce is flavorful enough to give slabs of skewered tofu a nice kick in the pants. The recipe for El Paso Egg Rolls stuffed with black beans, corn, and avocado will be familiar to anyone who's eaten a similar dish at Chili's or Cheesecake Factory. There are so many things going on in it, so many textures and flavors, that nobody will miss the meat or cheese.

In that vein, we tried a recipe for pizza, something usually found topped with both meat and cheese. Newman's version involves a crisp crust, a Thai-style peanut sauce, and a salad of cabbage and sliced fennel. We didn't have cabbage on hand, but we did have sugar snap peas and asparagus, so I substituted. The combination of crisp and fresh with the contrast of creamy peanut sauce was really stupendous. I can see myself making this recipe over and over, using whatever vegetables that are on hand.

The dish was even visually beautiful, the proverbial feast for the eyes.

I also appreciate that Newman gets creative with her meat substitutes. There are recipes that involve tofu and tempeh, but also jackfruit, which has a stringy/meaty texture that simulates pulled pork. And several recipes involve home-made "wheat meat" or seitan, a simple technique that involves vital wheat gluten, an ingredient found in any supermarket (it's also used for baking bread).

Overall, Fusion Food in the Vegan Kitchen is a lovely book with a good solid concept, well-thought-out recipes, and photos for most dishes. There are even recipes for desserts and libations. I recommend it for vegans and meat-eaters alike.

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Cookbook Review - Cheers to Vegan Sweets

While I don't bake often, I do enjoy whipping up something sweet and cake-like from time to time. I have plenty of baking cookbooks on my shelves, but couldn't pass up a review copy of Kelly Peloza's new one, Cheers to Vegan Sweets: Drink-Inspired Vegan Desserts: From the Cafe to the Cocktail Lounge, Turn Your Sweet Sips Into Even Better Bites! Talk about a specialty cookbook! Not only are the 125 recipes for cookies, brownies, cupcakes, and cakes inspired by beverages (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic), but they're all vegan.

Vegan, of course, means no butter or eggs. Instead, the recipes call for vegan margarine (like Earth Balance, which is actually very good and far far FAR tastier than any other of those margarine products that taste like fake-butter popcorn topping), and in some cases, coconut oil, both available at Whole Foods and some larger supermarkets. As for egg replacers - there are none, which makes this cookbook accessible for pretty much everyone, since there are few hard-to-find ingredients.

I wanted to try every recipe, well, all of them except for the Kool-Aid cookies, but started with the bourbon banana bread, as I had three very ripe bananas begging to be turned into something. The result was pretty delicious, with strong banana flavor and a hint of bourbon, and the texture was moist and fluffy. Rather than bake it in a large loaf pan for 1 hour, I used three smaller ones that I baked for 35 minutes. They were perfect.

If you're vegan, have vegan friends, or aren't vegan at all, Cheers to Vegan Sweets might be a fun addition to your cookbook shelf. After all, one can certainly substitute real butter for the vegan margarine if they want.

I won't tell.

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Cookbook Review - Kitchen Pantry Cookbook

I love reviewing cookbooks, especially when they prove to be endlessly useful. Like this one, Erin Coopey's The Kitchen Pantry Cookbook: Make Your Own Condiments and Essentials. Every recipe in the book makes a pantry staple, from Dijon mustard to chicken stock to ketchup. With this book and some raw ingredients, one can make pretty much any condiment, even Thousand Island Dressing, that tastes as good or better than store-bought...and without high fructose corn syrup, preservatives, or other additives.

The book's intro emphasizes the importance of knowing where food comes from and how its grown. GMOs are everywhere, and especially in processed foods. Avoid them by buying the most basic items (like eggs for mayo), make sure as many of them are fresh as can be, and create your own pickles and vinaigrettes. Sure, home-made products won't last as long as store-bought, especially since the recipes in this book are for single-batch, eat in a couple weeks, un-preserved foods. But you'll feel better. And they'll probably taste better, too.

Sometimes Neal and I like a little French dressing on our salad. Yes, real French dressing is just vinaigrette and not neon orange glop, but neon orange glop tastes good. Especially when it's home-made. So I tried the French dressing recipe from The Kitchen Pantry Cookbook. And it was terrific - and terrifically easy to make. Just mix sugar and some spices, add ketchup, oil, and mayonnaise, and voila! A tasty dressing that's much less-expensive than pre-made stuff from the supermarket, and if you use home-made ketchup and mayonnaise, much healthier, too, as you know it won't have corn syrup and whatnot.

I made half a batch of the creamy French version, which ended up being almost two full cups. It was delicious on a simple salad of tomatoes and avocado.

I have a feeling I'll be getting a lot of use out of this book, especially as I like to make my own condiments anyway. Now I need to procure large quantities of mustard seed so I can make one or more of the mustard variants in the book (ballpark, Dijon, honey). Homemade mustard might just be a great gift, too, and Christmas is right around the corner....

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Cookbook Review - World Class Cakes

When I was approached to review World Class Cakes: 250 Classic Recipes from Boston Cream Pie to Madeleines and Muffins, I jumped at the chance. I'm always searching the Internet for cake recipes and wishing there were one source for all of the things that I want to bake.

And now there is.

This book, by Roger Pizey, contains recipes for layer cakes, loaf cakes, cheesecakes, and little cakes like macarons and madeleines. There's even a recipe for canelés, an intensely flavored mini cake from Bordeaux. Pizey, currently the executive chef at Marco Pierre White's London restaurant, Marco, also includes the recipe for the lemon tart from another one of White's restaurants, Harvey's. And even without knowing any of this, I detected a British influence as I read through the book the first time. There are no decadent, over-the-top, American-style superindulgences in World Class Cakes, (although there is a rather nice version of Boston Cream Pie). Rather, the cakes are indeed "world class," and include treats from Brazil, Japan, and Scandinavia.

One can't review a cookbook without actually trying a couple of the recipes. While so many of them caught my eye at first--and many of them involved ingredients I usually have on hand--I settled on the simple Cardamom Coffee Cake. Baked in a bundt pan, the cake involved the basics--butter, flour, eggs--but called for superfine sugar. Actually, all of the recipes in World Class Cakes that call for white sugar call for superfine sugar, and that's really the only issue I have with the book. I usually keep a box on hand, but it's not the easiest product to find, even in our over-stocked American supermarkets. So while superfine sugar melts faster and perhaps produces a finer texture to cakes, the 50,000,000 other cake recipes that involve regular sugar can't be wrong. I used plain old granulated sugar, but if you're a stickler for following directions, whiz your sugar in a food processor or high-speed blender for a minute or so to make your own superfine.

Back to that cake. As befitting its name, it was strongly cardamom-flavored and its slightly dry texture went exceptionally well with a cup of coffee. Tea, too. 

I also tried the recipe for chocolate whoopie pies, and they were a big success. The batter spread just enough to form perfect little cakelets, which I then sandwiched with marshmallow. Beware the lemon whoopie pie recipe, however--it doesn't have enough flour in it, so it will not work. If you want to make them anyway, increase the flour until it equals the amount of flour + cocoa in the chocolate pie recipe. 

So--a fun book, all in all, with recipes for cakes most folks have never heard of that are pretty intriguing and seem pretty easy. And the photography and food styling is great, making everything look very accessible and not imposingly fancy. I'm sure I'll reach for my copy many times in the future.

* Any products in this post that are mentioned by name may have been provided to Minxeats by the manufacturer. However, all opinions belong to Minxeats.

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