Zucchini Bread - it will change your life

Hi everyone! It seems crazy but our regular season is already over! It's playoff time and we're really excited to actually be in the playoffs this year. That also means that our time here is almost over. Whenever something is coming to an end it makes you look back and remember that stage of your life. Our time in Poland has been great. Sometimes hard, frustrating, even boring but overall we've enjoyed ourselves here.

Looking back at my year usually involves thinking about the best things I've made. This one was actually brought to my attention by one of our teammates. I made some zucchini bread at the beginning of the year and brought it to some of our friends. He thought it was the best thing he's ever eaten. And he kept telling me how great it was. He ate the whole loaf in one sitting. Then he told me he would invest in my bakery if I ever opened one in Israel. That was definitely one of the best compliments.

Honestly, I've always loved zucchini bread. My mom has made it ever since I was little and it's one of my favorites. So being gluten free was not an excuse to leave behind one of my favorite things.

So I found a recipe online and adapted it to be gluten free. And it just so happens to be dairy free. After a couple of trials I have tweaked it to be just right. Not that it needed changing. Just perfecting. That's kinda how I do things :)

I adapted this recipe to be gluten free from this regular version: http://allrecipes.com/recipe/moms-zucchini-bread/

Zucchini Bread

Time: 1 hr 20 min                              Servings: 2 loafs

INGREDIENTS:

• 3 cups All purpose gluten free flour (see my blend here)
• 1 tsp Salt
• 1 tsp Baking soda
• 1 tsp Baking powder
• 2 tsp Guar Gum (or xanthan gum)
• 2 tsp Ground cinnamon
• 4 Eggs
• 1 cup Vegetable oil
• 1-3/4 cups Granulated sugar
• 1 tbsp Vanilla extract
• 2 cups Zucchini, grated
• 1 cup Walnuts, chopped (optional)

METHOD:

1. Grease and flour two 8 x 4 inch loaf pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2. Combine flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, guar gum, and cinnamon in a medium bowl.
3. Beat eggs, oil, vanilla, and sugar in a large bowl. Add the dry ingredients and mix well. Fold in zucchini and nuts. Pour batter into pans.
4. Bake for 45-55 minutes until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. If the top becomes too brown, tent it with some aluminum foil. Cool bread in the pan for 20 minutes.

You're supposed to wait until the loaf is completely cool before you slice it, but it's soooooo good warm from the oven. It's kinda like cake that you pass off as a bread. If I make it for dessert, I don't put the nuts. You could even add a glaze to be extra fancy. Either way, you will love this. It might unofficially be the best thing I've made this year...

Love,

Maura

Kielbasa Risotto

Happy Easter everyone!! Us K's have been pretty busy here over the last few weeks. The second round of our season has started and Levi has been having games twice a week instead of once. He also happened to have a pretty bad ankle sprain during one of those games so he's been out and slowly recovering.

In all that chaos, a guy's gotta eat (ok and me too). Since cooking and grocery shopping are my job, it was really important that I get everything I needed for Easter. As is typical in Europe, everything is closed during holidays. Easter was no exception and they decided that because Easter is on Sunday they needed a business day off as well. So absolutely no stores open for 2 days. This doesn't really seem like that big of a problem until you realize that I go grocery shopping everyday. Our apartment and kitchen are small. So having a whole bunch of extra food on hand just doesn't work.

That being said, I spent Saturday doing a bunch of grocery shopping. This is also not as easy for us as all the grocery stores here carry different things. So I had planned on going to 4 different ones to get all the things I needed for the holiday weekend. Little did I know that stores also decided to close at 4pm on Saturday. So I only got half of the food I had planned on getting. So I was pretty frustrated when I couldn't buy any meat for my large, carnivore husband for the whole weekend.

Thus, this recipe came out of necessity. When you only have kielbasa in your freezer, this is a great way to make something special. I was honestly surprised by how good this was. It's now my favorite kielbasa recipe. This recipe was adapted from http://singleguychef.blogspot.com/2008/01/creamy-cauliflower-risotto-with.html to fit what I had and to make it dairy free.

Kielbasa Risotto

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 tbsp Olive oil
• 1 Garlic clove, minced
• 1/2 White onion, diced
• 5 Button mushrooms, sliced
• 1 cup Arborio rice
• 1 cup Rose wine (or dry white wine)
• 2 Kielbasa sausages (each about the size of a hot dog), sliced 1/2 inch thick
• 1-1/2 cups Chicken broth
• 1 tbsp Butter (or vegetable shortening)
• 1/4 cup Heavy cream (I used rice cream)
• 1 tbsp fresh Parsley, chopped

METHOD:

1. Heat the olive oil in a sauce pan over medium-high heat. Saute the garlic and the onions until the onions are translucent, about 4 minutes.
2. Add the mushrooms and cook another 2 minutes.
3. Add the rice and cook for a minute to toast it. Turn the heat down to medium.
4. Add the wine. Cook, stirring often, until most of the wine is absorbed.
5. Add the sausage and 1/2 cup of the chicken broth. Again, stir until most of the liquid is absorbed.
6. Continue to add the chicken broth 1/2 cup at a time, stirring until it's absorbed and the rice is tender but not mushy, about 15 minutes.
7. Take the pan off the heat and stir in the butter and cream.
8. Finally, stir in the parsley.

And that's it!! One pot meals are always my favorites (and Levi's since he has to hand wash everything). I hope you try this one. It's super creamy and comforting. A good winter dish for those of us who still have cold weather....

Maura

Secrets of GF Baking - The Flour

I've always been the kind of person who can just follow a recipe and have something turn out. This is thanks mostly to my mom who at the very least made us a good homemade dinner every night. So cooking was pretty normal to me.

Then this doctor decided I had this gluten problem. Great, I'll just continue with my normal way of baking. WRONG! Gluten free baking is oh-so-different. It's not hard; just not what we're used to. Gluten has major effects on a finished baked good. You always have to be careful not to over mix but things always come out fluffy, chewy, and wonderfully held together.

Successfully baking gluten free requires a change in mindset. The norms of baking are gone and you'll have to learn the special nuances of the GF versions. If you have any cooking talent at all, I promise you can figure it out.

The factor that has the largest affect on the finished product is the flour. Some people buy mixes for breads, muffins, even pizza dough... only in America people! Europe, especially outside of the major tourist attractions, doesn't have a culture of pre-made, pre-packaged food. These people make things from scratch. If you've been to Europe I know you've gone into one of those pastry shops and wanted to try everything (or maybe you did). Different pastries are in different countries but same concept.

So good luck finding a GF cake mix for your birthday, etc. Aaaaannnnnddddd, if you do find it, it's definitely not healthy for you. Maybe it's because I live in health-obsessed Colorado but you can always find healthy, GF choices of bread, crackers, even sweets. But for some reason Europe has decided that everything that is GF has to be made from cornstarch. Please look up the nutrition facts for cornstarch. You will discover it has basically no nutritional value. Then compare it to whole wheat flour and you will be even more stunned how bad it is.

As a Celiac, I have to cut out a huge portion of a typical diet by not eating gluten. Remember the food pyramid? Yep, grains is the big category on the bottom. The majority of people fill that category with allll gluten products. So now I need to replace that big part with other grains. So, in an effort to be healthy, there is no way I'm going to replace all that with cornstarch.

So the answer is: make your own blend of flour! This is crucial in not only being healthy but it is a widely know fact than no single kind of gluten free flour can be a 1 to 1 substitute for wheat flour. They just behave differently. But when you mix different kinds together in the right way... blam! It works great.

All that said just so I can give you my fool-proof recipe for GF Flour. This is modified from one of my awesome cookbooks, Artisanal Gluten-Free Cooking. Their basic ideas combined with the ingredients that are available to me have been a perfect substitute for an all-purpose flour.

As a sidenote, this recipe changes based on where I am and what I can find. I could find certain flours in Mallorca, others in Huesca, and others in Slupsk. Even still, the basics always stay the same.

ALL-PURPOSE, GLUTEN-FREE FLOUR BLEND
Time: 5 min               Makes: 6-1/3 cups

INGREDIENTS

• 4 cups different types of GF flours (rice, millet, sorghum, teff, amaranth, buckwheat, oat, etc.)
• 1-1/3 cups corn starch
• 1/2 cup potato starch
• 1/2 cup ground flax seed (optional)

METHOD

1. Combine all the ingredients in an airtight container (mix with a whisk or just shake till it's combined)

TIPS

1. Do not use corn flour, coconut flour, or nut flours in this recipe. Each of those have very different baking properties and should be used only in recipes that call for that specifically. Bean flours might work but honestly anything I've made with them tastes and smells like metal so I don't go near them.
2. I always use rice flour. It is very easy to find and very inexpensive. Brown is obviously better nutrition-wise but either works.
3. I make double this amount every time. It lasts longer.
4. Teff flour is very expensive so I use it sparingly. However, I do always use it because it has an extremely high iron content which is always something women are lacking.
5. SPAIN: Mercadona (grocery store) sells white rice flour and a "bread mix" that is nearly all cornstarch. Otherwise, they have stores called Herboristeria that has some other choices. Also, there is a great online store outside of Zaragoza called Biomix. They have everything you need.
6. POLAND: Buckwheat and rice flour are in many grocery stores. Delima also has amaranth flour. For other kinds, buying online is both cheap and easy. Biokiosk is the one I have used many times.

Yep, I currently use 5 flours in my blend! 1 cup rice flour, 1 cup buckwheat flour, 1 cup amaranth flour, 1/2 cup oat flour, and 1/2 cup teff flour. Oops, and I forgot to label that little bag at the bottom!! That's ground flaxseed. 

Ok, I think that's all.... That's a lot to digest but I promise this has always worked great for me. Leave a comment if you have any questions!