Weekly Menus: May 11

Our menu this week comes mostly from How to Cook Everything Vegetarian by Mark Bittman. Recently, he's inspired me to cook my own beans instead of buying canned. I never realized how easy it is. With a 12-hr soak, the beans are usually cooked in less than an hour. I plan to use them in a few meals and freeze the rest. For the price of two cans of Progresso chickpeas (about $2.50), I get 2 lbs of cooked beans, or over nine cups. And their taste is immeasurably better than canned.

Tips for cooking dried beans: When cooking your own beans, add 5 inches or so of kombu to make the beans easier to digest. Don't add salt until the beans start to become tender.

Our Mother's Day meal--sushi bowls--consists of brown rice topped with pickles (in the small bowl), Japanese omelets, braised veggies, and avocado. Mmm! What more could a first-time mom want? I've included the recipe for spicy 2-hour pickles. Don't be too scared by the amount of sriracha called for--my palate doesn't tolerate very hot chiles, but I don't have a problem with these.

The Gluten-Free Menu Swap is being hosted by Faking It Gluten-Free Style this week so head on over there to check out what other GF bloggers are eating.

Question of the Week:

What do you do when you're invited to a wedding (or similar event)?
Take your own food? Call the restaurant ahead of time? Talk to the caterer?

Sunday: sushi bowls with Japanese egg crepes, pickled daikon (see recipe below), and braised carrots and parsnips

Monday: stewed chickpeas in their own broth with tahini and bread crumbs, kale

Tuesday: chicken soup, yet-t0-be-determined veggie

Wednesday: chickpea redux

Thursday: Dinner at my in-laws'

Friday: my cousin's rehearsal dinner

Saturday: my cousin's wedding

Spicy Quick-Pickled Daikon (a variation on Bittman's Asian-Style Quick Pickles)

1.5 lb. daikon sliced into quarter circles
1 tbsp. salt
2 tbsp. dark sesame oil
1 tsp. sugar
2 tbsp. soy sauce
3-4 tbsp. chili-garlic sauce (sriracha)

Place the daikon in a colander. Sprinkle the salt over it and rub it around with your hands. Put a plate over the salted daikon (still in the colander and in the sink or over a plate to catch the liquid) and a weight on the plate (I use my iron tea pot). Let it sit for 30 min. Mix the rest of the ingredients together. Put the daikon in a bowl and pour the chili sauce over it. Let it still for at least one hour before eating.

Homemade Yogurt

I've been eating yogurt for years, but until I lived in Russia, my yogurt consumption was limited to Dannon and Yoplait. I hated dumping Dannon Fruit on the Bottom yogurt into a bowl and watching it hold its cup-like, gelatinous shape. Reminded me of cranberry sauce from the can (which, I admit, I love, but the can ridges are a bit scary).

In Russia and later in Ukraine, I discovered yogurt made from 1%, 2%, and even whole milk. Suddenly I could get any kind of yogurt I wanted and in all sorts of surprising flavors, like prune and pineapple. After growing up on the ubiquitous berry concoctions, I was hooked. Later I lived in Bulgaria, the home of yogurt, and discovered tarator (see below for recipe) as well as the joys of a good-quality plain yogurt.

Yogurt flavors and companies have multiplied since I was a kid eating from a conical Yoplait container. Dannon sells their Activa brand, which claims to help your digestion (though I'm not clear how it differs from any other yogurt with active cultures), in fun flavors, like fig. A recent perusal of my dairy aisle turned up whole, 1%, and several kinds of Greek-style yogurt. I'm not, however, terribly excited about the amount of sugar or, worse, artificial sweeteners used in them. And now that the Little Pottamus is eating yogurt, I need to be able to find organic whole milk yogurt for him. Shame on Dannon, Yoplait, and even Stonyfield's for putting so much sugar in their yogurts marketed at kids!

So why not make my own? Turns out it's super easy and far cheaper than buying yogurt from the store (even with the most expensive organic milk our coop has on offer homemade yogurt is half the cost of the commerical yogurt I would normally buy). And homemade yogurt tastes better than anything you can buy in a store--it's creamy and you can make it as rich as you like. Making yogurt doesn't take much time. I usually put the yogurt on as I'm cleaning up the kitchen or prepping dinner. Give it a try!

Homemade Yogurt
Some recipes call for added powdered milk to make it thicker. I've never had a problem with homemade yogurt not being thick enough, but you might experiment. I like my yogurt plain or with a little maple syrup or tahini and, of course, with plenty of add-ins!

Ingredients
1/2 gallon milk (2% is my favorite, but you could use any kind of cow/goat milk--see below for non-dairy tips)
1/2 cup plain yogurt with active cultures (a carton of Dannon or Stonyfield's will do)

Equipment
candy thermometer
2 quart-sized glass jars with lids
1 8-oz. glass jar with lid
large pot with lid (for sterilizing the jars)
pot with heavy bottom (for heating the milk)
small cooler or pot (for keeping the milk warm as it becomes )

Step 1--Sterilize the jars: Put two glass quart jars, their lids, and a small (8-10 oz.) jar and lid into a large pot (I use my pasta pot) with a few inches of water. Put a lid on the pot, bring the water to a boil, and boil for about 10 min.

Step 2--Scald the milk: While the jars are sterilizing, heat a 1/2 gallon of milk in a large pot with a heavy bottom. Hook a candy thermometer on the side. Heat, stirring occasionally, until the milk reaches 85-90 deg. Celsius.
Step 3--Cool the milk: Remove the scalded milk from the heat and cool until the milk reaches 50 deg. Celsius. I partially fill the sink with cold water, plunk the pot in the sink, and stir to speed up the cooling process.

Step 4--Inoculate the milk: Put 1/2 cup of plain yogurt with active cultures (I've used Dannon, Stonyfield's, and homemade yogurt from a previous batch successfully) in a 1-cup measuring cup. Add 1/2 cup of the cooled milk and stir to remove all of the lumps. Pour the yogurt-milk into the rest of the cooled milk and stir to combine.

Step 5--Pour the milk into the jars and cap them. Place the jars in a small cooler or deep pot. Add enough hot water until the jars are 3/4 submerged (you may need to place the smallest jar on top of an upside-down cup to make it tall enough). The idea is to keep the milk at around 50 deg. Celsius. At this temperature, you should have yogurt in about 3 hrs. (don't test the jars until 3 hrs have passed, or you risk losing heat each time you check on them). If the milk has gelled, congratulations--you've made yogurt! If not, just leave it a little longer, until it gels. Stick it in the fridge and enjoy. You can also freeze yogurt, just don't fill the glass jars too full or they will break (yep, one of my nice Mason jars broke yesterday).

Yogurt Recipes and Resources

Homemade Yogurt at 101 Cookbooks
A Comprehensive Yogurt-Making Tutorial (a more in-depth version of my instructions)
Homemade Soy Yogurt
Homemade Soy Yogurt at Fat Free Vegan Kitchen
Homemade Coconut Milk Yogurt at Stephen's Recipes
Buy a GF, Soy-Free, Dairy-Free Yogurt Starter!

Tarator (Balkan Cucumber-Yogurt Soup)
Labneh (Yogurt Cheese)
Greek-Style Soy Yogurt or Soy Yogurt Cheese

One Recipe: Gluten-Free Graham Crackers, Cinnamon or Ginger Snaps, and Thin Mints

Last summer was my first summer of gluten-free, s'moreless camping. I was eight months into my gluten-free adventures, though, so I'd progressed past the point where I would have been sitting around the camp fire morosely drooling over everyone else's s'mores. I took my favorite chocolate chip-peanut butter-oatmeal cookies (which I need to get around to posting someday soon), intending to use them as graham cracker replacements. But unlike a conventional s'more, I found the cookie-s'more to be less than the sum of its parts. I tasted chocolate-peanut butter goodness and toasted marshmallow goodness but not as much of either as I wanted. So I ate them separately. No big deal.

But I'd like to be able to make a s'more, if I wanted one. So I started perusing the web for recipes. My problem with most graham cracker recipes, though, is that they contain an incredible amount of fat and sugar. They're more a cookie than the slightly sweet cracker I always ate as snacks growing up. I started tweaking recipes and came up with a whole-grain, no-starch graham cracker like those I remember....and three other variations. The latest turns the graham crackers into Thin Mints, which I've been craving ever since making Karina's Mint Chocolate Chip Cookies last week. Note: all of these recipes have been tested in the middle of the night, as I attempt to bore my 5-month-old into sleep!

Gluten-Free Graham Crackers

This recipe can be easily doubled--it makes a bunch of little crackers but not so many regular- sized ones. These crackers would make a swanky s'more dipped in chocolate with toasted marshmellows...or with homemade marshmellows dipped in chocolate...or both.

2 tbsp. teff flour
2 tbsp. gluten-free oat flour
2 tbsp. brown rice flour
2 tbsp. sorghum flour
1 tbsp. sugar
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. cardamon
1/8 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. xanthum gum

1 tbsp. honey
1 tbsp. molasses
2 tsp. canola oil
1/4 tsp. vanilla
water (as needed)

Preheat the oven to 350. Mix the dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Mix the wet ingredients in a small bowl. Pour the wet ingredients into the flour mixture and stir until a smooth ball of dough forms. Add flour if the dough seems too sticky or a little water if it is too dry. Chill for 10 min. Divide the dough in half. Flour a surface and roll out one half to 1/8 in. thickness. Cut out in squares or using cookie cutters. Place on a greased baking sheet and bake for 10 min. Let the crackers cool on the tray until they are crisp. Makes about 3 doz. 1.5 inch cookies.

Now for the Variations!

Gluten-Free Cinnamon Snaps
Omit the cardamom and add 1/2 tsp. nutmeg. Increase the sweetener by 1 tbsp. white sugar and 1 tbsp. molasses. If you want a very crisp cookie, bake 1-5 min. longer.

Gluten-Free Ginger Snaps
Omit the cardamom and cinnamon. Add 1 tsp. ginger. Increase the sweetener by 1 tbsp. white sugar and 1 tbsp. molasses. If you want a very crisp cookie, bake 1-5 min. longer.

Gluten-Free Thin Mints
Girl Scout Thin Mints without all of the not-so-healthy ingredients! Omit the cardamom and cinnamon. Increase the sweetener by 1.5 tbsp. white sugar and 1 tbsp. molasses. Add 2-3 tbsp. cocoa (preferable a dark cocoa, like Hershey's Special Dark or Dagoba's). Add 1/2 tsp. peppermint extract with the vanilla extract. When the cookies are cool, melt dark chocolate, stir in 1/2-1 tsp. of peppermint extract, and dip cookies (on one side, or completely coated for an authentic Girl Scout experience).

Gluten-Free Menus: February 18

Gosh, I haven't posted since last week. But my lack of posts doesn't mean I haven't been cooking--I've been tweaking a gluten-free graham cracker recipe that I hope to post about this week. Also, stay tuned: I'm going to make yogurt and labneh (a yogurt cheese) for the first time ever! Why, you might ask, am I making my own yogurt? Well, it has to do with my reading...

Last week, I discovered that other foodie bloggers are reading what I'm reading. I just finished a fiction jag (during which I read Pevear and Volohkonsky's new and fabulous translation of War and Peace--I highly recommend this version, which is far superior to any previous translations) a few weeks ago and picked up Michael Pollan's new book, In Defense of Food.
Sally over at Aprovechar mentioned that she's reading it, too, and that she was somewhat disappointed with the book (its scope is much less than that of his previous book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, which I also hardily recommend). I wasn't exactly disappointed, but the book seemed less full of new ideas and more full of somewhat extended ideas from OD. The book can be summed up by his mantra: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants."

In any case, it's very well researched and documented, and I found myself at our local library on Friday checking out some of the books he cites, notably Marian Nestle's What to Eat and Food Politics. What to Eat is a look at our supermarkets and the politics that goes into what is available for us to buy and how it's labeled. I'm both horrified and fascinated by the statistics and anecdotes she recounted: almost 70% of Danimals yogurt is sugar; the USDA routinely tries to weaken rules governing organics and is only stopped (some of the time) by hundreds of thousands of letters from consumers; farmed salmon can have double the fat and saturated fat as wild salmon (not to mention all of those artificial dyes--how many times must I have exclaimed over food coloring on a platter?).

So, while we have very high quality yogurt produced locally, I was interested to find out exactly how difficult making my own would be. Hence my forays into yogurt-making. I'll keep you posted.

Here's our menus for this week:

Sunday: Indian-style savory mashed sweet potatoes (from Moosewood Restaurant Low-Fat Favorites), curried lentil-carrot salad, pineapple-apple chutney
Monday: Pumpkin-Chicken Enchiladas, sauteed kale
Tuesday: Enchiladas, Take Two!
Wednesday: Mezza with olives, hummus, labneh, pita, and roasted squash
Thursday: We're out of the house...
Friday: Red Lentil-Apricot Soup, kale, challah
Saturday: Friday leftovers

Need healthy snacks or desserts? Try these gluten-free chickpea crackers--I've made them several times and am never disappointed. They're also a great use of Bob's Red Mill All-Purp GF flour, if, like me, you can't stand the beany taste it imparts to everything. Also, try Karina's Mint Chocolate Cookies. I adapted them to be lower in fat and to be completely whole grain very easily: use equal parts brown rice, teff, corn, and sorghum flours in place of her flours, and replace half of the oil with applesauce. Instead of mixing the chocolate chips into the cookies, I melted them, added a little mint extract, and dipped the cookies. Almost like Thin Mints!