Chicken Curry Pita

I rarely cook chicken. I think it’s kinda icky to prepare and I’m really bad about washing my hands. No, not in that way. You don’t have to worry about the food that I’m cooking for you. I don’t lick my fingers THAT much and I always wash my hands before stepping into the kitchen to cook. Super convincing I know, but what I mean is I don’t like that I need to wash my hands so often when I’m cooking meat.  If I want to turn on the sink to wash my hands after cutting chicken I need to contort my body into some funky yoga pose.  All that work to flip a faucet with my elbow. Tisk tisk. How do I avoid this problem?  I stay pretty much vegetarian in the home.

But as I am posting this recipe, I obviously cook chicken every once and a while. When I do, I’m always rewarded with protein filled goodness. Anyways, cooking meat is a pretty challenging for me and I always need a challenge in the kitchen. I can’t always be cooking cupcakes and casseroles.

I’m really not doing a good job at telling you that you should cook this recipe right away. The dish reminded of me of swimming rama, but without peanut butter. Even though it’s dairy free, the sauce has a very creamy taste and texture and gave me a much needed creamy fix. The best part is that the meal comes together quite quickly. As the chicken is chopped into small pieces, it doesn’t take long to cook.

However, I found that if you stop cooking as soon as the chicken is done, your sauce will be a little thin. If you like it like this, I would recommend serving it with some rice and treating as a curry dish. Keep in mind that I’m difficult and wanted to eat my chicken in a pita dangit!  This meant that I needed to both reduce the sauce (read: cook longer) and add a cornstarch slurry. Even though the recipe didn’t originally didn’t call for a sauce thickener, I found it to be too thin “on its own.”

Did I forget to mention, I am officially 100% cow’s milk free but I CAN eat gluten (praise the kitchen overlords!).  I had a very bad reaction when I tried reintegrating dairy but no such problems eating goat cheese.  This is a prognosis I can live with, I mean, goat cheese/milk/butter is classier anyways.  Keep your eyes peeled for some goats milk ice cream and cookies!

Chocolate Cake with Raspberry Buttercream

Did you know, before today, I hadn't had a cup of coffee in almost a week?  I'm trying to make changes here people and my complete and total dependence on coffee was a good start.  That, and I really hate cleaning my French press.  Today is a different story.  As I type, I am waiting for my friends to show up so we can head into the Cascades to do some hiking.  Guess what time I woke up?  6:30 am.  Without an alarm.  Can someone please tell me why I naturally wake up so early on the weekends yet it is feat of strength for me to even pull the eye-shades off before 7:30 during the week?

Regardless, I had coffee this morning.  A whole French press of coffee.  I haven't done this since college and now I am remembering why I don't do this on a regular basis.  I feel like I'm on magical cocktail of all the mood enhancing drugs in the universe.  I sorted my laundry!  I'm writing a blog post!  I made my lunch!  WEEE!  Let's hope the inevitable crash comes AFTER I'm done hiking for the day. [fact: it didn't]

Now that I've forewarned you to how drugged I am, tally-ho!  Onto the food!

This is a cake I made for my friend Sasha's birthday.  We play kickball & bar trivia together, so she knows about my baked goods.  When her birthday rolled around, she asked for a birthday cake knowing that I willingly make extravagant cakes.  After questioning her about cake flavors (Chocolate?  White?  Yellow?  Neon Green?) and toppings of choice (Rainbow sprinkles? Fruit? Fluffy clouds?) she decided on her favorite flavor combination: chocolate and raspberry.

Easy for me as I've made cakes & cupcakes with this combo countless times! As far as the raspberry buttercream goes, you can use either fresh or frozen raspberries, just make sure you strain the puree before reducing it.  I made this mistake once… I almost lost a friend over a rogue raspberry seed.  Even after adding some preserves to the puree, if the color isn't to your liking, feel free to add a pin prick of rose food coloring.

Black Bean Hummus

Sorry that I’ve left you hanging friends.  I have some pretty big news.  No no, I didn’t win the lottery.  Nope, did not meet the man of my dreams and am currently siting on a beach in Fiji honeymooning.

I’m moving.

BAM.

Not anywhere particularly exciting.  Actually, I’m only moving one neighborhood over and about 4 miles away from my old apartment.  What is exciting is that this is the first time I’ll have my “own place.”  Probably shouldn’t have said that on the internet, now creepers are going to be coming after me and my single self.  Regardless, Queen Anne, get ready for my arrival! 

So you probably know what that means, almost everything I own is in a box, waiting to go in a box, or somewhat unpacked at my new place.  Basically, my cooking is pretty much non-existent at the moment.  I’ve been sustaining life on some bean soup I made an embarrassingly long time ago, Amy’s frozen meals and lots of coffee.  Lots.

But this black bean “hummus” (it’s really more like a black bean dip, but who’s calling the PC police here) is from a few weeks ago.  My friend Julie & her family hosted a glass sale out of their home to raise money for her dad & brother to go to Russia. John McComish (Julie’s dad) is an extremely talented local glass artist and he went to Russia to install some glass work at an orphanage.  I really recommend you check his stuff out: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hot-Glass-Seattle/209400679084056

Food.  Right.  To help nourish the shoppers, Julie and I cooked and catered for the event.  She made some delicious “faux-mosas” (samosa filling in phyllo dough), I made the black bean dip, cut up some veggies, laid out some tortilla chips & we attempted to make gluten free macaroons (they failed MISERABLY).

The original recipe called for 2 tablespoons of tahini but as we didn’t have any of hand, and Julie conveniently doesn’t like tahini, we did without.  I think it made the texture a little thicker and the bean flavor a little more prominent, two things I was completely ok with.

In other news, I am starting the re-integration process for gluten & dairy!  Today (and today only) I get to eat AS MUCH GLUTEN as I WANT!  (insert evil, maniacal here)

Cherry & Apple Venn PIEagram

This recipe has been simmering on the back-burner for a while now and it’s finally ready to claim its place in the spotlight.  I made it the week I found out I couldn’t eat gluten or dairy and I knew that I wanted my next few posts to be for food that I could eat and drool over without feeling guilty.  Now, my masterpiece is ready (I also feel like this would be an appropriate time for an evil laugh, too) for general consumption.  Welcome to my deliciously geeky creation: a venn PIEagram.

There is a little bit of a backstory with this culinary creation and I need to give credit where credit is due.  A few months back (sometime during March Madness) my boss sent me a picture of a of a venn pieagram and I never turn down a challenge.  Ever.  Seriously.  Ask all my old co-workers at the Bivouac and Michigan Radio.  Ask my friends.  Ask anyone who I beat and is not crying in a corner with their inferior biscotti (not that I’m implying anything *wink wink* Lester).  Cut to the end of March Madness and I made this pie as a celebration for both the championship game and the fact that men of the world suddenly had a lot more free time on their hands.

Evidenced by the photos, I chose to make an apple pie with a crumble top and a tart cherry pie with a lattice crust.  I wanted to have two pies that would both contrast well and taste good together when they inadvertently mixed in the baking process.  Anyways, aren’t apple and cherry pie the definition of American?

If you want to make this (and if you want to impress people, I recommend you do), you’re going to have to use a few special and cheap supplies.  In hindsight, I should have taken pictures to show you how I jiffy rigged two disposable cake pans together but hopefully this (incredibly poorly drawn) picture will help:

I know, you wonder why I didn’t go to art school.  I ask myself this too.  Just call me the queen of MS Paint instead.  So as you can obviously see, get yourself two disposable cake pans, cut out a section from one of them and then tape them together.  Tada!

Roasted Pear and Toasted Pecan Ice Cream

Three more weeks.  I keep on having to repeat that to myself over and over… only three more weeks until I will (hopefully) start reintegrating gluten and dairy.  My doctor thinks I am sensitive to one of the two and I need to "cleanse" my system more before I nosh on a hunk of bread or block of cheese.  While I wouldn't call my current diet ideal, not being able to have dairy hasn't been too hard.  I've known for a while I'm lactose intolerant.  I mean, haven't you noticed that 99.9% of my recipes use a milk substitute?  But what has been hard is finding a soy ice cream without brown rice syrup.

You'd think having the word rice in the name would mean it was gluten free.  You'd be wrong.  It's one of those sneaky glutenous ingredients.  So, if I can't buy it I'll make it!  I had some pears that were at the edge of being over ripe and a craving for some ice cream.

 When you make this ice cream (which I highly recommend) make sure you set aside a chuck a time.  While not being labor intensive, there is a lot of down time.  At least at the end of it all, your house will smell like roasted pears, toasted pecans and you will be snacking on some freshly turned ice cream.

Mint Chocolate Brownies (Gluten & Dairy Free)

Here is it - my first recipe post that follows my gluten free, dairy free diet.  I would be lying if I said this wasn't difficult.  I have never read so many nutrition labels with such concentration in my entire life nor have I had to pester so many waitresses to make SURE that smoothie has NO DAIRY (not even milk powder) in it.  That's not even the hardest part, I think that titles belongs to having to say no to friends.  To eat at certain restaurants, restrain from diving headfirst into their sandwich (still on the hunt for a good DF/GF bread) or just seeming like the weirdo with the nitpicky dietary concerns. 

Really though, it's not that bad.  I haven't had to deal with this for years, I don't even know if I'll have to deal with much longer (doctor's appointment is on May 5th) and I live in Seattle.  I think out of all cities to be gluten and dairy free in, Seattle must be one of the best.  PCC, Metropolitan Market AND Whole Foods are my meccas now.  Even Trader Joe's does a pretty good job (I'm a big fan of how well they label things).

And you know what's even better?  NO ONE knew these were gluten and dairy free until I told them!  In my book, that's a a huge success on the GF/DF front.  I brought them to the kickball game last week and everyone (the other team, the ref, my teammates) raved over them, asked for seconds and still contested that the fact that they were GF/DF free.

Update

Hello Blogosphere,

I wanted to write a quick note as to while the Ginger Cook has suddenly become more barren than the Eastern Washington desert.  A few weeks ago, my doctor informed be that she suspects I may have a gluten and/or dairy sensitivity.  Her plan of action was to have me do an elimination diet for a month and then go from there.  As all my recipes suggest, my number one lover is cheese, bread and butter.  That's right, I went through a triple break-up at the same time a few weeks ago.  I've been adjusting, but needless to say I've been in a bit of a cooking and baking funk as I've been adjusting what I can eat.  A few days ago, I made some stellar gluten & dairy free chocolate chip cookies (my co-workers ate all of them), but I've been struggling a little bit.  I hope to get up and running again (i.e. give you all some delicious recipes!) ASAP and I will be posting some gluten-loaded ones that I have stockpiled in my computer.

Thank you for being so patient and if you have any gluten/dairy free suggestions, it would be much appreciated!

Love,
The Ginger Cook