Gluten Free Breads, Refried Black Beans, Pork Liver, Cauliflower Lentil Curry, and Korean Omelettes

Random Photos of the Week

First a hodgepodge of photos from the week. A lovely scramble with kale, some more of that tasty celery soup (Paleo and Whole30), a one pot goulash, and an Aldi haul.

For the goulash, I thought I’d try just cooking the noodles in with everything else, instead of cooking them first separately. It worked okay. The noodles were inconsistently cooked. So some of the noodles were a bit too soft and some were underdone. Maybe I could have babied the pan more and stirred it more, though I feel like I was stirring it an awful lot. We also found the dish to be a lot creamier from the starch of the chickpea noodles that normally would have been drained off.

I’m still surprised at what I’m able to find at Aldi. Gluten free bread! Grassfed Organic Beef! Organic Chicken! I got that cart-full of goodies for $135 including a loaf of gluten free bread, 3 lbs ground beef, 3 lbs ground turkey, a whole chicken and a package of chicken breasts, 2 cartons of eggs, and a whole lot of produce. And almost everything was organic. Amazing.

Gluten Free Artisan Bread

I mentioned before that I have a cookbook called Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. Well, there’s a gluten free version as well! Gluten Free Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day. The title is a bit misleading. Sure, the “5 minutes a day” no-knead method is faster than making regular bread. But the gluten free bread takes longer and is a bit more complicated than the gluten-filled version–as all gluten free recipes are.

This book uses two main basic flour combinations. The first mix is white rice flour, sorghum flour, tapioca flour, potato starch, xanthan gum or ground psyllium husk. The second mix is the whole grain flour: brown rice flour, teff flour, sorghum flour, oat flour, and xanathan gum or round psyllium husk. When you make what they call the “master recipe” (Boule gluten free artisan free form loaf) you use a combo of the two flour mixes plus yeast, salt, sugar (optional), and water.

I made the dough in the stand mixer on one day and then made two different loaves on different days, as the dough just waits in the fridge for several days until you’re ready . The first loaf was in a pan, to make more of a sandwich loaf, and the second was a free form loaf. The sandwich loaf didn’t rise as much as I’d hoped, so it was a bit short and they were both pretty dense. But I was happy with how they came out. They tasted good!

Pork Liver and Onions

We purchased a whole hog from a local farm when we first moved here and a pork liver is one of the meat cuts that we got from that. I’m a fan of beef liver, but I’m not sure if we’ve had pork liver before. If so, it wasn’t memorable.

The pork liver came already sliced, so that made it easy. I cooked it up with sliced red onions in a skillet. Minced garlic, ghee, capers, salt and pepper. All the goodies.

Sadly, the pork liver just wasn’t as good as beef liver. Not as creamy and more bitter. It was okay, but I definitely prefer beef liver. That’s probably why you don’t see pork liver sold in the grocery store like you do beef! I love the sweetness that the sauteed onions add to liver, in general, so I enjoyed that. But I’ll probably stick with beef liver and wouldn’t make an effort to seek out pork liver.

Refried Black Beans

This came from a recipe in the cookbook Milk Street Fast and Slow, which has options for using the instant pot or crockpot (or crockpot mode on the instant pot.) Thanks to my friend, Kathy, for recommending this cookbook! I’ve made a few things in here so far and they’ve all been really good.

On to refried black beans.

The recipe starts with the “Simple Black Beans” which has you rinsing and draining the dried beans. No soaking overnight?? I was tempted to do so anyway because I know that helps with digestion, but I didn’t want to throw off the recipe so I followed the instructions and just rinsed them. Onion. Fresh tomatoes (I used canned because that’s what I had and figured they’d be cooked anyway, so it was a fine sub.) a whole head of garlic. (This was fun. You slice off the top of the garlic head to expose the cloves and it’s just so lovely.) Chili powder. Bay leaves. salt. Water.

I used the instant pot and pressure cooked.

Then you make the refried beans by cooking them in a skillet, after draining, squeezing out the garlic, mashing, and adding more spices. This took a bit of time for it to thicken. Stirring and stirring the beans and waiting for them to brown and cook down.

In the end, this was a decent amount of work for refried beans. We thought they were good, but not so much better than canned that it was worth the effort. In fact, it was an effort to get through all the leftovers since the kids decided they didn’t care for them. Bummer. I probably wouldn’t make these again. But I’m still have to have gone on the cooking adventure.

The last photo shows the finished refied beans, served with grilled pork chop, roasted potatoes, and that gluten free bread from above with cream cheese.

Cauliflower Lentil Curry

This was a modified recipe from a cookbook called Indian Food Under Pressure, which is a fantastic cookbook. We’ve loved everything I’ve made in that book. I don’t make Indian food often because A) my husband traveled to India once and the food was so good there that no other Indian food here has ever compared and B) I have at one child who can not have a teeny tiny ounce of spice. Like, pepperoni is too spicy. Like sometimes black pepper is too spicy.

Anyway, I was looking for a way to use the cauliflower I had and also the red lentils. I flipped through this book and spotted the recipe “Lentils with Fresh Dill Leaves” and modified it a ton to make it work for what I had on hand.

The recipe calls for red lentils (masoor dal), split pigeon peas (toor dal), tomatoes, onion, minced garlic, minced ginger, a bunch of spices including cayenne, and fresh dill.

I omitted the toor dal, added cauliflower, used canned diced tomatoes (again), excluded the cayenne, and used some dried dill.

The end result was tasty! I served it with some baked chicken leg that I’d thrown some fresh herbs into. (I had some fresh herbs, just not dill!)

Korean Omelettes

Here’s a fun one. This recipe is on the Nom Nom Paleo site. I just love Nom Nom Paleo! The recipe is called Korean Egg Roll With Seaweed, but they are basically omelettes.

You scramble the eggs, then pour them in the skillet and lay down a sheet of nori and roll it up. Then repeat. Check out the recipe on their site for step by step instructions!

Something a bit different to do with your eggs for breakfast if you’re getting tired of the same old things. I definitely want to try it with adding some chopped ham and veggies or something to really take it up a notch.

Gluten Free Fajitas with Homemade Tortillas

Now these gluten free tortillas were amazing. Really fantastic. But took some work. These tortillas were made using a recipe in the Baked to Perfection cookbook, by Kat at the Loopy Whisk. One of my current favorite cookbooks. But she also has a version available on her website.

I honestly would have opted for the website version, if I’d had cornflour on hand. I had cornmeal, but that didn’t seem likely to work.

The cookbook version has more ingredients, including whole milk and yogurt. I subbed almond milk and canned coconut milk instead. I did end up adding more milk to make the dough form together, but it worked out great even with the subs.

It was a bit of work. You make the gel with the psyllium and then add all the ingredients together and you need to knead the dough and divide it and roll it out before cooking in the skillet. They are called “easy” in the cookbook and on the website and I would have to disagree. Anything that requires that many steps can’t be called easy.

But I’m not lying when I say that it’s worth it. I will absolutely make these again. I couldn’t believe how soft and pliable these tortillas were for being gluten free! No grainy texture. They were divine.

I sauteed bell peppers and onions and added in some leftover pork. Made some simple guacamole and served with salsa. Delicious!!

Fruit Bouquet

And then for dessert… my friend Karen surprised us with this beautiful fruit bouquet! Isn’t it gorgeous? It made us all smile.

What a beautiful way to end the day.

What are you cooking this week?

-Jessi