My Favorite Breakfast

I don't think this even counts as a recipe, it's so simple.

Muesli for Dummies;

or, Summertime Oatmeal

makes 2 hearty servings

1 cup rolled oats

1 cup unsweetened applesauce OR 1 grated apple OR a cup of any smooshed-up fruit

1 cup thin plain yogurt OR kefir OR water OR any other liquid

1) Mix in a bowl.

2) Cover the bowl.

3) Put the bowl in the fridge overnight.

4) In the morning, scoop some out and top with anything you want: dried or fresh fruit, honey, nuts or seeds, cinnamon, coconut...

Ridiculously easy, endlessly adaptable, and packed with fiber to keep you full until lunch.

Crock-Pot Peanut Porkchops

My family loves pork chops; I love peanut sauce. The two can be combined with surprisingly tasty results!

Based on a Betty Crocker recipe for "Thai Chicken Thighs." This recipe isn't Thai, but it is easy and tasty. Also, like a lot of slow-cook recipes, it's great "fridge velcro"- a way to use up odds and ends cluttering your condiment shelf.

Crock-Pot Peanut Porkchops
serves 4 plus leftovers

6 lean pork chops- I used boneless chops cut from a larger loin roast, about 1 1/2 lbs.
1/2 can coconut milk
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/2 jar salsa
2 tablespoons fish sauce or soy sauce
2 tablespoons sesame oil
1 T worcestershire sauce
2 tablespoons grated ginger (1 thumb-sized knob)
zest of one lime

Rinse pork, and arrange in the bottom of a 2 qt. slow cooker. Combine everything else, and pour on top of the pork chops, coating them. Cook on high until the pork registers 160 on a meat thermometer-- for my 1" chops, it took three hours.

Serve the pork with rice and steamed broccoli, or other veggies. Good condiments are chopped cilantro, crushed peanuts, Sriracha or other hot sauce, lime wedges, and pickled veggies. There will be a lot of leftover sauce-- toss it with some veggies and rice noodles, and it's like a bonus meal.

Gluten-Free Fig and Lemon Scones

Before my partner was diagnosed Celiac, I was a baker for a small cafe in Somerville, MA. The biggest focus of our morning baking was scones-- and man, did we have fantastic scones. People came from Jamaica Plain for our scones. I was really proud to make them.

Now, I no longer work as a baker-- my partner is really, really sensitive to wheat gluten, and coming home covered in flour every day is not a good way to keep her healthy. However, I still love to bake, and I still make great scones.



Fig and Lemon Scones
makes 8 scones

Dry Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups Pamela's Baking Mix (any GF pancake-type mix will do, but this is the one I swear by)
1 teaspoon GF Baking Powder (Davis is fine)
1/3 cup white sugar
zest of one lemon

4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) very cold unsalted butter, chopped into small cubes

Wet Ingredients:
1/3 cup half and half
1/3 cup milk
1 large egg, beaten

1/2 cup chopped dried figs

Mix dry ingredients together in a large bowl. Cut in the butter with two knives, a pastry blender, or by pulsing the dry ingredients together with the butter in a food processor. Don't overdo it: you want the end mixture to look sort of gravelly, with some visible chunks of butter.

Whisk the wet ingredients together in a measuring cup. Add this mixture to the dry ingredients and butter while stirring, or use a stand mixer on low. When the dough is nearly together, add the chopped figs, and stir to combine.

(Note: When baking gluten-free, your doughs and batters are going to be universally looser and stickier than in traditional wheat recipes. For this, your dough will be sticky, but you want to add extra baking mix if necessary to push the mixture firmly over the line from batter to dough. If you can pour it, it needs more flour!)

Line an 8" skillet with plastic wrap-- I use two pieces, arranged in an "X". Spoon the dough into this mold, cover with another layer of plastic wrap (trust me, it's easier), and press the dough into a more-or-less even disc. Invert your plastic-wrapped scones onto a plate, and chill in the fridge for at least two hours or overnight.

When you're ready to bake, preheat your oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Take out your scones, and cut them into eight wedges (you can do this with the plastic still on, just take it off before you bake them). Bake the wedges you plan on eating that day, and freeze the rest-- they freeze wonderfully, and they're so much better freshly-baked. Sprinkle the tops of your scones with a little bit of white sugar, and slide them into the hot oven.

The high heat will help them get brown on the outside and fluffy in the middle, but it's too high to cook them all the way at without burning, so reduce the heat to 375 after a minute or so. Bake for 15 - 17 minutes.

Gluten-Free Biscuits and Gravy

When I learned that my fiancee needed to go gluten-free, I approached it with the defensive enthusiasm of a virgin on a third date. Short motivational speeches to no one in particular kept the cowering terror at bay; scrubbing any invisible crumbs off of the knives, pans, forks, counter, and ceiling stood in for pacing and posing and shellacking my hair until it was sturdy enough to protect my fragile ego (not that I ever did that before a date). I didn't like being a baker anyway, I reasoned: this would be an excellent opportunity for a fresh start. And so on, and so forth, for a good couple of weeks, until a craving hit me like a tire iron to the back of the knees:

Biscuits.

the sort of meal that had been tempting me.
image source: flickr user su-lin
used under the creative commons license

Buttery, flaky biscuits. Golden and godly biscuits, freshly split, so hot they give you steam burns but you keep eating them anyway. Biscuits skated around a cast-iron pan to sop up gravy so thick it's almost soap.

So I shuffled around the fancy grocery store in a kind of mournful daze, holding up bags and boxes and jars, staring at labels that could have been written in Hieroglyphs for all the good they were doing me. I asked Dr. Google, who gave me recipes for things like "lime-encrusted sea jelly biscuits with rosemary-Sauternes gravy" and "wheat-free egg-free soy-free sugar-free dairy-free vegan carob biscuits with almond butter gravy."

That was roughly a year ago, and I've been trying to make simple gluten-free biscuits and gravy ever since. My fiancee thinks I cook because I love her, but underneath my smiling oven-mitted facade has been a drooling beast just waiting for a reasonable biscuit and a pan of sausage gravy. All my trial and error, the cookbook-highlighting, the late nights when I stagger home smelling of pork fat and flour from the wrong side of town: all for this one meal.

(The really idiotic part is how simple it is.)

GLUTEN-FREE BISCUITS AND SAUSAGE GRAVY
Biscuits:

• 1 c. of your favorite GF baking mix. Make sure it includes tapioca flour or starch, xanthan gum, and rising agents.
  
• 1 rounded T dry buttermilk powder
  
• 1/4 c. butter-flavored shortening
  
• 1/3 c. milk (I used diluted evaporated milk)
  

Gravy:

• 1/4 lb. gluten-free pork breakfast sausage. I like Jamestown, but anything will do as long as it's GF and fatty.
  
• Roughly 1 c. milk
  
• Pinch of Bell's seasoning/ poultry seasoning
  
• Salt and pepper to taste
  
• Roughly 2T GF baking mix
  

Preheat oven to 375 F. Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper, or grease it.

Heat sausage in a medium skillet (pref. cast-iron) over med-low, breaking it up with a spatula.

In large bowl, mix 1 c. baking mix and dry buttermilk together with a fork. Scoop out little pieces of shortening with a knife and flick them into the flour mixture until you've added 1/4 c. Use the knife and fork to cut the shortening into the flour until it looks like cat litter. You can use your fingers to help it along, but work lightly and quickly so as not to melt the shortening with the heat from your hands.

Check on the sausage while you're making the biscuits. You want it to brown eventually, but more important here is rendering the fat. The sausage should be getting smaller and smaller in addition to browner. Lower heat is better than higher.

Work the 1/3 c. milk into the biscuit flour a little at a time. Again, don't overwork the dough, but be careful not to add too much liquid. As soon as it all holds together in a ball, roll the dough out gently (or push it with your fingers) on a floured board until it's about as thick as the first joint of your middle finger. Cut biscuits with a biscuit cutter or the rim of a glass, reshape the dough gently, and repeat until you've used up the dough. There's usually one real ugly biscuit by the end, but cook it anyway or be haunted by the ghosts of a thousand glaring frugal grandmothers.

Bake the biscuits on the cookie sheet at 375 F for about 11 minutes. Don't let the dough sit, get it right in the oven.

The sausage should be about done by this time. Scoop it out of the pan and save it in a bowl or something, and turn the heat up to medium or so. Add baking mix (there's usually enough left on the board you rolled the biscuits out on) in about a 1:1 ratio to the fat in the pan to make a roux (flavor paste).

Feel free to use plain GF flour instead of baking mix here; I just use the mix because it's convenient. Stir and scrape the flour/ fat mixture in the pan until it's just a little brown*, then pull it off the heat and add milk, a little at a time, stirring constantly. Return to low heat, season to taste, add back the sausage meat, and cook it gently until it's a good consistency-- liquid, but not too runny.

Ding! The biscuits are done! Serve split open, in a shallow bowl, topped with gravy.

*Or risk having your gravy look like semen, which some folks are fine with.