Chili-Mac: Gluten-Free

I love chili. When my daughter was home sick with a stomach bug, I took the opportunity to break out the chili fixin's for myself.

Weird thinking, I know, but when there is a bonus day off from work (not saying her being sick was a bonus, mind you), I feel inclined to go big with my cooking. She doesn't eat chili and said the cooking smells wouldn't bother her, so I figured since I had to make really bland stuff for her to eat, I'd make myself something extra spicy. I also made oven-roasted jalapeno peppers (recipe will be appearing shortly, needs some adjustments...). Clearly, I was not having any of the bland food myself.

For years now, I've been using a mix for the spices, from Carroll Shelby's Original Texas Chili Kit, which I highly recommend. There are no chemicals or weird fake-foods in the box, just cayenne pepper, corn masa flour, cumin, garlic, ground chili peppers, onion, oregano, paprika, salt. It's just easier to have everything put together for me, especially since I may not have all the ingredients on hand, most importantly, the corn masa which you use towards the end of cooking to thicken the chili.

I'd like to talk about chili-mac now. It's not a dish I grew up with. Maybe it did exist in NY, but it never made its way to me. The first time I encountered it, I was in southern Illinois with my then in-laws at Steak 'n Shake. It seemed to me like an ingenious combination. Why not use pasta as your vehicle of choice for chili? It's a pretty good combination of textures, and the cheese just sinks into the pasta every so nicely.

While I cooked the chili, I looked around for some corn tortillas to serve it with, only to come up empty. Instead, I chose a rice pasta as my base for the chili, making this the first time I've made chili-mac in my own kitchen. There is no cheese in this version, as I'm primarily dairy-free (except for butter, can't leave that behind), but you should feel free to add some nice sharp cheddar and maybe even some sour cream to finish off this great dish.

Gluten-free Chili-Mac

Ingredients:

Method:

  1. Heat a large non-reactive pot over high heat.
  2. Add the olive oil and half of the minced shallots.
  3. Cook for 1 minutes. Add the ground meat.
  4. Brown on all sides, about 15 minutes of cooking time.
  5. Drain the fat from the pan.
  6. Add the tomato sauce, water and spices.
  7. Cook for ten minutes. Add the drained black beans.
  8. Slightly cover the pot. Cook for another 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
  9. While the chili is cooking, take the masa flour and mix with 1/3 cup warm water.
  10. Add to the chili to thicken it. Make sure the corn masa flour is not clumping in the chili, break it up with a fork as you stir it into the mix.
  11. Cook for five more minutes.
  12. Place the prepared pasta into individual serving bowls.
  13. Top with chili (and cheese, if you're into that).
  14. Serve and enjoy!

 

 

 

What to Bring to Dinner: Apple and Pear Crisp

What were the odds that I would happen to have a piece of fabric with apples and pears on it to present this lovely crisp? Slim to none, I'd say.

I hadn't pre-planned including the pears in the crisp, but as luck would have it, I ran out of apples and had to combine the two fruits. The mix of the flavors turned out well: one bit might be all apple, the next all pear, or you may get two-for-one!

I've never made a crisp before. We were invited upstairs to dinner with our fabulous neighbors. When they came down to invite us over, I asked what I could bring. Somehow, the topic of a crisp came up and knowing that they liked my granola, I offered to make one.

Pastry dough and I aren't generally friends, but I am good at cutting and mixing things, so this was the perfect project for me. And, I found a funny little knife that made the fruit into crinkle cuts. I think it's meant to be used for potatoes, but it worked just fine on my pears and apples. You can't go wrong with the combination of flavors here: butter, vanilla, lemon, cinnamon, fruit and oats. And it's the easiest thing I've made for a dessert in a long time.

The neighbors loved it. I think this will go into my regular rotation of easy, take-along desserts. Hope you like it.

Apple and Pear Crisp

adapted from Simply Recipes

serves 4

Ingredients:

  • 2 medium Pears, cut into chunks
  • 2 medium Apples, cut into chunks
  • 3 tsps Lemon Juice
  • 1/2 tsp Vanilla Extract
  • 1 cup Brown Sugar
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground Cinnamon
  • 1 cup Rolled Oats
  • 1/2 cup Butter, room temperature
  • 5 to 10 almonds, crushed
  • 5 to 10 Walnuts, crushed

Method:

  1. Preheat oven to 375°F.
  2. In a mixing bowl, combine fruit, lemon juice, and vanilla. Toss to combine.
  3. Put the pear and apple pieces into a baking dish. I don't really layer, just put them in there, and any baking dish will do here, I used a souffle dish.
  4. Mix together the dry ingredients (oats, cinnamon and brown sugar) with the butter.
  5. Using a pastry blender or a fork, chop up the butter until it is in small pea-sized pieces.
  6. Cover the fruit with the oat mixture.
  7. Place the nuts on top of the oat mixture.
  8. Set in the oven for 45 minutes.
  9. Bake until the topping looks crunchy, being careful not to burn the nut topping.
  10. Serve with ice cream on the side.

Don't Eat The Unopened Clams!

I'm on some kind of a fish kick right now. It probably has to do with the amount of meat I consumed over the holidays. I've been craving fish and salads, so I'm going with it.

Just after my salade nicoise evening, I decided to make some clams served over a saffron rice. Just before I began to cook, I realized there was no saffron in the house. Gran Fran is always very innovative when it comes to missing ingredients. I thought for a minute, went through my spice cabinet and pulled out the smoky Spanish paprika I love.

Gran Fran uses anisette or vermouth in her saffron rice preparation, but again, I came up empty. A bottle of nice white wine with lots of fennel seed added to the pot, along with some clam juice and lemon juice, saved the day. My McGyver-type survival skills will do Gran Fran proud.

I've often watched her make clams, but I rarely do so myself. If memory serves, Gran Fran would flip out if more than just one or two of the clams she had steamed didn't open up when cooked. Her take on this, I think, was that all of the clams were tainted and maybe we shouldn't eat them because who knows what kind of disease one might get? Botulism? Salmonella? I'd like to point out right here and now that we all made it through, just by avoiding those unopened clams along the way.

But, her fears did come bubbling up within me when I prepared to cook these clams last night. What if I didn't cook them long enough? What about those diseases, or worse yet some unknown hazard came up? I tried to channel the other side of Gran Fran in the kitchen: the devil-may-care cook who throws ingredients in a pan with reckless abandon and comes up with wonderfully delicious dishes in the end.

It worked. The clams turned out great, it was fast and simple and the broth was really interesting with the extra hit of paprika in the end. The rice turned out well, too, though different in flavor than my beloved saffron rice, it was a hit. No one got sick, and the food was delicious.

Steamed Clams with Fennel and Red Rice

serves 4

Ingredients:

  • 1 pound clams, cleaned and soaked in cold water
  • 1 cup white wine
  • 1/2 cup clam juice
  • 2 tbsps lemon juice
  • 1 tbsp dried fennel seeds
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1/4 cup olive oil
  • 2 cloves garlic chopped roughly

Method:

  • Put everything in a large pan and cover with a lid.
  • Bring the mixture to a boil.
  • Cook for 10 minutes.
  • Lift the lid and check to see if all (or almost all) of the clams have opened up.
  • If not, cover and cook for another two minutes.
  • Serve over rice (see below).

Steamed Red Rice

Ingredients:

  • 1 cup white Basmati Rice
  • 1 cup Water
  • 1/3 cup Clam Juice
  • 3 Tbsps Lemon Juice
  • 3 Tbsps Butter
  • 2 tsps Smoked Spanish Paprika
  • 3 cloves Garlic chopped
  • 2 tsps Fennel Seeds
  • 1 Bay Leaf
  • Salt and Pepper to Taste

Method:

  • Put all ingredients except for the rice in a large pot that has a lid.
  • Boil the mixture,then lower it to a simmer for 10 minutes.
  • Add the rice.
  • Return the pot to the boil.
  • Stir once.
  • Reduce the heat to low.
  • Cover the pan and cook for 12 minutes.
  • Turn off the heat and allow to stand for 6 to 8 more minutes until the rice is cooked through.
  • Serve with the clams, using some of the broth the further flavor the rice.