July 8th, 2010
Experiments in the Kitchen with Gluten
So I’ve been doing this cleanse thing since the beginning of May. It’s been very interesting and challenging. Basically, I spent a week eating veggies, fruit, and select grains while drinking green juice every day. Then the real work began and one by one I began adding foods back into my diet to test. It’s two months later and I’m still not finished with my reintegration stage. I’ve got several key things back into my diet (dairy, fish, chicken, turkey, tomatoes, nuts, garlic), but I’ve still got a lot of stuff left to test and I’ve got some things that didn’t work out so well.
Anyway, I realized (too late) that this would be have been good blog fodder but I had a lot going on and missed that opportunity. I will try to document the things I have left to test though since I still do have a ways to go and it feels as though the process has gotten murky lately
So I added gluten (second try) on Tuesday and my first meal was cooked greens (stir fried in olive oil with garlic and olives) with whole wheat orzo and finished with a dusting of parmesan. It was delicious, but I was looking for something else.
The day before I added gluten I happened to surf on over to Smitten Kitchen and see her recipe for Cherry Pie Crumble and I knew I wanted to make that during my gluten test. So I made the crust on Tuesday night and then after procuring a cherry/olive pitter from Target I made the pie last night.
Normally, since I’m still on the cleanse, I would have substituted the sugar with agave but since I haven’t done any baking in forever and I’ve never baked with agave I decided to just go with the recipe. In hindsight, I should have gotten some raw, organic sugar at least to use since it’s less processed and I know that refined sugar can sometimes be processed with corn syrup and corn is a big no-no for me (it failed its test big time).
I also could not find sour cherries, perhaps this is an East coast thing? I got regular cherries and cut the sugar I used in the filling to a little over 1/4 of a cup. I also used arrowroot instead of corn starch.
I also cut the sugar used in the crumble in half, since I was trying to mitigate the use of sugar and any side effects it might have.
Overall, it turned out really good, it had a nice cherry flavor without being too sweet and the crust was awesome (I did use the vodka trick). When I cut into it it was a bit messier than I wanted, but I may not have let it cool enough or maybe the arrowroot didn’t thicken as much as cornstarch would (more experiments needed).
I did miss at least one pit though, I think I’d probably be eliminated from Top Chef for this, but hey I wouldn’t complain about making a dessert.
