All Purpose

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.

No Comments | In: baking, experiments | tags: cherry, cleanse, gluten, pie. | #

I’ve been trying to force myself to do a little more cooking and to try some new things in the kitchen. This is probably the second Experiments in the Kitchen, but my first foray (croissants from scratch) happened before I had a name for it.

My second experiment is learning the art of the soufflé. I got Mastering the Art of French Cooking for Christmas this year and that’s one of the main things I wanted to really try. Plus we went to this amazing salon de souffé called Rise while we were in Dallas for my birthday and now I’m hooked on soufflés. The non-dairy thing was stopping me though, but since I took a break from no dairy at Easter it turned out to be a perfect time to try soufflés!

So I actually didn’t use a MtAoFC recipe for my soufflé because I really wanted to do something that was light on the cheese and milk. I used the Goat Cheese and Herb Soufflé recipe from Epicurious.

I halved the recipe and made some other changes, like WAY less Parmesan and goat cheese and used So Delicious Coconut Milk instead of regular milk. For the record, this kind of coconut milk is not like the canned coconut milk you find, it’s much thinner like the consistency of 2% or skim milk and does not taste like coconut at all. I use the cream (non-flavored) in my coffee everyday now.

So when I cook I like to get everything ready and then do the cooking. So I get everything set up and chopped and I might mix some things then everything is ready to go. I guess I watch too many cooking shows, maybe?

I prepped the dishes with maybe a teaspoon of Parmesan for dusting the pans and just a bare minimum of butter to cut the dairy content. Then I got the base ready to go.

I used probably a little less than a full cup of the goat cheese and I barely put any Parmesan into the base. I got the eggs to the right place but when I added the eggs to the base I think the base might have been slightly too hot. Everything seemed fine though and while the soufflés baked I made a Spinach Salad with Raspberry Champagne Vinaigrette.

The dressing was a little tart since I left out the sugar, will remember that next time and add some agave nectar. The soufflés did puff, but not like they were supposed to, but I blame the fact that the dishes I used were a bit too big for the amount of soufflé. I’ll try again soon with smaller dishes.

They were delicious though, really yummy and I’d definitely make this again or some other soufflé variation. So this was a good experiment, but I have not mastered this yet so I’ll be trying again soon.

No Comments | In: cooking, experiments | | #