The Ink-Pot and the Palette

I was just standing here eating broccoli when it occurred to me how odd both of those things are. I switched to a standing workstation a couple of months ago, and somewhere in the last year or two I've finally managed to make vegetables a part of my everyday life. I believe, but can't prove, that each of these changes has been good for my health.

So I got to wondering what else I've changed in the last few years.

( Turns out, quite a lot. )

I've got a pot roast in the oven. I've never actually cooked a pot roast before, but my mom had a small cut of beef in her freezer that needed using, so it's in the Dutch oven with onions and some stock and carrots and a bit of bacon, fragrancing the house on this stormy, Halloween-ish evening.

Meanwhile, the small and really astonishingly expensive chicken I bought at the farmers' market today is in the stock pot on the stovetop. I may need to re-think my flesh-eating strategies at these prices.

There's a beautiful array of green and leafy vegetables, also from the farmers' market, on the cutting board, waiting to become...soup, I think. Or part of a stir-fry. Maybe some of them will go into a green tart à la general_jinjur.

There is one unifying trick to a) staying gluten-free, b) avoiding junk food, c) eating nutritiously, d) not breaking the bank eating out, and e) regulating my caloric intake: bringing my own food to work with me.

And the trick to bringing my food all week long is to do a lot of cooking on Sunday.

A Twitter conversation about cilantro yesterday between Jane Espenson and Drew Greenberg (Jane vows to try liking it, Drew feels betrayed in their united cilantro hatred) led me to some reading about this poor controversial little leaf, aka coriander and also aka Chinese parsley, which some people regard almost as a poison even as it makes up an important part of several great cuisines.

An NPR article cites some research into the divide. After ruling out taste factors in the leaf, the research found that there's a smell component that cilantro lovers can detect, but which cilantro haters can't. Without that component, the stuff smells like soap. Or bugs.

This interested me because I've been on both sides of the cilantro divide. For most of my life I hated the stuff. It ruined anything it was in, and removed vast swaths of Mexican and Indian cuisine from my enjoyment.

Then a few weeks ago, thanks to a cilantro-centric dish offered by kis when she was visiting, I discovered that I now like it. I suspect my gluten-freedom has something to do with it: a number of my tastes and cravings have undergone such remarkable changes in the last eight months that I hardly know myself. Sinus-clearing alone could account for the shift in olfactory perception.

So, a poll.

My nephew and I made Napoleons last night. See what I did there with the subject line?

I have conquered gluten-free puff pastry, you see. I had half a batch in the fridge (the first half having gone to make little test crackers), and I wanted to use it up before it went off. So I told my nephew, who's getting to that always-hungry age, that I was going to make Napoleons, and would he like to help out and then eat them?

"What're Napoleons?"

"They are delicious stacks of puff pastry layered with rich vanilla pastry cream and topped with chocolate-striped fondant."

Nephew, being a sensible boy who has been raised on good food, a) actually knew what I was talking about in that description and b) instantly perceived its appeal.

We ran to the store for a few things, then came back and he read me the recipe and measured stuff (in between playing with his iPhone and talking to me about Halo Reach), and by and by we had these sort-of Napoleons.

The pastry cream was too thin--more of a crème anglaise, really. We could not be bothered with fondant, so settled for powdered-sugar icing. The chocolate stripes were more like little blobs ("polka dots," we decided), and the result was incredibly messy and the portion had to be served in a bowl, with more custard spooned over the top to make up for what smooshed out upon cutting.

It was not photogenic, so I didn't photograph it.

But oh sweet mother of Jesus, it was delicious. The puff pastry (made from rice and tapioca flours, mostly) was absolutely perfectly croustillant--it crackled between the teeth with the most delicious crunch, and stayed crisp even in the face of the too-thin pastry cream. The pastry cream was rich and sweet and vanilla and cold. Eating this thing was dessert heaven.

Nephew and I each had a portion, then my 17 year old niece came over and she and I split what was left. She agreed that this was one of the greater family pâtisserie achievements ever.

Then I went to bed, and oh the dreams I had. The tossing and turning. The noise of my brain. I awoke this morning with a genuine, honest-to-badness hangover from the sugar. It took me two quarts of water, two ibuprofen, and two large cups of black coffee to begin to feel like a real girl again.

It's been a long time since I sugared out like that. Makes me realize how far I've come, because I used to be in that state, like, most of the time.

So will I be making gluten free Napoleons again? Oh hell yes. But I'll make them presentable, so that I can present them to others before they kill me.

The sheer bliss of a Monday off--the third day in a three day weekend--is exceeded only by the sheer bliss of HAVING TUESDAY OFF TOO! \o/

The training schedule from hell last week took a larger chunk out of me than I anticipated: it was like jet lag without the jet, for five days in a row. Even though I went to bed early and got as many hours' sleep as I generally get, they were the wrong hours, and I was all out of whack.

I'm rested up now and doing some wonderful writing (I mean, I'm feeling wonderful about it--haven't read it yet to know whether it's crap), and in the breaks, I've made little gluten-free chicken pies.

( Pie! Warning: SO not vegetarian. )

I'm having mixed success with gluten-free baking (though so far, I'm having no trouble in general staying gluten-free). Scones and biscuits have been mediocre at best, and I've had some fair cookies. I haven't even TRIED yeast bread yet. But I think I've just about conquered the loaf cake.

This evening I decided to make a chocolate one, more or less based on the GF pound cake recipe I've been testing. It's fairly dense (but by no means a Tempur-Pedic mattress like the last one), fairly moist, sturdy enough to slice without falling apart, and it's good and chocolatey with no need for frosting.

( It's a simple cake. )

Not in the blackout-drunk sense, just in the cleared-my-calendar-so-I-could-write-then-choked sense.

I got no writing done. Only writing exercises. I am well and truly B-L-O-C-K-E-D on chapter 31, which a few people are waiting for. I've tried what I know to bust through the block. I read articles. I played writing games. I went outside and worked in the yard (pruning--seemed appropriate). In an unexpected place, I found a useful quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance:

Value traps are the ones where your thinking is not as clear as it should be. Value rigidity is the first one. It is a refusal to value anything other than a certain thing just because it “has” to be that way. A lot of times a solution will be staring you in the face, but you’re in too much of a hurry to notice it. Slow down — stare at it for a while! It’s very much like a fisherman sitting and waiting for a nibble. Value rigidity is usually an ego problem. Lose the ego and be humble. Let yourself be surprised, and solutions will show themselves.

I might have made a little progress late today. I think I've started to see a path. Stay tuned...

Meanwhile, I baked a gluten-free cake using agave instead of sugar, and it's pretty tasty. It's a variation on the pound cake I've been trying to perfect for several weeks now. Agave, for the record, tastes quite a bit like golden syrup.

The muse really can't be coerced, but if anyone has any more suggestions, tips, or tricks for enticing her back, let me know.

Inspired by the possibilities that my teff-flour pancake last night laid before me, I cranked out a batch of Everything muffins this afternoon--everything but the wheat gluten, anyway.

My original recipe calls for whole wheat flour and wheat bran--I subbed teff flour and oat bran--and makes a dozen rather heavy, hearty, filling breakfast muffins.

( Recipe! Picture of food! )

I just made some gluten-free crackers. They aren't bad. They contain, on a foundation of Bob's Red Mill Gluten-Free Baking Flour (which is mostly garbanzo and fava bean flour):

• toasted white sesame seeds
• brown rice flour
• toasted black sesame seeds
• poppy seeds (caraway seeds would be good too)
• almond flour
• coconut flour
• potato starch
• parmesan cheese
• a little butter (coconut oil next time, I think)
• a little flaxseed oil (maybe some flaxseeds next time?)
• an egg
• a little curry powder
• a spoonful of Marmite
• baking soda
• black pepper
• xanthan gum

I sort of threw dry things in the bowl, then added fats and egg and water till it all stuck together.

Rolled out thin, cut into circles, and baked slowly till dry, they're pretty tasty, and they have a nice crunch. The texture is a bit sandy, but I'm beginning to realize that that's just a hazard of GF baking, because the flours that have any body at all are highly fibrous. I don't love the distinctly beany flavor of the bean-based flours, but I don't hate it, and using the much tastier coconut and almond flours would be too expensive.

I'd post a picture of them but they're just beige circles with black speckles. They taste good with sharp cheddar cheese on 'em, and I bet they'll be good with tuna, too.

I'm on a new adventure. The oft-repeated advice from any number of healthcare practitioners to consider giving up wheat finally sank in. I think it was a comment from lamentables about whether my fabulous and delicious Elvis Cake could be recreated in a gluten-free version that tipped the balance.

"Gluten-free," like "no wheat", has always evoked for me such a dismal and joyless foodscape that I've tried for years to pretend that wheat is just fine and not a problem for me, when it seems clearly to be. I don't meet the symptom profile for celiac disease, or even for wheat intolerance, and yet, being wheat-free for the past week or so has left me feeling so much better that I might as well just keep doing it.

( But to face an indefinite wheat-free future, I will need pound cake. )