Coconut Flour Bread

This is literally the easiest bread recipe in existence.  The hardest part about it is finding the coconut flour to cook it with.  Coconut flour I must warn you is not cheap.  I think a pound was $12 at my local grocery store.  But it is worth it for the experience and to try a totally new flour.  Coconut flour is ridiculously high in fiber and about a 45 on the glycemic index so it is perfect for this diet.  I really enjoyed having a bread that was different than anything else Ive ever baked, its naturally sweet and has a crisp outside and tender chewy middle that makes it have the mouth feel of toast without actually requiring a toaster.

Actually a word of warning on that issue, unless you have a very narrow toaster, because this makes such a tiny loaf the bread, it will just fall in the toaster never to be heard from again.   So if you want it warm just stick it in a warm frying pan for a minute or so to get warm.  Another thing, grinding up unsweetened coconut you already have at home will not make coconut flour no matter how finely you grind it.  Believe me Ive tried and I havent figured out how to fake it with out lumpy horrible results so this is one case where Im going to have to advise you to suck it up an pay full price at the store for it.  You wont be sorry you did. 

Coconut Flour Bread

6 eggs

1/2 cup melted coconut oil 

1 tablespoons agave nectar

1/2 teaspoon sea salt

3/4 cup coconut flour 

Mix all ingredients together and pour into a small buttered loaf pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 40 minutes. 

From the Nourishing Days blog.

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Rice Flour Crepes with Blueberries and Coconut Whipped Cream

I havent been posting much lately because I havent been eating much of interest.  

See the ridiculous thing is Im a foodie with serious food sensitivities.  Figuring out that gluten was causing me problems helped out my digestive issues a lot.  Getting rid of dairy made me feel a lot better too.  However there were still things that seemed to be causing me problems and even after keeping a food diary, seeing a nutritionist, an allergist and a gastroentrologist I still couldnt figure out what was making me ill.  Unwilling to "just live with it" as all but one of my doctors advised I decided to take the next step and go on an elimintation diet.

The people over at Whole Life Nutrition Kitchen had one that seemed reasonable so Im giving it a try.  Eating nothing but green smoothies for a couple days, giving up chocolate, coffee and alcohol and eating only the simplest of unseasoned foods has not been easy.  But after my body got over the initial shock I felt better than I ever had before.  If eating green salads and brown rice with lentils and nothing else was going to get rid of my unending digestive woes I was willing to do it.

At this point Ive added in a few foods without any issues so I do have some variety in my diet.  So far I have sadly discovered citrus, cinnamon and parsnips are all problem foods for me.  So as this goes on Ill be healthier and feel great but my diet is getting more and more restricted.  In order to not let thoughts like that get me down I spent the afternoon plotting out a dessert that I could eat on this diet.  Something other than me peeling a mango and eating it like the crazy sweet-food starved person I am.  

Out of that I came up with this recipe for these vegan hypoallergenic rice crepes that fit with the strict parameters of the first phase of the elimination diet.  They are so amazing you would never guess they are missing things like eggs, dairy, wheat or sugar.  I went crazy and made some dairy free whipped cream as well since I was craving it but the crepes though simple are great without anything but your choice of fruit.  The fella and I enjoyed ours with blue berries while sitting out on the porch and enjoying the warm sunny evening.

Vegan Rice Flour Crepes 

1 tablespoon ground flax seed

2 tablespoons hot water

1/2 cup brown rice flour

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon agave nectar

1 1/4 cup homemade rice milk

In a very small bowl mix the ground flax seeds with the hot water and mix well.  Allow mixture to sit undisturbed until it becomes very sticky.

In a medium bowl mix together the remaining ingredients until well incorporated then add in the flax seed mixture.. Your mixture will be very a little runny and gritty. 

Heat a nonstick frying pan over medium heat and gently grease it with cooking spray. When the pan is at temperature add 1/4 a cup of the crepe mixture to the pan and agitate the pan to roll the mixture around the bottom making it as thin as possible. Cook the crepe for one minute then flip and cook for a 1 1/2 on the other side.

Repeat with the remaining mixture, being sure to stir the crepe batter before putting it in the pan as the heavy rice flour will quickly sink to the bottom of the bowl in the time it has taken you to make the preceding crepe.

Blueberry Filling

1 cup frozen blueberries

1 teaspoon agave nectar

Place both ingredients in a small sauce pan over medium heat and allow to simmer until the melting berries turn into a thin syrupy mixture.

Coconut Whipped Cream

1 14-can full fat coconut cream (the kind that separates out)

1 tablespoon melted coconut oil

1 teaspoon agave nectar

Place a metal bowl and the beaters for your electric mixer in the freezer.  Open the can of coconut milk and place in the refrigerator until the solid part of the coconut milk solidifies a bit more and is easier to skim out of the can.

After about 10 minutes remove the coconut milk from the fridge and place the solid mass floating on the top of the can in the frosty bowl that was in the freezer, leaving behind the liquid part of the coconut milk to use for other purposes.  Add the coconut oil and agave nectar to the coconut milk and return the bowl to the freezer until the mixture becomes mostly solid but not frozen through.  This will take awhile, probably between 30 to 90 minutes.  Check it often.

When the coconut mixture is stiff, begin beating the mixture with the cold electric beaters.  You will get both some soft peaks and some cold ice creamy textured bits during this process.  It wont exactly be "real" whipped cream but its so delicious it wont really matter.

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Look Ma My Bread is Famous

 Photo by Steve Apps of the State Journal.

The interview I did with my foodie friend Lindsay for the local newspaper here in Madison just went up today.  As you may know May is Gluten Free Awareness month so she talked to me and a couple other people in the Madison gluten free community about our experience of going without wheat.  And the most important part of the whole thing of course was the food. 

I cooked four different very photogenic loafs of bread that the papers photographer did a great job of capturing.  Ill post the recipe for the banana cardamom bread I reverse engineered from the fellas favorite gluteny recipe next week.  The other three recipes are from some of my favorite gluten free bloggers so be sure to check those out in the article as well.

It was a fun experience.  Now that people know what Im doing over here I better get back to some serious blogging.  But after all that baking I need some time off from making bread.  Im all breaded out.

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Coconut Milk and Saffron Ice Cream

Its been a shamefully long time since Ive blogged.

Partly because I hit a plateau in the diet; I havent lost weight in a while and weve been eating the same handful of recipes over and over again so there hasnt been much to say. The fella also disappeared to Boston for a man vacation for a couple weeks and my single girl menus were nothing to brag about. Lastly with spring has come a full social schedule which hasnt left me time to sleep let alone write. I know, excuses, excuses.

No worries, during this time Ive continued to cook a few new and interesting things and I have a bunch of wine to tell you about. Hopefully Ill have some time to write about all of this soon. First I have to tell you about my newest obsession.

Ice cream.

A little fairy (okay it was my mother) left an ice cream maker for me a couple weeks ago and I havent stopped experimenting with ice cream since. Custards sweetened with agave nectar work really well so these have been some very tasty experiments. It also helped that I discovered David Lebovitz about this same time. This man knows what hes talking about when it comes to frozen treats so Ive stuck with his recipes thus far and been very happy.

Writing about food comes with a fair amount of hyperbole and metaphor but there is none of that when I say this is the best ice cream ever created . I mean it literally. Make this ice cream and you could seduce anyone. It could get you a promotion. You could probably use it to get out of jail. Okay now Im exaggerating but it really is that good.

Not only is it amazingly sweet and rich it is super easy. These four simple components make it taste like you spent hours slaving over complex mixtures of mysterious sweet ingredients. The secret really is the saffron which pairs perfectly with the coconut milk and creates a unfathomably delicious flavor. It tastes like....something. You cant quite wrap your mind around what but its fabulous and comforting and coats all of your taste buds in a halo of yum.

Ive already made this twice. The first time I made the recipe as is (all I changed was to use agave in place of his sugar) and it was enough to share with a friend after dinner. So I had to be a bitchy foodie running around telling people how good it was but not having any proof. The next time I quadrupled the recipe and that was the perfect amount of this. It was enough for the fella and I to nibble on for over a week and share with a few people so they could see what I was talking about.

If you have an ice cream maker you have to make this, its too simple and too good not too. If you dont have a machine Mr. Lebovitz has you covered. So go, now.

Coconut Milk and Saffron Ice Cream

2/3 cup heavy cream
1 cup coconut milk
scant 1/4 cup agave nectar
scant 1/2 teaspoon saffron threads

In a medium-sized saucepan, bring all the ingredients to a boil.

Reduce the heat and simmer gently for ten minutes, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, and chill the mixture thoroughly.

Once chilled, freeze in your ice cream maker according to the manufacturers directions. Once churned, be sure to scrape any saffron threads clinging to the dasher back in to the ice cream.

Vow to never buy store bought ice cream again.

Original recipe by David Lebovitz on his blog Living the Sweet Life in Paris.

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Paneer Bagh E Bahar

This is one the strangest things Ive ever made which is saying a lot considering I cooked frog legs for New Years, once spent 8 hours waiting for ox tail soup to finish cooking and made green fairy ice cream for the fellas birthday.  And that isnt to say it wasnt tasty because it truly was but in an odd am-I-really-putting-this-in-my-mouth kind of way.  First of all its so high in fat and all that naughtiness that even as someone on a low carb diet I felt weird eating it.  Secondly fried cheese and pineapple in the same dish?  Thats just crazy.  Yummy but crazy.  And like so many things, this meal is all the fault of the fella and the chef.

See the fella went through a faze a while back where he was buying a ridiculous amount of pineapples.  We always seemed to have 2 in the fruit bowl.  It was as if I would cut one up and put it in the fridge to snack on when another would appear in the house magically while my back was turned.  And I like pineapple but those suckers are labor intensive to cut up so eventually I got fed up with the pineapple and left one to languish in the bowl figuring if the fella wanted to keep buying them he could cut the freaking pineapple up himself.

You know, typically passive aggressive chick behavior towards someone youve lived with for a while and drives you crazy in the best possible ways (mostly) and occasionally drives you to perform small scale sociological experiments to find out if the other person of their volition will ever do the thing youre sick of doing when it stops magically getting done for them.  Why does this ever seem like a good idea?  It never works.

Anyway at some point the chef came over and he noticed the pathetic pineapple and in his typical fashion started dreaming up totally insane things to do with it.  I just shook my head and hoped to not encourage the behavior.  The fella then hops in with the helpful suggestion "Lets smoke it."  Which then became plans to fry it or, marinate it in fish sauce or turn into a hat rack.  Who knows by then I was in my happy place thinking about socks and puppies and ignoring them both.  When I drifted back into the conversation they were contemplating using apple wood to smoke the poor pineapple then debating whether that was kosher or not.  All this at 8AM or so.  This is my life.

It was then I  knew I would have to give up my silent pineapple cutting strike.  So being that this was during the great early winter paneer surplus I went looking for a crazy Indian recipe that would take care of the remaining paneer and the pineapple at the same time.  Imagine my surprise when such a recipe existed.  I gathered the ingredients to cook this that night before the pineapple fell into the hands of philosophical extremists.  Image how surprised I was when what started as a joke ended up as a great dinner.  The super sweet pineapple somehow works with the salty paneer to make something wonderful.

I cant make any of this up.  Its all true.  So long story short, if youre looking for a really interesting curry to impress yourself and anyone lucky enough to be eating with you, this is it.  Pineapple curry, who knew?

Paneer Bagh E-Bahar

1 cup paneer cubes (about ½ pound)

1 cup yellow or red pepper, chopped

1 cup pineapple, chopped

1 cup tomato, chopped

1/4 cup cashews

1/2 cup cream

2 tablespoons oil

1 teaspoon garlic, finely chopped

2 green chillies, finely chopped

2 tablespoon tomato sauce

Cut paneer, pepper, pineapple and tomato all into 1 inch pieces.

Make a paste of cashew nuts by placing them in food processor along with a few teaspoons of water and grinding until smooth. Add the cream and process again briefly.

Heat oil in deep frying pan over medium high heat to fry garlic and chilies until browned. Mix in the cashew paste. Increase heat and stir fry pepper in cashew and garlic mixture until softened. Add pineapple and tomatoes and stir frequently until cooked through. Mix in paneer, tomato sauce and salt and pepper to taste.

Stir fry one minute longer, combining ingredients fully. Serve sprinkled with a couple tablespoons of cream.

Original recipe from Indian Food Forever.

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Spicy Coconut Milk and Mushroom Soup

It started innocently enough with my 3 jalapeño curry, the fella amped it up with 4 Serrano in his pea and paneer dish and the chef shamed us with this evilly delicious soup. There were 5 unseeded habenaros involved. I think it is safe to say I will not be continuing the spicy cooking challenge by making a jerk sauce with 6 Scotch bennet peppers. Im okay with letting Jacob win, he is after all the professional.

The really amazing thing about the soup was that not only was it hot but it was tasty as well. Yes it made us all cry in the very best way while clutching our beers (mine sorghum from Red Bridge and theirs Founders wet hopped seasonal) but it also had great flavor. The habenaros open up every taste bud you never knew you had to all the other things going in the soup. Citrusy lemon grass, salty fish sauce, herbal cilantro, creamy coconut milk. They all work together to make something amazing.

Were all crazy people who like spice so the heat wasnt a problem for us. If you arent up for that much spice you can put in less peppers or cook some of the heat off of them by frying up the onion puree which will cut the spice a bit. And if the spice is still too much in the finished product you can do what we resorted to and pour it over some brown rice and toss in some paneer to add something to compete with the habenaros.

Spicy Coconut Milk and Mushroom Soup

1 1/2 cups mushrooms, chopped
2 tablespoons oil
2 medium onions, chopped

3tablespoon lemon grass puree
1teaspoon fish sauce

5 cloves of garlic
1-inch piece of ginger, peeled and roughly chopped
5 habenaro peppers, seeded

3 cups coconut milk
6 Cubeb peppercorns, ground (1 teaspoon of regular pepper and a pinch of clove would work fine)
2 1/2 cup chicken stock
3 tablespoons cilantro, chopped (mint or basil will work as well)


In a pot heat oil over medium heat then add mushrooms and one of the chopped onions. Cook until browned. Add lemon grass and fish sauce.

Puree remaining onion, garlic, ginger and habenaros in the food processor. Add in one cup of the coconut milk and puree until you have a paste. If you want to lesson the heat of the soup sauté this puree until the onions are no longer raw before adding to the pot with the mushroom mixture.

To soup pot add remaining 2 cups of coconut milk, peppercorns, and chicken stock and bring to a boil.

Add cilantro and simmer soup for 5 minutes. Serve over brown rice with paneer or tofu to cut spice if needed.

A purely original Jacob Schenk recipe.

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