GF/DF/EF Stuffing

For Christmas Eve we visited friends for dinner. This is usually a major production for me since I often have to cart over an entire cooked meal for us whenever we go out. A number of our friends are excellent cooks and foodies, but terribly attached to certain types of dishes and traditions in a fairly rigid way. I've never quite understood that. Food for me, even before my allergies were discovered, was a bit of an adventure. I often ate the same things, but that was simply because I didn't have time to learn any other way, or when I was a vegetarian, because I thought I was supposed to. I usually preferred something new and exciting, preferably something that was something entirely new and not a "substitute" food.

Anyway, I've never gotten into the "traditional" stuff that goes with celebratory meals (read: super-sweet candied sweet potatoes with stuffing and a big, often overcooked tryptophan-laden bird with sticky, glutenous gravy - no fermented foods and nothing to relieve the heaviness but a bit of raw green salad with bottled dressing,) although I understand that for many folks it is important.

Our hosts decided to go with the old standbys, but bless her heart - she used ghee in the sweet potatoes so that Little Moo could eat them. She made the turkey herself and it was delicious. I think she gave up entirely on making a stuffing that her husband might like and went and found some at Whole Foods, then I suggested that perhaps I could take all of Little Moo's leftover rice bread-ends and make a stuffing for her and anyone else who wanted it. It was a huge winner. Little Moo had two big helpings, and it went great with an amazingly flavored turkey. Here's the recipe, based on the basic Joy of Cooking for a stuffing made separately from a roast:

Rice Bread Stuffing

4 cups lightly toasted or otherwise hard rice bread, cut into small pieces

about 1/4 lb giblets, cooked overnight in chicken soup

1 onion

1 cup chopped mushrooms

1/4 cup chopped celery

1/4 cup chopped parsley

1/4 cup rendered duck fat

1 cup chicken broth

additional fat for top - can be ghee if tolerated

Finely chop separately: giblets, onion, celery, parsley and mushrooms.

Saute onion for 2o minutes or so in duck fat. This is a good time to chop everything else to make the time go by. Add giblets first, then everything else to the pan and saute another 10 minutes or so.

Pour the bread pieces/crumbs into a 9x12" pan. Pour the sauteed mixture over it. Salt and pepper to taste. Mix well. Add more fat if necessary and the cup of broth and mix it in. Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees F for about 20 minutes. Remove foil. If the bread was cut into pieces, you might want to stir and mash it up a bit more if you like a finer grain stuffing. Dot the top with more fat and brown for up to 10 minutes.

What I discovered: when in doubt, add more fat and more broth. :)

My people liked it so much that they had it for Christmas Day breakfast!

Ricebread makes a comeback as birthday cake!

We had a fabulous birthday party - the first one of two - for Rain's 2nd birthday tonight. My mother and I took over the kitchen and sent my dad packing. We had some decent girl-time cooking and baking together, which we don't usually get. Rain's deal was "Rain no pants! No underwear!" So, she was the pantsless baby. Friends of the family I haven't seen in years came. They enjoy exciting new foods, so they were really into the grass-fed buffalo and veggies on rice pasta. (Whew.)

I baked a totally miraculous cake that was gluten-, corn-, soy- and dairy-free. Unlike us, my parents have a great oven, and it actually ROSE. We made a custard from coconut milk, egg yolks and sugar and had tons of fruit with it.

Note: My dad ran out to the store to get vanilla extract. In suburban Phila, there's next to no options for whole foods, so there was one kind of vanilla - McCormacks. I noticed after I let a few bits into the cake that it has CORN SYRUP in it. What the heck, right? Okay. So, not entirely happy with that, but I'm not the elephant man yet, and my child seems to be okay. Anyway, if you don't do corn, don't get McCormacks. I'm sure the recipe would be fine with extra banana and no vanilla, if necessary. Even better. Use a vanilla bean!

This cake was basically the Ricebread recipe from the Allergy Survival Guide with a few twists.

• 1 1/2 c rice flour1/2 c flour mix (1 part rice flour to 1 part tapioca starch)1 tb baking powder
• 1/2 c coconut oil, melted
• almost 1/2 c maple syrup
• about 1/4 of a soft banana, mashed
• 1 whole egg + one yolk, beaten
• about 1/2 ts vanilla extract. (Stopped short when I realized it had corn syrup in it! I'm sure it would be tasty with 1 whole ts, or even a vanilla bean...)
  
• 9" round pan. Ours was Pyrex glass and worked fantastically.
  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Blend dry ingredients well. Blend wet ingredients: Put mashed banana into a cup measure and fill up the rest of the way with maple syrup to 1/2 cup line. Blend with oil, egg, vanilla. Add wet ingredients minus the water to dry. Add water at the end. Mix well

Pour into a greased pan (we used coconut oil) and bake for about 45 minutes.

See next entry for tasty coconut milk custard recipe...