November 26, 2009
Posted by glutenfreegirl, November 10, 2009 at 2:30 PM
"Millet was first grown in China, where it was revered for thousands of years as one of their five most sacred grains."
[Photograph: Shauna James Ahern]
Millet is the tofu of the grain world.
OK, I know that might not make some of you hungry. Tofu has a bad reputation, just like millet. Some of us associate tofu with that watery block of white goo, sealed in plastic. Unappetizing. Truly good tofu, however, is made fresh that day, still warm, silky on the spoon, and something else entirely than what you have in your head.
The same is true for millet. Where have you seen millet before? For most of you, that's probably in a bag of birdseed. Yep, millet is the small round grain fed to the birds in the park by crazy old ladies. Does that make you want to eat it? Probably not.
How about this? That salad you see up there? That's a chilled millet salad with red peppers and golden raisins, honeycomb tangerines, goat cheese, red leaf lettuce, and prosciutto. Plus, a little apple gastrique.
Millet does not have to be boring.
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Posted by glutenfreegirl, October 27, 2009 at 2:00 PM
[Photograph: Shauna James Ahern]
I grew up in Southern California, which was always sunny, generally pleasant, and filled with people who wanted to be in the movie industry. And, let's face it, a good chunk of the people who lived there were absolutely nuts.
LA was the land of colonics and smoothies, the ever-tan and permanently grinning from facelifts. I remember seeing billboards for plastic surgeons touting breast jobs for teenagers on the side of the freeway. Dr. George Fishbeck fiddled with his bow tie nervously and apologized when the forecast called for rain. And LA is where I first heard of people eating a macrobiotic diet.
One summer, my family and I ended up at a garage sale in Malibu. I have no idea why these people were having a garage sale, when their neighbors down the street had a life-size replica of a TIE fighter on their roof, and everyone had Mercedes and Porsches parked in their garages. But there it was—a garage sale. Listening to the sound of the surf hitting the sand behind the house, we poked through old clothes and slightly scarred furniture. My mother found a standing lamp from the 1920s that she bought for $15. My brother and I found a stack of a single book: The Knowing Nose.
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Posted by glutenfreegirl, October 6, 2009 at 3:30 PM
"Its name is appropriate—this squash is delicate, weighing less than a pound, with thin skin."
My brother and I hunched over our pumpkins, racing to see who could scoop all the seeds out first. After our parents cut the top hunk off the thing, we stuck our arms in as far as they could go to rid our soon-to-be jack-o'-lanterns of unwanted weight. I flicked the stringy mess onto the newspapers scattered on the kitchen floor. From this distance, I'd like to think I regarded the process with imagination, pretending the goo was zombie slime, or something more artful. Mostly, in my mind was: "Ewww. Get this away from me."
We had to forge our way through the flesh to reach the goal: the chance to carve faces into the thick shell. However, I was always disappointed in the outcome, since my mother handed us such flimsy steak knives that they bent when I tried to cut out the eyes.
(I'm not blaming her, since it's all we owned at the time. And now that I've grown up, I know that it was my lack of artistic skill that left the triangle nose slumping to one side, the mouth a ragged patch of teeth.)
A month later, we ate pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving dinner. My brother, even as a child, wanted a quarter of the pie to himself. My mother made the crust, but she swirled the whipped cream out of a can. We loved to squirt it into our mouths after she finished decorating the pie. And as far as I knew, the filling for the pumpkin pie came out of a can too.
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Posted by glutenfreegirl, September 22, 2009 at 3:30 PM
Juniper berries. [Photograph: Shauna James Ahern]
If you had seen my spice cupboard in 2005, you might have laughed.
A half-empty cinnamon bottle, used vigorously during the holiday season, then not touched for months. The same was true for the nutmeg and cloves. I think I may even have owned a squat Pumpkin Pie Spice. Honestly, I don't even know what Italian Seasoning is, but I kept it. Iodized salt. Ground black pepper.
That was it.
Now, the spice drawer in our pull-out pantry is stuffed full of little bags and mismatched glass jars: smoked paprika; gomashio for poached eggs on brown rice; star anise; turmeric; dried lavender; fresh vanilla beans. We still have cinnamon, but it's from Saigon instead of Schilling. Those holiday cookies taste a hell of a lot better now, even if they are gluten-free.
Juniper berries have a clean taste, refreshing, like wind coming off cold mountains.
I really don't think I would have discovered the world of spices without letting go of gluten.
It's too easy to rely on old standards when you think you can eat everything. It was only when an entire world of food was closed to me that I became voraciously interested in every food I could eat.
The other day, my friend Sharon and I walked into World Spice here in Seattle. The mingled smells of cumin and fenugreek, lemongrass and mustard seeds, nigella and sumac made us both stop and smell, smile at each other, then smell again. Honestly, every time I walk into that store, I slow down. I lift lids and breathe in, close them up and wonder what I would cook with that spice, move to the right and lift another lid. It's meditation through inhalation.
At the counter, I asked for two ounces of juniper berries, among other spices and herbs. When we left the store, Sharon said, "What are you going to do with juniper berries? I would never buy those."
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Posted by glutenfreegirl, September 8, 2009 at 7:15 PM
"You might have eaten teff and not known it."
Injera, the spongy Ethiopian bread, is made of teff flour. [Photograph: Robyn Lee]
When people find out I cannot eat gluten, they often say, "Oh, I'm so sorry."
(Not me.)
And the next utterance? "Um, does that mean you are on the Atkins diet?"
Nope. Not even close. Can I eat rice? Yes. Corn? Oh yeah to tortillas. Potatoes? I don't know what I would do without potatoes.
I am not on a low-carb diet. In fact, now that I live gluten-free, I eat more whole grains than ever before. Did you know that many Americans do not eat a single whole grain in a year? Not one. Think about it. How many people grab a toaster waffle for breakfast, a sandwich on white bread for lunch, take-out tacos for dinner? There's a lot of processed wheat in those on-the-run days but not many whole grains.
If I had not been forced to go gluten-free because of my celiac diagnosis, I don't know that I would have ever eaten teff.
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Posted by glutenfreegirl, August 25, 2009 at 2:30 PM
Note: We've offered a small amount of gluten-free recipes on SE in the past but have never had a specific column devoted to the topic. That changes today. This post marks the Serious Eats debut of Shauna James Ahern. You may already know her from her blog, Gluten-Free Girl (one of the most popular gluten-free cooking blogs out there), or her book of the same name. We're pleased to welcome her to the site. Take it away, Shauna!
[Photograph: Shauna James Ahern]
A few weeks ago, on Top Chef Masters, Michael Chiarello quaked at the announcement of a blind taste test. The show's host explained that the chefs would have to guess at foods such as umeboshi plum. Chiarello, who prides himself on his extensive knowledge of Italian cuisine, uttered a load groan. "I don't even know what that is," he admitted in the personal interview.
Really? I've been using umeboshi vinegar (also called ume plum vinegar) for years now, splashing it into stir-fries and adding it to brining liquids for crisp pickled vegetables. Bottles of it sit in the Asian section of most of the grocery stores here in Seattle. I've started to take it for granted.
"After letting go of gluten, I have opened my palate to the entire world's foods."
But when I started to think about ume plum vinegar and why it's in my pantry, I realized how lucky I am.
I can't eat gluten.
You see, when I was diagnosed with celiac disease in 2005, my entire life changed. Told that I could not eat gluten--the elastic protein in wheat, rye, barley, triticale, and spelt--for the rest of my life, I rejoiced. I had been so sick and laid up with malaise for years that I celebrated having an answer. More than that, I saw how lucky I am. Given the choice of diseases and auto-immune disorders I could have, give me the one where I can heal myself solely by eating great food.
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