No Gluten, No Problem

Bagel Dogs

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:31:00 +0000

Back when Kelli and I first started dating, in early 2003, we did our fair share of camping and rock climbing on the weekends. There was nothing like spending the day up on the cliff, and then retiring to a tent and campfire in the forest later that evening. It was then that she introduced me to hot dogs wrapped in dough. Not pigs in a blanket. We're talking full-on hot dogs encased in doughy goodness.

We'd skewer them lengthwise onto long sticks and patiently hold them over the fire, rotating them every so often to ensure even browning on all sides. Before wrapping her hot dog in dough, Kelli would even partially split the dog down the middle and fill it with a bit of cheese.

Fast forward to late 2004. By then we'd moved to Boulder, Colorado. And wouldn't you know it? A local bagel shop offered bagel dogs. A hot dog, wrapped in bagel-like dough, cooked to golden brown. Divine. For my money, I'll take a bagel dog—campfire cooked or not—over a plain white hot dog bun any day.

When it came time to trim our Christmas tree earlier this month, Kelli had the brilliant idea to make bagel dogs as part of our hors d'ouerves. Our tree trimming party with drinks and appetizers has been a tradition for as long as we've been together. In many years, pigs in a blanket makes an appearance on the menu. It's one of the only times of the year when we make them, and I always look forward to it.

Hot dogs—full sized or mini—are one of my guilty pleasures. (Ask my college roommates about how I'd eat my way through a pack of 8 or 10 hot dogs, plus buns, in the course of a single evening pulling an all-nighter...) To this day, as healthy as I often try to eat, I can't resist a good hot dog. For that reason we don't keep them in the fridge too often. If I know they're there, I'll want to go and eat them. I might be addicted.

All of that said, when we made these bagel dogs for our tree trimming party they totally hit the spot. The girls loved them. Kelli loved them. And I especially loved them. And the best part is, they're super simple to make. Choose your favorite hot dog. Add a basic pizza dough recipe. Form the bagel dogs and bake them. Bada bing, bada boom. Done.

Bagel Dogs
Makes 4

For the pizza dough
175g warm water (3/4 cup)
1 tbsp honey (or sugar)
2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
1 tbsp olive oil
175g Artisan Gluten-Free Flour Blend (about 1 1/3 cups plus 1 heaping tbsp)
1 tsp xanthan gum
1 tsp salt

4 GF hot dogs (we used turkey dogs, but take your pick!)
Olive oil

Steps
1. Preheat the oven to 350 deg F.
2. Combine the warm water, sugar, and yeast. Give the yeast about 5 minutes to really activate.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together the flour, xanthan gum, and salt.
4. Add the olive oil to the yeast mixture. Then add the dry ingredients. Mix well to form a dough ball. Drizzle lightly with olive oil and roll around to coat evenly on all sides.
5. Divide the dough evenly into 4 pieces. Wrap each hot dog in a piece of dough, and place on a lightly greased cookie sheet or baking pan.
6. For a puffier dough, give it 20 or more minutes to rise. If you're impatient, as we were this time around, pop them strain into the oven.
7. Bake for 20 minutes, turning after 15 minutes or so to help brown evenly.

Enjoy!

This recipe is: gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, peanut-free, tree-nut-free, fish-free, shellfish-free.

Note: To make this recipe refined-sugar-free, use honey to activate the yeast.

- Pete

Gluten-Free Cupcakes (Elana Amsterdam)

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 13:39:00 +0000

It's another week, which means another cookbook review here at No Gluten, No Problem. (There appears to be no end in sight, as we have at least four more books in the queue following today's post!)

Yesterday was National Cupcake Day, and so today we're focusing on Gluten-Free Cupcakes by Elana Amsterdam. She's the popular blogger over at Elana's Pantry. We crossed paths with Elana a few years back, when we were both presenters at the Gluten-Free Culinary Summit in Denver, and would carpool to and from Boulder County, where we both lived at the time. (Elana still does. We obviously don't since we're in New York now.)

Today's write-up is a bit different than ones we've done in recent weeks. We're recusing ourselves from a formal review. As far as I can tell, there are only two cookbooks on the market dedicated solely to gluten-free cupcakes: Elana's and ours (Artisanal Gluten-Free Cupcakes). Not only that, but the books coincidentally were officially released within 5 weeks of each other earlier this year, and both contain recipes for 50 cupcakes. Did we just enter the gluten-free cupcake Twilight Zone?

Clearly, there'd be a bit of a conflict of interest. No matter how objective we might try to be—or even claim to be—I think some readers would quite reasonably question whether we had any bias in writing the review. If we wrote a review we couldn't fault anyone for wondering if there was a bit of "Buy our cookbook! It's great!" in there, whether we said it literally or if it was hidden between the lines. So we're not going to go there.

But we didn't want to flat out ignore Elana or her beautiful book. Elana and us bring different perspectives to gluten-free baking. I like to think of our approaches as complementary. If you're a fan of Elana, her blog, and her previous cookbook, you'll likely love her cupcake book. Ditto for us—if you like this blog, and our previous cookbook, you'll likely love our cupcake book, too.

We realize that, for most kitchens, one cookbook on gluten-free cupcakes is enough. Unless you're an obsessive cookbook collector (or a really big fan of cupcakes), you're not going to buy both books. For those of you wondering, "What's the difference between them?" we thought we'd offer a side-by-side comparison, a tale of the tape. (Or in this case, a tale of the cake...)

Here's how the books size up:

Title	Gluten-Free Cupcakes	Artisanal Gluten-Free Cupcakes

Author	Elana Amsterdam	Kelli and Peter Bronski

# Cupcakes	50	50

# Frostings	14	33

# Photos	16 pics of 20 cupcakes, plus a few "collages"	50 pics of 50 cupcakes, plus some step-by-step sequences

Flours Used	Almond and Coconut	Artisan Gluten-Free Flour Blend (whole grain brown rice flour, whole grain sorghum flour, cornstarch, potato starch, potato flour, xanthan gum)

Sweetener	Agave nectar, Some stevia	Sugar, plus appendix with instructions for refined-sugar-free with agave or brown rice syrup

Other diets?	Many dairy-free recipes, Some vegan	Appendix with detailed ingredient subs for dairy-free, egg-free, and vegan

Cupcake categories	classic; chocolate; fruity; warm and spiced; special occasion; savory treats; frostings, fillings and toppings	classics; fruity; nutty; chocoholic; sweet surprises; old faithfuls; extraordinary

Classic flavors in both	chocolate, vanilla, red velvet, mocha, chocolate peanut butter, banana split, pina colada, pumpkin spice, German chocolate cake

Unique flavors	ice cream cone, savory muffins (i.e. scallion goat cheese), fallen chocolate souffle, vanilla fig, orange rosemary	strawberry shortcake, hazelnutty, s'mores, caramel apple pie, jelly donut, fruit tart, snickerdoodle, cannoli, tiramisu, poached pearfection

And so there you have it. Happy National Cupcake Day! (One day late...)

- Pete

Almond Chocolate Brownie Swirl Cake

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 17:38:00 +0000

Whew! What a whirlwind this time of year is. The run-up to the holidays, while fun, can get insane. Thanks to the coincidental timing of birthdays, I feel like that's especially true in the Bronski household. In the span of six short weeks, we have: my birthday, Thanksgiving, Kelli's birthday, St. Nicholas Day, Marin's birthday, St. Lucia Day, Christmas, and New Year's.

On top of it all, this year Kelli and I have been busy putting final touches on the 2nd edition of Artisanal Gluten-Free Cooking, and I've been additionally swamped cranking through another book project due just after the New Year (as in...due January 2, 2012!). Oh, and like many of you—workers, and parents, and working parents alike—there's that whole "day job" thing. Thank goodness we have a tropical vacation planned for the second week of January. We're going to need it!

When it came time to celebrate Kelli's birthday, I asked her what she wanted for dinner, and what kind of cake she'd like. For dessert, she demured, saying I was too busy to worry about that sort of thing. If I did anything at all, she just wanted some nice brownies. I couldn't let that happen.

With Marin as my sidekick and kitchen helper, I decided to combine Kelli's request—brownies—with her favorite cake flavor—almond. I based today's recipe off the Almond Cake and Brownie recipes in the 1st edition of Artisanal Gluten-Free Cooking, but I adjusted ratios and ingredient quantities so that the yield of the two batters matched more closely, had similar texture, and was convenient to measure.

The result was superb. Great texture—moist and chewy. When the cake was still warm from the oven, the chocolate flavor was dominant. As the cake cooled, the almond became more and more pronounced, especially on the morning of the day after, when Kelli and I agreed the flavors had achieved full harmony. Try it for yourself and see!

Almond Chocolate Brownie Swirl Cake
Makes one 9x9-inch pan

Almond Cake Ingredients
5 oz GF almond paste
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, softened
1/3 cup (41 g) Artisan Gluten-Free Flour Blend

Chocolate Brownie Ingredients
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter
1/2 oz baking chocolate
1 1/2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 egg
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 tsp GF vanilla extract
1/4 cup (31 g) Artisan Gluten-Free Flour Blend

Steps
1. Grease a 9x9" baking pan, sprinkle with flour, and shake out any excess. Preheat your oven to 350 deg F.
2. Start by making the almond cake batter: In a stand mixer, combine the almond paste and sugar until well mixed.
3. Add half the eggs, then the softened butter, then the rest of the eggs.
4. Add the flour and mix well, just enough to fully combine. Pour into the prepared pan and spread into an even layer.
5. Continue by making the chocolate brownie batter: Melt the butter, chocolate, and cocoa together in saucepan on the stovetop.
6. Remove from the heat, stir in the eggs, sugar, and vanilla and mix until smooth.
7. Stir in the flour until combined. Spread over the almond cake batter in a second even layer.
8. Use a knife, the handle of a spoon, whatever, to swirl the batters together. There's nothing scientific about this part...have at it!.
5. Bake for 30 min, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.

Enjoy!

This recipe is: gluten-free, peanut-free, fish-free, shellfish-free.

- Pete

Forlini's, New York City

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 17:33:00 +0000

A little over two weeks ago—on Friday, November 25—we did the unthinkable. We went into Manhattan on Black Friday. We'd just hosted 17 people, mostly family, for Thanksgiving the day before. We all thought it'd be fun to keep the party going and head into New York City the day after. Soon, a plan came together... We'd start at the American Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side, and eventually work our way downtown to Little Italy for dinner later that night.

If you know anything about New York's Little Italy, you know that the "happening" place is Mulberry Street (in the photo above). It can be something of a crazy scene. There's one restaurant after another. Some offer authentic Italian-American food. Many others, however, feed into the tourist mentality and offer a caricature of Italian-American cuisine and culture. People known as "wranglers" stand out in front of each restaurant, trying to lure you in, competing for your business.

As one of the members of our group with the strictest dietary needs, the task of finding an Italian restaurant that offered a gluten-free menu wandered its way onto my shoulders. I searched high and low, exploring options. But my gut instinct kept bringing me back to one: Forlini's.

It had a lot of great reviews on many of the commonly searched websites (TripAdvisor, Urban Spoon, Yelp, etc.). The New York Times noted that it does a popular lunch business with high-powered judges and lawyers. (Forlini's is just a few blocks from the major courthouses...) The restaurant didn't have a website (they do have a phone: 212.349.6779). And, it was located on Baxter Street, south of Canal Street, which technically puts it in Chinatown, not Little Italy.

To me all of this boiled down to one hopeful conclusion: a place where we could grab authentic Italian-American eats away from the Mulberry Street scene. But did they offer gluten-free menu items? I'd read rumors of such. A quick call to the restaurant confirmed it: yes they did. We made a reservation for 6:00pm.

At Forlini's, "Little Joe"—manager Joe Derek—gave me the story. They'd started offering gluten-free versions of their foods about one and a half years ago, and the move has proven very popular. Forlini's does it right...they have separate pots, separate pans, and separate pasta water for the gluten-free foods. There's gluten-free rice pasta. And they use crushed gluten-free Rice Chex cereal to bread menu items such as the chicken parmigiana. The only thing they didn't have was a GF bread option, which would have been a nice way to round out the offerings.

We ordered three gluten-free versions of Forlini's menu staples: chicken marsala, chicken piacentina, and chicken parmigiana. At $15-$16 each, all three of our entrees were very reasonably priced. The chicken marsala was great. The chicken piacentina—with cheese, eggplant, and prosciutto—was excellent. And the chicken parmigiana was sublime. You'd be hard-pressed to tell that the breading on the chicken cutlet was actually crushed gluten-free rice cereal. The melted, lightly browned mozzarella and red sauce were in great balance.

The entrees each came with a side of angel hair gluten-free rice pasta tossed in the house red sauce. Loved it.

The non-gluten-free diners among us also complimented the food. One said the baked ziti was good. Another raved about the veal parmigiana.

We left at the end of the night feeling very satisfied. Forlini's is not a fancy place, nor a hole-in-the-wall restaurant. It's exactly what I expected—and hoped—it would be... a no frills, give-it-to-me-straight restaurant that offers up the classic Italian-American red sauce food experience. If you're looking for that experience, done gluten-free, don't overlook easy to miss Forlini's. It's worth finding. I know I'll be back.

Later that night, as Kelli, the girls, and I strolled Mulberry and popped into one restaurant for strawberry gelato (for the kids) and a glass of Montepulciano (for the 'rents), I was already planning my return.

- Pete

125 Gluten-Free Vegetarian Recipes

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 12:42:00 +0000

Our review-one-cookbook-per-week extravaganza continues this week with Carol Fenster's 125 Gluten-Free Vegetarian Recipes. If you've poked around the gluten-free world even just a little bit, you've almost certainly come across Carol. She's about as big of a household name as you get in the gluten-free community. Teaching cooking classes, appearing at conferences, publishing popular cookbooks (including 1,000 Gluten-Free Recipes and 100 Best Gluten-Free Recipes). 125 Gluten-Free Vegetarian Recipes is her latest offering.

What's so intriguing about this book is that Carol is an omnivore. She eats meat, but has written a vegetarian cookbook. We immediately connected with Carol's perspective. We're an omnivorous household, but one that—as of late—has been trying to eat smaller portions of meat, and eating meat less frequently. We purposefully try to incorporate vegetarian meals into our weekly food planning, and hoped that Carol's new book would provide inspiration. (Unfortunately, the book contains no photos, so our inspiration was based solely on the titles of the dishes and their descriptions.)

The book has many divisions. For example, a section on Main Dishes is subdivided into pastas, breads (bread salad, bread pudding, pizza), polenta, stuffed with rice, rice on the bottom, casseroles, beans and lentils, and grains. We did find a few idiosyncrasies here or there...for instance, the Beans and Lentils subsection of the Main Dishes contains 6 recipes, none of which call for lentils.

Other major sections of the book include Vegetables, Soups and Stews, Appetizers, Breads, Breakfast, and Desserts. The inclusion of sections such as desserts (brownies, cookies) and breakfasts (waffles, pancakes) caught us off guard. We don't normally think about vegetarian desserts, or vegetarian pancakes or waffles, because they tend to be so anyway. Ditto for the inclusion of recipes such as Bistro French Fries. Then again, they all are vegetarian recipes, so why not?

All of the recipes appear quite manageable. Nothing is overly complicated. A handful of recipes, in fact, perhaps verged on the too simple. Such as Parsley Buttered Pasta, which contains nothing but pasta, butter, and parsley, plus salt to taste. (This is not a criticism. We're "guilty" of the same thing in our Artisanal Gluten-Free Cooking, which—in addition to more complex offerings—similarly contains a handful of super-simple recipes, such as our Grilled Asparagus, with olive oil, salt, pepper, and garlic powder, or our Jasmine Rice, which uses just rice, water, olive oil, and salt.)

If you know Carol's work, you know that she has a flair for catering to multiple palates. I remember several years ago, when Kelli and I and Carol were presenters at the Gluten-Free Culinary Summit in Denver, Colorado. Carol demonstrated a recipe—a bread or muffin, I believe—that she called her Little Black Dress, a go-to piece that could be accessorized in myriad different ways. The same is true of the some of the recipes in 125 Gluten-Free Vegetarian Recipes. Case in point: Carol's Thai Noodle Bowl. It reminded us of our own Asian-Inspired Noodle Bowl. The sauce had classic flavors—soy, ginger, garlic, sesame—and we used her recipe, combined with ingredients we had on hand in the house, to make a quick, easy, delicious lunch earlier this week. Her Thai Noodle Bowl was our Little Black Dress, that we fancied up as needed.

A section on grain salads—using wild rice, quinoa, amaranth, millet, sorghum—was compelling.

For this review, however, we felt pulled toward the book's savory vegetarian entrees. We made a pasta dish, a falafel, a pizza, and a soup. And so, without further ado, on to the recipes...

For a pasta dish, we made Tofu Stroganoff. It had been a long time since either of us had had a stroganoff, vegetarian or otherwise. Gluten-free brown rice pasta, mushrooms, and tofu form the base of this dish, pulled together by a unique sauce. With cumin, mustard, GF soy sauce, tomato paste, dill, and sour cream, it was unlike any stroganoff we've ever had. It was rich and creamy, but the flavor combinations left us scratching our head. For us, it was not a successful dish.

That said, our girls loved this recipe. They devoured the food on their plates. If we would have let them, they would have licked their plates clean.

Perhaps this says something about the power of expectation. Kelli and I each had a very particular idea of stroganoff in our minds. When this dish didn't match our pre-determined expectation, our taste buds revolted. But our girls, free from any expectation, ate this dish on its own merits. And by that measure, they voted with their mouths, showing hearty approval.

Next up was a classic Falafel. We hardly consider ourselves falafel experts, and from what we've read, it can be difficult and finicky to make well. It certainly was for us. A first attempt disintegrated while we tried to fry it in a pan, leaving us with a pan filled with lots of tiny falafel bits swimming in oil. A second time around, we baked our falafels to avoid the previous disaster. They had good flavor, though in part because of the baking, were dry and crumbly. The fried falafel bits had better flavor. If we could learn the knack of working with falafel dough, Carol's pan-fried falafel patties would be great.

Carol's recipe for Pizza followed. In short, this one was a real winner, though we tweaked her recipe in a few ways to get it there. Carol's pizza sauce recipe calls for a can of tomato sauce, which you amend with some dried herbs, salt, and other goodies. However, because you're using a store-bought brand of tomato sauce as a base, your pizza sauce's sodium content is at the mercy of the tomato sauce base. The tomato sauce we bought happened to have plenty of salt on its own, so we omitted the extra salt called for in Carol's recipe. Using it would have resulted in a too-salty sauce.

The other challenge we had was the consistency of the dough. Prepared according to the recipe, it was way too wet. Kelli had to add more than half a cup of extra flour to get it to a workable consistency as described in the recipe. That's a lot of extra flour. Once Kelli made that tweak, however, this pizza crust was magic.

It browned nicely and had very good flavor. It was crunchy and cracker-like in places, with a complementary chewiness throughout. You could easily hold a slice in your hand. Fork and knife not needed here. We both agreed that Carol's pizza crust was excellent, and the resulting pizza was very good.

Lastly we made the Thai Corn Chowder. This is an imaginative dish. It takes some classic Thai ingredients and flavors—basil, mint, cilantro, lime, coconut—and melds them with a potato-and-corn chowder. The cilantro came through strongest of the herbs, while the basil was not very present. For me, the mint coupled with red pepper flakes in the recipe resulted in a pleasant Icy Hot juxtaposition of sensations in the mouth. (Kelli didn't get that same sense...)

We reduced our chowder (a step not called for in the recipe) to intensify the flavors, and added a touch of soy sauce for depth of flavor and salt. The lime (which is called for in the recipe) greatly brightened the flavors. Kelli and I agreed that full fat coconut milk—as opposed to the recipe's light coconut milk—would give better richness of flavor.

Overall, this was a very successful dish that we enjoyed greatly.

Conclusion

In the interest of trying to quantify our subjective experience (as we did for The Gluten-Free Asian Kitchen and Simply Sugar and Gluten-Free), we're using a five star ratings scale, with points earned as follows:

Layout and design = up to 1 star
Is the book appealing to the eye? Intuitive to navigate? Sensibly organized?

Photos = up to 1 star
Are there photos? Are they in color? How many photos are there? Are they good photos?

Recipe quality = up to 2 stars
Most importantly, how good is the food? Are recipes easy to follow? Do they deliver as promised?

Overall impression = up to 1 star
How well does the book achieve its vision?

And so, how does 125 Gluten-Free Vegetarian Recipes rate?

Layout and Design: 0.75 stars
Photos: 0 stars
Recipe Quality: 1.25 stars
Overall Impression: 0.75 stars
Rating: 2.75 out of 5 stars

As we've noted with other photo-less cookbooks, the addition of pictures would be a great enhancement that would boost its quantitative star rating. The book's many sections, each with many more subsections, sometimes made navigating the recipes less than intuitive. Some recipes presented challenges (flavor on the stroganoff, texture on the falafel). Other recipes were very successful (pizza and Thai corn chowder). We found that the recipes were most successful when we made modifications...either to the preparation steps and/or the ingredients. At the end of the day, though, Carol has delivered another solid cookbook. Gluten-free vegetarians will find much to love in this book, and if—like us—you're an omnivore looking for vegetarian inspiration, Carol's book is a good resource.

- Pete

Gluten-Free Ratio Rally: Belgian Speculaas Cookies

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 04:54:00 +0000

This month's Ratio Rally is a special and timely one for us. The theme is cookies, and yesterday was St. Nicholas Day, the Belgian Christmas. My grandmother was Belgian, and the holiday has always been an important one in the Bronski household. Every holiday season, you'll find pairs of wooden clogs under our Christmas tree, and on the morning of St. Nicholas Day, those shoes get filled with gold-wrapped chocolate coins in keeping with tradition.

So it was again this year. Now that we have young girls, it's been wonderful passing along the tradition to them, too. (For now, I think the thing they were most excited about with this holiday was the novelty of eating chocolate at 8 o'clock in the morning...)

Another hallmark of the Belgian St. Nicholas Day is the speculaas cookie. It's akin to a spicy gingerbread cookie, and is sometimes pressed or stamped with a wooden mold that evokes scenes from everyday life in Belgium and the Netherlands. Our recipe—which we share in Artisanal Gluten-Free Cooking—dates to the 19th century, and comes direct from my great-great-grandmother.

Usually, we cut the dough into simple shapes and bake it. But for today's Ratio Rally, we wanted to "step up" our game and use our wooden mold to make the cookies just as you might find them over in Antwerp or Brugge, where some of my relatives still live. To do that, we made some minor modifications to the recipe—in how you prep the dough, as well as with the oven temperature and bake time.

For this recipe, our ratio of flour to butter to sugar worked out almost exactly to 5:3:3 (plus a whole bunch of spices thrown in for good measure).

Belgian Speculaas Cookies

Ingredients
375g Artisan Gluten-Free Flour Blend (3 cups)
2 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp GF baking powder
2 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground nutmeg
1 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp salt
225g salted butter (2 sticks)
233g packed brown sugar (1 cup)
1 tsp GF almond extract
2 tbsp rum or cognac

Steps
1. Sift together the flour, xanthan gum, baking powder, spices, and salt. Set aside.
2. Cream the butter and sugar in a mixer until fluffy. Add the almond extract.
3. Add the dry ingredients and mix until incorporated. The batter will be very crumbly.
4. Add the rum to form a paste-like dough. Shape the dough into a log, wrap in plastic wrap, and refrigerate.
5. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 400 deg F. Butter cookie sheets.
6. Remove the dough from the fridge, and let warm until it becomes workable.
7. Cut the dough into manageable sections, and roll out each piece into a thick sheet between two pieces of plastic wrap.
8. Remove the top piece of plastic wrap, then use the plastic wrap on the underside to flip the sheet of dough over onto the prepared cookie sheet.
9. Press your mold into the dough, and cut away any excess. Dough scraps can be combined and re-rolled.
10. Bake for 12 minutes.

Enjoy!

This recipe is: gluten-free, egg-free, peanut-free, tree-nut-free, fish-free, shellfish-free, soy-free.

Note: We usually use dark brown sugar, though for today's recipe, we used light brown sugar. Also, if you don't have a speculaas mold (but seriously, who doesn't these days!?), simply cut the log of dough into quarter-inch-thick slices and bake.

Finally, be sure to visit Caroline over at The G-Spot Revolution. She's hosting this month's Ratio Rally, and there are lots of other tasty cookies to check out, including many seasonal ones that'll be great for holiday parties.

- Pete

Mozzarelli's, New York City

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 13:16:00 +0000

We recently passed the one year anniversary of our relocation from Boulder, Colorado to New York's Hudson Valley. My how time flies! Now that we're living just an hour and a half north of "the city," we're trying to take advantage of our proximity to the Big Apple.

So it was that one recent weekend (I can't believe it was a full month ago already) we met up with Amie V. of The Healthy Apple to stroll the Union Square Greenmarket and grab lunch nearby. We had a delightful time, and after saying goodbye to Amie, started making our way back to our car.

That's when friends from Connecticut called to say they were headed into the city on the train, and would be arriving at Grand Central. Quick change of plans: we grabbed our Chariot—a double-wide jogging stroller / bike trailer—from the trunk of the car, loaded up the girls, and started walking north to meet up with those friends.

Along the way, we stumbled upon Mozzarelli's. From what we'd heard, it was something of an institution among New York's gluten-free community. The gluten-free menu boasts everything from pizza by the slice, to baked ziti and penne alfredo, to biscotti chocolate chip cookies and tiramisu brownies. Make no doubt about it—they're doing some great things, and they know what they're doing in terms of minimizing the potential for cross-contamination. (The owners' niece was diagnosed with celiac disease in 2003, so they take it seriously...)

Of course, we couldn't resist popping in to grab a slice. (Actually, by this time both girls had fallen asleep in the Chariot, so Kelli stayed outside with them while I went in to order a slice and come back out, but let's not split hairs...)

Before I tell you what we thought of their pizza, I should offer a disclaimer of sorts. I'm a Long Island native. I grew up eating not just New York-style thin crust pizza, but actual, authentic, dyed-in-the-wool New York thin crust pizza. Kelli hails from the Finger Lakes region of New York, but she's been around my side of the family enough to be an honorary downstate New Yorker, too. We both had the same reaction to the pizza.

We were disappointed. The crust—made from a blend of rice and bean flours, plus a few gums—was somewhat light and airy, as Mozzarelli's proclaims, but it was also mealy and broke apart in the mouth, rather than being chewy. The cheese was fine, but the tomato sauce was forgettable, with a flavor closer to plain tomato paste than to the pizza sauces we're accustomed to. At $4 per slice ($5 with toppings) we expected better. Sigh.

At the end of the day, I'm left feeling conflicted. On the one hand, I applaud Mozzarelli's for offering such a varied gluten-free menu at a pizza-by-the-slice joint. They do it well, and they do it with care for cross-contamination. Do I think it's great to be walking the streets of New York City, and to be able to pop in to a place like this and order a slice? Absolutely, without question.

On the other hand, a part of me feels like—to grossly generalize—we, the gluten-free community, can sometimes be placated too easily. If a restaurant offers genuinely gluten-free food, with care to prevent cross-contamination, we rightly praise them and say bravo. There's an appropriate posture of gratitude. But the applause often comes without regard for the quality of the food. If it's gluten-free, it's good enough. Right? Not any more. Standards in gluten-free foods are rising rapidly these days, and I'd love to see Mozzarelli's revamp its pizza crust recipe to give the Big Apple's gluten-free community more of the chewy-meets-crispy thin crust the rest of New York is eating.

But maybe that's just me. Have you eaten gluten-free pizza at Mozzarelli's? If so, please leave a comment and let us know what you think!

- Pete

Daddy's Hard Cider

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 12:55:00 +0000

Just over one month ago we posted a recipe for simple, easy home-brewed hard cider. After two weeks of fermentation, and another two weeks of bottle conditioning, we're now ready to report on the results!

I am amazed at how thoroughly the champagne yeast converted the apple sugars into carbon dioxide and alcohol. When I took hydrometer readings to confirm that the cider was ready for bottling, I was shocked. The cider had fermented to bone-dry status. There was basically zero residual sugar left behind. The result is a cider with about 7% alcohol by volume.

Because this cider is very dry, it had a mild tartness to it from the apples. (Most commercial ciders are back-sweetened to balance out this effect.) With the benefit of just two weeks (so far) of bottle conditioning, however, the flavors have matured wonderfully. It's nicely carbonated, the tartness has dialed back, and a crisp, clean apple flavor (with subtle pear notes) has come forward.

We're enjoying the results so much that we're planning to brew another larger batch before apple season is truly over. Whether you're an experienced home brewer, or new to the process, this is a great recipe to try.

- Pete

P.S. As is tradition with many home brewers, we name each batch of our brew. This time around, we gave Marin the honors of naming the batch, and she decided to call it like she sees it: "Daddy's hard cider."

Simply Sugar and Gluten-Free

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 14:50:00 +0000

Today marks Week Two of our gluten-free cookbook review blitz. (If you missed last week, check out our review of Laura B. Russell's fabulous The Gluten-Free Asian Kitchen.) This week we focus on Amy Green's Simply Sugar and Gluten-Free.

Amy is the founder of a popular blog of the same name. She's also the organizer of the upcoming Nourished conference, about food blogging and publishing, scheduled for April 2012 in Chicago (I'll be a panelist at the event). Nourished immediately precedes the Gluten & Allergen Free Expo (where Kelli and I will be teaching a Breads class).

A hallmark of Amy's recipes is that they are both gluten-free and refined-sugar-free. She uses some Stevia, but principally coconut palm sugar and agave nectar.

Simply Sugar and Gluten-Free is divided into major sections of recipes: starters and snacks; spreads and condiments; simple soups; salads; main dishes; side dishes; cookies and bars; cobblers, crisps and pies; cupcakes and cakes; fast frostings; mousses, puddings and custards; and frozen desserts. In other words, she offers up wide-ranging cuisine.

In general, her recipes have inspiring combinations of flavors. This is especially true of the naturally gluten-free entrees. Many recipes are also accompanied by handy "Quick Tips" that aid in the preparation of the dish.

One thing that became immediately apparent to us is that, by incorporating lots of fruits and vegetables (including into baked goods), and by using alternatives to refined sugar, Amy's is a very healthful way of cooking.

Admittedly, we did have difficulty finding some specialty ingredients at our local stores. After trips to five stores—3 major supermarkets and 2 natural foods stores—we still didn't find some things we needed, such as quinoa flakes that we wanted to use to make the book's apple spice muffins. Also, recipes are written in paragraph form, rather than as numbered instructions. We sometimes had to take a moment to re-find our place in a recipe. Other than the cover, the book contains no photos.

But on to the food...

First up we made the chocolate black bean brownies. Amy's book also contains a more conventional brownie recipe, but we were curious to try this unique alternative. The recipe contains no flour, and if you're coming in with "traditional brownie" expectations, prepare to be surprised! The consistency, texture, and flavor were all different. We thought of it more as a tasty chocolate bar than as a brownie. Banana, used in the recipe, comes through, as does a very mild sourness from yogurt. You'd never know there were black beans in it, however. The next morning, the first thing our girls asked for was more of these brownies. With how healthy they are (with bananas, beans, and just a bit of agave and stevia), we didn't hesitate to say "sure."

Next up we made the tomato, pesto, and fresh mozzarella socca pizza. The socca crust is made with garbanzo bean flour, whipped up as a liquid batter in a blender, and then poured into an oven-heated skillet. (Her recipe called for a cast iron skillet, which we don't have, so we used a heavy-duty Calphalon skillet of the same size.) Very unique. Amy describes it as a modified flatbread.

As a flatbread, it was very successful. As a pizza crust, for us it was less so. With the moisture from the fresh tomatoes and fresh mozzarella, the crust became very soggy, to the point of almost falling apart on us. Par-baking the crust for longer, and using toppings with less water moisture, might help that.

We did absolutely love the flavor combo. In some regards, it was reminiscent of a margherita pizza, with fresh mozzarella, fresh tomato, and basil. But instead of basil leaves, Amy makes brilliant use of basil pesto as a sauce for the pizza. Prosciutto, meanwhile, provides a pleasant light saltiness.

Then came blueberry yogurt crumb cake. The coconut palm sugar gave the crumb topping great flavor. (In fact, there's none left on our remaining cake because the girls ate all of the topping right off the top...) The cake was moist, and a little dense but not overly so. The taste of bean flour—part of Amy's Basic Flour Blend—came through strongly. As a matter of personal preference, we don't use much bean flours in our baking, but Amy notes that you can substitute brown rice flour for bean flour in her blend to change the flavor profile.

Finally, we made the carob chip cookies. It was pretty close to a standard chocolate chip cookie recipe, though a little thick. An initial batch remained more as slightly mounded cookies. For a second batch, we pressed the dough balls flatter, resulting in more traditional cookie shape. The cookies had less overt bean flavor than did the crumb cake, and have a cake-y cookie texture, as opposed to a chewy cookie texture.

Conclusion

In the interest of trying to quantify our subjective experience (as we did for The Gluten-Free Asian Kitchen), we're using a five star ratings scale, with points earned as follows:

Layout and design = up to 1 star
Is the book appealing to the eye? Intuitive to navigate? Sensibly organized?

Photos = up to 1 star
Are there photos? Are they in color? How many photos are there? Are they good photos?

Recipe quality = up to 2 stars
Most importantly, how good is the food? Are recipes easy to follow? Do they deliver as promised?

Overall impression = up to 1 star
How well does the book achieve its vision?

And so, how does Simply Sugar and Gluten-Free rate?

Layout and Design: 1 star
Photos: 0 stars
Recipe Quality: 1 star
Overall Impression: 1 star
Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

If you're looking for a cookbook that serves up recipes that are both gluten-free and refined-sugar-free, Amy delivers. She does so with many inspiring flavor combinations.

For this review, we specifically chose baking recipes from several sections of the book. We did have some challenges with the baking recipes—collecting required ingredients, executing steps, some unexpected flavors and textures. The addition of photos would be a great enhancement, and pump up the book's quantitative star rating...potentially to 4 out of 5 stars.

Meanwhile, we're very excited to try many of Amy's naturally gluten-free savory dishes, which have us drooling in anticipation.

- Pete

The Gluten-Free Asian Kitchen

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 14:45:00 +0000

We're just one day away from Thanksgiving! Apart from all of the wonderfulness that it entails, this means that we're also two days away from Black Friday and the official start to the holiday season. Maybe you're looking for gifts for family or friends. Maybe you're hosting dinner parties, or holiday meals, and are looking for new recipes to jazz up your kitchen and dinner table. Well, today we're kicking off a blitzkrieg of cookbook reviews. And we're doing it in style, with The Gluten-Free Asian Kitchen, by Laura B. Russell.

Russell is a former associate editor at Food & Wine cookbooks, the "Gluten Freedom" columnist for the Oregonian, a frequent contributor to Prevention, and a gluten-free blogger. The Gluten-Free Asian Kitchen is her debut as a cookbook author. The book was released earlier this year by Ten Speed Press.

It includes more than 120 diverse recipes. Those recipes are divided into sections: sauces and stocks, skewers and snacks, dumplings and savory pancakes, noodles, rice, vegetables and tofu, seafood, poultry, meat, sips and sweets. Approximately every third recipe has a full page color photo. The photos - by photographer Leo Gong - are gorgeous. The layout and photography combine to make this one of the more visually stunning gluten-free cookbooks we've seen.

As Russell notes in the book's introductory section, it includes a range of recipes - those that are naturally gluten-free, those that are GF with simple ingredient swaps (i.e. tamari wheat-free soy sauce for conventional soy sauce), and more elaborate workarounds. The introductory material also includes an extremely valuable section that defines Asian ingredients, some of which may not be familiar to American cooks. Plus, Russell lists their probable gluten-free status (always, usually, sometimes, rarely, never), and lists product manufacturers for GF versions. She also notes whether you're likely to find the ingredient in a grocery store, natural foods store, or specialty Asian market. It makes for an incredibly comprehensive resource.

Throughout the book recipes that call for an ingredient that may or may not be GF are highlighted in red, with a "GF" icon next to it. It's an elegant approach to reminding readers when to be extra vigilant, and one from which other gluten-free cookbook authors could take a lesson.

We started off by making the book's cover recipe, Gingery Pork Pot Stickers. The cover photo immediately reminded us of a food vender, Sister's Pantry, we'd frequent at the Boulder Farmers Market. They sold amazing dumplings, but alas, they weren't gluten-free, and so we hadn't had a dumpling - gluten-free or otherwise - since before 2007 when we switched to the gluten-free diet.

Russell's pot stickers were time consuming and labor intensive to make. This is not a criticism, just a fact of life. We find that often, the more elaborate gluten-free recipes (such as our own tortellini) involve an investment of time and energy. It's the price of admission. Having tasted Russell's pot stickers, the price for this recipe is more than worth it. These dumplings are phenomenal. You'd never know they're gluten-free. The gingered pork has bold, well-balanced flavors. The texture of the dumpling wrapper is sublime - a nicely browned, crisp bottom; moist and tender from steaming elsewhere. The dish finishes with a simple but flavorful dipping sauce (which we made with jalapeno pepper from our garden).

Next up we made the Mu Shu Pork. As with the dumplings, I can tell you exactly when was the last time we had mu shu pork. It was circa 2005, when we picked up an order of mu shu pork from P.F. Chang's prior to seeing James Taylor in concert in Denver, Colorado. This gluten-free version has been a long time coming for us!

With this recipe, Russell hit another home run. It was similarly labor intensive, and so it's something we won't make every day. But it was a real treat, and has earned a slot in our rotation of go-to meals. Our girls loved it, too. Kelli in particular was in heaven. The Chinese pancakes that form the base of this recipe start with a near identical dough as the dumplings, but are treated differently. The pancakes had superb texture - moist, smooth, pliable. The black wood fungus, Savoy cabbage, and bamboo shoots were nice additions to the filling. The seasoned pork was excellent. We agreed that Russell's gluten-free version is better than the P.F. Chang's version we had years ago.

As a matter of personal preference, we would have enjoyed more cabbage in the filling. Also, we didn't use the extra salt called for in the recipe. We made a from-scratch Hoisin sauce, since we couldn't find a GF version at our local markets, and that provided enough saltiness for us. ~~One final note: at the end of dinner, we found ourselves with extra filling, and could have used 50% more pancakes. Even so, the filling was great the next day reheated and served simply in a bowl~~. (Update: 11/23/11 - Chatting this afternoon, Kelli and I remembered that the girls had eaten at least four of the pancakes before we sat down to dinner. Had we had a full batch of pancakes, the ratio of filling to pancakes would have been perfect. That's also a testament to how good the pancakes are!)

For a final dish (we're testing three recipes from each cookbook we review) we made the Shredded Chicken with Creamy Sesame Sauce. It was significantly easier to make than the previous two recipes. You boil, steam and shred chicken. Whip up the creamy sauce in a blender. Serve over rice noodles or your base of choice. Top with freshly chopped cilantro. Bada bing, bada boom. Done.

The shredded chicken - boiled and steamed in low sodium chicken stock - turned out moist and tender. Tahini paste gave the sauce its rich, creamy flavor, while classic Asian ingredients, such as soy sauce and ginger, rounded out the flavor. For the sake of the girls, we omitted the red pepper flakes from the sauce. The creamy sesame sauce tasted a touch salty by itself, but once we combined it with the chicken and plated it over a bed of rice noodles, everything fell into balance.

I will say that we made a few adjustments to the sauce. As we were preparing dinner, we looked at how much sauce the recipe made, how much chicken we had, and how much rice noodles we boiled up, and decided that we didn't have enough sauce to go the distance. So, we made a double batch of sauce, and also thinned it out with a bit of GF chicken stock from when we boiled the chicken. This gave us a better thickness for tossing with the noodles. No matter how you make it, though, it's a versatile sauce that would go well over chicken (as in the recipe), vegetables, rice, lentils.

Additional thoughts

Overall, we found Russell's recipes to be easy to follow, with specific, accurate instructions that gave results just as her recipes indicate they would. Also, following her advice in the book, we found many ingredients - some of which we couldn't locate anywhere else - at our local Asian market. Of the ingredients that were available at our area supermarkets, many were significantly less expensive at the Asian market.

Conclusion

As both a gluten-free and an Asian foods cookbook, The Gluten-Free Asian Kitchen is a double-niche book. If you're gluten-free and into Asian cuisine, this book is a no-brainer. It's a must-have for your cookbook collection. Plus, this book has very little overlap with gluten-free cookbooks that are already on the market. It's filling an important void.

As a cookbook, period, it's beautiful. Great photos, great recipes, great layout. Anyone can enjoy the recipes in this book...gluten-free or not.

In the interest of trying to quantify our subjective experience (for this and future cookbook reviews), we'll be using a five star ratings scale, with "points" earned as follows:

Layout and design = up to 1 star
Is the book appealing to the eye? Intuitive to navigate? Sensibly organized?

Photos = up to 1 star
Are there photos? Are they in color? How many photos are there? Are they good photos?

Recipe quality = up to 2 stars
Most importantly, how good is the food? Are recipes easy to follow? Do they deliver as promised?

Overall impression = up to 1 star
How well does the book achieve its vision?

And so, how does The Gluten-Free Asian Kitchen rate?

Layout and Design: 1 star
Photos: 1 star
Recipe Quality: 2 stars
Overall Impression: 1 star
Rating: ~~4.75 out of 5 stars~~ 5 out of 5 stars

This book is top-notch. The dumplings and mu shu pork especially were ethereal. Don't take our word for it. Make them for yourself. Now. You won't regret it.

For our part, we're excited to continue cooking our way through the book's recipes...

- Pete

Book cover image courtesy the author. Cookbook provided by the publisher.

The Artist's Palate, Poughkeepsie, NY

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 15:23:00 +0000

When Kelli and I celebrated our 8th wedding anniversary earlier this month, we wanted to pause from our busy schedule and mark the occasion. But of course, because we'd been so busy lately, we had barely given a thought to the day and how we'd celebrate it. Walking home from work around 5:00pm that day, though, I had an epiphany.

Our favorite local sushi restaurant is Bull and Buddha, on Main Street in Poughkeepsie. Each time we visited, we walked past another restaurant just a few doors down - The Artist's Palate. The restaurant looked beautiful, and the menu tempting, with its Hudson Valley-inspired contemporary American flare. There was just one problem: whenever we walked by, the restaurant was always closed. Was it ever open? we wondered.

A quick check of their website confirmed yes. (They're in fact open for dinner 6 nights a week, so we'd just had coincidentally unfortunate timing on all of our previous visits...) At 5:15pm we made a reservation for 6:00pm, dressed the girls (such last minute dinner plans meant a babysitter was out of the question), and we were off for our celebratory dinner!

The Artist's Palate opened in 2006, the baby of co-executive chefs and co-owners Megan Kulpa Fells (a Culinary Institute of America graduate and previous competitor on The Food Network's Chopped) and Charles Fells (they're a husband and wife team). I'd read rave reviews from gluten-free diners on the Internet, and the restaurant's website also mentioned that they accommodate gluten-free dietary needs. As we'd soon learn, the rave reviews were entirely justified.

We were seated toward the back of the comfortable, warm space, a few tables away from the open kitchen, where Kulpa Fells (in the yellow hat, above) was busy at work. We had noted our gluten-free needs when making our dinner reservation, and our server - Andres - re-confirmed our dietary restrictions.

A few minutes later, Kulpa Fells came out from behind the kitchen to introduce herself, discuss our dietary restrictions personally, and assure us that she could craft a wonderful gluten-free dinner for us. As we walked through the menu, it was clear how well she knows her own food, highlighting naturally gluten-free dishes, as well as deftly offering ways she could prepare other dishes to make them gluten-free (such as making a fresh pan sauce to go over a steak that otherwise would have been finished with a gluten-containing sauce). She even offered to prepare anything our girls might like for dinner, even if it wasn't on the menu. (Kulpa Fells has a toddler of her own...) We swooned. And it only got better from there.

We ordered a bottle of wine, some appetizers, our entrees. While we waited for the first course to arrive, the chef sent out an amuse bouche - gluten-free, of course - tomato, fresh basil, olive oil, and a touch of cheese over a rice cracker. Then came the gluten-free bread basket (photo below). The texture was divine. These were some of the best GF dinner rolls we've ever had.

Appetizers followed. The Caesar salad - dressed with naturally GF polenta croutons - was very good, though a touch heavy on the anchovies for our taste. A second appetizer - crispy tofu in a rice flour batter - was also very good.

Our entrees only elevated the dinner further. The Hudson Valley duck breast in an orange-rhubarb glaze, with aromatic rice, was moist, perfectly cooked, abundantly flavorful.

Our second entree was a special of the night - bacon-wrapped filet mignon (photo below), with a GF au jus and mashed potatoes. The mashed potatoes were slightly mealy, but the beef was ethereal. With each bite my eyes rolled back in my head, and I don't say that about beef very often.

I joked with Kelli: "We need to start making our steaks like this!" To which she countered: "Then we need to start buying better cuts of beef!" That, and perhaps we'd hire Kulpa Fells to work her magic in our kitchen.

An a la carte side of roasted Brussels sprouts rounded out the meal.

(Note: The menu at The Artist's Palate changes about every two weeks.)

Finally, for dessert we ordered a flourless chocolate cake with fresh berries (very good), and a pumpkin creme brulee (excellent), which was the direct inspiration for yesterday's pumpkin-bourbon creme brulee recipe.

Throughout our dinner, service remained discretely attentive. Wine glasses were filled, finished plates cleared, silverware replaced as needed...all without us feeling like the service was overbearing or otherwise interrupting our dinner. It is a highly underrated skill - attentive service that manages to fade into the background. Very well done.

At the end of the night, two shared appetizers, two entrees, one a la carte side, two desserts, a bottle of wine, and a generous tip set us back about $150. As such, The Artist's Palate is not kind of restaurant we'd patronize every day. But on this special occasion, it was worth every penny, and we'd go back in a heartbeat.

- Pete

Pumpkin-Bourbon Creme Brulee

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 12:52:00 +0000

With Thanksgiving just days away now, I've been thinking about the day and the menu. I suspect most people have a favorite part of the meal. The turkey, or the stuffing, or the gravy, or the mashed potatoes, or the dessert. Not me. I genuinely don't think I have a favorite part of the Thanksgiving feast that occupies a position of heightened importance above all the rest. For me, the meal is a package deal.

That said, there's nothing like finishing the feast with a proper, traditional dessert. And when I think of Thanksgiving desserts, pies immediately come to mind. Three in particular figure prominently: apple, pumpkin, and pecan. In our household, certain pies are requisite traditions. Apple is one. As superficial as it may sound, the holiday just wouldn't be the same without one.

This year, however, we've been inspired to also serve as a somewhat less conventional Thanksgiving dessert that's still in the spirit of the holiday and the season: pumpkin-bourbon creme brulee. Credit for the inspiration goes to The Artist's Palate in Poughkeepsie, New York. When we celebrated our anniversary there a few short weeks ago, we concluded dinner with a shared pumpkin creme brulee. From the first bite, we knew we had to go home and concoct a recipe of our own.

The pumpkin is prominent, but not overpowering. The bourbon adds a layer of complexity to the flavors. The texture is silky, smooth. When we tested the recipe over the past weekend, Kelli and I both intended to just sample the creme brulee to confirm success. Instead, we both ended up eating an entire 6-ounce ramekin! Try this recipe for yourself and see why we couldn't hold back. For our part, we'll be serving it to our family on Thanksgiving. It's that good. It's a dessert that can stand up to one of America's great holidays.

Pumpkin-Bourbon Creme Brulee
Makes six 6-ounce ramekins

Ingredients
2 cups heavy cream
1 tablespoon bourbon
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
8 egg yolks
1 cup pumpkin puree (cooked and mashed, or canned)
Granulated sugar

Steps
1. Preheat your oven to 300 deg F.
2. Whisk together all of the ingredients except the granulated sugar.
3. Skim any foam off the top of the mixture.
4. Place 6 ramekins (6-ounce size) into a pan. Divide the mixture evenly between them.
5. Place the pan on the middle rack of the oven. Pour enough hot water into the pan so that the water comes half way up the side of the ramekins.
6. Bake for 30-40 minutes, until the creme brulee is just a little wiggly in the center.
7. Cool the creme brulee completely in the water bath. Remove from the water bath, cover and refrigerate at least 2 hours.
8. Sprinkle granulated sugar on top of each ramekin just before serving. Use a kitchen torch to caramelize the sugar.

Enjoy!

This recipe is: gluten-free, peanut-free, tree-nut-free, fish-free, shellfish-free.

Notes:
1. If you don't have a kitchen torch, you can caramelize the sugar by placing the creme brulee ramekins under the broiler in your oven. Just watch them carefully!
2. You can also use smaller or larger ramekins, but the bake time may decrease or increase accordingly.
3. Normally you'd serve creme brulee with a spoon. We had a brain cramp and photographed it with a fork. Either way, it's delicious!

- Pete

Spicy Tofu Patties

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Fri, 18 Nov 2011 14:20:00 +0000

An admission: from time to time, I can be a picky eater when it comes to the texture of my food. There are certain textures that, for whatever reason, my palate finds a big turn off. The result is that I'll love a certain food prepared one way, but would rather leave it on the plate when it's prepared another.

Tofu is the perfect case in point. Grilled, marinated tofu? Great. Fried rice-flour-battered tofu? Love it. Small cubes of tofu stir fried until lightly browned and added to pad thai or fried rice or whatever? Super. But big chunks of bland, mushy tofu? No thank you...

You can imagine my skepticism, then, when I walked into the kitchen to find Kelli pulsing a block of tofu in the food processor to make a tofu paste. She asked me to withhold judgment. I warily obliged, as she added an assortment of spices and a touch of cornmeal and gluten-free all-purpose flour to bring it all together. That's when my opinion slowly started to turn. It smelled fabulous. But how would it taste cooked, and more importantly, what would the texture be like?

After Kelli formed the tofu paste into patties and pan-fried them in a touch of olive oil, I became a believer. Crispy exterior. Silky interior. Bold flavors. These patties were delicious.

They're also super simple to prepare, which makes them especially appropriate for this week leading up to Thanksgiving (and the week after). If you're like us (and many American families) you'll be doing no shortage of cooking and/or baking in preparation for the big Turkey Day. Which means that it pays to have easy recipes on hand, so you can save your kitchen stamina for the main event.

Finally, one additional admission: as you might guess from the plate in the picture, Kelli originally made these spicy tofu patties with the girls in mind. But I think we ended up enjoying the patties more than they did! Try them for yourself and see.

Spicy Tofu Patties
Makes 2-3 servings

Ingredients
7 oz extra firm tofu
1/4 cup (31 g) Artisan Gluten-Free Flour Blend
2 tbsp cornmeal
2 tsp tamari wheat-free soy sauce (or GF soy sauce)
1 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp ground coriander
1/2 tsp ground ginger
Salt and pepper (dash each)
Olive oil

Steps
1. Add all ingredients except olive oil to a food processor and pulse until combined and smooth.
2. Preheat a little bit of olive oil in a skillet on the stovetop.
3. Use a cookie scoop to drop balls of tofu batter onto the skillet.
4. Use a spatula coated with non-stick spray, or wet fingers (be careful of the hot oil!), to press the tofu balls down into round patties.
5. Pan fry until golden brown on the first side. Flip and repeat.

Enjoy!

This recipe is: gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, peanut-free, tree-nut-free, fish-free, shellfish-free, refined-sugar-free, vegetarian.

- Pete

The Thanksgiving Countdown

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 12:41:00 +0000

Thanksgiving is one week away. Let the countdown begin! We're hosting again this year, and as usual many traditional foods are on the menu: roasted turkey with gravy, mashed potatoes, cranberry relish, apple pie. And of course, no classic Thanksgiving spread is complete without stuffing.

We've been making this version for years - a corn bread stuffing with onion, sage, and pork sausage. The recipe first appeared in Artisanal Gluten-Free Cooking, and then here on blog back on November 2009. For the forthcoming 2nd edition of the cookbook, we've tweaked the recipe slightly (mostly to reduce the salt and butter). Those subtle changes sacrifice none of the flavor.

When we made this recipe earlier this month to re-test it for the cookbook re-release, it succeeded in putting us in the mood for the Thanksgiving holiday. Since then we've been looking forward to making it again, and now we're just one week away. I can hardly wait!

Is your Thanksgiving menu planned yet? What dishes are you most looking forward to?

Corn Bread Stuffing
Makes 8 servings

Ingredients
1 pound GF pork sausage (caseless, or with casings removed)
6 tbsp (3/4 stick) salted butter
1 medium onion, diced
2 tbsp chopped fresh sage
1 tsp salt
1 tsp ground black pepper
GF corn bread (9x9 pan size), cut into 1/2-inch pieces
2 cups GF chicken broth

Steps
1. Preheat your oven to 350 deg F. Grease a 2-quart baking dish.
2. Cook the sausage in a skillet over medium-high heat until browned. Remove and set aside.
3. Melt the butter in the same skillet. Add the onion and saute until translucent.
4. Return the sausage to the skillet, plus the sage, salt and pepper. Stir to mix.
5. Combine the sausage mix and the corn bread in the baking dish. Toss to mix, and pour the chicken broth over the stuffing.
6. Cover the dish with foil and bake for 30-40 minutes, until the stuffing is heated through. In the last minutes, remove the foil to allow the top to get nice and browned and crispy.

Enjoy!

This recipe is: gluten-free, peanut-free, tree-nut-free, fish-free, shellfish-free.

Depending on your corn bread, this recipe can also be made dairy-free, egg-free, and refined-sugar-free.

- Pete

Go Ahead, Mako My Day

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 12:54:00 +0000

No matter how busy life gets, it's hard for me to stay away from certain activities for long. Trail running is one of those activities. So is mountain climbing. And now that we're back living on the East Coast, surfing has once again entered the queue of options that help to define my active gluten-free lifestyle. Lately I've been especially chomping at the surfing bit, because Kelli and the girls got me a new wetsuit, so that the surf season can extend well beyond the summer months. As of last weekend, the suit was still waiting for its maiden voyage. But on Sunday morning, that changed.

The morning dawned cold. At 7:00am the air temperature was just 32 degrees. A layer of frost covered the windshield and roof rack of our car. I wore jeans and a hat and a down "sweater" as I strapped my surfboard—a board I bought more than 16 years ago used from a surf shop on Long Island—to the roof of the car. I drove south from my mom's house where we were staying for the weekend to the barrier beaches of Long Island's Atlantic shore. There's something about that drive... early in the morning... few other cars on the road... the sun low in the eastern sky, glistening off the water...

The water temperature was in the high 50s, maybe 60 degrees F at best. Only a handful of other cars were in the parking lot. Surfers, every last one of them. I pulled on my wetsuit—a full body 3/2. I had no booties, no gloves, no hood. (Though those will be mandatory items if I'm to surf straight through the winter.) The hardest part was walking across the freezing parking lot and then the cold sand with my bare feet before the sun warmed things up. Once I made it into the water, though, I was in heaven.

The waves were modest but rideable. The ocean surface was clean. Fewer than 10 other guys were in the water. The beach was otherwise deserted. It was the kind of morning I live for.

When I had had my fill of the waves, having caught some fun rides, I paddled to shore and traded my wetsuit for jeans and a long sleeve T-shirt. Then, as has become routine when on the Island, I stopped by a local fish market on the way back to my mom's to see what the fresh catch was. To my delight, they had some of the most beautiful mako shark steaks I've seen. And for the rock bottom price of $6.99 per pound to boot.

I've only had mako two, maybe three other times in my life. Once at a restaurant on Long Island's North Fork; once caught fresh and grilled at home. Each time it had been superb. This was an opportunity I couldn't pass up. It's a hearty fish that stands up well to grilling, with a firm texture similar to swordfish.

I whipped up a marinade/glaze, following the principles in our "tips for making successful sauces and marinades" post: a little salt, a little sweet (from brown rice syrup), a little spice (from chipotle power and paprika), and a little acid (from fresh squeezed lemon juice). Later that evening, we feasted.

Grilled Mako Shark
Makes 4 servings

Ingredients
1.5 pounds mako shark steaks
3 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp brown rice syrup
1/2 tsp GF Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp chipotle powder
1/4 tsp paprika
1/4 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp ground black pepper
Juice from 1/2 a lemon

Steps
1. Rinse and pat dry the fish.
2. In a bowl, combine all other ingredients and whisk well to make a marinade/glaze.
3. Pour the marinade over the fish and let marinate for at least 20 minutes.
4. Meanwhile, preheat your grill to 400 deg F.
5. Place the mako steaks on the grill. Grill on the first side for 7 minutes. Halfway through, pour and/or brush half the remaining marinade onto the fish.
6. After the 7 minutes, flip the steaks, pour/brush any remaining marinade onto the fish, and grill for 7 more minutes, or until done. (The fish done when opaque throughout and flakes well.)

Enjoy!

This recipe is: gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free, peanut-free, tree-nut-free, shellfish-free, refined-sugar-free.

Note: If you don't have brown rice syrup, you can substitute similar quantities of honey or agave nectar.

- Pete

Friday Foto: Apple Harvest

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 17:14:00 +0000

For the last month it feels like we've been living in a black hole. From time to time we've popped our head out to blog here and there, but mostly it's been nose to the grindstone on gluten-free book projects. It's also been prime harvest season here in the Hudson Valley, and a few Saturdays ago we took an afternoon off, packed up the girls, and headed to a local orchard to do some good old fashioned apple pickin'.

We drove across the Hudson River to Wilklow Orchards, in Ulster County. Wilklow is a regular fixture out our semi-weekly local farmer's market (walking distance from our house), and so when it came time to decide which orchard to visit, Wilklow was at the top of our list. You pick your own apples by the half-bushel bag, which Wilklow sells for $18. Each bag holds 20-25 pounds of apples. If you do the quick math, that equals lots of local, fresh apples for less than $1 per pound. How can you beat that?

Since then, we've been enjoying apples every which way. I've been eating roughly two a day straight up. We've had sliced apples with peanut butter. We've made two apple pies (one of which we photographed for the revised second edition of Artisanal Gluten-Free Cooking, due out May next year). But I just might be the most excited about the hard apple cider fermenting away right now. After we had finished picking apples, we picked up three gallons of fresh-pressed apple cider from the farm's tiny country store. One gallon we drank. But two gallons we "brewed" to make a hard cider that we'll hopefully be drinking on Thanksgiving.

As homebrewing goes, making hard apple cider is about as easy as it gets. Strictly speaking, all you need is apple cider or apple juice and yeast. That's it. Sure, you can add more ingredients (such as brown sugar, to help boost the final alcohol content of the cider). And yes, you can complicate the process by racking and aging the cider to both clarify the brew and mature the flavors. But that's all optional.

The trick is to make sure you're using fresh-pressed cider or juice that does NOT contain preservatives, such as sodium benzoate or potassium sorbate. They'll kill your yeast, and you'll end up with a wasted batch of cider. With in mind, you're good to go!

For this recipe, I went with a champagne yeast. Normally used in winemaking, it works very well for cider (so I've heard...this is my first batch). And by stroke of luck, our local homebrew shop gave Kelli the yeast for free! Having spent $10 for 2 gallons of fresh cider, having gotten the yeast for free, and already having the brew equipment, we're looking at a cost of about 50 cents per bottle of cider, or $3 per six pack, roughly 1/3 what we pay for a 6 pack of Woodchuck.

Hard Apple Cider
Yield (accounting for loss when racking and taking hydrometer measurements) = ~20 bottles

Ingredients
2 gallons fresh-pressed apple cider (preservative-free)
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 packet (5g) champagne yeast (I used Lalvin EC-1118)

Steps
1. Sanitize all of your brewing equipment.
2. Pour one gallon of cider into your carboy.
3. Heat the second gallon of cider in a pot on your stove to about 140 deg F. Dissolve in the brown sugar.
4. Pour the heated cider into the carboy. The cider should equalize to about 90 deg F. Allow to cool to below 80 deg F.
5. Pitch the yeast and shake/swirl to aerate. Place an airlock on the carboy and let the fermenting begin! (The fermentation is complete after you get steady hydrometer measurements for three consecutive days.)

This recipe is: gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free, fish-free, shellfish-free, nut-free, tree-nut-free, soy-free.

This recipe is easily made refined-sugar-free by substituting honey, molasses or another natural sweetener for the brown sugar.

Notes:
1. If you're using truly untreated fresh-pressed cider, you should heat ALL of your cider to at least 140 deg F, but NOT to boiling point (which will "set" the pectins and cause hazy cider), to kill off any wild yeast or bacteria. Allow the full batch to cool to below 80 deg F before pitching your yeast. If using UV-treated or pasteurized cider, follow the directions as in the recipe.
2. Homebrewed cider naturally finishes pretty dry. Most commercial ciders back-add sugars to sweeten the cider and balance the tartness of the apples. There's no need to do that with a homebrewed cider. Many people enjoy it dry.
3. If you want carbonated cider, you can do one of two things: force carbonate, or bottle condition, as in beer brewing. (I do the latter.)
4. If you want to back-sweeten your cider AND carbonate it, things get more complicated. Email me for details.

Otherwise, enjoy!

- Pete

Know When To Fold 'Em...

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:36:00 +0000

7:45am, shortly before the start of the Bimbler's Bluff 50K Ultra

Kenny Rogers said it in "The Gambler" - You got to know when to hold 'em; know when to fold 'em; know when to walk away; know when to run.

This past weekend, I raced in the Bimbler's Bluff 50K, a trail ultramarathon in southern Connecticut. That decision - of when to stick with it and when to call it quits - was the theme of the day.

For a full week leading up to the race, I had gotten less than 5 hours of sleep per night. I was going to bed routinely at 2:00am. Life's been busy with many irons in the fire. That sort of schedule may have worked for me in college, but not anymore. And that's no way to get your body strong for an ultra.

On Saturday, I did a good job with my pre-race gluten-free nutrition. Dinner that night was a heaping bowl of whole grain brown rice pasta with turkey bolognese (ground turkey in a tomato-based sauce). Later that night I had some more high-octane fuel.

I also laid out my food for the race the next day. At 32-33 miles, this was a shorter race than the Virgil Crest Ultra from one month ago, run at a faster pace. As such, the nutritional needs were different. I basically did a simplified version of my Virgil Crest foods, with an emphasis on carbs: GU energy gels, chocolate, oranges, apple slices with peanut butter, Gatorade, water. Simple and effective.

I turned in for bed at 11:00pm that night. It was the first time in 7 or 8 days I'd gone to be before 2. But because I woke up shortly after 4:00am to drive to the race start, it still ended up being a very short night.

We arrived at the race venue in southern CT around 7:00am. Before the race even started, I was feeling tired and fatigued. This was not a good thing. Yet, I somehow thought I could overcome it, thought I could simply run through the fatigue, that it wouldn't matter. Mind over matter can only take you so far, however. The body can give up, despite the mind's best intentions.

The fact that I thought I could just will myself to overcome the fatigue was perhaps one indication that I wasn't coming into this race with the proper mindset. As I would soon discover, I both underestimated the course and overestimated my self confidence. That's a dangerous combo. In some respects, it was a rookie mistake. I shouldn't have made it, but I did.

Racers head off from the start of the Bimbler's Bluff 50K

The 8:00am race start was cold and cloudy. Most of us began the race in long sleeves. It was good race weather for me, much better than if it'd been hot and sunny (and worse, humid).

In the first miles, my legs felt sluggish and heavy. It was hard to get into my rhythm. I discovered that though the course didn't have nearly the elevation gain and loss of Virgil Crest, it still had its ups and downs (both literal and figurative). There was a lot of elevation change hidden between the topo lines, not immediately recognizable on the course map. But the hills were there, none the less.

I wasn't sure if my legs felt heavy from the 2-hour car ride that morning, or from the fact that I'd done just one training run 8 days earlier, followed by nothing all week because I'd been too busy, or if something else was amiss.

Aid Station 1 came quickly. I was running fast, despite the fatigue with which I started the race. If this ultra was a cycling race, there would have been a breakaway, a chase group, and a long, strung-out peloton. The breakaway took off like a rocket. I was part of the leading edge of the chase group, in great position. At the aid station, I paused briefly to shed my long sleeve shirt, allowing most of the chase group to run past me. I fell in behind them and we all continued on at roughly same pace.

I re-passed some of them on the rocky downhills. Many racers slowed down in the steep, unsure footing. For those moments, I felt like a mountain goat, cruising downhill, skipping from rock to rock, moving quickly. It gave me a temporary boost of confidence. The confidence would be short lived, though.

Slowly but surely, I was self-destructing. Some of it was just dumb luck. For example, at one point, my right foot knocked a large rock up into the air. As I continued running, my left foot kicked it like a soccer ball, sending it hard directly back into my right ankle bone. I couldn't have done this if I tried. Suffice it to say that I saw stars. I limped for what felt like a good 200 meters before I could resume my normal gait. By the end of the race, the swelling made it look like I had a secondary ankle bone next to my real one.

I also made the wrong choice in footwear. I raced in my Inov8 RocLite 295s. They're a lightweight naturalistic trail running shoe with minimal heel-to-toe drop and with aggressive treads. I wore them for every mile of the Virgil Crest 50-Miler one month ago, and loved them. But the Bimbler's Bluff 50K proved to be a much rockier course than expected. With the fallen leaves, seeing the sharp rocks was difficult. Sometimes, they were simply unavoidable, whether you could see them or not. It made for tough going for my feet. Had I known this about the course, I would have worn my Montrail Mountain Masochists, which have a full rock plate (Montrail calls it a Trail Shield) in the sole of the shoe, protecting your foot. What's that they say about hindsight?

Then came the Bluff for which the race is named. It involves a steep ascent to the summit cliffs of a small forested peak that overlooks a scenic rural valley. It's basically a mandatory power hike section. There's no running up that thing. As I topped out and resumed my run, my left calf seized in a cramp. I broke my stride, leaned against a sturdy tree and stretched my leg. This was uncharted territory for me. In the 6+ years I've been endurance racing, since early 2005, I've never had a muscle cramp. At all. And my left calf was just the beginning. Over the course of the next miles, my right calf threatened to cramp up. Then my left quad started threatening to cramp up. What was going on?

What's more, my right ankle - which I rolled trail running back in July or so - was acting up.

At this point, it felt like a lot more was going wrong than was going right. About the only thing that was going well was the nutrition. I was drinking a lot, keeping well hydrated. I was eating well, pushing in lots of nutrtition... GU packs every 30-45 minutes, chocolate, apple slices with peanut butter, oranges, Gatorade.

But that wasn't enough to keep this boat from sinking. I'd been stressed all week. I was overworked, sleep deprived, you get the picture. I expected the race to be a time to sort all that out, to let go of it and recharge. Trail running is often a valuable time for me to "re-set" my system. Only this time, it didn't reset. The tension just threatned to boil over. The macho, stoic man in me is reluctant to admit this publicly, but there were a handful of times during race when I thought I might shed a few tears. This was an odd experience for me. That kind of thing seldom happens to me... the whole crying thing. (For the record, I didn't shed any tears during or after the race, though I came close...)

What that all boiled down to was that my heart and mind were not in the race. I felt defeated. And as my body continued to fight against me, I felt my morale and motivation sinking further.

A racer begins his ascent of the infamous Bluff.
Stop running and commence power hiking in 3... 2... 1...

By the time I arrived at Aid Station 4, after 22 miles, I had serious doubts about continuing. Physically, mentally, emotionally, it wasn't my day. Normally, a trail ultra of that distance (32+ miles), over that terrain (mostly rolling hills), at that pace (roughly 10 min per mile), should be no problem for me. But it was. Something was majorly off.

I told Kelli as much when I ran into the aid station, where she and the girls were happily waiting.

"I know that you can finish this race, if you want to," she said re-assuredly. "But is it worth it?" That was the million dollar question.

After an agonizing few minutes, having contemplated the decision, I walked over and told the aid station volunteer with a clipboard and spreadsheet that I was withdrawing.

I looked over her shoulder and watched as she flipped the page, found my bib #, and scribbled the initials "DNF" next to my name. Did Not Finish. It was my first DNF. In any race. Ever.

If you compete for long enough, every racer has a DNF at some point. This, I think, is a nearly universal truth of endurance racing. I don't know why I thought I'd be immune to it.

In the past, as I've thought about this hypothetical future moment (which had just become my present reality), I always envisioned it as a moment of crushing disappointment. Surprisingly, it wasn't. In some ways, it was a relief. Did this mean I had given up? I don't think so. I think that deep down I knew that this was the right decision to make.

Kelli was right. Sure, I could have finished, but at what cost? I was in rough shape. I had to think about the rest of the year...the girls, the busy holiday season, two looming book deadlines, the 2012 race season. I'd been burning the candle at both ends for too long. Heck, if my candle had 3 or 4 ends, I'd be burning those, too. I feel like I've been flirting dangerously with chronic fatigue. It's time to take a step back, to really rest, to let my body fully recover to 100%, and come back in a month or two refreshed, strong, ready to go. Besides, "it takes courage to withdraw," Kelli comforted me.

We walked as a family down the trail and to the car. I wouldn't run those last 10+ miles of the race. As I changed my clothes, from shorts into jeans, I lifted my leg to put it into my pants, and my hip cramped up. Seriously? What was wrong with me? It was another sign I had made right decision.

Yesterday, tentative race results were posted to the race website. I immediately noticed that my name is missing. Upon further inspection, it became clear that the race director didn't list the DNFs. What? I was taken aback. Did only finishers get the "honor" of being listed in the results? Was the race director trying to save us DNF folks the "disgrace" of being listed as such? My missing name was like a little extra kick in the gut. I was there. I toed that starting line. I ran for 22 hard miles. That counted for something.

Looking at the finish times of other racers, I felt a twinge of regret for pulling out of the race. Kelli had been keeping approximate track of my place in the race. At the time that I withdrew, after those 22 miles, she estimated I was right around the top 20 mark in the race. Even at my slower pace, as terrible as I felt, I likely could have finished the race in a time that would have still kept me in the top 30, in a race that had 170+ registered competitors. That's nothing to scoff at. (I wonder too how well I might have done if I'd been feeling better for the race.)

But then I reminded myself - yes, I could have done that. I could have finished the race and "salvaged" the day. But at what cost?

It has been a valuable learning experience.

I wonder - now that I have my first DNF - if it will be a gateway drug. Now that my streak has ended, and I finally have a DNF on my record, will that make it easier for me to do it again in the future. I don't think so. Now I've tasted it. I know what it feels like. And I know I don't want to do it again. This time it was the right decision to make. But I also don't want there to be a next time.

Part of my plan for assuring I don't DNF again is to get back to 100%. Doing that requires not competing for a little bit. I told Kelli as we left the aid station together, "In a few weeks, if I start talking about doing another race this fall, remind me of this conversation."

I'm going to take some time. No racing. At least for the next two months. In the interim, I'll focus on "lifestyle" fitness... a bit of late season surfing, some hiking with the girls, rock climbing, and soon, ice climbing and skiing. I'm going to get my legs pain-free. And I'll be back trail running again before not too long either. It's hard for me to stay away. But before I resume, I want to make sure that all systems are go.

Although I don't know what it is just yet, the next gluten-free endurance challenge is waiting for me around the corner. Time to look ahead to the race calendar and make some plans. In the meantime, I've got other work to do... =)

- Pete

Friday Foto: Raspberry Rum Punch Cocktail

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 12:19:00 +0000

You may have noticed that in recent weeks we haven't been posting as frequently as usual. There's a good (and exciting) reason, though. I promise. Our first cookbook - Artisanal Gluten-Free Cooking - is being released in a second edition come spring 2012!

In partnership with our publisher, The Experiment, the entire book is getting a major overhaul. New cover. New design/layout. We're revising and updating old recipes. We're adding a bunch of new recipes. We're incorporating bake-by-weight measurements to any recipes that call for our Artisan Gluten-Free Flour Blend. And instead of a center insert of small, ho-hum photos, the new edition will have 50 or so full page, full color photos throughout the book, like Artisanal Gluten-Free Cupcakes.

Needless to say, we're very excited for the second edition! We're also exhausted. We've been hard at work taking photos, and it is no easy task. We're constantly trying to raise our own bar; to hold ourselves to a higher standard; to make this work better than the work we've done before. We're succeeding, but it hasn't been easy.

With two young girls at home, carving out time to prep the food, style the photos, take the shots, etc. has been a challenge. Plus, since I'm working full time as a magazine writer and editor, taking the photos during the day - when the photographic light is best - just hasn't been possible. And so we've "built" a photo studio in our house. That studio is also known as "our former bedroom."

We needed a space where we could leave everything set up, and not have to take it down after every shoot. We needed a space that could be closed off, so the girls wouldn't be at risk of hurting themselves, or damaging any equipment. We needed a studio.

We didn't have one. But we did have a large bedroom. So we moved out. Earlier this summer, we had moved Charlotte's crib into Marin's bedroom so the girls could share the air conditioning. That left the small room that once contained Charlotte's crib and a glider rocking chair pretty much vacant. That cozy space has now become our bedroom. And believe me, it is cozy. It literally has enough room for our king bed (pushed against two walls), one small laundry basket, and that's it. I'd take a picture of it, but I don't have a wide-enough angled lens to shoot in such a small space and still capture everything. But it's working for us. Like a hobbit hole. Or something like that.

Meanwhile, what used to be our bedroom has been transformed. Around the perimeter of the room are tables and filing cabinets and dressers piled high with dishes, silverware, tablecloths, napkins, cups, bowls, glassware, and an assortment of cutting boards and other wood surfaces. There's our camera, a new tripod (our old one just wasn't cutting it), a trio of lenses (including my new infatuation, seen in the photo above), a studio lighting set up, and an assortment of reflectors.

I won't bother going into the photographic particulars here. Perhaps that'd be another post for another day. But here's a sneak peak at one of last night's dishes we photographed...Pad Thai. I haven't done any post processing. No white balance adjustment. No brightness/contrast adjustment. No tweaking to "calibrate" the colors. This photo is straight out of our camera. I hope you think it looks as delicious as I do. (I also have some insider information on the pic, since we also ate the pad thai for dinner last night!)

All of this said, we're in a celebratory mood. Artisanal Gluten-Free Cooking was our first baby. (Our first cookbook baby, at least.) And she's growing up. With the forthcoming second edition, she's maturing and becoming a more refined version of herself. What better way to celebrate than with a cocktail?

Today's cocktail recipe had two primary sources of inspiration. One is summer, hence the fresh raspberries. (Although I must say, I'm pretty excited about fall being here...) The other inspiration is Copa D'Oro. Copa D'Oro is a bar in Santa Monica, California. I first learned about it during a press trip to Santa Monica. But to call it "just" a bar doesn't do it justice. This place specializes in making what it calls "market fresh cocktails." Translation: the bartenders regularly go shopping at and stock the bar with produce from the Santa Monica Farmers Market. Fruits. Vegetables. Herbs.

Mint? Sure. But how about some basil or rosemary or sage in your cocktail?

Strawberry or raspberry in a cocktail? No problem. But how about slices of apple, or blackberries, or blood orange?

Celery in your bloody mary? Standard. But how about some ginger, or some jalapeno or bell pepper in your drink?

The most exciting part of visiting Copa D'Oro, for me, was not going in and inventing my own cocktail with their unique "market fresh" ingredients. Instead, it was telling the bartender a drink I like - a mojito - and then giving him free reign to "sex it up" with an unconventional twist. Buried somewhere in my notes from that trip, I have written down exactly what I ended up with. Based on memory, it was a mojito, but with a different blend of herbs and fruit...some basil and blackberry, as I recall. And it was good. Very good.

In that spirit, we give you today's Raspberry Rum Punch Cocktail. Bottoms up!

Raspberry Rum Punch Cocktail
Makes 1 drink, if 1 part = 1 shot

Ingredients
1.5 parts white rum
2 parts seltzer
4 parts fruit punch
3 muddled raspberries

Steps
1. Combine all ingredients. Serve over ice.

Enjoy!

This recipe is: gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free, peanut-free, tree-nut-free, fish-free, shellfish-free, soy-free, refined-sugar-free.

Note: For the fruit punch, we used a 100% juice, no-sugar-added, no artificial colors option.

- Pete

Gluten-Free Ratio Rally: Grilled Pizza

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 05:20:00 +0000

Historically, I have not been shy about professing my love of pizza here on the blog. Over the years we've posted a number of recipes. Most recently we developed our San Marzano deep dish pizza recipe. Before that, there was a recipe for spicy buffalo chicken pizza. There was a dual recipe for Sicilian and thin crust pizzas before that, in a post I titled, "The Pizzaholic." And there was a margherita pizza and others before that.

When this month's Gluten-Free Ratio Rally decided to tackle pizza, I was pretty excited. As usual with the Ratio Rally, Kelli and I wanted to challenge ourselves with a pizza we'd not attempted before. We almost immediately settled on our goal: a grilled pizza, cooked over an open flame.

Now, I don't want to let the cat out of the bag here, and I don't want to overly pat ourselves on the back, but oh my gosh. This pizza is good. No, this pizza is great. Kelli declared it possibly the best pizza we've ever made. And we tend to have a pretty high opinion of our pizzas, so this is saying something. The delicious char and unmistakeable grilled-ness on the slightly crunchy yet chewy crust. The fresh vegetables. The balance of sauce and not too much cheese.

But, you don't have to take our word for it. Try the recipe and see for yourself! And while you're at it, head on over to Karen R.'s blog, Cooking Gluten-Free. She's hosting this month's ratio rally, and you'll find links to lots of other tasty gluten-free pizzas there!

As for the ratio of the recipe itself, the participating bloggers began with a starting ratio of 5:3 flour:water. The more we work with gluten-free doughs, the more we like those doughs to be pretty wet. With the case of something like a pizza dough, we like for it to be right on the edge between workable by hand and too wet/sticky. The result, for this pizza, was a ratio of 1:1. We used flour and water in equal quantities by weight.

Regardless, the end result is what matters, and this time around, the result was divine, and I don't mind saying so.

Grilled Pizza
Makes 1 pizza, Serves 2-4

Ingredients

For the dough
175g warm water (3/4 cup)
1 tbsp honey (or sugar)
2 1/4 tsp active dry yeast
1 tbsp olive oil
175g Artisan Gluten-Free Flour Blend (about 1 1/3 cups plus 1 heaping tbsp)
1 tsp xanthan gum
1 tsp salt

For the pizza
250-275g crushed San Marzano tomatoes (about 2/3 of a 14.5-ounce can)
110g shredded mozzarella cheese (about 4 oz)
1/4 red bell pepper, sliced thin
1/4 green bell pepper, sliced thin
1/4 red onion, sliced thin
Dried oregano
Dried basil

Steps

To make the crust
1. Preheat your oven to 500 deg F.
2. Combine the water, honey/sugar, and yeast in a bowl and let stand until the yeast is well activated, about 5 minutes.
3. Stir in the olive oil. In a separate bowl, combine the flour, xanthan gum, and salt. Add the liquids and mix to form a dough that is soft but not sticky to the touch. Drizzle a little bit of olive oil into the bowl and roll the dough ball to evenly coat.
4. Drizzle a liberal amount of olive oil onto a cookie sheet and press the pizza dough into a thin crust shape, approximately 15" x 7.5", or whatever will fit comfortably on your grill. Let rise 10 minutes.
5. Par-bake the crust in your pre-heated oven for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat your grill to 500 deg F, then decrease the flame. (How much you decrease the flame will depend on your grill - you want to get good grill marks and char on the bottom of your pizza, but don't want to burn the crust before you melt the cheese and cook the toppings.)
6. Use a spatula to separate the pizza crust from the cookie sheet, and transfer to a pizza paddle, if desired.

To make the pizza

7. Spread the tomatoes/sauce on the par-baked crust, then add the shredded cheese, then the sliced vegetables, and finally a light sprinkling of the dried herbs.
8. Finish the pizza on the hot grill, baking for about 5 minutes, until the cheese is melted and the toppings are cooked.

Enjoy!

This recipe is: gluten-free, egg-free, peanut-free, tree-nut-free, fish-free, shellfish-free, soy-free.

This recipe is easily made dairy-free with the use of dairy-free cheese. This recipe is refined-sugar-free as long as you don't use sugar to activate the yeast.

- Pete

Race Report: 2nd Annual Gluten-Free Ultramarathon Challenge

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 20:47:00 +0000

Topo map of the out-and-back course.

Well, the 2nd annual Gluten-Free Ultramarathon Challenge - and my 2nd Virgil Crest Ultra - are now one for the record books. The race was a little over one week ago, and just enough time has elapsed that I can sit down and write this race report with a bit of perspective.

The fact that I'm writing a race report at all is itself a small miracle. Exactly one week before the race I was in the emergency room of a local hospital. Between the Thursday before and the Tuesday after that trip to the hospital, I'd seen five different doctors. Then, two days after seeing an infectious disease specialist, we drove from our home in the Hudson Valley to Kelli's parents' place in Ithaca, about half an hour from the race venue.

When we arrived, Kelli's mom said to me, "What am I going to tell everyone at church on Sunday? It's awkward. This past Sunday I had them all praying for you. Now you're going to race."

"Tell them the prayers worked!" I said. (On that note, many thanks to all of you who also sent prayers, positive vibes, healing thoughts, good energy, etc.)

When we arrived I also had an email waiting for me from my good friend, Tom. He ran the 50-mile Virgil Crest Ultra last year also. This year, he's been busy training for the New York City Marathon, which is in early November. The subject of the email said "Good luck." The body of the email wasn't exactly so positive. "Just did a 20-mile training run," he wrote. "All I could think was, 'I'm so glad I'm not doing 50.'" Way to inspire!

But he had a kind of point. I had been pretty sick not a week before the race. What was I thinking racing 50 miles across rough terrain?

Elevation profile of the course.

The Friday before the race was largely consumed with preparation. I built a new spreadsheet that would allow Kelli to track my aid station arrival times and my average per mile pace. I printed out driving directions to several of the aid stations for Kelli. She slaved in the kitchen baking scones, cookies, Italian meatballs. I peeled oranges, sorted GU packets, loaded zip lock bags with all sorts of foods. My mother-in-law cooked up a pound of bacon, and made trips to the supermarket to pick up last minute odds and ends for my race nutrition. It was a real team effort.

By that evening, we had all the food portioned out and sorted on the kitchen counter, and boy there was a lot of it. I knew I wouldn't eat it all. Not even close. That wasn't the point. Race day nutrition can be a bit of a crap shoot. Depending on how you're feeling, how your stomach is handling the exertion, and how your body holds up to the miles, you may or may not feel like eating certain foods. By bringing lots of options, my hope was that I'd be able to find something palatable to eat.

Friday night was also the pre-race meeting and bib number pick-up. News about the condition of the course wasn't good. It was raining during the meeting, held in a local firehouse, and it had rained every day of the week leading up to the race. There was going to be mud. Lots of it. And some streams to cross, where getting wet would be unavoidable. Lovely.

As the evening drew to a close, I retired to the bathroom to try and put in my contact lenses. My right eye especially had gotten swollen from the hemorrhage. With the rain and mud and sweat (though hopefully no blood or tears), I was reluctant to run in my eyeglasses. I was also reluctant to run without any corrective vision whatsoever. The last few times I've done that I've tripped on unseen roots and rocks. All week I'd been using prescription steroid eye drops to reduce the swelling. The opthalmologist said there was an outside shot I could wear contact lenses by the weekend. And so I tried to put them in and...they felt fine! (In fact, over the course of the night, the subtle pressure the contacts placed on my eyes helped to push blood away from my corneas, actually improving my vision!)

I turned in for bed sometime around 11 or so that night, I think, and woke to my alarm clock at 4:00am to eat breakfast and get ready to hit the road by 4:45am or so with Kelli. She graciously served as my support crew for the entire race.

Ready to go at 5:40am, 20 minutes before race start.

At Hope Lake Park - the start/finish of the race - some 150 runners from the 100-mile, 50-mile, 50k, and 100-mile relay races mingled about. Most of us huddled under a covered picnic pavilion. It was raining. Again. Rather than a heavy downpour, it was a constant mist/drizzle, and the brutal humidity seemed to indicate that we were in the clouds that were raining on us.

With my race # clipped to my running shorts, my Camelbak filled with water and stuffed with a few GU packets, and my wristwatch timer set, I was ready to go. Or so I thought. The day would unfold not exactly according to plan, but I'll get to that in a bit.

A few minutes before the official start of the race, all the runners assembled near the starting line between a pair of flaming torches. In most races I've been in, competitive racers crowd the starting line. I purposely stopped a bit shy of the starting line, expecting other runners to fill in ahead of me, leaving me 3 or 4 people back from the front for the race start. To my surprise, most runners filed in behind me, so that I constituted the front line of runners.

Race director Ian Golden gave us all a few last minute instructions. Then, as per tradition, he blew into his ram's horn and we were off. The first section of the race took us across a grassy field and onto a trail that wound around one end of Hope Lake, across the lake's dam, and then up into the wooded hills. Having done this race once before, I suppose I looked like I knew where I was going, because the other runners followed me. For those first few hundred meters of the race, I was in the lead. Either that, or I was shoulder to shoulder with another runner up front with me. That would be the first - and last - time I'd lead the race.

Once across the dam, faster runners moved ahead of me, and I focused on trying to find my target race pace.

Race director Ian Golden (left) giving last minute instructions to the runners. I'm in the front center of the group.

At that early hour, we were all running with headlamps on. It was surprisingly difficult. With the misting rain and heavy clouds hanging on the hills, running with a headlamp was a bit like driving in fog with your brights on. It made visibility difficult, but you needed to see where you were going, where the next reflective race marker was, where you were putting your feet.

Ahh, and where I was putting my feet. There was water and mud, seemingly everywhere. There would be no dry feet on this day. In places the mud was deep. A handful of times it threatened to pull a trail running shoe right off my foot, and I tie those on pretty snugly.

Getting dirty wasn't the problem. The real trouble was all the extra energy it took to run through the muck, all the subtle ways that more muscles were being called into action to help maintain balance in the face of unsure, slippery footing. Race director Ian Golden cautioned us to take it more conservatively than we had planned. I should have followed his advice more closely.

The first ten miles or so - through aid station 1 to aid station 2 - felt surprisingly good. I was running faster than my intended race pace. This was partly by design. I had run those legs of the race faster last year as well. In the grand scheme of things, they were "easier" than the remainder of the course. Running them faster now meant I was putting time in the bank, because I knew I'd be going slower later.

Arriving at Aid Station 2.

When I arrived at Aid Station 2, Kelli was there waiting, all smiles. "You're doing great!" she said. "I'm so proud of you!" Her encouragement was great. The race was off to a good start. My body was feeling good, and cooperating. No complaints. But things were about to get much more difficult in a big way, quickly.

Leg 3 of the race is known as the infamous "Alpine Loop," which takes racers up and over Greek Peak. Not once, but twice. The course gains - and loses - nearly 1,500 vertical feet in just 4.2 miles. Many sections of the ascents are too steep to run. Racers power hike them until the top, when you can start running again.

Wise from last year, I brought trekking poles this time around. They allowed me to better power on the ascents, using a bit of arm energy to conserve precious leg energy. I arrived at the next aid station feeling good. Hopefully, I could keep this type of performance going.

Arriving at Aid Station 3, 14 miles or so down, 36 to go.

The fourth leg of the race was another tough one - an ascent up and over Virgil Mountain - and the race's longest stretch between aid stations. For the first time, my body wasn't feeling so great. My legs developed a hint of fatigue, and my stomach was feeling unsettled. That unsettled feeling mostly affected my appetite. Certain foods that I planned on eating just didn't sound appealing at all. In fact, by the time I arrived at Aid Station 4, the Rock Pile, I couldn't stomach another packet of GU energy gel.

Just the thought of eating one more GU made me want to throw up. And I had planned on GU packs being an important part of my race nutrition on the trail in between aid stations, when I'd eat solid foods. Yet, as I came into Aid Station 4, Kelli was there with good news - I was still on my overall race pace. Awesome. What's more, a stereo at the aid station was blasting AC/DC. It just so happens that I brought two "psych up" albums for the car ride from Ithaca to the race: the soundtrack to Rocky IV (to any guy from my generation, this choice requires no explanation), and AC/DC.

"Thank you to whoever put on the AC/DC album," I hollered as I ran into the aid station. I changed my socks and tried to refuel. But my stomach and appetite just wasn't in it. Over the full distance of the race course I would manage just a single slice of bacon, and just a single Italian meatball. GU packets were out. Instead, I chowed down on zesty dill pickles, oranges, and slices of apple with copious amounts of peanut butter. And I stocked up on mini Reese's chocolate peanut butter cups for the next leg of the race. They weren't part of my race nutrition plan. My mother-in-law bought them on a whim. Thank goodness she did. They would prove to be a saving grace of the race.

Kelli would be staying at Rock Pile and waiting for me. Next, I'd head to Daisy Hollow, Aid Station 5, the turn-around at mile 25.1, and head back to meet her right back at this same spot. From this point onward, I'd be running farther than my longest training run this year.

The run from the Rock Pile to Daisy Hollow is always a place to take stock. Since Daisy Hollow is the race turn-around, anyone heading the other direction is ahead of you in the race. By counting the number of runners you pass heading the opposite direction, you can count your current place number in the race. I started counting. But before I arrived at Daisy Hollow, I gave up. Keeping stock of my place in the race was taking too much mental energy, and I sensed that my body was starting to betray me. My place in the race didn't matter. Finishing the race did.

By the time I arrived at Daisy Hollow, I was somewhere between 12th and 15th place in the 50-mile race, out of 76 or so runners. But by then a mantra had entered my head. Instead of counting my place in the race, I silently repeated the following phrase: "Honor the distance. Respect the course. Find a rhythm. Listen to your body." The only problem was, my body was saying "stop."

After reaching the Daisy Hollow aid station, I refilled my water bladder, and set off the way I came. The miles were earned with much more difficulty, and I could feel myself slipping off the pace. My left knee hurt. My right calf hurt. I'm not sure if I tweaked one leg, and then favored the other, thus tweaking it as well, or if they were just independent aches and pains. Even my nipples hurt, and that has almost never happened to me in a race.

As I ran, now facing all the runners who were still behind me heading out to Daisy Hollow, a surprising number caught me off guard by sincerely asking if I was feeling okay. It took me until mile 29 or so to finally realize why: they saw my eyes, and thought that the blood-red color happened during the race. Now I got it.

When I returned to Kelli at the Rock Pile at mile 30, I wasn't too far off my pace. By then, however, my body wasn't feeling so hot. I sat down in a camp chair and rested. I changed my socks. (In total, I'd go through 4 pairs of socks during the race. Each pair got wet and muddy within minutes of leaving an aid station, but they felt oh so good to pull onto my wrinkled, drenched feet.) I took time to really force myself to eat a lot of food. I knew my nutrition hadn't matched my physical output. I actually managed to eat a little too much, developing a slight stomach cramp that thankfully went away soon. And I joked with Kelli: "How long do you think I can take a nap before I should start running again?"

Inertia was setting in big time. My goal had been to keep my aid station stops to roughly 3 minutes each. When I glanced at my watch, I was stunned to discover that this stop had lasted more than 11 minutes! Time to get moving. Slowly.

At the Rock Pile, mile 30.

The next 6-plus miles from Rock Pile back to the base of Greek Peak were the toughest of the race for me. It felt like my body was self-destructing in slow motion. I walked long stretches of trail. I hobbled and jogged other sections of trail. This train was starting to derail; the wheels were coming off the wagon. If I continued this downward spiral, things would not be looking good. In fact, for the first time in the race, I seriously faced the realistic possibility that I might not finish. Withdrawing when I arrived at Aid Station 7 at mile 36 entered my mind as an appealing and likely option. I had bitten off more than I could chew; tried to do too much too soon after being so sick the week before. I was humbled.

Yet, despite how miserable I felt, I despised even more the idea of quitting the race. I didn't want to DNF. I wanted to finish the darn thing. I looked at my watch. I'd been moving for more than 8 hours. The race cut-off time was 16 hours. Heck. From Aid Station 7, it'd be "just" 14 miles to the finish. With the number of hours remaining in the race, I could walk the rest of the course and still finish within the allotted time.

The final section of this leg of the race was a long, steep descent from Virgil Mountain back to Lift House 5 at the base of Greek Peak. I knew that at the bottom of the mountain I'd make a left turn to run briefly along a gravel road called Tone Road before arriving at the aid station. In my race induced delirium, my thought process on that descent went something like this: Hmm. Tone Road. That reminds me of Tone Loc. And that reminds me of "Funky Cold Medina."

At that point, "Funky Cold Medina" started looping in my head endlessly. And that was awesome. It turns that song has a tempo and beat that's just right for trudging along at a modest run. I powered in to the aid station.

Not exactly all smiles, finishing up Tone Road and arriving at Aid Station 7 at mile 36.

At the aid station I leveled with Kelli. I told her exactly how I was feeling and what I was thinking. Not that it surprised me, but she handled the situation with expert tact. In between refilling my water, feeding me whatever I could eat, and re-stocking my chocolate peanut butter cups, she told me that she understood how I was feeling. She gave me the option to gracefully exit the race just then. She explained that doing so was in no way a bad reflection on me. That there was nothing to lose in making that choice.

But in the same breath, she also unconditionally supported my continuance of the race. She knows me. She knows how badly I would want to finish a race such as this. She trusts me to listen to my own body, my own needs. If I wanted - or needed - to walk the rest of the race, finishing in the darkness of night. She'd be there. If I found some unknown hidden reserves of energy, and could run to the finish, she'd be there.

And so I decided to continue. In a way, I sensed that - despite the misery of miles 30-36 - I might actually be able to finish. My rationale (and psychological self-trickery) was thus: miles 36-40 were a repeat of the Greek Peak alpine loop. Much of it would be power hiking (alternating with steep downhills), assisted by my trekking poles. Surely I could power hike 4 miles. From there, miles 40-50 were the "easier" miles of the course. Miles 40-46 or so would get me to the Gravel Pit aid station. If I could get there, then I'd have just 4+ miles to go to the finish, with a net elevation loss. Surely I could do that. There's no way I would let myself get that close to the finish and not make it.

In this way, I knew that as I reached each of the remaining aid stations, I'd have a compelling reason to continue on to the next one. And with that strategy - taking one leg of the race at a time - I'd finish.

With trekking poles in hand, I looked up at Greek Peak and took the next strides.

As expected, by the time I finished the Alpine Loop, I was starting to feel a bit better. What's more, when I jogged in to Aid Station 8, Kelli's mom and sister had arrived with Marin and Charlotte (wearing a "Team Daddy" shirt). I had a small cheering section to root me on. The motivational boost was great.

In fact, in retrospect the mental (and physical) shift between miles 30-40 and miles 40-50 was remarkable. I went from the depths of despair to a perspective of real optimism and hope. With spirits buoyed, I set my sights on the Gravel Pit, at roughly mile 46.

En route, my body started "coming back," too. I was running longer sections of trail, downshifting only to hike the uphills. Superb.

Arriving at the Gravel Pit.

A swig of Gatorade, some M&Ms, a last change of socks, and 4+ miles to the finish.

At the Gravel Pit, Team Daddy was out in full force. I plopped down into the mud and wet grass and changed my socks for the fourth and last time. Although I was only 4-plus miles from the finish, I credit my sock changes with my successful avoidance of blisters and other foot problems. Charlotte toddled over and shoved a small handful of M&Ms into my mouth. Marin traded swigs of Gatorade with me. And then I was off.

There were a few short but noticeable uphills on the last leg of the race, but for the most part, it went downhill (in a literal sense). In the last mile, the course spit me onto the trail that circled around Hope Lake. As I approached the dam, the sun had come out. Across the smooth lake, the green grass, colorful trees, and finish line glowed in later afternoon light. It was beautiful.

This was only the third "environmental" observation I'd consciously made all day. Once, on the return trip over Greek Peak, I looked up from the mud for long enough to admire the surrounding hills, which were beginning to set ablaze with the colors of fall. The other thing I noticed were the mushrooms. They were everywhere, probably thanks to all the rain. I must have seen more than two dozen varieties.

Running across the dam, I heard some loud cheering. It was probably folks cheering another runner across the finish line. But I imagined that it was Team Daddy and others at the finish line. They'd spotted my bright red shirt, and were giving me a final motivational boost for the last few hundred meters. I raised one arm in the air and pumped my fist to acknowledge them.

And at long last, across the dam, the trail circled around, made a left onto the grass, and it was a straight shot to the finish line, where Team Daddy was waiting.

I crossed the finish line in 12 hours 15 minutes. I had finished. Not only that, but I was only 30 minutes behind last year's time. Given both a) the muddy conditions and b) my recent illness, I was more than thrilled. It was the most difficult day of racing, and the most painful and hard-earned finish, I've ever had. By a long shot. And it felt good. (That sounds crazy, doesn't it?)

And though I didn't successfully repeat a Top 10 finish as I had hoped, my place finish was still pretty respectable. Based on preliminary results, I came in 22nd out of 78 runners in the 50-mile race. The 100-mile race had an incredible 50% DNF rate. Any 100-miler who passed the 50-mile mark, but later dropped out of the 100-mile race, was awarded a finish place in the 50-mile race. When you take those folks into account, I finished 29th out of 100. Not too shabby.

The Bronski clan

The full Team Daddy.

Another Gluten-Free Ultramarathon Challenge had come and gone.

And so now I can say many, many huge "thank you's." Thank you to everyone who supported me through the training. Thank you to everyone who supported me through my illness. And thank you to everyone who supported me come race day.

Thanks, also, to all of you who made donations to the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness. This year we raised nearly $3,030. I deeply appreciate every one of your dollars, which the NFCA will use to benefit the gluten-free community. This brings our two-year fundraising total to $6,600!

Finally, I want to say thank you to all the great gluten-free companies that made donations to support the NFCA, especially this year's Sustaining Sponsors: Bard's, the Gluten-Free Bistro, and Rudi's.

My recovery from the race has been going well. I've taken a bit of time off to rest my body and mind. I haven't run since the race. The soreness is gone. I can walk up and down stairs again, and wrestle with the girls around the house. And believe it or not, I'm already eyeballing my next ultramarathon. It's in three weeks. =)

- Pete

Gluten-Free Ultramarathon Training Update #5

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:10:00 +0000

Weather.com forecast for the race location, today through race day

This is my last training update before the big ultramarathon! It's been exactly one week since the last training update, and so much has happened, I scarcely know where to begin. It's been one helluva roller coaster. (This is a long post, but I promise it makes for entertaining reading.)

I've decided that the theme for today's training update is "when it rains..." As you'll see, that's both a literal and a figurative statement. I'll start with the literal, the weather, since that's the easy part.

The weather over by the race venue has not been good. They've had some pretty decent rain there in the past few days. Also, as you can see from the image above - a screen grab of the weather.com forecast for today through race day (Saturday), there's a very good chance of more rain, including the day before and the day of the race.

If I could sit by a warm fireplace sipping hot mulled cider, that'd be one thing. But in the context of the race, a few associative words come to mind: wet, cold, muddy, and perhaps above all else, epic. This year's race is going to be epic. Adverse race conditions mean that all bets are off. (As I'm about to explain, all bets are off for another important reason, too. Read on.)

Image courtesy Stock.xchng / linder6580

My health over the course of the last week has been...not good. Bad even. In last week's training update I talked about what a good summer it had been, how I remained healthy and free of injury. I'm not a superstitious man, but I'm thinking I may have jinxed myself. Because no sooner did I post that update, than my health went in the toilet. It's easiest to convey the saga by way of a two-part explanation: my symptoms, and my futile search for a diagnosis.

Early last week on a routine trail run, I got a very minor scratch on my lower right leg from brushing against a thorny vine on a partly overgrown trail. It was maybe half a centimeter long. That's it. I get little nicks and cuts on my legs all the time, and didn't think anything of it. I washed the leg, and that was that.

By Wednesday, when I posted the last training update, that little cut had become mildly infected, with a quarter-sized red area around it. Something I took notice of, but still nothing to worry about. Then Thursday came along, and this thing blew up. It rapidly grew in size and changed appearance. It became raised, warm to the touch, swollen, uncomfortable. (I won't go into any more detail than that, in case you've just eaten... Let's just say it wasn't (and still isn't) pretty...)

With my stay in the hospital this past spring for staph in the back of my mind, I didn't want to mess around. And so Thursday was the first of many trips to the doctor. More on that in a bit.

Thursday night I developed systemic symptoms - fever and chills, joint pain, extreme fatigue, raging headache, nausea and vomiting, lack of appetite, general ill feeling. Friday through Saturday those symptoms stayed with me, or worsened, or waxed and waned.

When I woke Saturday morning, Kelli nearly jumped out of bed. Sometime overnight, both of my eyes developed pretty severe 360-degree hemorrhages. (See the photo below...) My right eye in particular continued to bleed until mid-day Sunday, so that the globe got a bit swollen and uncomfortable, causing some mild tearing and some blurriness on the edges of my vision.

Saturday was probably the worst day overall. I barely could get out of bed. After a brief 30-minute attempt to eat lunch at the dining room table around 12:30p, I went to sleep around 1:00p - and other than waking once a few hours later to throw up my small lunch - I slept until 8:30p or so. I got up for about an hour, and then went back to bed for the night.

By late on Sunday, many of the systemic symptoms had resolved or began to resolve, which now has left me with a small bit of lingering tiredness, the infection/rash on my leg, and eyes that make me look like the devil/vampire.

Such has been my health roller coaster over the last week or so. The search for a diagnosis has proven frustratingly elusive.

I'm here to take your soul.

Worried that the infection on my leg was a recurrence of staph, last Thursday I went to my primary doc. She agreed that it looked like staph, and treated it as such, prescribing an oral antibiotic. She also ordered a panel of blood tests, and said to come back if I had any major change in symptoms.

That night I developed my long list of systemic symptoms, and so sure enough, on Friday I went back to my primary doc. My white blood cell count looked good, but funny thing, initial tests came back positive for Lyme disease. Yikes! So she put me on a second oral antibiotic to treat that, and once again said, if things get worse, see her tomorrow (Saturday).

Well, as you know I woke looking like an extra from the Twilight movie series, and so I called her office. The receptionist answered the phone.

"My eyes are bleeding," I told her.

"Do you mean they're bloodshot?"

"No. I mean both of my eyes are covered in blood."

Silence while she checked with the doctor.

"We think you should go straight to the hospital. Since it involves your eyes, we don't want to mess around."

Which is how I spent the first part of my Saturday morning (before spending the rest of the day in bed) in the ER of the hospital. They didn't have any answer for my eyes, or for my systemic symptoms, but diagnosed my leg as poison oak contact dermatitis and sent me home with a topical cream.

Meanwhile, the infection/rash on my leg doesn't seem to respond to the oral antibiotics or to any topical treatments. In fact, it continues to spread and get worse. So on Monday I visit a dermatologist, who diagnoses it was a severe spider bite, with accompanying systemic reaction. He prescribes a new stronger topical cream. He said he would normally have also prescribed a certain oral antibiotic, but that it could increase intraocular pressure, and with how my eyes already looked, well...

That same day I also went to see an opthalmologist, to make sure something serious wasn't wrong with my eyes. (For the most part, they're fine.) He gave me prescription eye drops (combo steroid and anti-inflammatory).

Oh, and by Monday, the full blood test results were in, and this time Lyme was negative.

To round out my bases, yesterday (Tuesday) I saw an infectious disease specialist. His assessment: the problem with my leg was an extreme allergic reaction to the vine that caused the initial scratch, and the systemic symptoms were my reaction to a drug allergy to one of the antibiotics my primary doc prescribed when she thought I had staph.

So to recap: since just this past Thursday, I've seen my primary doctor, an ER doctor, a dermatologist, an opthalmologist, and an infectious disease specialist. Those five doctors have variously diagnosed me with: a staph infection (not it), Lyme disease (also not it), contact dermatitis from poison oak (doesn't explain my systemic symptoms, and which, by the way, doesn't grow in New York!), a bad spider bite with systemic reaction (it's not a spider bite, trust me), and a contact dermatitis allergic reaction and bad drug side effects/allergy (possible, though I'm still skeptical).

At the end of all this, I have no definitive resolution. I just know that I'm getting better.

So what has all this meant for the last week of training? As you might have guessed, there hasn't been any training. I didn't do my last long run. I didn't do my last short runs. In fact, I wasn't even sure I'd be doing this race in a few days. As of Saturday night, it was looking like a 97% probability that I'd have to withdraw. I was already thinking of other ultra races later in October and November that I could run to "make up" for having to miss this one.

But my health has rebounded enough that I'm going to give it a try. I went for one modest short 4.5-mile "test run" yesterday to see how I was feeling after all this. I didn't feel great or terrible, good or bad. I just felt okay, which is fine by me all things considered.

I'll admit. At times I've felt demoralized and disappointed by all this. I want to perform at my best. I want to peak for this race. That won't happen. And this isn't the first time a major race has been sabotaged by illness. This spring I missed the North Face Bear Mountain Endurance Challenge (another 50-mile ultra) because I was hospitalized with staph and then tick-borne ehrlichiosis. Back in 2009, I came down with a nasty case of H1N1 flu two days before the Xterra off-road triathlon US national championship.

I've tried to put a positive spin on the situation, and have come up with at least two ways getting sick will actually help me in this race:

1. Abandoning training and spending all that time in bed prevented me from over-training in this last week, forcing me to start an early "taper."

2. My devil eyes will be great for intimidating the competition.

2x Supporter

GF Bistro

It wasn't been all doom and gloom, however. On a much brighter note, you all are awesome! While I've been resting in bed, trying as hard as I can to recover in time for the race, you've been busy supporting the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness! As of this morning, we've reached 59% of my goal. Together we've raised more than $2,930. Thank you all for your support! Let's break right through the $3,000 mark and keep on going.

If you've thought about making a donation, but haven't yet, please go do it now. Visit my fundraising page. Every dollar helps. Seriously. And the clock is ticking. The fundraising doesn't officially stop on Saturday... the fundraising page stays open for another month or so after that. But Saturday is a finish line of sorts, and I'd love to get as close to the goal as possible by then. Do it for yourself. Do it for someone you know who is gluten-free. Do it for the NFCA. Do it for my red eyes. =)

Finally, on a logistical note... for those of you who want to track my race progress live, you'll be able to do so. The race starts at 6:00am on Saturday. Starting Friday, you can go to the race website and follow links to "live runner tracking." Find my name under the 50-mile race format. Or, if you prefer to have text messages sent to your phone each time I pass through an aid station, you can sign up for that now. Go to this page, choose the 50-mile race format tab, find my name (Peter Bronski), and click the cell phone icon next to it.

Wish me luck. After the week I've had, I'm going to need it!

- Pete

Product Review: TrueBars

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 15:40:00 +0000

When Bakery on Main - makers of gluten-free granola and gluten-free granola bars (which we reviewed here) - offered to send us gratis samples of their new TrueBars, I'll admit I was a bit skeptical. Based on initial appearances, they bore resemblance to Bora Bora bars and Wild Alice bars, and we only felt so so about those brands. As we soon discovered, though, appearances can be deceiving.

TrueBars seem to represent something of a departure for Bakery on Main. The company name and logo are seriously downsized. Instead, "TrueBar" is dominant on the packaging, which is slick and colorful and modern, and has little in common with BoM's other products. It's as if they're trying to establish a separate brand or a sub-brand. Fortunately for BoM, these bars can certainly stand on their own.

The tag line is that these are bars "with nothing to hide," a nod to the use of straightforward, wholesome ingredients. For example, the ingredients list on one bar reads: coconut, cashews, brown rice syrup, evaporated cane juice, rice crisp, agave nectar, chia seeds, brown rice flour, inulin, soybean lecithin, sea salt, and canola oil. Other flavors may have different nuts, seeds, dried fruit, or a touch of chocolate. Some people may take issue with the evaporated cane juice, soy lecithin, canola oil, or even the agave nectar, but on the whole, these bars are filled with good stuff. And you can pretty much see all the ingredients in the bar as you eat it.

Nutritionally, the bars range from 150-190 calories per bar. Fat ranges from 6 to 12g per bar. Sugar ranges from 12 to 15g per bar. Each bar has a few grams of protein. Ingredients such as chia seeds give them omega 3 fatty acids. Other ingredients make them pretty high in fiber. Many of the ingredients are lower on the glycemic index scale. And their balance of carbs, protein and fat make them pretty hunger-satisfying.

For texture, bars to me sit along a spectrum, from too soft and chewy, to good chewy, to good crunchy, to break-your-tooth too crunchy. The TrueBars hit the Goldilocks sweet spot of snack bar texture - neither too chewy nor too crunchy. They have a pleasant firm chewiness, with enough substance to let you know you're biting into something with texture.

As for flavor, we found a lot to love. We sampled six: Fruit and Nut, Raspberry Chocolate Almond, Hazelnut Chocolate Cherry, Walnut Cappucino, Apricot Almond Chai, and Coconut Cashew. On the average, the nuts in any given bar had a pretty subtle flavor. For example, I barely detected the hazelnuts in the Hazelnut Chocolate Cherry, which was a shame, because I love hazelnuts. Otherwise, here's how the flavors broke down:

Fruit and Nut
A good bar. Kind of the Plain Jane of the group. Tasty, but unmemorable.

Raspberry Chocolate Almond and Hazelnut Chocolate Cherry
I group these together because they were similar in terms of overall "formula" - nut, plus tart dried fruit, plus mini chocolate chips. As I mentioned earlier, in both cases the nuts (hazelnuts and almonds) were pretty subtle, though visibly present. The mini chocolate chips never overpowered the bar, but provided a pleasant sweet chocolate flavor, balanced well by the tart raspberries and cherries. If you like fruit in your nut bars, these are the way to go.

Walnut Cappucino and Apricot Almond Chai
These two flavors were excellent. Spices such as cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, and cloves gave the chair bar warm, complex layers of flavor. The walnut cappucino bar similarly impressed us. Kelli declared it her favorite snack bar flavor ever. That's saying something!

Coconut Cashew
Another superb flavor. This was my favorite, by a very long shot. I would buy these by the case. In fact, I just might do that in advance of my ultramarathon on September 24. They're like a slightly chewy, slightly crunchy coconut macaroon in snack bar form...with lots of chia seeds. So good.

And so there you have it. By our measure, TrueBars are a huge step in the right direction for Bakery on Main. Overall, they have great ingredients, great texture, and great flavor. After sampling many fruit-nut-seed style bars over the years, we've finally come across one that knocks it out of the ballpark.

- Pete

Images courtesy Bakery on Main

Gluten-Free Ultramarathon Training Update #4

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 14:09:00 +0000

An unnamed waterfall on Shaupeneak Ridge,
one of my regular weekday trail running training locales

This past weekend I headed over to the Shawangunk Mountains for my longest training run to date. It was 17.5 (maybe 18) miles with some good elevation gain, though not quite as much as the race is going to dish out. As I worked my way up toward a summit known as Skytop, I was huffing and puffing up a steeper section of trail when I saw ahead of me a large porcupine smack in the middle of my path.

As I grew closer, that little guy didn't much seem to care. He looked at me, casually turned so that his sharp spines faced me, and slowly ambled to the side of the trail, where he stayed. He didn't scatter into the woods. He didn't frantically run for cover. He simply provided enough space for me to pass, and then continued about his day. In other words, that porcupine had confidence. With just a week and a half to go until the big race, I could use as much confidence as I can get.

Confidence, at least in this context, seems to come about through a combination of knowledge, experience, and self-assurance. I've done the race before. This is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, I know the course (normally good for confidence). But on the other hand, I know the course (if you know that the course is brutal, this is maybe not so good for confidence... sometimes ignorance is bliss). I know what worked and what didn't work for my gluten-free race nutrition. I know that this year I'll bring trekking poles for the insanely steep Greek Peak section of the race.

But there are also unknowns, which aren't great for confidence. Will my revised training regime pay off? Or should I have stuck to a training plan similar to last year? What kind of condition will the course be in following the unbelievable rains and flooding New York has had? (As of the race director's most recent email to registered competitors, the steep ascents and descents are described as "muddy slip and slides." Yikes. This year's race could be epic.)

I do have two big positives in my corner, though. For one, I've been healthy on a well-rounded gluten-free diet. My body is back to performing at high-octane levels. For another, I have the support of the gluten-free community in my corner.

Speaking of which, I'm happy to announce the Bard's Tale Beer Company as the latest Sustaining Sponsor. Bard's is one of the long-standing pillars of the gluten-free beer world, and as far as I know, the only brewery to use genuinely malted sorghum grain (as opposed to sorghum syrup) to brew their beer. That's a quality that doesn't go unnoticed amongst die-hard beer drinkers. (Just one reason why, in our Great Gluten-Free Blind Beer Tasting, Bard's earned votes for both top pick in its flight of beers as well as for overall best in show from our panel of tasters.) Bard's is also - through Midwest Homebrewing Supplies - the first gluten-free beer company to offer a homebrew kit for you to brew your own Bard's Tale clone beer. Stay tuned for future blog posts about the nuances of Bard's malted sorghum, as well as our experiences brewing a Bard's clone at home. Should be fun! (And tasty!)

And don't forget about our other Sustaining Sponsors: Rudi's Gluten-Free Bakery and The Gluten-Free Bistro.

2x Supporter

GF Bistro

Finally, as always with these training updates, I want to leave you with a fundraising update. We've now raised almost $2,400, bringing me to 47% of my goal of raising $5,000 for the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness. With a week and a half to go until the race, we're in the homestretch. Please visit the fundraising page and help us inch closer and closer to our goal. Every dollar helps! Thanks again for your support.

Two more short training runs (5-10 miles each) and one more long training run (~20 miles) to go. Then it's game time. Starting to get excited!

- Pete

National Celiac Disease Awareness Day 2011

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 14:45:00 +0000

Today is National Celiac Disease Awareness Day. There's lots I could write about celiac disease - what it is, how prevalent it is, how rates of the disease are rising, how it impacts health. But I'm not going to. I've said it all before, in pieces here and there, on the blog. And I'm sure other bloggers and gluten-free/celiac organizations will cover that ground more than adequately.

Instead, I'd like to use the day to plug a bunch of upcoming events:

First and foremost, did you hear that - thanks to the efforts of many organizations, companies, bloggers, and others in the GF community - the FDA has finally taken notice and reopened the comment period for gluten-free labeling? It's not a GF standard for the US. Yet. But it's a step in the right direction, and is long-awaited progress after the process had stalled for several years. Visit the FDA website and submit your comment today!

Secondly, for those of you in the New York City area, Kelli and I are going to be at G-Free NYC on the Upper West Side on Sunday, September 18, from 1-3pm. They're calling it a "meet, greet, and eat." We'll be bringing samples of mini cupcakes. (We're thinking mocha, and since fall is fast approaching, pumpkin spice with cinnamon vanilla frosting.) Come on by and say hello!

Thirdly, as you've heard from me incessantly in recent weeks, on Saturday, September 24, I'm racing in the Virgil Crest 50-mile ultramarathon to raise money for the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness. So far we've raised more than $2,340 (47% of my goal). With the race less than two weeks away, we're in the final push (both training and fundraising). Check out the fundraising page, and make a donation today!

Finally, one week later, on Saturday, October 1, I'll be at the Gluten & Allergen Free Expo in Dallas. I'm co-teaching a 4-hour class called "Bread & Beyond." Mary Capone and Brittany Angell will be joining me. We're each tackling one or more gluten-free breads. I'll be walking folks through the finer points of crafting a genuine boiled-then-baked Long Island bagel. After the class, I'll be on hand at the Expo to sign cookbooks, chat, answer questions, etc. Get your tickets today!

- Pete

Gluten-Free Ultramarathon Training Update #3

noreply@blogger.com (peterbronski) — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 13:00:00 +0000

How I'm going to feel immediately following the race

As she has for so many parts of the country lately, Mother Nature hasn't given us a break. First it was Irene. Most recently, it's been the remnants of Lee. More prolonged, steady, heavy rain. More flooding.

I'm not normally one to bring up the condition of the trails and the weather. I typically take it as it comes, sun, rain, snow, whatever. But many local trails are borderline unrunnable. Some area roads are under water and/or washed out. This definitely qualifies as training under adverse conditions.

Needless to say, in the week-plus since my last training update, I haven't gotten in nearly the mileage I had planned. Instead of 10- to 15-mile runs, I've managed 5- to 10-mile runs. Plus, many of those miles have been on paved and gravel roads, instead of trails. At this point, I'll take what I can get.

As of this writing, I'm just shy of 300 training miles since I started tracking after my hospitalizations this past spring. With just two weeks to go until the race, under best-case circumstances, I'll manage another 50 miles or so of trail running. This will bring my pre-race training mileage to 350. Compare that number to last year's pre-race training mileage, which was 550. That's a 200-mile difference. Holy cow.

On the positive side, this is right on track. When I originally announced the 2nd Annual Gluten-Free Ultramarathon Challenge, I had 190 miles under my belt, and estimated I'd log another 150, for a total of 340. And here I am, pretty much on the mark. (I was quite pleased to discover this when I looked back!) I also noted that I'd take a different approach to training this summer, focusing on a bit shorter mileage during my runs, but with increased intensity. That too has panned out. (My longest training run this summer will be 20 miles or so, compared to 32 miles last summer.)

Even so, the big question is how I'll feel on race day. Overall, it's been a good summer. Since the hospital "episode," I've remained largely healthy, largely free of injury, and - with the exception of one gluten cross-contamination from a restaurant while traveling - confidently gluten-free. This all bodes well for the race.

The big variable, though, is the race itself. It's not a distance to take for granted. Just because I handled it well last year doesn't mean I will this year. Race day - just two weeks away - will tell all.

The other race I'm running (in case you haven't noticed), is the fundraising race. I'm trying to raise $5,000 for the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness...$100 per mile. I'm once again thrilled to report great progress thanks to your support. We're now at 41% of my goal, with roughly $2,040 raised so far. I'd love to go into the weekend at 50%. Won't you help me - and us - get there? Please visit my fundraising page and help make it happen.

This week I announce two new corporate sponsors, who have generously donated to the NFCA. The first is this week's Featured Sponsor: New Planet Gluten-Free Beer. They're a 2x Supporter, having also donated to the NFCA during last year's inaugural Gluten-Free Ultramarathon Challenge. We're pretty big fans of New Planet. You may have caught our review of their Off Grid Pale Ale, our review of their Raspberry Ale, our review of their Tread Lightly Ale, or New Planet's impressive performance in our Great Gluten-Free Blind Beer Tasting.

Secondly, I'm announcing an additional Sustaining Sponsor: Rudi's Gluten-Free Bakery. They make some of the best gluten-free bread you'll find in the supermarket, and they've recently added pizza crust, as well as multigrain hot dog rolls and hamburger buns. Like New Planet, Rudi's is also a 2x Supporter, also stepping up for a second year in a row after supporting the NFCA as a Sustaining Sponsor in last year's inaugural Gluten-Free Ultramarathon Challenge. Thank you Rudi's and New Planet!

Finally, a reminder that the other Sustaining Sponsor is The Gluten-Free Bistro, which makes an awesome pizza crust, all-purpose flour blend, and pasta.

Please note that these sponsors are not advertisers. When I say we love 'em, it's because we love the company and the product. When I link to past reviews, they are independent, unbiased reviews of these company's products. We've taken no money from these sponsors. All of their "sponsorship" money goes directly to the NFCA as a donation. We never see a dime. I plug them here on the blog as a way to say thank you for their support of a cause we all have a stake in. It doesn't hurt that we also love these companies, and you can look back and read our reviews to find out exactly why.

But enough of that. It's time to focus back on the training. An ultramarathon is looming, and the clock is ticking...

- Pete