Worst Promise Ever

So we did again make the Kimchi Soup and I did again forget to take pictures. I also made Gluten Free Matzo and Matzo ball soup. It was my second time making it and for some reason the recipe I used for the Matzo didn't work quite as well as before.

I have been trying to get my hands on Cybele Pascal's book from the Library again, but every time I look for it it's at another branch. A conspiracy I wonder!

We had a 'shrimp boil' of sorts by cooking shrimp and fish in a metal pan on the grill the other night. To which I added a roasted root vegetable medley. I have never roasted beets before, but we had some from our last CSA pick up a few weeks ago that I wanted to use so they wouldn't go bad. So I cut up six beets, ten short carrots (just slightly longer than my middle finger), a sweet potato, two Japanese yams, and a white potato, drizzled them will olive oil and sprinkled on pepper, garlic, and Bell's seasoning. I baked them in the oven at 375 deg F for 45 minutes. At about 35 minutes I drizzled them with more oil and mixed them around to make sure they baked evenly. The Japanese yams got dark spots on them as they oxidize almost immediately after peeling, so next time I think I would try to leave the peel on. But I wasn't sure how well I could scrub them.

This got me thinking and inspired me to get out into our 'garden.' Spring and summer are coming, I planted a head of garlic that was happily growing in the kitchen, an onion that we let sit too long (I don't know if it will make it, but I'm hoping), and spruced up our pepper plants. Our basil looks half dead and half ready to go wild so we will see what happens with that as well. I'm looking forward to finding some ways to use up the last of our Kimchi. After which I am going to experiment with making whole cabbage Kimchi. I couldn't do this before because our container wasn't the proper size to do so, but now we have a specific one.

I'm looking forward to coming up with some other things to do with spring and summer crops. I'm really hoping that by my birthday I'll be able to treat myself to an Excalibur Dehydrator and a Vitamix blender. Not that we honestly need more kitchen appliances (seriously, our kitchen is tiny) but I want these to make fruit jerky, smoothies, cashew cheese, and other raw food applications.

I have a theory that Summer in Florida is a good time for raw food. Simple, low heated foods that don't add to the insane heat of the scorching sun. But theories are just that!

Today marks the beginning of my work week, so it's likely the kitchen finesse will not be happening again until next weekend, but we will see!

Amazing Food Everywhere!

So while I have been slacking off in posting, I have not been slacking off in the kitchen. We have been cooking up a storm of gluten and dairy free amazingness that I am going to try to explain to you. The sad thing is I keep forgetting to take pictures!

So first up - GF/DF Fudge

We needed a sweet treat that was going to satisfy my intense need for chocolate. Something I sadly had been having to do without because almost all chocolate you buy in the store has dairy in it, unless it's for baking. Enter Trader Joe's (Thank goodness!) who sell dairy free chocolate chips and delicious dark chocolate bars that are both cheap and dairy free. So inspired by this I again consulted Pinterest (which seems to house a lot of inspiration).

I found this pin from the Once a Month Mom that was for fudge. As always I didn't have exactly what was needed (really the only thing I didn't have was a conventional sifter and an 8 x 8 pan) so I made it in an eight inch round cake pan. We used this tea strainer we have as a sifter, which takes longer but worked just as well. I have since purchased a nifty three cup sifter which I will be using today to make another batch of fudge. I used carton coconut milk and found it to work surprisingly well. This fudge was amazing. We kept it in the fridge and it lasted a long time because one or two pieces is dark and rich enough to satisfy even the strongest craving.

I am still on a mission to find a more natural replacement for powdered sugar. I killed our blender attempting to make coconut powdered sugar for a cake several months ago and haven't tried a second attempt since then. I'm sure a good hour on the internet will solve that problem!

I also made another Allergy Free Red Velvet Cake using Cybele Pascale's recipe. I used a "rice beverage" as opposed to Rice Milk and I'm not sure it didn't negatively effect the cake (Logician says it was the best yet, so there is that). I also only have one eight inch round pan so I ended up using two springform pans. Which resulted in a thicker layer that caved in a bit while it settled. Since I had a new surprising indent I put some Trader Joe's Monticello Cherries in the middle, which was quite tasty. Again this is another recipe where I would love to substitute the powdered sugar with something else, but the coconut 'powdered' sugar gave the icing a strong molasses flavor that the vanilla extract then made too strong. So adaptation in progress!

That same night we also tried out a new Korean Dish - Kimchi Soup (Kimchiguk) made by Maangchi. Who by the way - if you haven't tried her food. Do it. It's incredible! We've only had one recipe Logician and I didn't agree on and we had to use different ingredients (I'll explain a bit further down!).

We started making her Easy Kimchi sometime last summer. The first batch we made was okay but we increased the spiciness and added more vegetables and such the second time and it's so much better! Logician first discovered Maangchi on YouTube watching one of her BBQ Pork videos, which got me hooked. So we turned to her when we made the kimchi. We had finished off almost all the old kimchi but had bought a new container specifically for making kimchi (plastic, not the beautiful clay pots. That comes next) so we made a new batch. So sitting lonely in the back of the fridge was this older, more sour kimchi. So I decided to make Kimchi Soup after seeing one of her newer videos (Recipe and Video here).

It was delicious! I picked up a new type of tofu which turned out to be really weird to me (Logician found that it grew on him) and it was my first experience cooking with pork belly on my own. But the soup was incredible. We had company so I made a double recipe which allowed me to use all the remaining older kimchi and some of the newer batch. It was so good we decided to make it again this week.

However, as we were on our way to the more Chinese based market to pick up what we needed, Logician became inspired by a different recipe for Braised Saury. I knew we had seen this canned fish somewhere before so we set off to find it in the market. As it turns out that particular market does not stock Saury so we opted to try Jack Mackerel instead. The recipe looked and smelled beautiful but was way too fishy for me! I couldn't eat it. I went to the Korean/Japanese influenced market this morning and found the exact brand she used in the video. So I am thinking in the next two weeks or so, we'll try it again.

Maangchi has so many recipes I want to try, but I am absolutely addicted to her Kimchi recipes! I want to get a clay pot (I saw a smaller one today for about $20.00) and make whole cabbage kimchi. But only time will tell if I get to!

One thing we have discovered is that the more Asian influenced food we cook, the less likely we are to run into Dairy and Wheat, our two biggest foes. However this does leave some room for GMO soy, MSG, and other nasty chemical things. However, it seems like the more we read labels the more we find out that there are less of these chemical bad guys in the things that are imported! Seriously! It seems awfully odd to me, but it does make me very happy.

I promise to take some step by step pictures of the Kimchi Guk tonight and a finished picture. It's going to be awesome. I will likely make a one and one half time recipe of it, since I have such awesome looking pork I want to have stewed in the broth and I also bought some Enoki mushrooms to place into the pot! I'm looking forward to dinner so much I'm hungry now!

Happy Eating!