Rice Krispy Fun

It all started because one of the boys in my son's class can't eat eggs. I don't know what happens to him, but as one who avoids a major food group, I knew it couldn't be fun to be vigilant at every unsuspecting snack time.

I first tried substituting apple sauce for the eggs, but the cake was more a muffin, though delicious with cream cheese icing.

Then I remembered the humble rice krispy treat. So versatile!

I bought several boxes of cereal (one large box makes two batches), along with bags of marshmallows, and prepared to bake. Then the snow came, postponing the party and bringing some opportune friends instead for a little impromptu celebration. I cracked open the boxes and made some monster treats.

The next weekend, when the sun shone, the party was on. Starting Friday, I made 7 more batches of rice krispy treats, and left them to harden slightly in the pan. We cut them into bricks and assembled, using marshmallow fluff as the mortar, marshmallows for the turrets, fruit leather cut into flags for the decor. Small knights fought on the ramparts. Swedish fish swam in a blue icing moat, around gumdrop stepping stones.

When the time came for cake, the kids crowded around as I broke bits off and put them on plates. It was gone in a jiffy, and not one kid had to worry whether they could eat it. Seconds were had, even thirds, by big and small alike.

Rice Crispy Treats

6 cups rice crispies
1 bag of marshmallows
3 T butter
1 teaspoon vanilla

Melt butter in a pan on the stove and add the marshmallows, stirring until they are all melted. Pour over rice crispies in a large bowl and add vanilla. Stir to combine.

Pat out in lasagna pans and let harden. Cut with knife.

For the monsters, make one batch. Decorate with icing and M&Ms.

For the cake, make 7 or 8 batches. Decorate with icing, marshmallows, gumdrpos and fruit leathers.

Enjoy.

Tip 13: Drink your veggies, part 2

Maybe green drinks aren't your thing, or you just can't give up eggs -- it's all good. But if you like the idea of pre-pulverized veggies down the hatch, there's another way.

Soup.

Soup is good food. Whether you heard it from Campbell's or the Dead Kennedy's first, you heard it here. Cooking vegetables into soup retains more nutrients than baking or sauteeing, and if you puree them, you're helping your body to digest more of them as well.

There is something about drinking soup that is healing. And there is something about making soup that is calming too -- first, you can use all the odds and ends in your fridge up; second, you can make it while you are doing other things; third, it makes your house smell like a home; fourth, it is just plain tasty. Satisfying but not weighty. Healthy, but not austere.

There is a soup for all seasons, and this one is perfect for warm days that turn cool at night, for the time of year you want to shed the hibernating ways but still crave an extra dose of comfort. Carrots provide an of the charts dose of vitamin A, night vision enhancing beta-carotene and help regulate blood sugar. Tests show that a diet containing as little as one carrot a day can cut the rate of lung cancer in half.

Combine them with curry, celeriac for an anchoring smoothness and ginger for kick, and this is a spring palate in a bowl. Ginger gives it an anti-inflammatory benefit, while aiding digestion. Garlic is a natural antibiotic. Top the whole thing with mint -- another tummy soother -- and you've got a dish beautiful enough for a black tie luncheon date with Bugs Bunny.

Sound too good to be true?

Wait until you taste it.

Curried Carrot Soup

2 Tablespoons grapeseed oil or olive oil
1 lb  carrots, preferably organic
1 head of garlic, peeled
1 small onion, peeled and rough chopped
1/2 celeriac root, peeled and rough chopped
1 2-inch knob of ginger, peeled
4 cups vegetable broth
1 tablespoon curry powder
1 teaspoon cornstarch
coarse salt

Heat oil in heavy stock pan over medium high heat. Add garlic and onions and saute until translucent and beginning to soften. Add a pinch of salt and the curry powder (my favorite is Dean and Deluca blend, I buy it by the tub full). Stir to combine then add ginger, celeriac and carrots, cornstarch and stir again. Roast about 4 minutes to sweat the vegetables and ignite the curry. Add vegetable broth and water if needed to cover vegetables.

Simmer gently until vegetables are soft, then use an immersion blender or food processor to puree. Season to taste with salt and pepper, if you wish, and top with chopped mint.

Enjoy!

Fat Tuesday

When my husband is away, my 5-year-old and I often have breakfast-for-dinner. This usually means that I have no plan for food and we will pour milk on cereal and play Candyland, then eat ice cream cones.

So today, when a friend's 5-year-old asked if we were having pancakes for supper, it made supreme sense. I am not super-religious, rather, I think I am spiritual. Pagan, a good friend once said. But I like the idea of Shrove Tuesday -- use up all the butter and eggs in the house before the Lenten Fast -- and while I was planning to use the eggs and butter to make a cake to send to my step-daughter in college (promise we'll do that tomorrow!), pancakes seemed way more fun. And a little bit spiritual.

There is only one thing about pancakes: I have been gluten-free for almost two years, and never met a gluten-free pancake to write home about. Or anywhere, for that matter. My husband, bless him, tries every so often of a Sunday to throw together some vehicle for syrup we can all eat. So far, no dice.

It is important to mention that NO home-made pancake has ever made the grade with me, gluten or no. You see, there is a pancake of legend in my gluten-ous past. It is served in a dive called Dick's Harbor House, on the shores of Lake Chautauqua, New York, and is fluffy, high, light and full of flavor. I have tried to pry the chef's secret from many a waitress, including my earnest friend Carolyn, to no avail; they just shake their head sadly and roll their eyes. I've never ventured back to the kitchen ask the cook himself (or herself) but I think in part that might be because I secretly fear it will be so disgusting back there I may never return. But despite this lack of hard evidence, I have for years suspected that the secret ingredient may just be vanilla.

So tonight, Shrove Tuesday, I put aside the visions of flat, burned discs of rice flour and embarked on a mission: fluffy, light, flavorful pancakes. Gluten-free.

Talk about your 100-year snow.

Armed with vanilla extract that I request from a girlfriend who vacations in Mexico each year, I hit the stove, 5-year-old and all. I made it up while he measured and stirred. Then he played me a little electric guitar while I fried them.


It might be the electric guitar that did it. Next time I am at Dick's, I will inquire if the cook plays. Because darned if these weren't the lightest-fluffiest- yummiest pancakes I've ever turned out. And did I mention they are gluten free?

I won't tell if you won't.


Fat Pancakes

1/4 cup rice flour
3/4 cup sweet rice flour (I think it would be fine to use all one or the other, I had just a little in a bag to use up)
1/2 cup tapioca flour (also sold as tapioca starch)
4 tablespoons dry buttermilk powder
3 teaspoons vanilla sugar (fill a jar with sugar and stir with a split vanilla pod, store until needed - which I promise will be more than you think, once you have it. In fact you may wonder how you ever didn't have it)
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
sprinkle of cinnamon sugar (I have a shaker on hand with raw sugar and ground cinnamon for just such emergencies)
2 eggs
3 tablespoons applesauce
1 1/2 cups water

Mix or sift dry ingredients together. Stir in the eggs and applesauce. With a whisk, incorporate water slowly -- you may need more or less depending on how thick you like your pancakes. I have one person here who only likes crepes, and this batter, with more liquid, makes a fine one.

Heat a griddle and melt some butter. Pour batter into rounds, or Mickey Mouse heads, or the initials of your favorite rock star. When uncooked side begins to bubble, slide a spatula under the cake and flip in one deft go. Cook another 5 minutes or so (again, depending on the thickness of your batter), plate and butter. Serve with real maple syrup, preferably from just down the road, or from Indiana.

Enjoy!

Why did the chicken cross the road? Would you believe he was in a curry?

The chicken is a versatile, humble creature, able to be both the best and the worst of culinaria. Let's skip the worst, and just admit: There is something about a roast chicken that not only welcomes you home but pulls up a chair and says 'Bon Appetit.' It is unremarkable on the highway to divine.


There are many ways to roast a chicken. I happen to like Mark Bittman's quick method most: put a metal roasting pan in the oven, turn it to 450 degrees. When the oven is hot, put the chicken in the pan. This sears it and cuts the roasting time, though I have never met his record of 45 minutes. I also like the versions (Ina Garten has one) that stuff it fuller than a skinny man at a hot dog eating contest with garlic.

These are Sunday, lazy afternoon roast chickens, that slowly fill the house with smells of comfort and joy, that, when pricked, ooze pure gold juices to mix with heavy cream into a heavenly gravy. But I often do not have time for these roast chickens, however much I might idolize them. That is why, for me, the advent of rotisserie ovens in many local groceries is up there with the great events of the 21st century. (The 20th century, I am pretty sure, was the ATM card.)

There they are, right when you walk in the store, with their rich, lazy Sunday afternoon attitudes, even on a Tuesday at 7 p.m. when you haven't an idea about dinner. Their smell assails you as you enter the supermarket, changing dinner from a scary prospect to a delightful one in a whiff. I have been known to drive 15 miles out of my way for a rotisserie chicken. Once, when I got there and none were left, I was so bereft that the frightened manager gave me 'I owe you's' for three chickens.

But what really rocks about a rotisserie chicken is the day after. Because you have all this plump, moist chicken waiting patiently for something special to happen to it. You can chop it, grind it, puree it, sautee it, stir fry it -- it cares not. It's date night for this chicken, and it's ready to go. Especially somewhere exotic, somewhere it can put on rouge and a silk scarf. That, you'll agree, means curry.

Now, there are even more recipes for curry than there are for roast chicken, and like the chicken, I have tried my fair share. But what really puts the ease in easy for me has two ingredients. Making this a three ingredient dinner. See, I told you it could be simple.


Three Ingredient Chicken Curry

1 1/2 cups coconut milk (You can use lite, if you are concerned about fat, or even coconut milk beverage, which is deceivingly creamy -- So Delicious makes one that posts only 50 calories a cup.)
1/4 cup curry paste (Patak's Mild Curry Paste is a good choice, I have another I like as well, or better, it's more subtle, but harder to come by.)
Diced rotisserie chicken, about 4 cups

Heat the coconut milk, add the curry paste and whisk to combine. Bring to a simmer and add the chicken. Let simmer 20 minutes or so more to really saturate the chicken. Or eat it immediately.
I crumbled some curry leaves in it last time which I had in the freezer from the Indian shop in Chantilly. Or you can use chopped fresh cilantro. That totally makes it necessary to change the name.

I think it's worth it if you do.

PS -- To kick this up a notch 'real food' wise, I like to get the chicken from one of two shops in our town that roast organic chickens (Home Farm, and Market Salamander, both on Main Street in Middleburg, Virginia, see links), rubbed with spices or just sea salt. Because I really do think that organic can make a difference in how healthy the chicken is. With real food, what it's been fed is a barometer of how well it, in turn, can feed you. (It's also important where it lived, for chickens that rove around are tastier than caged birds. No one I've read can explain this well. Most agree that they just taste more chicken-y. They are right. Try it.) And the other bonus is, I have an organic carcass for making broth. (More, much more on making broth later.)



I served this with a sweet potato puree, (boil two sweet potatos, a cup of baby carrots until tender. Drain, reserving small amount of liquid. Process until smooth, using either reserved liquid or cider, season with salt and pepper) which was a good counterpoint. But the spinach, now that was a joy, kicked out of being comfortable by studs of coriander.

Sauteed Spinach with Coriander

1 T olive oil
1 T coriander seeds (hint: buying spices in bulk in the Hispanic section of our supermarket makes them completely cheap -- you get a whole boatload for just a couple of bucks.)
1 t coarse sea salt
3 T slivered and peeled garlic
1 clamshell fresh baby spinach

Heat oil, add salt and coriander seeds. Add the garlic and turn until just browning. Add spinach and cover, letting it wilt. Off the heat and stir together.


I have found that roasting salt like this with spices heightens and emulsifies it, so it coats the food with a subtle picante, as a jewel tone scarf intensifies ocean blue eyes.

Enjoy.