Working Lunch

Sorry I have been MIA, it had someone staying at my house and didn't want to be that girl taking pictures of my food, and then I (on purpose) ate some gluten and was out of commission for like a week. Sorry Momofuku, your crack pie isn't worth it. Anyway, I'm having a bit of a time getting my grove back, so this post won't include a recipe, per say, but since I eat the same thing for lunch every single I figured I would share.

When I was in middle school, there was a girl whose mom packed her homemade lunchables and cucumbers everyday. I was so jealous, because her lunch looked so tasty and delicious. So now, as an adult, I've been creating my own.

Ladies who lunch eat this.

Grown Up Lunchables

Ingredients
cured meat or deli meat (pictured is some Soppressata I bought at the Buon Italia at Chelsea Market)
slices of cheese (I use whatever fancy CSA cheese I have or white cheddar)
crackers (I've very fond of the Glutino brand)

cucumbers
sea salt
lemon wedge

Instructions

• Slice up the meat & cheese. Count out an equal number of cheese pieces, meat slices and crackers (I aim for 8).
• Stick it in your lunch box. You can also put a delicious treat in there, as well.
• Slice up your cucumber.
• Sprinkle the cucumber with salt.
• Stick the cucumber in a plastic bag with the lemon wedge. Don't put the cucumber in your lunch box because it will get watery and you dont want cucumber juice all over your crackers.
• Head to work (or if you like to make lunch the night before, have a nice sleep).

Fresh out of the oven.

Rosemary & duck fat chips.

I got a blog review from my little brother. This is what he had to say: this blog would be cool if it wasn't gluten free. So, Riley, this is for you.

Fancy Potato Chips

this is enough for one serving.


Ingredients
1 medium-sized potato
pink Himalayan salt, to taste
1 tablespoon rendered duck fat
1 sprig of rosemary


Instructions

1. Pre-heat the oven to 350° f.
2. Slice up the potato. I used a slicer, but if you don't have one just use a sharp knife.
3. Chop up the rosemary. I ended up with about 1 heaping tablespoon.
4. Melt the duck fat in a pot on the stove until it is just melted. Toss the potato slices in the duck fat.
5. Spread the potato slices on a a baking pan. Sprinkle with salt and then sprinkle with the chopped up rosemary.
6. Stick in the pre-heated oven for about 20 minutes (I start checking at 15 minutes, if any chips are staring to crisp up take them out and let the rest of the chips keep cooking).
7. Enjoy!

Lil bit of carrot cake.

So today, I decided to try my hand at using chia seeds as egg replacements. Worked rather well, I must say. I had a bunch of carrots from my CSA, and since it didn't seem like I was just going to eat them, I decided to make carrot cake.


I made a little one for me to eat right away, and a larger loaf sized cake to bring to a barbeque later in the week. 

mmm...mmm...good!

Vegan Carrot Cake

Modified from here

Ingredients
1 bunch carrots

1/4 chia seeds
3/4 cups warm water

3/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup turbinado sugar
2 cups gluten-free flour mix (I use this)
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 cup coconut oil
1 banana
2 teaspoons vanilla

Instructions 

1. Shred the carrots. You're going to need about 3 cups. Set the shredded carrots aside.
2. Pre-heat the oven to 325° f. Grease your baking pan(s) with coconut oil (I used the ramkin pictured and a large-ish ~9in loaf pan)
3. Mix the chia seeds and water together. They will expand a bit so put them in a container slightly larger than 1 cup. Let sit for 10-15 minutes until it gets gummy. I used this time to measure out the rest of the ingredients.
4. Mix together the sugars, flour, salt, cinnamon, baking powder and baking soda. Set aside.
5. In a separate bowl, mix together the oil, banana, vanilla, chia mixture and carrots. Mix in the dry ingredients.
6. Pour the batter into your pre-oiled pans. Stick them in the oven for about 45 min. My little ramkin of carrot cake was finished in like 1/2 an hour. The cake will be moist, but if you stick a knife into it and it comes out clean, it's finished.
7. Let it cook for a bit and enjoy!

The Good Chicken & Waffles

Mmm....mmm...mmm...good!

This is basically my favorite thing to eat, now it can be yours as well. It takes forever to make but the results are well worth it.

I call this chicken "the good chicken" because when I lived in the Netherlands, the mother of the family I was living with would always say, "Are you making the good chicken?" whenever I would make this. I later learned that she didn't actually like chicken, unless it was "the good chicken" I made.

The Good Chicken

modified from the Momofuku cookbook

Ingredients
4 chicken thighs
1 cup water
2 tablespoons salt
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup rendered duck fat (or pork fat, save the fat from when you make bacon)
optional: a couple strips of bacon


Instructions

1. Make a brine by dissolving the sugar and salt in water. Pour over the chicken and place in the fridge. I do this is the morning before I go to work, so it usually sits there for 8-9 hours. I like my chicken really salty.
2. Pre-heat the oven to 180° f.
3. Take the chicken out of the fridge and discard the brine. Place the chicken in an oven safe pot. Pack the chicken sungly, so you do not have to use as much fat. If you want add the bacon, tuck it in with the chicken now (the bacon helps give the chicken a smokey flavor).
4. Put the chicken in the pre-heated oven for approximately an hour.
5. Once the chicken is nice and confited, take it out of the oven and let it cool. Stick the chicken you won't be cooking right away back in the fridge with the left over fat.
6. Heat your cast iron pan on medium-high heat on the stove top. Once the pan it hot, put the chicken on. I place another pan on top of the chicken to weight it down. If you have a press use that.
7. Cook the chicken for 3-5 minutes, until it is slightly blackened. Flip and cook the same for the other side.
8. Remove from heat and cool slightly. Serve over rice or waffles (see below).
9. Enjoy!

Waffles

Modified from roost blog.

Ingredients
1/2 cups almond flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp baking soda
1 scant teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
2 eggs
1 scant tablespoon maple syrup
1/4 cup greek yogurt
1/2 a banana (I usually eat the other half, but if you are eating the waffles without the chicken, you can serve the waffles with the leftover banana)
optional ginger syrup


Instructions

1. Pre-heat your waffle iron, per the instructions that came with the waffle iron. All irons are different, so you're on your own with this.
2. Mix together the flour, salt, baking soda, cinnamon and nutmeg. 
3. Whisk in the eggs, maple syrup, yogurt and banana.
4. Scoop approximately 1/3 cup of the batter onto your waffle iron. Cook according to waffle iron instructions. (I cook for just over 2 minutes.)
5. Serve with "the good chicken" and ginger syrup (or whatever topping you prefer on your waffles).

C is for Cookie!

One of the hardest things about being gluten free is not being able to make small sandwiches when I want a small snack. I've been craving peanut butter lately, and since I can't bring myself to eat it straight from the jar, I went for the next best thing, cookies!

I'll eat you up, I love you so!

Peanut Butter Cookies

adapted from here

Ingredients
1 cup almond flour
pinch sea salt
¼ teaspoon baking soda
½ cup peanut butter (I used Trader Joe's brand with flax seeds)
¼ cup maple syrup
2 tablespoons coconut oil
¼ teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350°.
2. Mix together almond flour, salt and baking soda.
3. Separately, beat together peanut butter, maple syrup, coconut oil and vanilla. I used my blender.
4. Mix dry ingredients into wet until well combined.
5. Roll dough in 1 tablespoon sized balls. Place dough onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Squish with fork and then rotate 90° and squish again to create cross marks.
6. Bake for approximately 12 minutes until golden.

Ball jar of scapesto

What are these?

They are garlic scapes, of course! Scapes can be used in the same way you would add garlic to a dish, but they can also be used to make delicious, delicious pesto. Pesto are sort of my thing since I went gluten-free. I pack my lunch for work every single day, and my go-to dish has pretty much been pasta. Pre-gluten-free, I would eat pasta with just some butter and cheese, but gluten free pasta doesn't have the same flavor as the wheat-full version. I don't eat tomatoes (ever!), so I started going the pesto route. Pesto is super simple, just gather up the ingredients and stick them in the food processor and pesto! you've got pesto.

Scapesto Pasta Salad. I use Trader Joe's corn pasta, that is why it is so yellow.

Luckily my food processor matches the pesto.

Scapesto

modified from here

I don't like store bought pesto because it is very oily. I will usually drain off some of the oil if I do buy pesto (I do this with peanut butter, as well). If you don't think the recipe is the right consistency for your pesto, you can double the oil.

Ingredients 
150 g garlic scapes (about 10)
1/3 cup Parmesan
1/3 cup almonds
2 tablespoons hemp seed oil *optional
2 tablespoons olive oil (if you omit the hemp seed oil use 4 tablespoons or 1/4 cup)

Instructions

1. Put everything but the oil in your food processor (I have seen recipes where people use their blender, I have never tried but I assume that will work). Process (or blend).
2. Slowly add the oil while blending. Most food processors have a spout you can pour liquids in, if not lift off the lid, pour in some oil, blend and repeat. Once you are happy with the consistency, you are done! 
3. Enjoy!

Chicken Burger Wraps

Chicken burger wrap

I finally decided the use the meat grinder my mom bought me for my birthday back in February. I decided to make little chicken burgers. Lately, I've been on a kick of wrapping my food in lettuce wraps. It's a little trick I learned when I lived in California from In-n-Out burger. I always order a protein burger and animal style fries when I go there (even before I was gluten-free). The people at In-n-Out really know how to do a lettuce wrapped burger. They have a very good proportion of lettuce to burger so your hands don't great burger juice all over them. I think that is the main point of the bun on a burger. 

Anyway, this burger has a slice of CSA cheese, mustard and a good amount of lettuce wrapped around it. You can add tomatoes or onions or whatever other veggies you like. I'm pretty minimalist with my burgers, I like to go big on my fries. Here's the recipe for my chicken burgers.

Baked chicken burgers

Chicken Burgers

recipe modified from smitten kitchen

Ingredients

500 g chicken thighs (if you don't have a meat grinder, get 1 lb ground)

3 slices gluten-free bread, torn into pieces (~1 cup)
1/3 cup milk (I use hemp milk)
50 g prosciutto, finely chopped
3 green onions (or scallions as New Yorkers call them), finely chopped
1 small garlic clove, minced
2 tablespoons finely chopped chives
3 tablespoons finely chopped basil
1 large egg, beaten

Instructions

1. Pre-heat the oven to 400 f.
2. Grind up the chicken thighs in the meat grinder. If you are using pre-ground meat, just open the package and dump it in your bowl.
3. Pour the milk over your bread pieces. Set aside (watch out, the gluten free bread can get really runny).
4. Cook the prosciutto on the stove over medium. Add the green onions and the garlic. Cook for about 5 minutes. Take off the stove and let cool for a bit, or else it will cook the egg when you mix everything together.
5. Drain the milk that didn't get absorbed by the bread you set aside earlier.
6. Now mix everything together! I think it works better to use your hands, you get a more even mixture. If you don't want to touch the raw chicken, use a spoon, it's your prerogative.
7. Make the chicken mixture into balls. If you want burger use about 90 grams per burger. If you want meatballs like the original recipe, use about 50 grams per ball.
8. Pop those suckers in the oven. I set my timer for 20 minutes, but I know it will take 25 minutes. I'd rather check before everything is cooked than burn my burgers. Enjoy.