Martha Stewart is hosting a competition within her company to help staff members contribute to generating new strategic directions. She is down to seven finalists, one of which (Alexis) is proposing a publication dedicated to food allergies. Here’s her abstract:

To publish a special magazine that offers delicious allergy-friendly recipes, making life for people with food allergies and sensitivities easier and more delicious. Millions of people, including myself, can’t eat nuts, dairy, wheat or gluten, and I’d like to empower people to make great recipes even if they can’t use all the standard ingredients.

Vote for Alexis’ proposal and get Martha Stewart on the bandwagon! 1 in 133 Americans can’t be wrong…

Gluten-free flank steak tacos marinated in chili sauce with warm grilled corn tortillas, fresh handmade tomato/onion/garlic/cilantro/chipotle salsa, and guacamole. Mmmmm…

Salsa

• 1/2 onion, diced
• 1/2 tomato, diced
• A handful of chopped cilantro
• 1 tablespoon of chipotle powder
• 1 chopped clove of garlic
• dash of lemon juice

Mix up these ingredients in a bowl and set aside.

Steak

• 1/2 lb. flank steak
• 2 tablespoons chili powder
• dash of Worcestershire sauce
• dash of gluten-free soy sauce
• 1/4 cup water
• dash lemon juice

Dice up the flank steak into small cubes, marinate in rest of ingredients for at least a half hour, and stir fry everything on high until the marinade condenses into a nice glaze. Dash lemon juice into the hot pan towards the end and serve.

Don’t forget the tortillas. I use store-bought gluten-free organic extra-large corn tortillas from La Tortilla Factory. I spread a thin layer of butter on one side, dash a little salt on the buttered side, and drop it in a hot frying pan for about 60 seconds. This gets them nice and soft and hot, and frying them butter and salt brings out the corn flavor.

Place a generous amount of meat and salsa on your tortilla. Top it off with a dollop of fresh guacamole. Fold it and stuff your face. Bring napkins.

Alternate style: Add some cheese and melt it. I like to use a dry aged cheddar, or you can use Monterey Jack, asiago, or cotija cheese, fold everything, and heat it in a lightly buttered pan until the cheese melts. Top with the guacamole after frying that puppy.

A fellow blogger and gluten-refugee wrote of being
filmed for a day on the Food Network. Exciting. And I’m glad to see our plight get some national exposure. But more importantly, she offers us her banner recipe for what sounds like one of the most delicious-sounding roasted chickens I’ve ever read. And I post my comments on this mostly to garishly remind myself to give this a try this weekend. It’s just the way she describes some of the juicy details:

At the last moment, throw the garlic cloves into the cavity of the chicken, then slide the hot lemon in. [...] Because the lemon is already hot before you begin cooking, it releases its juices into the chicken immediately, making it extraordinarily juicy.

Last Thanksgiving I had used Alton Brown’s recipe for brine turkey, and it was incredible. There is nothing quite as tasty as properly-cooked poultry from inspired recipes.

This is the first of what I hope to be at least a weekly event: Cooking. Lately I’ve been a slacker in the kitchen. My last attempt at cooking got me banished from the kitchen all together, so this is my redemption song:

New York Steak with Baked Potato and Grilled Broccoli

The steaks were choice New York strips, cut nice and thick, and marinated in balsamic vinegar, Bordeaux wine (a bottle I didn’t care for drinking, so it got demoted to cooking wine), a little chili powder, and about four cloves of fresh crushed garlic. I topped it with a little butter after I took the photo.

The baked potato is a full-size Russet, and is topped with butter, sour cream, crumbled honey/pepper bacon, and seared green onions.

The broccoli crowns were smothered in crushed garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

I put the steaks in the top rack of my oven and set it to convection broil at 450��F, and set the broccoli on the bottom rack on a piece of aluminum foil. I nuked the potatoes in the microwave until they were mostly done, and then put them in the oven next to the broccoli to let the skins dry out and develop some crispiness.

Then I poured a nice tall glass of Kendall Jackson 2003 Sonoma Cabarnet Sauvignon. (Not pictured)

Now that’s a Happy Meal�Ѣ!

Dedicated to all the GF bloggers out there that were kind enough to post comments or send emails, and their blog postings filled with inspiring comments and recipe ideas. Cheers!

Oh yes. As part of the ongoing effort to preserve some of my grandmothers’ best recipes, I offer you the source code for her cinnamon rolls. I think that for most of us, this was our favorite. It was for me. I am going to give this a try next weekend to see if I can come somewhat close:

Note: This is a very soft dough and requires an electric mixer with a dough
hook to knead.

Ingredients

Dough

• 2 cups milk
• 1 tsp salt
• one half cup sugar
• one quarter pound butter
• 4 eggs
• 1 Tblsp vanilla
• one quarter cup lukewarm water
• 2 Tblsps sugar
• 2 pkgs dry yeast
• 7 cups unsifted, all purpose white flour

Filling

• one quarter pound milted butter
• one and a half cups dark brown sugar
• 1 Tblsp cinnamon

Glaze

• 2 cups powdered sugar
• one quarter cup orange juice and grated rind of 1 orange
• Pinch of salt

Procedure

Rolls

Combine milk, salt, one half cup sugar and butter in a pan. Heat to scald, remove from heat and cool to lukewarm. When milk, sugar and butter mixture is lukewarm, add eggs, slightly beaten, and vanilla. Set aside. Combine to proof yeast, water, 2 Tblsps sugar, and let stand ten minutes. Combine milk and sugar mixture with yeast mixture in mixing bowl and slowly start beating in flour one half cup at a time.

The dough is very soft and it is very important to knead the dough using a dough hook for twenty to thirty minutes or the dough will be very difficult to handle. After kneading, let dough rise until doubled in bulk and punch down. Turn out onto floured board and roll out into a large rectangle about one half inch thick.

Filling

Spread melted butter over rolled out dough; sprinkle brown sugar on top of butter; sprinkle cinnamon on top of butter and brown sugar. Loosely roll into a long log and slice one one and a half inches thick. Place slices onto greased pans. Let rise. Bake at 350 degrees approximately twenty to twenty-five minutes or until lightly golden brown-remove from oven,brush with melted butter.

Glaze

Mix all ingredients together and brush over hot rolls.

My note: One addition grandma used to include to the filling was raisins. I like ‘em with the raisins in.

Note: This is the first of what will be several recipe posts, and I’ve added a new recipe category. Most of the stuff in this collection are from my grandmother Georgia, who told us these from memory between 1997 and 2000.

The Khoresh recipe here is originally from my great grandmother Jesse, who picked it up during their days in Or≈�m��yeh in present-day Iran.

We don’t cook all that often, and passing along recipes from generation to generation is a fast-decaying practice. Welcome to the year 2005. And thus, we move this particular oral tradition thread over to the web. The nice thing though is that comments are open if someone can figure out how to improve on these or find some interesting variances…

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 6 pounds lamb ribs or shanks, cut into bit-sized pieces
• 3 large onions, coarsely chopped
• 2 large cans of whole, stewed or chopped tomatoes
• 4 cups of beef broth
• 2 cups of cut string beans
• 4 large carrots, peeled and chopped (one half inch pieces)
• One half teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 2 to 3 whole bay leaves
• 3 to 4 garlic cloves, chopped
• Salt and pepper to taste

Procedure

Begin cooking khoresh in the morning. Start by putting tomatoes, beans and 3 cups of beef broth into a stew pot and set aside. Heat oil in a large, heavy skillet. As you brown the lamb, adjust the heat to keep the temperature between medium and high, doing one layer of lamb pieces at a time. When nicely browned, add to a stew pot and heat. After all lamb has been browned and put into the stew pot, add onions to skillet and brown the onions in the pan drippings, cooking until lightly browned. Add this mixture to stew pot. Now put garlic into the skillet for approximately one minute. Add garlic to stew pot. Finally, add carrots to skillet and brown lightly. If necessary, add a bit of additional oil. Now add carrots to stew pot. Add the spices to the stew pot. Deglase skillet with the remaining 1 cup of beef broth, bringing to just under boiling point, reduce heat and simmer all afternoon, being careful not to allow khoresh to boil. Serve over steamed basmati rice.