Gluten-free waffles

I’m afraid I’ve been very slack at updating my blog. The truth is I have experimented with several gluten-free waffle recipes, one of which was wonderful – but because I didn’t make notes, I can’t remember which one it was now :(!

The last recipe I tried was from the book Gluten-Free Baking with The Culinary Institute of America. This recipe uses ‘Flour Blend #5′ which of all the flour blends in the book, is the one with the highest protein content. As you can read in my earlier notes, I modified the flour mix slightly too. If my inference is correct, this could be the reason for these waffles having a rather bread-like texture. I personally prefer my waffles more crisp, so perhaps I should experiment with using different flour blends with this same recipe.

This recipe also uses additional whisked egg whites to add more lift to the batter (just as my grandmother’s waffle recipe does). Actually I haven’t noticed a huge difference between waffle recipes that used the extra egg whites and those that don’t (although others swear that whipped egg whites are critical). Since I’m lazy and would also prefer not to use up four eggs on one batch of waffles, I’d probably choose another recipe as my basic waffle staple.

One thing I do like about this recipe is that it’s not as oily as the first waffle recipe I tried. Overall, it’s quite a good recipe.

1 1/3 cups (7.7 oz) Flour Blend #5: rice, tapioca, soy flours – see here.
1/2 Tbs baking powder
1/2 tsp salt [omitted]
1/2 cup (4 oz) sugar [omitted]
2 eggs
1/4 cup (2 oz.) butter, melted
3/4 cup (6 oz.) milk
2 egg whites

1. Mix together dry ingredients.
2. Mix together wet ingredients separately.
3. Pour wet ingredients into dry and mix thoroughly.
4. Whip egg whites to medium peaks.
5. Temper egg whites by adding one-third of batter to egg whites and mixing gently.
6. Fold tempered whites into remaining batter.
7. Bake in oiled waffle iron.

Related posts:
A waffles novice
Four-grain waffles

improvised gluten-free pear muffins

I remember the time when I was really scared to start gluten-free baking because it seemed so complicated, so many types of flour, so easy for things to go wrong, for the baking to fail. A couple of weeks ago, I baked some muffins (if you can call them that) without following any gluten-free recipe book and amazingly, the product was edible!

All I did was to try a direct substition of wheat flour with a gluten-free flour blend in my original basic muffin recipe. Yes, the very first basic muffin recipe, which I subsequently stopped using when I found basic recipe no. 2 gave better results. Basic muffin recipe no. 1 is so easy that you can easily by heart:

2 cups flour
1 cup milk/liquid
1/4 cup oil/butter
1 egg (2 , if you prefer)
1 tsp baking powder
other ingredients of choice – e.g. 1 chopped apple, handful of nuts/dried fruit etc.

I used exactly those quantities together with a few large chunks of tinned pears, and made up the 1 cup liquid with half milk and half pear juice from the tin. Apart from the pears and pear juice, no added sugar. (If you are avoiding salicylates, remember to choose pears in syrup as commercial pear juice contains the peel which has salicylates. Of course if you are on an anti-candida diet, the syrup is probably worse!)

The gluten-free flour blend is the one I described earlier:

8oz/225g brown rice flour
8oz/225g tapioca starch
8oz/225g soy flour

No xanthan gum, no gelatine.

The batter was extremely wet, but I decided to go ahead without adding extra flour. The consistency (and eventual effect) reminded on a crazy improvisation attempt when I dumped a load of mashed pumpkin into a gluten-free sponge cake recipe, thereby completely altering the ratio of liquid to other ingredients — a crazy attempt which I did not blog about because I can’t even remember exactly what I did (brain must have gone on strike, hence giving rise to the mad improvisation to begin with); started out being utterly disappointed with the result and subsequently very pleased when put aside my preconceptions and realised the texture was quite appealing and the taste pretty good.

The result:

It looked beautiful at the end of baking, but collapsed as it cooled after coming out of the oven, just as this gluten-free bean bread did. I’ve discovered the quick bread gluten-free recipe that doesn’t sink is this one that uses gelatine as well.

Taste-wise, I was very pleased although visitors to my home who tasted a bite responded only with a grimace masquerading as a polite smile :). Texture-wise, I’ll repeat what I’ve said in my other gluten-free baking entries; it reminds me of Southeast Asian kueh or steamed cakes, soft and very close-textured, no ‘crumb’, kind of squishy.

The overall effect of the non-wheat taste and texture is certainly very reminiscent of local desserts, so perhaps if I dropped names like ‘muffin’ or ‘cake’ and called it kueh, people would have different expectations and not react so negatively towards my gluten-free baking!

Today I tried out the basic yeast-free bread recipe from The Gluten-Free Gourmet Bakes Bread by Bette Hagman, using the Four Flour Bean Mix described in my previous posting with the standard supermarket flours using in Indian cooking (Mustafa being the only supermarket I know that stocks them, though!).

The result was rather uneven: some parts did not rise much – the very smooth, close-textured parts – and other parts had huge air bubbles.

However, taste-wise and in terms of ‘mouth-feel’, I’m pleasantly surprised! The very green smell from the green bean flour disappeared after baking, and the bread was springy to the touch, much like real bread (despite the cake-like appearance). Actually, the texture reminds me very much of kueh lapis!

I tried it with a variety of savoury and sweet toppings as well as plain with butter, and it tasted fine every time. I couldn’t stop eating… how wonderful to be able to eat ‘bread’ and not be worrying about exceeding my wheat & gluten limit.

The recipe for a small loaf:

DRY INGREDIENTS

2 cups Four Flour Bean Mix : I used 1/3 part chickpea flour, 1/3 part green bean flour, 1/3 part sorghum flour, 1 part cornstarch, 1 part tapioca starch
1 1/2 tsp Xanthan gum
3 Tbs brown sugar [which I reduced to 2 Tbs - still rather sweet]
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp Egg Replacer [omitted; Hagman uses this to provided additional protein and leavening power]
1/2 tsp salt

WET INGREDIENTS

Eggs – 2 plus 1 white [I used 3 small whole eggs, also because I omitted the Egg Replacer]
2 Tbs melted butter [replaced with ghee as I was too lazy to melt butter!]
1 Tbs honey [replaced with light argave syrup]
3/4 cup buttermilk [used substitute]
approx 1/3 cup water [used much, much less]

[Hagman also uses optional dough enhancer, which I have omitted completely here.]

Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease loaf pan(s) and dust lightly with rice flour.

Whisk together dry ingredients.

In a large bowl, beat eggs and egg white(s). Add melted butter, honey and buttermilk. Blend with mixer on low speed.

Add dry ingredients and continue to blend on low speed.

Add ’sufficient water to make the dough the consistency of cake batter.’ This was the hard part! What is the correct consistency? I’ve seen a whole range of consistencies of cake batters. Anyway, using my judgement, I only needed to add about a tablespoon of water. The batter was strange-looking because of all those sticky flours, the cornstarch and tapioca starch, not at all like cake batter.

Beat 1 minute on high.

Spoon into prepared pans and bake for 55 to 60 mins, covering with aluminum foil after 30 mins.

Problems

* The bread rose tremendously in the oven the collapsed afterwards, which suggests that I should reduce the amount of leavening agent next time.

* The texture was very uneven, it did not affect the taste, but certainly is less than ideal. Bette Hagman constantly gives strict instructions to follow recipes exactly as substituting ingredients may end up with a different result. As usual, I can never follow a recipe precisely so I guess I will have to keep experimenting.

* Hagman also suggests that overly dense texture might be due too much liquid, and from my experience with muffins (which is what this essentially is – a muffin method, dry + wet ingredients then mix) is that it could also be case of over-mixing. I might just make this by hand next time; the mixer is unecessary and might have contributed to the over-mixing.

Verdict

Whatever the problems, I was really pleased with the result. I fear the little test loaf in the freezer won’t last long at all. Am definitely making this again, and at double the quantity :).

Here are Hagman’s quantities for a large loaf:

DRY INGREDIENTS
Four Flour Bean Mix (see above) – 4 cups
Xantham gum – 3 tsp
Brown sugar – 1/3 cup
Baking soda – 1 tsp
Baking powder – 1 rounded tablespoon
Egg replacer – 2 tsp
Salt – 1 tsp

WET INGREDIENTS
Eggs – 3 plus 2 whites
Butter, melted – 6 Tbs
Honey – 2 Tbs
Buttermilk – 1 1/2 cups
Water (more or less) – 1/2 cup

31/10/08 Update: experimented with this recipe a second time, making some tweaks and getting a much better result. Read more here: Improved recipe for gluten-free, yeast-free bean bread.

Posted in anti-candida diet, baking, food intolerance, gluten-free, Indian, recipes, wheat-free ]]> http://mainmainmasakmasak.wordpress.com/2008/10/21/gluten-free-yeast-free-bean-bread/feed/ 6 niceties gluten-free-yeast-free-bread-with-bean-flour-2 http://mainmainmasakmasak.wordpress.com/2008/10/16/chye-tau-kueh-fried-savoury-radish-cake/ http://mainmainmasakmasak.wordpress.com/2008/10/16/chye-tau-kueh-fried-savoury-radish-cake/#comments Wed, 15 Oct 2008 17:23:52 +0000 niceties http://mainmainmasakmasak.wordpress.com/?p=796 ]]>

Recently, some friends gobbled down two plates of chye tau kueh from the hawker centre in front of me whilst I munched on my gluten-free carob muffin. They felt a bit guilty comparing their fried dish with my healthy snack but actually I really wished I could eat chye tau kueh too!

I came home and flipped through my mountain of cookbooks and finally found a somewhat poorly-written recipe for ‘Singapore-Styled Stir-Fried Turnip Pudding 星洲炒蘿蔔糕’ in a Hong Kong produced cookbook called Asian Snacks Cooking Course 亞洲小食製作教程.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a more authentic recipe in any of my Malaysian cookbooks (an excuse to buy even more :) ?!?). Anyway, it worked really well so am sharing here with you. You may want to compare this recipe with the one from Lily’s Wai Sek Hong.

This is a great snack option that’s wheat- and gluten-free, also no sugar. As long as you don’t find fried foods too unhealthy :).

INGREDIENTS FOR STEAMED RADISH CAKE

960g white radish/daikon
320g rice flour

Wash, peel and chop the daikon.

Use a blender to puree it, then using a sieve, squeeze out as much juice as possible. You need 3 cups of daikon juice.

Mix rice flour with daikon juice in a pot over low heat. The original recipe only uses the juice, but I put in all the daikon pulp as well so as not to waste it.

Stir until it the mixture thickens. This part requires careful attention as it can take quite a while to thicken on low heat but if the stove is too hot, it will clump together very quickly.

Pour the thickened batter into a greased mould, such as an aluminium cake tin. A 9-inch round tin is actually better than the one I used in the photo because it won’t be so full, and because the cake won’t be in such a thick layer, it will take a shorter time to be fully cook. Dark-coloured heavy cake tins are not good for steaming, they don’t seem to conduct heat very well.

Steam for 1 hour. Test for doneness with a chopstick, which should come out clean.

FRIED RADISH CAKE

Cut the steamed and cooled cake into cubes.

Fry ingredients of your choice until fragrant, such as garlic, shallots, minced meat, red or green chilli, spring onions. Add seasonings of your choice.  Traditionally, this is cooked with thick dark soya sauce and preserved turnip and preserved Chinese sausages are a must, with a special chilli sauce for those who like it spicy.

Add the steamed radish cake cubes and fry until browned.

Push ingredients to one side of the wok (or remove from pan), add a beaten egg and when semi-cooked, toss well with all the other ingredients.

My version shown below is cooked with salt (or organic tamari), garlic, stir-fried shallots, green and red capsicums, and topped with raw spring onions and deep fried shallots.

Verdict: close enough to the real thing to keep me happy! Loved the distinct daikon taste in the cake. Now if I can just figure out how to make preserved turnip or chye poh at home, the other members of the family might actually enjoy this as much as me :).

Nearly 1kg of daikon makes a lot of chye tau kueh and I had this in my lunch bento for days!! Next time I’ll only make half the quantity!

Now I can join the rest of my family when they eat baked beans & toast for breakfast with my own version :)!

* homemade baked beans

* organic, salt-free brown rice cake from Lundberg — a crumbly rice cake, not as smooth a texture as Kallo brand, but then again, this one is brown rice. Most rice cakes are soft and taste stale straight out of the packed, especially Lundberg, but nothing a couple of minutes in the oven toaster won’t fix. Be careful as rice cakes burn easily, so set the oven toaster timer for just 2 minutes but leave the rice cakes in for 5 minutes to crisp up slowly in low heat.

* Pearl of the Orient tea from Gryphon brand — Singapore brand of gourmet teas in elegant packing. The extra-large fine mesh bags seem excessive but actually tea leaves need space to expand and release their full flavour. Gryphon’s Earl Grey is lovely (the brand’s best-selling tea in Singapore) but Pearl of the Orient, a jasmine+rose Chinese tea is definitely over-fragranced. Cheapest place to buy Gryphon teas is NTUC Finest at S$10.50 a box of 20 tea bags, $2 cheaper than chi-chi gourmet delis like Culina.

For ages, I have been watching my family members eating tinned baked beans for breakfast, unable to join in because of the tomato sauce which is high in glutamates, amines and salicylates (not to mention plenty of salt & sugar)!! The other day, I finally got down to making Failsafe baked beans from the recipe in the Friendly Foods cookbook.

The result was wonderfully satisfying! Even my family members who are used to the over-flavoured commercial version pronounced this ’surprisingly edible’.

RECIPE

300g (1 1/2 cups) dried beans – navy, cannellini or flageolet
1 leek, washed and sliced
2 sprigs parsley
1 clove garlic, peeled
2 x 5cm pieces celery
2 Tbs soft brown sugar
1/4 tsp citric acid
3/4 tsp saffron threads [which I omitted, hence the anemic colour of my baked beans]
sea salt

Wash beans and soak overnight with 1.5 litres water. Drain the next day.

Place beans & leek in saucepan. A heavy-bottomed pot for slow-cooking is good, such as a cast iron pot. You can also use a crockpot.Main-Main Masak-Masak › Edit Post — WordPress

Tie the parsley, garlic and celery into a bouquet garni with a piece of string and add this to the pot.

Pour in enough water to cover the beans. Simmer uncovered for about 1 hour or until tender. Remove the bouquet garni.

Add the sugar, citric acid, saffron and salt to taste. Simmer for another 10 minutes.

Here I used dried organic navy beans which I bought at Nature’s Glory.

If you don’t have time to soak the beans overnight, you can use canned beans. It can be hard to find navy/cannellini/flageolet beans, but I’ve seen them at Carrefour and Cold Storage, as well as at health food stores like Eat Organic and Nature’s Glory. Basically, check the stores which stock more western ingredients.

With navy and cannnellini beans being more unusual products in Singapore, even the non-organic canned ones only come in relatively expensive foreign brands. The good news is that tinned, organic navy and cannnellini beans are available at about the same price as non-organic ones :), S$2.30 per tin for Eden brand. Other organic brands cost about a dollar more.

***************

6/12/8 Update:

Tip 1: Make a large batch, divide into serving portions and freeze. Defrost as necessary.

Tip 2: Aside from eating baked beans with bread (gluten-free bean bread for me) and rice cakes, it’s also good with rice. Especially quick and easy if you have cooked rice on hand at all times in the fridge or freezer.

Here’s my first experiment with non-wheat flour. It really doesn’t taste very different, but that’s because spelt is actually a variety of wheat. Even if you don’t have an outright wheat intolerance problem, food rotation is a good idea.

I came up with this recipe after comparing the Pumpkin muffin recipes from the following books:
Diana Linfoot, Muffin Magic (Perth, Western Australia: Diana Linfoot, 1990)
Miriam Kasin Hospodar, Heaven’s Banquet: Vegetarian Cooking for Lifelong Health the Ayurveda Way
Mary Ann and Mace Wenniger, The Best-Ever Wheat and Gluten Free Baking Book

Spelt is not gluten-free so there really was no need for the last book, but it was still interesting to note the spices, raisins and nuts as well as orange juice used as milk replacement in the recipe (no citrus juices in large quantities for me – high in salicylates).

Both the vegetarian and gluten-free books’ muffin recipes use buttermilk or yoghurt, and I’ve found I prefer the texture from this mix than the old recipe I was using. I also use 2 eggs now instead of the 1 egg I did before.

The Ayurvedic book also melted ghee, butter or oil interchangeably for muffins, so I opened the first tin of ghee I’ve ever used ☺. I already had it sitting in the cupboard, waiting to be experimented with.

For the flour mix, you can replace up to half a cup out of a total of two cups with alternative non-gluten flours.

You don’t need any sugar as the pumpkin, raisins and walnuts give this plenty of flavour.

Ingredients

1 1/2 cups wholegrain spelt flour
1/2 cup oat flour
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tsp cinnamon

2 eggs
1/4 cup melted ghee
3/4 cup yoghurt
1/4 cup water

1 cup pureed cooked pumpkin (if you have extra you can freeze it)

1 cup chopped walnuts, lightly roasted by dry-frying without oil in a skillet over low heat – you may want to sieve out the tiny pieces which get burnt during the roasting process
1/2 cup sultanas

1) Sift together dry ingredients. This is important to combine the leavening agents and flours properly. If they are not evenly mixed, there will be large holes in your muffins. I often have a problem sifting wholegrain flours with leavening agents because the large flakes in wholegrain flour don’t go through the sieve and I can’t get at the smaller clumps of baking powder/soda to break them up and press them through the mesh. Right now, I’m trying to get round the problem by using my sieve which has a coarser mesh.

2) Mix wet ingredients together. Put the eggs in last, because if you mix raw eggs with hot melted butter you will get cooked egg (yes, this happened to me before!).

3) Mix the pumpkin puree thoroughly with the wet ingredients. I like to use a whisk for the wet ingredients.

4) Coat the raisins and nuts with flour to prevent them from sinking in the batter whilst baking.

5) Mix all the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients all at once quickly and lightly with just a few strokes. It’s ok if there mixture is clumpy.

6) Mix in the raisins & nuts.

7) Put into greased muffin tins. Paper casing is unnecessary. I have discovered that unless the cake has a high fat content (such as this cake recipe), it will stick to the casing. Pour water into any unused holes in the muffin tin to keep the tin from warping, and to produce steam which helps to create crispy tops on the muffins.

8) Bake at 180°C for at least 20 mins, or until toothpick comes out clean and muffins are fragrant.

Blue corn tortilla chips with red lentil dip (top) and hummus (bottom).

My first encounter with hummus was when I started on the anti-candida diet and found hummus inside Xandria William’s Overcoming Candida cookbook. Recently, I’ve also seen hummus variations (no tahini, no olive oil) in Sue Dengate’s Failsafe Cookbook. It’s a dish that you can easily adapt to your own taste and desired consistency, so the recipes don’t need to be followed exactly at all.

The basic ingredients are:

1) Chickpeas — canned or cook your own from dried chickpeas. If cooking, soak them overnight (they will swell considerably), change the water, then bring to a boil and simmer, scooping away the froth. Cook for 1 1/2 to 2 hrs, or until soft enough to crush easily. Save the cooking liquid for pulverising stage.

2) Garlic. To taste. Xandria William’s recipe uses 2 cloves to 450g of dried chickpeas, whereas Sue Dengate’s uses 2 cloves to one 440g tin of cooked chickpeas!

3) Oil. For best flavour, use olive oil. But olive oil is also high in salicylates, so choose a failsafe oil if you need to (sunflower, safflower, canola, and most failsafers can also tolerate rice bran). My take on oil is also to avoid GMO foods if you can.

4) Tahini. To taste. Sesame seeds are high in salicylates, so omit tahini completely if you have to. If using tahini, do stir in the oil floating at the top properly first. In the photo above, the hummus looks very dark because I used tahini made from unhulled sesame seeds. This kind of tahini also has a stronger nutty taste.

5) A tangy flavour. To taste. Traditionally, it’s lemon juice, but again lemons are high in salicylates, so use the standard failsafe substitute – citric acid dissolved in a bit of water. Usually 1/4 tsp will be enough to produce the equivalent of a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice.

6) Salt. To taste.

7) Parsley, chopped. To taste.

Put all into a food processor and blend till smooth. Adding as much oil and chickpea liquid until you get the desired consistency.

Having just made a small tubful of hummus, I’m going to use it as:

a) a dip for my favourite Kettle’s organic blue corn or multigrain tortilla chips (shown in photo). They work out cheaper than Kettle’s non-organic potato chips even, and the blue corn chips are barely salted – fabulous! Food sensitive failsafe eaters will know that Kettle’s chips are better-tolerated than other commercial brands, which I myself have also personally experienced.

b) a spread for sandwiches, which can be combined with other sandwich fillings like roast chicken, roasted vegetables or salad.

Scones are one of those inherently plain staples that you can add as much or as less little topping to, and which can be made sweet or savoury. That makes them ideal for those with food sensitivities as the whole family can enjoy the scones, customised to each individual. I’ve also turned to plain scones and muffins as bread alternatives when candidiasis has forced me to stay off yeasted breads.

I love scones when there’s nice thick cream available (Carrefour is a good source, in the form of the house brand crème frâiche), topped with a little bit of jam (my vote goes to Meridian brand organic fruit spreads, which have no added sugar and are particularly low in total sugars – as much as half of standard jams or even other organic brands) and enjoyed with a cup of strong English tea (my secret: Marks and Spencer tea bags, especially Red Label or Gold Label, and works out cheaper than standard supermarket brands). Recently, I tried out a few different scone recipes, including a new method I’ve never used before.

The first batch of scones I made were based on this recipe from my grandmother’s notebooks. omitting the sugar and salt. Comparing with Delia’s Smith’s recipe, the amount of butter looked too little to me, so I used a total of 50g butter. I’ve already written a fair bit about the method of making scones here, so please have a look.

N.B. I always make my scones with wholemeal flour. Sometimes I use all wholemeal, the scones here have been made with half wholemeal-half plain flour. The appropriate amount of baking powder to add is 4g (approx. 1tsp) per 100g of flour. Be careful: the same volume of wholemeal and plain flours weigh in differently.

You’ll notice in the photo that my scones were hexagonal in shape. That’s because I used a honeycomb scone cutter (which I’ve described here) that saves you having to roll out the leftover edges again and again. Each time you roll out the dough, it gets more tough too.

The scones came out OK. Even internal texture, dense in the way that scones should be but maybe a little too heavy. The bread-like consistency of this batch could also have been due to the fact that I used high-protein wholemeal bread flour because my packet was expiring and had to be used up quickly.

When I made scones again the following week, I decided to try out an interesting alternative method, which I saw on an America’s Test Kitchen free online video. In this method, the block of butter is frozen, then grated, and the grated bits then quickly mixed into the flour, without rubbing in. After adding the milk to make a dough and rolling it out, more grated butter is sprinkled evenly over the rolled out dough. Make sure that all your ingredients, not just the butter, are very cold.

Similar to making puff pastry, the dough is then folded in half and rolled out again, then put in the freezer to chill. After a short while, repeat the process by sprinkling more grated frozen butter, folding over and rolling out again, then put it back into the freezer.

Reading the buttermilk biscuits recipe in Baking at Home with The Culinary Institute of America, I’ve just learnt more about this method:

This dough is rolled and folded repeatedly before it is cut into biscuits, a technique referred to as lamination. Laminating a dough in this manner creates layers that add extra flakiness and height to the finished biscuit. Try to make as few scraps as possible. After cutting, you can reroll the dough scraps and cut out more biscuits, but the biscuits made from the trimmings are usually a little less tender than the first ones.

As I didn’t have the exact quantities of butter from the video, I adapted this cheese & garlic scones recipe I have used with great success many times. Instead of the 1/2 cup grated cheese, I measured out the same amount of grated butter. The main problem is that in the hot Singapore weather, grated butter bits melt faster than you can say ‘frozen butter’, which a big problem as you need to prevent the butter from melting in order to get the desired flaky texture.

When you take the dough out from the freezer after it’s chilled, roll out and shape the dough into a rectangular piece about 1/2-inch thick, this time, you can add dried fruit (raisins, blueberries, cranberries etc), distributing them evenly over the dough surface.

Fold the rectangle into thirds, so that it resembles a sort of loaf shape. Slice the loaf into pieces to shape the scones. I much prefer this method of shaping scones to using a cutter. It’s messy to keep having to roll out the dough and be left with odd bits, not to mention the problem of overworking the dough through repeated rolling out. Another method of shaping I use is to pat the dough into a round and cut into wedges.

Bake as normal. Recommended hot oven of 220°C for about 10 minutes or until golden and fragrant.

As you can see from the photo, the results here were distinctive in the lighter, flaky texture produced by the butter and puff pastry method. I loved it! According to the video, the trick is in really, really cold butter and dough, and quick, light handling.

The original recipe included plenty of sugar as well so that this scone is more like eating a piece of cake, without any extra cream, butter, jam that needs to be added when serving.

This is just too yummy not to write about. I’m sorry I don’t have a photo because I made it for a midnight snack so no natural light for getting good shots. [P.S. Maybe it wasn't a good idea to consume green tea at midnight! I was so hyper when I went to bed :P]

Of all the commercial non-dairy milks, my favourite is the Rice & Soy Beverage from Eden Foods. It’s got a rich, creamy texture and it’s subtle tastes are probably due to the inclusion of amazake, which is made from organic short grain brown rice and the fermentation starter, koji (Aspergillus Oryzae) as well as kombu seaweed. As amazake is fermented, those on a strict anti-candida diet should probably avoid this milk alternative. Read more about amazake and a detailed description of the product here.

There are instructions on the side of the carton to make the green tea smoothie:
1 cup Rice & Soy Beverage
1 tsp matcha green tea powder [1 used 1 1/2 tsp]
Blend till green tea dissolves and enjoy!

I have some homemade red bean paste in the fridge, so perhaps tomorrow morning I’ll try a red bean version.

I’ve commented on this before and I’ll say it again, always always compare prices before plonking down your cash in an organic/health food store. My first foray into the new Brown Rice Paradise at Tanglin Mall has left me reeling (and empty-handed as I left the store), prompting me to repeat myself once again.

While some items were about the same price as elsewhere (such as Traditional Medicinals teas at S$12 a box, with an impressively wide selection too), some products were as much as double the price of other shops. For example, Avalon Organics toiletries go for S$19 compared to S$13.95 at any branch of Nature’s Farm, while the price organic maple syrup ranges from S$19.90 (exactly the same brand & size that’s sold in Carrefour for S$9.50) to $45 (for Coombs Family Farms brand 12oz bottle; sold in many other stores, such as Eat Organic, in 8oz size S$14-$15). Right now, I’m looking at a Market Place brochure that advertises Waitrose Organic Maple Syrup (No.1 medium grade, 330g, more or less 12 oz) for S$10.45!

In fact, it’s very much worth browsing around all the conventional supermarkets — especially those premium stores targeted at expatriates, such as Market Place — looking for the similar organic/health products, and I’ve often been surprised at just how reasonable the supermarket prices are, sometimes not too far off from the non-organic products. There are quite a few organic or natural food staples even in NTUC Fairprice, which is known more for its low-priced staples going back to its labour movement co-op roots. As organic products become more popular, the range of items stocked in regular stores is constantly growing too. In some stores, such as Market Place, organic products are no longer hived off into a special foods ghetto, but shelved alongside regular items. This is a good way of reaching out to consumers who would normally not look for organic/natural products, perhaps thinking that they are too strange or too expensive.

So I’m glad I put down the Nairn’s Organic Oat Cakes I picked up in Brown Rice Paradise costing S$9 (non-organic varieties priced almost the same), and made my way down to Market Place supermarket in the basement, where I found Waitrose Organic Oat Cakes at S$6, not to mention an great range of rice/corn cakes in three different brands available too. [Back on the anti-candida diet after some years, I’m rediscovering old friends -- rice/corn cakes and oat cakes -- to replace breads and sweet biscuits.]

The verdict on the new Brown Rice Paradise: looks great, a huge store, bright and fresh decor like a supermarket and a far cry from the dark, warehouse-like mess of the old store, but just like the old store, some items seem to be shockingly over-priced. I’d only head there for items I know can’t be found anywhere else. (On the other hand, Market Place supermarket is a fairly enticing reason to visit Tanglin Mall!)

Looking at my stocks, I realised I had some recently-expired kinako to use up so I decided to make nutty no-sugar muffins using kinako (soya beans) and tahini (sesame). You can buy kinako in Japanese grocery stores or Daiso, or even make it yourself from roasted soya beans. This was pretty experimental and I improvised all the way through, using a buttermilk muffin recipe as a base.

Incidentally, to give sugar-free muffins a bit more kick, eat them preferably hot, with salted butter, plain yoghurt, cream cheese or fresh cream (^_^) **mmmmmm**….

Ingredients

[N.B.: If you want to stick more strictly to anti-candida principles, then omit the pine nuts and replace dairy milk with alternatives.]

1 cup plain flour
3/4 cup wholemeal flour
1/4 cup kinako
2 Tbs okara [because I happen to have plenty lying around after making soya bean milk] — be sure to grind to fine powder
1 tablespoon black sesame & walnut powder [a packaged powdered grain drink, can omit]

11/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda

handful of toasted pine nuts as desired

1 egg
3/4 cup soya bean milk
3/4 cup buttermilk [which I substituted with plain milk + 1/4 tsp citric acid]
30g melted butter – about 1/8 cup
3/8 cup tahini made from unhulled sesame seeds [I put the melted butter into measuring cup and added tahini up to total of 1/2 cup]
1 tsp vanilla essence

1) I sifted all the dry, powdered ingredients together.
2) Then stirred in pine nuts.
3) In another bowl, I combined egg, soya bean milk, buttermilk, butter and tahini.
4) Added dry ingredients to wet, mixed quickly in a few strokes till just mixed. Did not want to make the mistake of over-mixing which would make the muffins heavy and too dense. Although initially there seemed to be quite a lot of liquid, the mixture was just nice.
5) Preheated oven to 200℃. On previous attempts, my muffins never seemed to rise much so I decided to try a higher temperature and it seems to have worked. The muffins were done in precisely 20 mins as well. I suspect my 15 year-old oven is not as hot as what is the temperature dial but I’ll need to get an oven thermometer to check.

These taste delicious, even at room temperature! Plus the texture is the best of all the batches of muffins I’ve made recently (read about my muffin problems here). They are just right, not at all gummy, not too dry and the crumb texture is fine and even without much tunnelling.

Now the only thing is, the crack appears on the side of the muffin top, not in the centre. Maybe I’m just being silly here but I want my muffins to look perfect too!

Because the tahini I used was very dark brown in colour, these muffins came out in this deep colour. So the colour isn’t actually from the miniscule amount of black sesame powder but from the unhulled seeds in the tahini (which was made from normal white sesame seeds, not black sesame seeds).

Another vegetarian bento (ditch the omelette strips in the bee hoon and this would be vegan) that also tries to be anti-candida, plus low in salicylates, glutamates and amines.

Main dish:
* fried bee hoon (rice noodles) with garlic, cabbage, omelette strips, topped with fried shallots; seasoned with salt only;
* chap chye: dried soya mince, dried soya bean sticks (foo chok [Cantonese], 腐竹), Japanese freeze-dried kouya tofu (read more here and here) cut into chunks [I love the taste and texture of this style of tofu, which I only tried for the first time a few weeks ago], strips of konnyaku, cabbage, mung bean noodles — braised with a tiny bit of chopped garlic and miso.

Side dish:
* chunks of fried homemade tofu –> my first taste of my first homemade tofu!!
* cut-up pear.

Recently I had to pack a series of bento lunches that were vegetarian, as well as taking into my sensitivities to salicylates, glutamates and amines, not to mention avoiding foods that aggravate candidiasis. Now that was a major creativity challenge! I also made an effort to plan more variety between each of the meals than I usually do and also to splurge a bit on as much organic ingredients and produce as possible. Salt is the only seasoning used in the savoury dishes shown here.

The most suitable box for these lunches was the EZ-Lock compartmentalised box, which I described here. In my earlier posting, I commented that it’s normally too big for a single meal for me, but I managed to eat up most or all of the food in these vegetarian bento.

Vegetarian bento 1

* Origins Healthcare wild rice + brown rice blend. My current favourite brown rice, unlike many brands, it doesn’t have a stale & rancid taste.
* fried taukwa (firm tofu) stuffed with shredded cucumber, to be eaten with pureed pumpkin (orange contents of smallest section on left) and topped with toasted pumpkin seeds (inside blue mini condiments container). Based on this recipe, minus all the sauces and seasonings.
* stir-fried broccoli with chopped garlic

Vegetarian bento 2

* Origins Healthcare wild rice + brown rice blend
* stir-fried brinjal and cubes of fried taukwa with caramelised onion
* dhal with onions, garlic and little bit of red capsicum, no curry spices
* raita (live cultures yoghurt + chopped cucumber) — packed with mini ice pack, which I melted and bent into the shape of container, then put the whole bento container into the freezer to solidify the ice pack into shape.

Vegetarian bento 3

* couscous, cooked with garlic, onions, raisins, dried cranberries plus toasted pecans, raw tomato, cucumber and spring onions. This was delicious but not at all a good dish for my dietary restrictions! Anti-candida diets should not include nuts and dried fruit or refined pasta — which is what couscous is; tomato intake must be monitored for salicylate and glutamate levels, although fresh tomato is much better than tomato products.
* Japanese sweet potato, satsumaimo, with caramelised onions
* stir-fried broccoli with chopped garlic

Vegetarian bento 4

* vegetable okonomiyaki with onions, bean sprouts, cabbage, carrots, dried soya mince. I happened to find some organic yamaimo, which inspired me to make this.
* dhal, leftovers see vegetarian bento 2 above
* guava fruit

I also had a fifth vegetarian bento but I forgot to take photos ☹. It was Chinese stir-fried noodles (organic wholewheat) with garlic, onions, bean sprouts, carrots, red capsicum and egg. The side dishes were slices of raw cucumber and cubes of guava fruit.

I’m back on the anti-candida diet so that means no more sweet snacks for the time being. No matter what Sue Dengate says about the counter-productiveness of combining anti-candida with Failsafe diets, I’m trying! It seems pretty logical to stay off sugars that feed the growth of yeast in the body. I think I’m experienced enough at trying to manage both individually to attempt to do both together. Recently I had to make a series of bento that were suitable for a vegetarian environment. Now that’s a major creativity challenge (admittedly, I didn’t keep to either an anti-candida or Failsafe diet strictly for that whole series of vegetarian bento :P)!

Frustrated with the less-than-satisfactory muffin results of my last batch (see the update on Green tea, azuki bean and pine nut muffins), I decided to make some apple muffins, which were my fortnightly staple — alternating with scones — when I was following the anti-candida diet a few years ago. Apples provide flavour and a hint of sweetness, and I’ve even had friends unable to detect the complete absence of sugar.

This time I decided to try something a little different. Have been thinking of trying a buttermilk muffin recipe for some time, hoping that the buttermilk will provide a bit more lift in the batter. It just so happened that I came across one in an Ayurvedic vegetarian cookbook I recently picked up, Heaven’s Banquet by Miriam Kasin Hospodar. I like the detailed explanations about each category of recipes, the thorough background information makes this book much better than simply a collection of recipes. The book has a half page on the ‘The Seven Pillars of Eggless Muffin Wisdom’, the last being that ‘eggless muffins become leaden and clunky if they sit too long, so it is best to bake them just before serving’. That didn’t sound so good to me, especially after suffering heavy gummy muffins of late, so I decided to keep the 1 egg I have been using all along, but adapt the instructions for including buttermilk+bicarbonate of soda (which react with each other, as I explained here).

I also made soya bean milk yesterday, with okara as a by-product, so I added in a handful of dried okara into the flours. This is supposed to help produce a lighter texture.

Ingredients

1 cup wholemeal flour
1 cup plain flour
handful of okara
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp bicarbonate of soda
cinnamon, generous sprinkle (approx. 1 tsp?)

1 apple, chopped

3/4 cup yoghurt [to replace buttermilk; there’s a large tub of yoghurt with live cultures in my fridge to assist in the anti-candida diet]
1 cup soya bean milk
1 egg
1/4 cup oil

1) Sift dry ingredients together.
2) Toss apple bits in flour mixture.
3) Mix together wet ingredients.
4) Put all of the dry ingredients into wet mixture. Combine quickly till just mixed, about 15 strokes. Over-mixing will produce a heavy muffin.
5) Bake in preheated oven. I made it hotter than the 180℃, which I used to use, by using the ‘fan bake’ function. Hospodar’s muffin recipe recommends 200℃. Bake until golden brown and fragrant, 20-30 mins. I had a really big apple so there were lots of apple bits that made the surrounding batter soft and wet, even when the muffins were done, so skewers didn’t come out clean but upon dissecting a muffin, they seemed to be ready.

Recently, for some reason I seem to have lost my ability to determine whether something in the oven is done. The baking instructions never seem to be right and skewers come out clean but they aren’t done, or skewers are not clean but they seem ready. I’m beginning to wonder about the temperature control in my rather old oven; will have to invest in an oven thermometer. Another problem is having the baking trays on different racks on the oven, necessitating switching them around half way to ensure even baking. This never works for me though – the lower rack inevitably gets less heat at the all-important initial rising period so that tray is always not as good. I also must start paying more attention to my bakeware as dark and silver surfaces produce different results.

You can see an airy texture inside, without large tunneling or the gummy texture of the green tea muffins.

But guess what, I forgot to crush the dried okara chunks into a fine powder texture, so I ended up with these dry airy bits inside (the white part in the centre of photo). Okara is tasteless and I don’t really notice these dry chunks, but they don’t really add anything to the muffin, so it would be better to have all the okara crushed into a coarse grain instead.

To serve these sugarless muffins to friends and family with more conventional tastes, I cut a small hollow in the centre of each muffin and filled it with jam or marmalade.

I often don’t use paper cases because it’s wasteful and unnecessary. In this case, I wanted to make the muffins more presentable to give to friends, and also I used the paper cases to measure out smaller muffins (as compared to the giant size of normal muffin tins). I have a stack of 1000 paper cases to use up anyway (yes, that is the standard pack size in baking stores, or you can get packs of a few tens for an exorbitant price at supermarkets).

One problem of paper cases is that some of the muffin will stick to the paper. Muffins stick to the paper cases much more when they are hot; at room temperature, the paper cases will peel off relatively nicely, though there is the small problem of paper fibres sticking to the muffin (rather than bits of muffin sticking to the paper). [29/6/08 update: the more expensive glazed paper cases have less muffin sticking to them; they usually come in black or dark brown (think of the cases for expensive chocolates).]

Ever since I started experimenting with different foods in an attempt at food rotation, I’ve been thinking of cooking this dish. It’s made from Chinese white radish, also known as daikon (and most confusingly, can be called ‘carrot’ when translated into English, as I’ve noted here).

What held me up was trying to think of substitutes for the usual preserved meats and dried products that usually go into this dish: laap cheong Chinese sausages, laap yok waxed pork, dried shrimps, dried mushrooms. Without the seasoning of oyster sauce, soya sauce and sugar, and no flavourful ingredients I wasn’t sure how this dish would work at all.

In the end I just went ahead and made it absolutely plain and believe it or not, it was absolutely delicious! There are no fillings in this lor bak gou at all, and no seasoning apart from a tiny pinch of salt, but the familiar taste is unmistakably that of lor bak gou ☺.

Everything is in the additional toppings which can be adjusted to suit individual taste, so those family members who want to load up on laap cheong and bottled chilli sauce can do so as well, leaving the rest of us to enjoy this in a more simple fashion.

The toppings shown in the photo are chopped spring onion, homemade fried shallots, sesame seed furikake and sesame oil — my favourite way to garnish this basic lor bak gou.

This dish is suitable for bento, and the toppings can be packed into dedicated bento condiments containers, or even just wrapped up in folded aluminium foil. Personally, I prefer to eat lor bak gou warm and I didn’t try it in any bento this time round.

When I compared different recipes, the interesting thing was that they all used a different combination of flours in very different quantities. For example, for approx. 600g of radish:
a) 450g rice flour + 50g tapioca flour
b) 1400g rice flour + 80g tapioca flour
c) 450g rice flour + 1.5 Tbs corn flour + 1.5 Tbs wheat starch
d) 280g rice flour + 40g cornflour
e) 200g rice flour + 40g wheat starch
f) 150g rice flour

[To find out more about these types of flours, have a look at my info page on flours for Chinese & Japanese snacks.]

I decided to go with the quantities in what appears to be the most reliable of my cookbooks, Dim Sum by Chan Chen Hei, a renown chef who’s worked at top restaurants and hotels in Hong Kong and Singapore. The method was adapted from combining instructions in various cookbooks.
Ingredients

500g-600g white radish
200g rice flour
40g wheat starch
1 litre water
salt to taste

1) Peel and shred the radish (using a ceramic peeler and ceramic julienne slicer, if you have them ^_^). You can also chop the radish into strips, it’s said that these larger chunks give a better texture to the final dish.

2) Mix the flours with just enough water to form a smooth, liquid paste.

3) Pour the remaining water into a pot, put in the radish, season with salt to taste, bring to the boil and cook until it has turned transparent and soft.

4) Reduce the heat to low or turn off the heat completely and stir in the flour mixture. Combine thoroughly until thick and sticky.

5) Grease a container to hold the radish batter for steaming. If you wish, you can line the container with cling film to make it easier to remove the cooked radish cake intact. You can use any dish suitable for steaming, or even a disposable aluminium cake tin (cling film not needed, because you can transport, store and serve the radish cake in it, no need to remove the cooked product from the container) . In my experience, try to avoid anything that’s too thick and heavy or which does not conduct heat well.

6) Pour in radish mixture and smoothen the top. Preheat the steamer and steam on high heat for at least 30 minutes. It could take as long as 1hr, depending in the quantity and shape of the radish cake. Test the middle with skewer or chopstick; if it doesn’t stick, the dish is done.

There will be a watery liquid on the surface. Just leave it as it will be absorbed as the radish cake cools and prevents the surface from becoming dried out and cracked.

7) As the cake cools, it will firm up. You can then slice, garnish and serve.

Optionally, you can pan fry the slices until brown and fragrant, then garnish and serve.

Personally, I think this tastes best when hot. I kept it in the fridge and heated it up before eating. However, I found that it did not microwave very well. The outer edges would be hot and the centre still hard and cold, so I ended up having to reheat by steaming. Which isn’t really a bad thing since we should try to avoid the additional EMF exposure from microwaves — not to mention the questionable effect eating microwaved food (read more here and here), if we weren’t already so addicted to their convenience.

We have an electric stove at home, and it’s slower to heat up and cool down than a gas stove. My personal method to speed up the steaming/boiling is as follows:
1) Boil sufficient water for steaming in the kettle.
2) Whilst the kettle is boiling, heat up the pot on the stove by putting just enough water to cover the base.
3) When kettle has boiled, pour contents into the pot, which should be at boiling point by now.
4) Invest in good quality pots as the heat conduction is noticeably superior and the contents will boil faster.

16/4/08 Update: Just found this video of a cooking show demonstrating how to make traditional Hong Kong-style steamed radish cake, which is characterised by Chinese sausages (in Taiwanese dialect with Chinese subtitles).

13/6/08 Update: see also my steamed Chinese yam cake.

Inspired by the visual effect of this cake on Obachan’s Kitchen – the sliced black soya beans amidst the green cake, I decided that today’s rapid-baking session to fulfil urgent take-away snack needs would comprise my faithful muffin recipe, spiced up by matcha, azuki beans and pine nuts.

[N.B.: If you want to stick more strictly to anti-candida principles, then omit the pine nuts and replace dairy milk with alternatives, and perhaps avoid the green tea too. Guess that leaves you with a red bean muffin!]

Ingredients & baking notes:

1) 2 tsp matcha green tea powder for 2 cups of flour. This is the quantity I derived from making green tea glutinous rice balls. A very delicate matcha flavour and I think I could have used more in the muffins as wholemeal flour has a stronger taste compared to white flour so unless you are paying attention, the green tea flavours might just pass unnoticed. The brown colour of the muffin is from the wholemeal flour, no sign of green tea at all (no wonder so many commercial green tea products use colouring).

2) I cooked 1/2 cup dried red beans using this method. Cook till just soft and not disintegrated, and make sure they are dry enough to separate out into individual beans before mixing into the batter.

3) The pine nuts were roasted beforehand, by dry-frying in a skillet over very low heat.

4) Just over 1/4 cup of white sugar went in. I wasn’t sure what would be the appropriate amount to balance out the bitterness of the matcha and the bean taste. In the end, I think there wasn’t enough green tea taste and I could have used a little less sugar (or perhaps none at all, in which case everyone else in my family would be spitting this out at the first mouthful).

5) Decided to use butter instead of vegetable oil today.

Verdict: it was OK tastewise, but I think the main problem is that I don’t like the texture of this muffin recipe anymore. It seems too close-textured and sort of gummy. And they don’t rise enough to produce those enticing giant cracks on the top. [13/2/08 update: reheated the frozen muffin in microwave for a snack, and somehow they seem very nice today!?! The texture is crumbly and light - maybe they just needed a bit more cooking time? Useful to slightly underbake muffins that will all be frozen, so that the reheating won't dry them out too much. The pine nuts and red beans are great but not enough green tea taste.]

I got rather sick of these muffins after a period where I was making a big batch of them once every week or every fortnight (in the days when the only food intolerance friendly snacks I made were muffins and scones). Today was the first time in many months that I’d made them but no, I’m still sick of them.

Looks like it’s time to be more adventurous with my basic muffin recipe. I used to avoid ones that use buttermilk because it’s so expensive, but now that I know some substitutes for buttermilk, there’s no excuse not to try them ☺.

12/6/08 update: made these muffins again as I needed a sugar-free snack (omitted sugar this time) for bento. Increased the amount of green tea powder to 2 1/2 Tbsp and it was great. Also, the texture is definitely slightly gummy. A check on various troubleshooting websites suggests that there’s too much liquid. I also wonder if I have been over-mixing the batter…

]]> http://mainmainmasakmasak.wordpress.com/2008/02/13/muffins-green-tea-red-beans-and-pine-nuts/feed/ 6 niceties muffin-green-tea-red-bean.jpg green-tea-red-bean-pine-nuts-muffin-0.jpg http://mainmainmasakmasak.wordpress.com/2008/02/09/red-bean-agar-with-glutinous-rice-ball/ http://mainmainmasakmasak.wordpress.com/2008/02/09/red-bean-agar-with-glutinous-rice-ball/#comments Sat, 09 Feb 2008 08:13:58 +0000 niceties http://mainmainmasakmasak.wordpress.com/?p=370 ]]>

This is from the Hong Kong-published wagashi recipe book, 日式和菓子, where it is called Shiratama Azuki Mizuyoukan 白玉紅豆糕.

As I was already making glutinous rice balls, I thought it would be convenient to try out this recipe at the same time.

50g glutinous rice flour/ shiratamako
45 ml water

These are the quantities given in the recipe for 6-8 balls. My own recipe and tips for glutinous rice balls are here.

Before making the agar-agar, put one cooked glutinous rice ball into each mould. The recipe used small waterproof bags to create unevenly-shaped agar-agar for a unique appearance. However I wasn’t sure about pouring boiling agar-agar liquid into plastic bags so I went for some silicone baking cups instead.

80g red bean paste (already sweetened to taste or omit sugar if desired, my cooking instructions here)
4g agar-agar powder|
240ml water

The instructions in the book say: “Mix agar-agar powder with water in pot. Heat until agar-agar completely dissolves. Add in red bean paste.”

As usual I failed to follow instructions and started by mixing my chunky red bean paste with water, hoping to get a more even red bean liquid. (Yes, I should have used the food processor to make a smooth paste but I already had a disaster earlier in the day when I processed my red bean paste soon after it had been used to for chillies!! Hmmm, spicy red bean paste could be the beginnings of an entirely new food adventure…) So when the agar-agar powder entered the hot water, it immediately clumped up :P and I had to resort to much whisking to try and rectify the problem. Should have learnt my lesson after the water chestnut fritters experience.

In retrospect, I should have put the red bean paste and water in a blender (no chilli taste!) to get a smooth liquid. Then put the agar-agar powder into the room temperature red bean liquid before heating up the whole thing whilst stirring all the time.

Pour the agar-agar liquid into the moulds containing the glutinous rice balls. Put into refrigerator until hardened.

Makes 6 to 8 pieces.

The first thing I would say about this wagashi is – please eat immediately! The glutinous rice ball in the middle was a nice texture contrast to the agar-agar and like a special surprise inside. It was a bit harder than hot glutinous rice balls, but still nice and chewy. Later that day, the glutinous rice balls had turned too dry and hard in the centre whilst remaining gluey on the outside, and this became worse the next day and the day after. Serves me right for making 12 pieces instead of the 6 to 8 in the recipe!

Also, because my red bean was fairly solid, it separated out from the rest of the liquid whilst setting. You can see here the two clearly-demarcated layers. Which isn’t really a problem, simply a point to note; just depends on the effect you are trying to create.

As I wrote earlier, using buckwheat is one way to rotate foods and keep food intolerance reactions at bay. With a 1kg bag of buckwheat flour to use up, I made some more pancakes today. I was inspired to make these red bean rolls from photos of various wagashi in the recipe books I have.

I found the all-buckwheat pancakes the last time a bit too brittle in texture and deduced that this was because of the low gluten content of buckwheat. So instead of simply mixing it with plain all-purpose flour, I chose bread flour which has a higher percentage of gluten, and thus I figured would produce a more pliable pancake.

Pancakes

3/4 cup buckwheat flour
1/4 cup plain bread flour/high-gluten flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
1 egg
approx. 320ml soya milk [or any other kind of milk]
2 tsp melted butter

Mix flours & baking powder together.

Mix beaten egg into flour, then add milk a bit at a time until consistency of pouring cream is reached.

Beat in the melted butter.

I cooked the pancakes in a 10cm blini pan on medium-high heat. Low heat means that they are in the pan longer and a hard surface develops, whereas I wanted soft pancakes that could be rolled.

Red Bean Filling

There are clear instructions from Just Hungry – but leave out the salt and sugar and if you are short of time, there’s no need for overnight (or any) soaking, although soaking will shorten the cooking time and save electricity/gas. Like 日式和菓子, one of my wagashi recipe books from Hong Kong, Just Hungry tells us to boil the beans quickly once, throw away the water then boil again.

As I already had cooked red beans in the fridge from the day before, I simply put some in a skillet and gently stirred it around over low heat with sugar added to taste (which can be omitted if so desired). This dries out the cooked beans to make it into a paste and you can mash the beans up at the same time. Don’t overcook or it will get too dry and have crispy bits forming – at the crispy stage, it will have become the equivalent of Mexican refried beans (inspiration for a whole new dish ^_^?)!

If the red bean paste is too crumbly and not sticking together, mix in oil till you get a nice paste consistency. I used cold-pressed organic safflower oil but it imparted a distinct taste when I compared it with the oil-free red beans; although I didn’t notice the safflower oil taste when I ate the dish later in the day. So remember to use a flavourless oil, or choose one that will enhance the dish. Coconut oil might be worth a try, but can be overpowering so best to mix with another oil. Butter would probably be good. I’ve heard that the reason red bean paste in Chinese restaurants and food stalls tastes so good is because lard is used :).

Finally, spoon some red bean paste in the middle of a pancake and roll it up!

Leftover pancakes can be frozen (with paper or cling film in between the pancakes) and I usually leave my cooked red bean in the fridge, where it soon disappears into many different dishes.

I put a couple in today’s snack bento, but they fell apart and also weren’t that nice cold. I popped them into the microwave and yumminess was soon restored (^_^)!

9/2/08 update: In my second attempt to put these into a bento, I deconstructed the pancakes & filling as illustrated below. It worked much better this way.

Travelling with food intolerances can be a bit of a headache and the best solution is often to pack your own food for the journey. A short while back, Lunch in a Box blogged about avoiding airline food by packing your own bento, which is what I did too.

I was rather paranoid about going hungry on the 24hr+ journey and made all this food. In the end, it did look way too much so I put the rolled oats bars into the suitcase instead.

All food packed in microwave-safe plastic containers from SKP, thanks to the tip from Canton Pixie. They are supposed to be disposable, but are hardy enough to be washed and reused several times. The black boxes are about 500ml in volume.

Clockwise from the top:
1) Roasted chicken sandwich: homemade wholewheat bread, crockpot-roasted chicken, lettuce, tomato, seasoned with salt and mustard freshly made-up from mustard powder.

This is my standard sandwich recipe, which you would already have noticed in my other bento, the only difference is that I decided to try using mustard. Prepared supermarket mustard tends to have additional ingredients (and possibly preservatives) so I bought some plain Colman’s mustard powder. In any case, as I’ve not tested my tolerance to mustard powder, I used just a miniscule amount. It wasn’t worth using it, the taste wasn’t strong enough to enhance the sandwich, yet it was sufficient to impart a bitter edge and faint odour of rotten eggs. *Sigh*, so much for the taste experiment.

My roast chicken is made in an electric crockpot as I find this gives a wonderfully-tender result and you don’t have to watch the time too carefully. The only drawback is that there won’t be the crispy skin produced by oven-roasting. I don’t season the raw chicken with anything, but of course you can rub salt, pepper, lemon juice, honey, garlic, herbs – whatever you wish. You’ll need to raise the chicken carcass away from the bottom of the pot. One way is to use one of the small metal racks for steaming; alternatively, a less environmentally-friendly method is to crush aluminium foil into loose balls to cover the base of the pot and place the chicken on top of them. If you turn the electric crockpot onto ‘High’ or ‘Auto’, check the chicken for doneness after 2 hrs. The fats will all have dripped to the bottom of the crockpot. Sometimes I put potatoes in round the side as well.

I originally cut the sandwich into these tiny pieces intending to fit them into a different shaped box, but the box turned out to be too small. The bite-sized sections are handy for snacking, but they also result in the filling spilling out, hence the clingfilm wrap for each section.

2) Rolled oats, okara & almond bars. Recipe is here. Packed with paper napkins to cushion them and also stop them from moving around inside the plastic box.

3) Fried rice topped with lettuce strips, and side dish of chopped pear. The ingredients comprised sliced pork, chopped French beans, garlic, onions and homemade salted egg.

Although Chinese salted eggs are usually eaten hard-boiled with plain rice, I decided to experiment with scrambling the raw eggs, the way one normally does with fresh eggs for fried rice. Only after cracking open the egg did I discover that salted egg yolks are solid when raw! It had to smashed up when the egg was being cooked.

The egg seasoned the rice with a nice salty flavour, but I don’t think I would use this method again. Firstly, the special taste of the salted egg, in particular the yolk, is lost when it’s incorporated into the fried rice – what a waste of the salted eggs that took me five weeks to make! Secondly, it can be hard to gauge the amount of rice and other ingredients to go with the salted egg so that the final dish is of the correct saltiness.

The rice here was brown Japanese rice, genmai, which gave a sticky and chewy texture as compared to long-grain rice usually used for Chinese fried rice.

4) Buckwheat pancakes with stewed green apple (no added sugar) and brown rice syrup. Read more about the pancakes and brown rice syrup here.

The syrup was packed in a lidded sauce dish and tiny ziploc bag, then put inside the larger ziploc bag used to contain all my hand-carry liquids and gels!

In order to stop the foil dish of stewed apple from sliding around, I filled the gaps with two small pieces of steamed sponge cake.

5) Snack box of fried sweet potato strips, steamed sponge cake, and chopped pears. I used a cute plastic sheet bento divider between the sweet potato and the sponge cake, and kept the juicy pears enclosed in foil.

*****************

I was worried about having my food confiscated at the airport security check, but fortunately, I got through without any problem. I’ve also found out that while liquids in containers of more than 100ml are banned on flights, empty containers are allowed – at least at Singapore Changi Airport and the few other places I’ve been to. So I carry my Lock & Lock bottle on board and get the flight attendant to fill it up with warm water. (Do note that disposable plastic bottles will melt if filled with hot water.) Lock and Lock bottles are far cheaper than nalgene plastic bottles, so in the event that my empty bottle does get swiped by airport security, no need for heartache.

The other ‘problem’ I anticipated would be the curious stares and questions from fellow travellers, and this may sound strange but having to keep explaining my bento boxes and describe my food intolerances can be a source of great stress to me. The mere thought of having to answer questions about why I’m not eating the food provided, or of having to fight with serving staff in ‘no outside food allowed’ places is sometimes enough to make me decide to stay at home. So I had also planned my response to any questions: ‘I don’t like aeroplane food so I don’t want to eat it.’ True enough, the girl sitting next to me asked me once when the meal was served and again when we met at the baggage claim!

I did accept the aeroplane meals, just to see how much of it I could tolerate – using a combination of muscle testing and eating a bit to see how I felt. Mostly, bread and butter was fine for me, and the cooked meals had bits with no sauce that were all right, but if I had had to rely entirely on the aeroplane food, I would have been verrrrry hungry by the end of the trip.

In fact, I had tried to order a special meal for the flight as the airline’s website listed a ‘Low Calorie Meal’ (no sauces, no fried foods, low salt, low sugar) which sounded relatively less likely to produce a food sensitivity reaction. However, I had left it too late and after 15 minutes on hold with the airline reservation office, I gave up without an opportunity to try calling them again as special meals have to be ordered at least 24hrs in advance.

The best experience I’ve had with ordering special meals on the plane was a couple of years ago when I travelled long-haul on Singapore Airlines (and it’s not because I’m from Singapore that I say this :)!). I called and requested something that was outside their list of special meals: if I recall correctly, my request was no MSG, no soya sauce and no sugar (a watered-down version of an anti-candida diet). Amazingly, they agreed to do it! The meal out of Singapore Changi Airport was a deliciously tender beef steak, and I was impressed with their attention to detail by giving me diabetic jam at breakfast.

Even more amazingly, although I did not call the airline on the other end to arrange for the special meal on my return journey, when I got on the plane several weeks later, my ‘extra-special’ meal was served up! Unfortunately, this time round it tasted pretty horrible though and I had to resort to asking for a normal meal or risk prolonged hunger :P. Well, that was a few years ago and I don’t know what the current level of service is like now. If one had a serious food intolerance problem, I wouldn’t completely rely any kind of externally-prepared food anyway because you just can’t be sure.

And one thing I like to check out on planes is the disposable plastic cutlery ^_^, which has become prevalent after 9/11. So far, I’ve collected two types of sturdy plastic cutlery that are more like baby utensils than fragile disposable picnic ware. Why the fetish for plastic cutlery? It’s light and small-sized, so great for bento (^.^)v!