Bryanna Clark Grogan’s Vegan Feast Kitchen/ 23rd Century Table

I have a confession to make-- I love cornbread.  My husband doesn't really understand this.  He likes it all right, but not with passion, if you know what I mean.  It must be an American thing.  I was born in the States and he was born in Quebec. Even though I've lived in Canada since I was 18, I've never lost my passion for cornbread, and as a vegan, I've devised several cornbread recipes that I'm happy with.  But, faced with a pile of zucchini and scads of ovo-lacto-laden zucchini cornbread recipes, I decided to devise my own vegan version-- with nuggets of corn added at the last minute.  I almost added some Daiya vegan cheese shreds, but decided that would be overkill-- although, if you do try it, let me know!

I was out of whole wheat pastry flour, so I used my High-Fiber Gluten-Free Flour Mix instead, and you'd never know the difference!


Printable Recipe

BRYANNA'S CORN KERNEL ZUCCHINI CORNBREAD (Can be GF and SF)
Makes 1/ 10" cast-iron skillet-full
Moist and delicious, with the extra nutrition of vegetables. PS: If you don't have a skillet, use a 10" round or 9" square pan-- the skillet just makes the crust crispier.

DRY MIX:
1 cup yellow cornmeal
3/4 cup white whole wheat pastry flour OR my High Fiber Gluten-Free Flour Mix (or your favorite)
1/3 cup soy flour or chickpea flour
1/4 cup unbleached organic sugar
1 teaspoon baking powder
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
WET MIX:
1 tablespoon lemon juice with soymilk, nut milk or hemp milk to make 1 1/4 cups
1 cup packed grated zucchini with skin
2 tablespoons oil or melted Earth Balance
ADDITION:
1 cup thawed frozen (or cooked fresh) corn kernels, or canned corn kernels, well-drained

Oil a 10" cast iron skillet and place it in the oven while you heat it up to 375 degrees F. Whisk the dry Mix ingredients together in a medium bowl. Whisk or blend the wet Mix ingredients together and add to the Dry Mix. Mix briefly and pour into the hot skillet. Bake 20 minutes. Serve warm.

Nutrition Facts
Nutrition (per serving): 198.4 calories; 21% calories from fat; 4.9g total fat; 0.0mg cholesterol; 284.2mg sodium; 345.9mg potassium; 35.7g carbohydrates; 4.0g fiber; 8.2g sugar; 31.7g net carbs; 5.6g protein; 3.6 points.

Made with Bryanna's High-Fiber Gluten-Free Flour Mix:
Nutrition (per serving): 217.3 calories; 21% calories from fat; 5.3g total fat; 0.0mg cholesterol; 285.5mg sodium; 337.8mg potassium; 39.4g carbohydrates; 3.6g fiber; 8.2g sugar; 35.7g net carbs; 5.0g protein; 4.1 points.

Enjoy!

 
Vegan Pecan Pie-- gluten-free!

We're having our first of two Thanksgiving dinners (it's Canadian Thanksgiving weekend) tonight at my son's.  (And, boy, is it windy out there-- I hope the power stays on!)  They requested pecan pie, and told them I'd make the crust GF because my DIL Amber is gluten-sensitive. Smarting from my GF pie fail yesterday, I decided to try a recipe recommended by my friend Julie Hasson, the pie crust recipe in "Cooking with Isaiah" by Silvana Nardone-- recipe and tutorial here.

I think it was success, but I haven't used that much fat  in a pie crust for a long time!  I found out afterwards that I should wear my new reading glasses when I read recipes, because I used 1 1/2 cups non-hydrogenated shortening |(another thing I seldom use, and never in pie crust anymore) instead of 1 1/3 cups--yikes!!  It seemed to work, though-- even if it is super-rich. I also must admit that it was trickier to roll out than ordinary pie dough.  And, it makes enough for about 2 1/2 pies, actually.

 Here's the dough before it's 15-minute rest in the freezer:

Here's the dough in the pie dishes (there was enough leftover for a small free form tart):


I had some trouble getting the first one in the pie dish, so, with the second crust, I rolled  it out on a piece of baking parchment, put my left hand under the parchment, lifted it up a bit, placed the upside-down dish on the crust and gently flipped the whole thing over so that the crust was in the dish.  I carefully peeled the  parchment off the dough and gently fit it into place and fluted the edges, saving the scraps for my little tart.  As you can see, I patched it in a few places, which was easy to do.

I pre-baked the crust for 10 minutes (after pricking all over with a fork, as usual) at 400 degrees F.  With a wheat crust, you would only bake for 3 minutes, but this definitely seemed to need more.

Pre-baked crust:


Then I filled the crusts with my filling (from my new book "World Vegan Feast") and baked them at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes.  They came out looking perfect!




I looked around on the net for low-fat gluten-free pie crust, but I guess it's not possible (please tell me if I'm wrong!).  However, I did find one recipe that sounds pretty reasonable and uses either some millet flour or sorghum flour, which is more nutritious than white rice flour.  The original recipe is here and it uses sorghum flour and tapioca flour, but this blogger used millet flour instead of sorghum flour successfully, which is what I will do next time I make a GF crust, because I have a hard time finding sorghum flour here-- and I can grind my own millet flour.

Here's the little apple tart I made  with the leftover dough, using the leftover apples from my fail on Thursday:


Enjoy!

  My Gluten-Free "White" Yeast Bread
I have several friends and a relative or two who are gluten-sensitive, so I've been doing some research on gluten-free vegan baking.  We're having one Thanksgiving dinner at my son's tomorrow and his wife is not eating gluten but wanted to make her special stuffing recipe.  So, I volunteered to make her a couple of loaves of gluten-free bread.  I also decided I'd make a gluten-free pie.

THE SUCCESS:

I had already developed a vegan, high-fiber, gluten-free bread loaf for a friend a few years ago, and I decided to follow that recipe, but make it more"white" (even though it's still high-fiber-- brown  rice flour is quite pale-colored).  I changed my original recipe by using golden flax instead of brown flax seeds in both my flour mix and the bread recipe itself; by using maple syrup instead of molasses; and omitting the soy or rice milk powder.  Otherwise it was the same.

  The dough (actually a thick batter) is beaten for only about 3 minutes.

  Then it's divided into two prepared 8 x 41/2" pans and set to rise for an hour to 90 minutes.


  When it rises to the top of the pan it's ready to bake.


The result-- not a high loaf, but it slices well, is moist and tasty (maybe a bit sweet-- I'll have to work on that) and toasts nicely, too.  My DIL was pleased with it. (See the recipe below.)





THE FAIL:

Sorry, no pictures!  I didn't even think about photographing the debacle that was my first gluten-free pie crust until afterwards!  So, a description will have to suffice.  I should have known better and started with a conventional crust, but, instead, I decided to try my low-fat olive oil pastry for a freeform pie using the same flour mix I used for the bread.  Bad idea!  It was difficult to roll out and kept cracking, unlike the pliable and easily-handled wheat flour olive oil pastry.  I soldiered on, however, and cobbled together a very sad-looking apple tart.  When baked, the filling was lovely (I added some homemade crab-apple butter to the apples), but the crust dry and hard.  Not one to waste food, I served it anyway, with almond milk poured over it in bowls, like a sort of pudding.  This softened the crust and it was edible, especially with the delicious apples.

Tomorrow I'm making a pecan pie for the dinner at my son's house, with a conventional high-fat pie crust  made according to the recipe in Silvana Nardone's book "Cooking with Isaiah" and my own vegan filling.

A new version of my old Christmas cookie recipe "Chinese Chewies", which I'm calling "Pecan-Cranberry Chewies"-- these were gluten-free, but you can also make them with wholewheat pastry flour. I made these just before the power went out! This photo shows the cookies cut and un-sugared, cut and sugared, and cut, rolled, and sugared. UPDATE, Dec. 2011: here is a page about the origin of "Chinese Chews" and the original  recipe from 1917. "The origin of the name “Chinese Chews” for a snack with dates and English walnuts is a mystery that has not been explained."


This was the heavy, slushy snow coming down last Thursday-- picturesque, but mucky!

Well, the good news is, after 8 days, we finally have power again! The bad news is, now we have no phone access, until about Thursday! I was so depressed about that I could hardly enjoy the good news! I regret to say that I was in a really foul mood about the phone and DH had to put up with alot of whining and whingeing (as they say in the UK!). But, we attended our first Christmas party last night (very reluctantly on my part), and had a lot of fun and good food, and good laughs, so I feel better now. What can you do about it anyway?

Saturday, our close neighbors got their power back, but we had to wait because we were not a "multiple outage". Our neighbors just below us lent us their 1000 watt generator for the last 2 days or so, so at least we could have a lamp or two on, watch TV now and then, or even use the computer or a kitchen appliance. But, to use the computer, I had to bring the whole set-up down to a different spot and it was a bit of a nuisance, so I only did it once for 1/2 an hour.

Now, I can use the computer, but of course, this means we have no internet access because we have no phone line! I was able to download the photos off of my camera to my computer, resize them and put them on a disc, though. So I could put them on Photobucket from the disc here at work and use them on the blog.

Anyway, you're probably getting tired of hearing about it! I'm getting tired of writing about it! I hope that by Thursday, things will be normal, and I can write about Christmasey things!

Thank you all for your comments and good wishes!


Here is a not very good photo of the debris on our deck after the windstorm. It really doesn't do the whole thing justice, but it's all I have.

FOOD:

Here is a photo of the bamboo steamer set-up on the butane burner, reheating leftovers:


Here are some photos of that Breast of Tofu dish I described in my last blog post:






Here are the pyrogies with Soycurls that I mentioned in the last blog entry:


Here's the recipe for the "chewies". They are fat-free except for the nuts-- very sweet, but pretty good for you, and really delicious. Ps: i will add the nutritional info later.

Printable Recipe

BRYANNA’S VEGAN PECAN-CRANBERRY CHEWIES (CAN BE GLUTEN-FREE)
Makes 32-36 squares or balls
(Adapted from a recipe in my book “The Almost No-Fat Holiday Cookbook”)

The original version these bars (called "Chinese Chewies", and I have no idea where they got the name!) have been a favorite Christmas cookie for years. The original recipe contained eggs. I veganized it, and now discovered that a gluten-free version works just fine!

The first time I tasted these was at a Hanukkah party at my cousins' Baba's (grandmother's) house many years ago. Had to try to make them myself! They were originally made with just dates and walnuts.

3/4 c. wholewheat pastry flour  OR Bryanna's Gluten-Free High-Fiber Flour Mix (recipe below)
1 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
8 tsp. (2 T. plus 2 tsp.) powdered egg replacer mixed with 1/4 c. cold water
1 c. brown sugar
1/2 T. vanilla extract
OPTIONAL: 1 T. grated organic orange zest or 1 tsp. orange extract
1 c. chopped pecans
3/4 c. chopped pitted dates
1/4 c. dried cranberries
OPTIONAL: powdered organic unbleached sugar

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.

In a medium bowl whisk together the flour, baking powder and salt.

In a small, deep bowl beat together the water and egg replacer with an electric or rotary beater until like softly-mounded beaten egg whites. (NOTE: You can actually beat this with a hand immersion blender for this recipe, beacuse it doesn't have to get really stiff.)

Beat in the sugar and vanilla briefly. Scoop this into the bowl with the flour mixture, along with the dates, cranberries, and pecans. Mix gently but well.

Scoop the mixture into a nonstick or lightly-oiled or sprayed 8" square cake pan (you can line the bottom with cooking parchment, if you like). Bake for 25 minutes, or until it begins to turn golden (it will be soft).



Cool slightly on a rack, then cut into small pieces (32-36) and roll in powdered sugar, if you like.

You can also take the squares while they are pretty hot and roll them and squeeze them into little balls, and roll in powdered sugar, if you prefer.

Cool thoroughly and store airtight.

Nutrition Facts
Nutrition (per 1 square or bar, recipe cut into 36): 80.1 calories; 24% calories from fat; 2.3g total fat; 0.0mg cholesterol; 15.9mg sodium; 84.2mg potassium; 15.1g carbohydrates; 1.2g fiber; 8.4g sugar; 13.9g net carbs; 0.7g protein; 1.6 points.

Printable Recipe
 
BRYANNA'S GLUTEN-FREE HIGH-FIBER FLOUR MIX
Makes about 13 cups

7 and 1/2 c. brown rice flour (I grind it from short grain brown rice)
2 and 1/2 c. potato starch (NOT potato flour!)
1 and 1/4 c. tapioca flour
1 c. ground golden flax seed
1 c. chickpea flour (besan) OR soy flour
4 and 1/2 T. xanthan or guar gum

Mix well and store in a moisture-proof container in in the freezer. Use cup-for-cup instead of regular flour.

NOTE: Because non-gluten flours lack the structure that gluten provides, xanthan gum or guar gum (available in health food stores) is often added to gluten-free baked goods. This mixture contains enough xanthan or guar gum for cakes, cookies, pancakes, and quick breads. For yeast breads, you may have to add up to 1 tsp. more gum per cup of gluten-free flour.

Nutrition Facts
Nutrition (per cup): 607.8 calories; 9% calories from fat; 6.8g total fat; 0.0mg cholesterol; 19.0mg sodium; 399.0mg potassium; 126.2g carbohydrates; 10.4g fiber; 0.9g sugar; 115.8g net carbs; 10.3g protein; 11.9 points.


Enjoy!