Gluten-Free, Not Taste-Free

Now, what would a crayon-eating girl from a late ‘70’s TV sitcom have in common with the author of “one of the best food sites in the world” according to BonAppetit.com? As it happens, they are one and the same person! Shauna James Ahern, more popularly known in the food world as “The Gluten-Free Girl,” offers a world of information on everything from Gluten-Free Baking to Eating Gluten Free in Italy on her much acclaimed site: glutenfreegirl.com. Shauna (who did actually play Amy Finkelstein, the crayon-consuming child on the television series Rhoda) has also co-authored with husband Chef Daniel Ahern, “Gluten Free Girl and the Chef,” combining the couple’s love of food with personal stories and chef-tested gluten-free recipes.


A decade ago, this gluten-free website and book would not have garnered much attention, but since 2010, when the Ahern’s collaborative work made the New York Times Best Cookbooks of the Year List, Gluten-Free has had its coming out party, virtually exploding on the scene. Celebrities like Gwyneth Paltrow and tennis champion Novak Djokovic now tout the benefits of the gluten-free diet and new foods are popping up daily on the store shelves. Martha Stewart’s website devotes an entire section to wheat-free recipes and even the ever-popular game show Jeopardy has used “Gluten-Free Foods” as a category!

Whether you have a gluten allergy, are gluten intolerant or simply want to feel more energetic or lose weight, choosing a gluten-free lifestyle is no longer a death sentence for your taste buds. You can create an exceptional pantry stocked with products that taste delicious and will wow your family and friends. You’ll want to include a couple of high quality extra virgin olive oils, aged balsamic vinegar, sea salt, pepper and a few herbs and spices to start. Wheat-free soy sauce, such as Tamari, canned tomatoes, gluten-free chicken broth and fine mustard, like Edmond Fallot, are indispensable. Bob’s Red Mill and Hodgson Mill offer a wide selection of wheat-free flours: all-purpose baking flour, almond and brown rice flour, to name a few. You can use them in Martha Stewart’s gluten-free chocolate layer cake if you like baking.

Keep a variety of non-wheat grains on hand, such as quinoa, millet and wild rice. Legumes are also an excellent choice. The “caviar” or petite organic lentils from Ustica, an island off the coast of Sicily, keep their texture when cooked and make a rich, flavorful stew. The lentils are also served traditionally with robust Italian sausages. They will soon be a favorite in your gluten-free pantry (or in any pantry, for that matter!)

Everyone needs a few culinary treasures tucked away on the shelves for unexpected company or a spontaneous gathering. A gluten-free pantry is no different. Maggie Bauer of Sinfully Safe turned on her mixer and whipped up her own gluten-free chocolate chip cookies and brownies in Trenton, NJ when she couldn’t find anything to satisfy her cravings. She uses a variety of flours, including brown rice, tapioca and fava bean flours to create rich, chocolaty treats that will be a hit at any get-together. Sickles Market now features these decadent desserts in the bakery and in the on-line store. The Scone Shoppe of Pt. Pleasant is another New Jersey business that is making a genuinely artisanal gluten free product for our bakery. Fresh, flaky wheat-free scones are delivered on Saturdays to the market and they disappear very quickly! You can also special order these authentic English-style scones.

One of my favorite gluten-free snacks is Food Should Taste Good’s Multigrain Chips. A SOFI Gold winner, these flavorful chips made of flax, sesame, quinoa, soy and brown rice are super healthy and the perfect partner to Martha Stewart’s spiced hummus dip.  Another barbeque or picnic snack is Wellaby’s Cheese Up’s, fun for kids and adults alike. These whimsical, triangular pillows are light and airy with a snappy crunch and a burst of cheese flavor. Having won the Superior Taste Award at the prestigious International Taste and Quality Institute in Brussels, they are right at home in an exceptional “wow” pantry.

If you don’t feel like cooking, you can always head to the city for a night on the town. New York is burgeoning with gluten-free restaurants, including Risotteria which features pizza, panini and risotto and Babycakes, a wildly popular bakery with a killer donut. Either way, you’ll enjoy your gluten-free lifestyle!



Enjoy!
Cheri

P.S. On Saturday March 31st Sickles Market is celebrating Gluten Free Day with a variety of gluten-free vendors and samples. Come by and taste all of the new products!

Prix Fixe, Latin American Style

Sign in Quito

Whenever I arrive in a new country, I’ve got to adapt quickly: first, I figure out the money system, then the food, and, finally, a few key words, usually centering on greetings and cuisine. A girl’s got to eat. In Ecuador, where I traveled for the first time a year ago, it was easy to understand the local currency; they use the U.S. dollar (as well as dollar coins which never seemed to catch on in the U.S.). To learn the language, I enrolled in a small, excellent Spanish school right on the beach, north of Guayaquil, the largest city. The food of the Pacific coast was easy to negotiate, too: fish, seafood, plantains and bananas, and copious amounts of rice.
There was, however, one aspect of Ecuadorian food that took me a year to learn: almuerzos.  What is an almuerzo? Quite literally it means “lunch,” and that’s what I understood it to mean on my first visit. On my second trip, however, I realized that it has another meaning.

Shrimp Soup, Puerto Lopez

My first clue that almuerzo had more to it came during a meal in a remote section of the northern highlands, where my friend Rich and I traveled on the back of an agricultural truck to enjoy Oyacachi’s local hot springs. We were quite literally the only tourists in this small, alpine-like village, which attracts visitors only on the weekends, and there were no formal hotels or restaurants. After asking around, we scored two beds, each with six wool blankets to withstand the cold that comes even at the equator in the summer, from a shopkeeper. Later in the evening, his young son collected us from the wooden, A-frame house to lead us through the muddy streets to a family’s house for dinner. Joining us around a communal table were two Ecuadorian workers, far from their homes in the central sierra, to work on a much-needed drainage project. The four of us had no choice for our meals: first came soup with chunks of meat and starchy vegetables and then local trout with rice and French fries. This is when I realized that, as in Italy where there’s a first course of pasta followed by a second course of protein, complete meals in Ecuador start with soup and then are followed by the main meal.

Segundo of fish, Puerto Lopez

The full concept of almuerzo all came together a few days later in Mindo, northeast of Quito, where Rich and I travelled to experience the cloud forest and its tropical birds. On a hike to local waterfalls, we met a man from Ecuador, originally from Quito but living in Mindo for its lower altitude and favorable climate. He latched onto us and walked all the way back to town with us, along a winding, dirt road, stopping to knock down some orange-colored limes from a scraggly tree in a friend’s plot of land. Hungry from our walk in the bush, we asked Don Colon for a lunch recommendation, and he took us to Pablito, where he explained the almuerzo system. It’s a set menu, including a seasonal fruit juice, at a considerably cheaper price than meals ordered from the permanent menu.

Some places have a choice of what to have for the first and second courses; at other places there is only one option. At Pablito we got soup, as we did in Oyacachi’s, and then opted for a small fish, fried and served whole, accompanied by fat, red beans and lots of rice. Almost as rewarding as breaking the code of almuerzos was discovering how cheap they are, rarely over $2. And man is it filling!

Once we caught on, we didn’t want to give up our almuerzos. They were not only cheap but also “authentic.” It’s the food that the locals eat, cheap and filling and familiar. It was our entrée, so to speak, to simple, local places.

Enjoying almuerzos, Puerto Lopez

Once we hit the coast, the offerings for almuerzos changed slightly. The soup had seafood, as did the second course. At the bustling Saturday market in Puerto Lopez, a port city that attracts visitors going whale watching or taking a boat to Isla de la Plata, known as the poor man’s Galapagos we enjoyed shrimp soup followed by fried fish, lentils, plaintain chips, and a mountain of rice—a deliciously cheap and filling meal tasting of place and the real food of Ecuador.

There’s a similar system for dinner, merienda or cena, but after such a huge lunch we often just ordered a la carte, along with plenty of cocktails. After all, we were vacation.

Buon provecho!
Diana the Cheesemonger

To Market, To Market

 “To market, to market to buy a penny bun,

Home again, home again, market is done.”

Songs for the Nursery (1805)

When I was asked to be a part of the Sickles On the Road team heading to the 2012 Philadelphia Flower Show this past week, I was thrilled, although my excitement was largely due to something completely unconnected to tropical flora.  I was going to be right across the street from the Reading Terminal Market: one of the largest indoor food markets in the country!  Even better, Kirsty, our Tour Director, asked me to scout out some interesting local treats at the famous historic marketplace and share them with our guests on the bus ride home. When our bus arrived at the flower show and everyone disembarked and headed inside, Kirsty and I made a beeline for the bustling, 78,000 square foot building that takes up a city block, housing close to 80 independently-owned small businesses.  Originally built in 1892 by the Reading Railroad Company, the marketplace is celebrating its 120^th anniversary, although it has gone through many changes through the years.

We stepped inside the doors and were astonished by the sheer volume of people streaming up and down the aisles.  We were swept along past freshly baked bread loaves and muffins, jars filled with local jams and honey, whole fish of every size and shape, teetering stacks of cheese wheels, baskets of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole turkeys waiting to be carved up into sandwiches, tubs of ice cream, rows of festive candies and even an Irish pub.  Molly Malloy's is a gastropub, with handcrafted, creative dishes and local favorites, as well as 24 beers on tap, including a Limited Edition beer from the Philadelphia Brewing Company called Engine 1892.  This commemorative beer was created to celebrate  the Reading Terminal Market’s 120^th anniversary and it is actually brewed with chocolate from Chocolate by Mueller, a purveyor of handmade old fashioned chocolates located right  in the marketplace.

We eventually settled on a familiar Philadelphia product to share with our Sickles tour group.  Just like bagels in New York City and sour dough bread in San Fransisco, the soft pretzel is part of the culinary tradition of the city of Philadelphia.  Chewy and doughy, the Philadelphia soft pretzel is typically eaten warm with yellow mustard.  There are a number of stories circulating on the origin of the soft pretzel.  One source claims that the first American pretzel was baked in 1861 in Lititz, PA, about 75 miles west of Philadelphia.  A hobo was said to have given the recipe to a man named Ambrose Roth as a thank you for a hot meal and hospitality.  Roth eventually passed the recipe to his apprentice who established the country's first commercial pretzel factory.  Others say that Swiss and German immigrants introduced the pretzel to the region the 1800's.  Either way, soft pretzels made their way to the streets of Philadelphia and they are here to stay.  An artisanal chocolate company, Éclat, located in West Chester, PA has made this local snack part of its culture as well.  Éclat, recently named one of America’s Best Chocolate Companies in the U.S. by Bon Appetit, has created the PHL Chocolate Obsession Bar:  A 33% rich milk chocolate bar blended with Lancaster County pretzels.  I bought a bar while visiting Di Bruno Bros. in Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia and loved the combination.  You can sample Éclat chocolate products at Di Bruno Bros. when Sickles On the Road heads to Philadelphia on April 24^th

While wandering around one of more popular shops, the Pennsylvania General Store,  Kirsty and I noticed a petite chocolate candy called the “Wilbur Bud,” sold in bags, boxes and baked into cookies as well.  As it turns out, the Wilbur Chocolate Company is also located in Lititz, PA and got its name from its co-founder, Henry Oscar Wilbur.  Its most popular candy, the Wilbur Bud, was introduced in 1893 and looks surprisingly like a Hershey's Kiss -- which did not appear on the scene until 14 years later.  These original Wilbur Buds are offered in both dark and milk chocolate, have Wilbur stamped on the bottom of each candy, and are not wrapped in foil like the Hershey’s Kiss.  After tasting one of the Wilbur Bud peanut butter cookies, we were smitten and knew that we  had to share this local find.  The delightful shopkeeper Meg bagged up all the cookies, tied them with lovely ribbons and sent us on our way with a couple of boxfuls of Wilbur Buds besides. I can see why then President-Elect Barack Obama visited the Wilbur Chocolate Factory in 2008 – these candies are a national treasure!

Kirsty and I ended our search at Kauffman's Lancaster County Produce, a vendor that has been at the Reading Terminal Market for over 20 years.  The colorful stand offers farm fresh produce as well as preserves and crafts from the Pennsylvania Dutch area.  We sorted through the jars of canned vegetables, pickles and jellies until we spotted a stack of containers filled with all kinds of dried fruits looking plump and delicious.  We had packed some Dutch Vlaskaas for the bus ride home, a gouda-style cow's milk cheese, so we chose the dried pears and plums which paired nicely with the sweetness of the Vlaskaas.  Finished at last, Kirsty and I spent the last couple of hours at the flower show, and before we knew it it was time to head back.   Everyone loved the local finds and wished they had come along on our culinary treasure hunt.  Maybe next time we’ll all just go to the market!

Enjoy!

Cheri

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From the Jungle to Dairy Case

Ever wonder why Cheddar cheese, as well as the majority of cheese products (e.g. American cheese slices), is orange?

The answer is here in Ecuador, where I am currently traveling.

To be more precise, the source of the color—the “what?”-- is here in Ecuador, in the Oriente, the region that stretches, hot and humid, along the eastern length of this South American country. The complete answer to the question—the “why?”— is adrift in speculation.

The “what?” is annatto, the seeds of the fruit of the achiote, a small tree originating in the American tropics, which I got to see up close and personal for the first time on a tour of an orchid reserve in the jungle. Long before European contact, the indigenous people in South America used the seeds, which look as though they have been delicately dipped into a burnt-orange paste, for body paint and medicinal remedies.

Despite not having a particularly strong flavor, annatto has a fixed place in Latin American cuisine. It lends a slightly sweet and peppery note to dishes, but above all it’s prized for its ability to turn food the color of gold. Cheaper than saffron, annatto is used when the Spanish would have turned to saffron -- the most expensive spice in the world. Both will turn rice the color of sunshine.

When and why did the Europeans, the British in particular, get the idea to add annatto to white cow’s milk to produce orange-colored cheese? For at least 200 years, annatto has tinted England’s oldest cheeses, Double Gloucester, Cheshire, and Red Leicester. Unlike Cheddar in the States, these cheeses don’t come in a choice of yellow or white; they always sport a shade of orange, from the reserved cantaloupe hue of Cheshire, England’s oldest named cheese, to the deep, rich orange of Red Leicester. In England, by the way, Cheddar is almost always “white.” It’s not just in England that this tropical botanical brings color to fromage: France’s pockmarked, hard-as-a-cannonball Mimolette is as profoundly orange as Red Leicester; Holland’s sweet, long-aged Goudas aren’t naturally that caramel-colored; and, of course, in the U.S. we are geographically divided by our predilection for white or orange cheddar, white for New England and orange for the South.

Orange cheeses, then, aren’t the product of marketing monsters in America. They are naturally dyed, and have been for centuries. Even before annatto made it across the Atlantic to Europe, the British most likely relied on local flowers and herbs to color their cheeses, such as goldenrod. What is this tinted deception about? No one quite knows, but the answer may lie in the fact that the milk of cows eating grass is not pure white; it has a buttercup shade to it, which comes from the beta-carotene naturally present in the grass. In northern climates like Britain, cows are brought inside during the winter and fed fodder and other grains. Without grass in a cow’s winter diet, the milk lacks a natural, yellow hue, and so do the cheeses and butters made at that time. To mimic cheeses produced with rich summer milk, cheesemakers may have added annatto to bring a bit of color to otherwise snow-white cheese. Another theory has to do with marketing: if you go into a store and see cheeses in the same hue, wouldn’t a bright-orange one stand out and tempt you to buy it?

I find it truly amazing that a tree in the dense, humid jungles of Latin America is responsible for the color of some of our most iconic dairy products. Such is the wonder and reality of centuries of globalization and its enduring effect on the foods we eat every day.

Saludos,
Diana Pittet the Cheesemonger