Thanks Monica: Barbecue Sauce without mustard, garlic, vinegar, onions, dairy

After consulting with Monica on how to do this, I did the following:

Start with brown rice syrup, olive oil, water, and a chunk of brown sugar in a sauce pot without heat. Stir thoroughly. The brown sugar chunk should start to fall apart.

Turn on the flame but keep it as low as possible. The goal is to cook the sauce as slowly as possible, bubbling occasionally, but not too often. If it starts to sizzle, turn it off. Turn on the oven low, to 300 or 325.

Add spices:

A lot of smoked paprika and basil and cinnamon, plus a small amount of New Mexico chile. Add pepper and a small amount of salt.

Add fresh herbs: basil and rosemary.

Add a lot of ginger and several more kinds of pepper.

Take one tomato and cut it up. Put the gelatin in first, and cut up the flesh into small pieces.

Add tomato.

Take red, orange, and yellow peppers and cut them fine or diced and add them.

I added one blackberry.

It was still too sweet so I added a great deal of pepper and some sweet paprika.




For the chicken, I used mom's recipe, modified.

Mom's recipe is oil on the bottom of the oven pot, then the chicken, covered with a piece of buttered parchment paper.

I placed pumpkin on the bottom of the pot, on top of the olive oil. I opened a can of organic pumpkin, spooning a tablespoon or two of pumpkin into the sauce, and putting the rest in the pot. It's a lot of pumpkin but don't worry. I put a lot of soy butter in the pumpkin, plus some pepper.

Then I put in the chicken. The chicken breasts were a little too large so I tore them apart, but I'm sure a knife would work too. I put a lot of pepper on top of the chicken, and a lot of sweet paprika as well.

Then I put the buttered parchment paper on top. By the time I put the chicken in the oven, it was at 300. I let it cook for about 40 minutes, took it out of the oven and removed the parchment. The pumpkin and butter had filled up the pot.

I cranked up the oven to 350 for 10 minutes, and cranked up the flame a bit too. After a few minutes, the sauce had cooked down and was the correct cue texture.
When done, I found that I had a sauce that was sweet, sour, and spicy. The pumpkin and chicken worked nicely to cut both the spice and the sourness and merged with and changed the sweet as well. A great food evening!

Vanilla Pseudo-Curry Rice Milk Sauce

Pretty simple: 1 carton of vanilla ricemilk

Add a lot of tamari soy sauce.

Add cardomum, coriander, black pepper, and a lot of cumin.

Add some cinnamon-and-sugar.

Add some fresh tomatoes and mushrooms.

Cook!

Still needs something but is pretty good.

Cinnamon Chicken

I started by cutting the chicken into small pieces. I had enough for two pans so I fried the first batch in olive oil, flipping once, with a little salt, pepper, basil, and tamari soy sauce until the chicken was brown on one side and the oil had gone away.

While the first batch was cooking, I doused the next batch, still on the cutting board, with salt, pepper, and lots of cinnamon. I added an uneven amount of ginger, oregano, and cinnamon and sugar.

Then for the next batch I put some vanilla rice milk and a small amount of chocolate (Dagoba, non-dairy) in with the oil, added sweet peppers, a few olives, and a few mushrooms. There was a lot of liquid in there at this point and I smothered the whole thing in cinnamon and shook some tamari soy sauce in there.

The whole thing cooked for about fifteen minutes, flipping once, and maintaining a boil for about eight or ten minutes. It came out smoky and not too sweet. Very nice.

Lemon Sole with Spicy Coconut/Rice Milk Sauce and Rice

Finally, my (Melissa) first blog entry.
Saturday night, Alex created a spicy coconut sauce for Lemon Sole, vegetables and rice. We both love Thai food but find it problematic and we’ve been craving it lately. There’s no way to ensure that a restaurant uses a sulfite-free coconut milk (that product is usually harder to find and a bit more expensive). And, many Thai sauces use shell-fish of some sort – not good for me. On top of that, I also have to worry about any possible alliums in the dish (scallions, garlic, etc) that I have to avoid.

Other than some very hot spices, we haven’t pin-pointed specific source(s) of some of the problems Alex has with Thai food. We know he should refrain from hot dishes – precipitates an IBS episode. As for me, I just never cared for heat overpowering taste and always ordered mild dishes.

If we wanted to take a chance on a new restaurant or dish, we’d have to eat it on a Friday. Then we’d have the weekend to recover if the food caused problems. But who wants to spend their weekend’s sick? So, we try to mimic as best as we can some of recipes on TV, books and in restaurants.
Anyways…

Alex created Lemon Sole with Spicy Coconut/Rice Milk Sauce and Rice. I think this was a fairly successful Thai influenced dish. Initially, it was a bit too spicy for me, even without garlic and onions. But in the attempt to temper the heat of the spices, I think we made it better.

Fish:
2 Lemon Sole fillets
5 Crimini Mushrooms - sliced
1 Tomato - slice
2T Black Sesame Seeds
Olive Oil
Salt (we used Himalayan Salt in a grinder)
Black Pepper
Fresh Ginger Root – about a ½” chunk, sliced

Sauté crimini mushrooms, sliced tomatoes and black sesame seeds in olive oil. After about 2 minutes, place filets on top of the vegetables. Sprinkle additional sesame seeds. Salt and pepper the fish. Add half of the ginger slices and a little water. Cook on low for about 7 minutes. Flip over and cook for another 7 minutes. Cover, turn off heat and let it sit and simmer for another 5 minutes.

Rice: Basmati Rice for two

Sauce:
8oz. Rice Dream Vanilla Milk (small container)
5oz. can of unsulfited coconut milk (we used Thai Kitchen)
1 twist of the Salt grinder
1 or 2 tsp Cinnamon
To start, 1 Tablespoon each of the following spices:
Black Pepper, Red Pepper, Sweet Paprika, Cumin, Cinnamon Sugar (bottled),
Lemon Grass (put in muslin or a fine mesh tea ball strainer so you won’t have to worry about choking on the lemon grass)
Dried Basil – a lot, enough to cover the surface of the sauce in the pot
Remaining half of Ginger Spices

(later additions: handful of dried peppermint; Tofutti Cream Cheese)

In a pot, combine the milks. Stir well. Add the spices, stir. Bring to a boil and then simmer for 5 minutes. While simmering, taste the sauce and add whatever spice(s) you like. Alex didn’t measure the amounts of spices he added while the sauce was simmering. Alex thinks he used at least 2 Tablespoons Black Pepper.

The Vanilla Rice Milk is naturally sweet and light. Using rice milk cut down on the heavier fatty coconut milk calories (higher cholesterol count). We think the flavors blend nicely.

Plating:
Rice was at the bottom of a bowl. The Lemon Sole and vegetables was laid on top. Spicy Sauce was poured over everything.

Taste Results and Modifications:
While Alex liked the heat of the spices, I found it a bit overwhelming, yet tasty. Since we had plenty of sauce leftover, we wanted to try using it slightly differently today.

Before storing the remaining sauce in the fridge, Alex added a handful of crushed dried peppermint. He felt that the mint cooled the spices. With the idea of toning down the sauce’s heat some more, I suggested adding a dollop of the Tofutti Cream Cheese on top of the sauce. If we had Tofutti Sour Cream, we would have used that instead. Alex decided to take it a step further by stirring in several tablespoons of the Tofutti Cream Cheese into the sauce.

These modifications resulted in a creamier, less hot, yet flavorful sauce.

Wheat-Free Egg-Free Baking, With Brands

Recently, we made corn muffins with the Whole Foods house brand -- excellent taste, though a little chewy. All wheat-free baking seems to end up a little chewy. Cannot find a link for the house brand.


We're also enjoying Maple Grove Farms All Nautural Gluten Free Pancake & Waffle Mix (added egg replacer instead of eggs). Nice vanilla / tapioca aroma and real pancake feel. Slightly dusty taste if made with rice milk, but otherwise ideal. Better taste with soy milk.


Egg replacer is Ener-G Egg Replacer. Nice and reliable.

Chocolate Chili Sauce

I made this for chicken, but we'll be trying it with salmon tonight.

Olive oil
canteloupe
diced tomato
cinnamon + 2 cinnamon sticks
2 sticks of rosemary
basil
pepper
salt
white sugar
half a bar of chocolate
water
red pepper (ground)
paprika
new mexico red pepper
potato starch


Ended up with a smoky, chocolate-y sauce that nevertheless lacked the herb-y punch I was looking for.

I cooked it slowly over a very low heat. The ingredients keep separating. Just took it out of the refrigerator and it was semi-solid.

Needs work on texture too.

Update: Do not use with fish. Melissa liked it on chicken with her coconut curry sauce (not posted here yet).

Fresh Tomatoes

This is a very quick five minute thing. I use it to get ready to cook. Sometimes when you arrive in the kitchen, you're so hungry that it's tough to think. You can eat a slice of bread, drink some soymilk, or do this:

Cut up a few grape tomatoes in half and put them in a small bowl.

Add spices to taste: basil, pepper, salt, sugar (something hot if you wish).

Drizzle good olive oil

Eat! Now you're ready to cook.



Julia Child has a sauteed tomato recipe that's similar, except that you use fresh green herbs and sautee everything in a pan. I will soon experiment with adding rice bread crumbs to the mixture.