At the end of last week I shared with you what is quickly becoming my favorite roast chicken recipe, and I promised a follow up post with a chicken soup that could be made with the leftovers, if you had any. While you could just as easily make a traditional chicken noodle soup following the same instructions, I decided I wanted to give my soup a little kick this time around with a few Asian flavors – ginger, lemongrass, and just a hint of Thai chile. It sounded like the perfect match for a chicken and rice soup, and I agree even more so with that sentiment now that I’ve devoured a large potful of it. (more…)

Filed under:
Asian, Comfort food, Dairy free, Gluten free, Soups by Courtney

A few month’s ago, while in Carmel, I had what might be the best roasted chicken I had ever had out on the town at Hog’s Breath Pub. Maybe it was just because my husband and I were enjoying a weekend away together, maybe it was the wine, but either way, I couldn’t get the perfectly crisp skin, flakes of salt, and fresh vegetable succotash out of my head. So of course, I decided to recreate the meal at home.

Of course, I didn’t actually know what constituted a succotash. I assumed corn, because every succotash I had ever seen had corn. Making this meal was a little on the fly, as I noticed the grocery store had a large bunch of fresh corn in. So I wandered through the produce section, picking up some okra and zucchini, because it looked good. Only later did I learn that succotash also includes lima beans, by definition. So we’ll call this Courtney’s sort-of-succotash, sans beans, but you won’t miss them.

For the chicken recipe, I decided to try Thomas Keller’s simple roast chicken. (more…)

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Comfort food, Dinner, Gluten free, Side Dish, Sunday Suppers, Wine pairings by Courtney

It’s just that simple – alterations I’ve made to some of the Madd Hatter’s Kitchen recipes to adapt to the myriad of diets that my friends or family have adopted over the years. While in the past I’ve made little notes here and there in my recipes about ways to make them suitable for a vegetarian, vegan, or otherwise, there was really no way to quickly look for all the vegetarian foods or alterations on the site.

Alterations – what exactly does this mean? Well, I’m not a vegetarian, I’m not a vegan, I’m not dairy free, and other than a short two-month stint, I’m not gluten-free. So I don’t plan on retooling the site to be devoted to these types of foods, because that’s not how I cook. However, I love to entertain, and I want to be sure when I have friends and family over, they have something they can eat that tastes great. In some cases I do have a few of these pure recipes up my sleeve, but in many cases I alter my recipes, such as my poke bowl which is topped with edamame for vegetarian friends or those who don’t want to eat raw tuna. Or the cherry chai smoothie, which calls for yogurt, but at the end of my recipe I’ve noted a replacement to make this a suitable drink for a person on a dairy free or vegan diet.

So while you peruse the diet alterations section, you may see pictures that contain meat, eggs, cheese, et al, but scroll to the bottom of the recipe and you’ll see the recommended substitutions to satisfy the particular diet requirements. Of course, you can alter any recipe on the site, but these are recipes I’ve either tried or had someone else try, and I think they stay true my intention.

And while I’ve tried my best to learn in-depth about each of these diets, it is possible that I’ve slipped up and not realized an ingredient has casein or gluten or gelatin or something else. So I definitely welcome any feedback if you see such a slip up. That’s one way to learn!

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a note on this section by Courtney

On September 22, the first day of fall, that autumn feeling was in the air, and I completely switched into fall food mode. Even though here in the Bay area we keep swinging between crisper, breezier days and sunny, summer days, when my husband suggested we have something with pork for dinner, I jumped at the chance to make this whole pork loin atop apples. It is so simple I’m not sure why I haven’t made it in a few years, but I’m so happy I made a quick stop by the store for the ingredients this weekend. Pork + apples, it’s been too long! (more…)

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Dairy free, Dinner, Gluten free, Sunday Suppers by Courtney

Over the past few months you may have noticed on the Daily Nosh that I’ve been talking a lot about gluten – whether it be a gluten-free alternative to an older recipe, or a reintroduction of something to my diet with gluten. At the beginning of the year I experienced many bouts of food poisoning while staying in the UK and with that came a host of unexpected side effects including vertigo and numb extremities. Needless to say, it freaked me out a bit. So when it was suggested that my body may not be able to process the gluten due to the food poisonings, I resolved to go gluten free for a couple of months while I tried my best to rebuild the flora in my gut (because, really, I couldn’t imagine not having any gluten for two months, let alone the rest of my life).

One thing I was sure of, though, was that I did not want to go out and find a plethora of gluten-free products to replace my gluten-filled products. First and foremost, I know what wonderful bread and homemade pasta tastes like, and I know gluten-free is never going to match that. Secondly, my husband said he would go gluten-free with me, and many of the gluten-free products out there contain chickpea flour, which he’s severely allergic to. So for the most part I focused on adding more vegetables to my diet, but I did keep a couple of gluten-free alternatives around to squash the cravings for my favored pastas. One was a quinoa pasta, which, while it didn’t soak up sauce the way traditional pasta does, and the texture was horrid leftover, it was quite tasty with my veggie spaghetti.

After two months, I began adding gluten back to my diet, and my husband did the same. Only while it was sitting okay with me, he realized he was doing a lot better without it in his diet. Uh oh! Suddenly mostly-gluten-free was looking more and more like a way of life in this household. So I decided to try Cup4Cup flour which I had seen earlier on in my gluten-free quest, but passed on since my 2 month hiatus was almost up. (more…)

Filed under:
Gluten free, miscellany by Courtney