low-FODMAP

Daring Bakers | Pastel de Tres Leches

Nibbles

Because I didn’t have enough going on, I decided to join up with the Daring Bakers challenges starting this month. Actually, the reason I joined up was that with the “alternative” baking I’ve been doing, it’s easier just not to and there’s so much out there to experiment with. I figure the challenges will help push me to test my theories of Low-FODMAP baking while getting back to a bit of my pastry chef-roots.

Inma of la Galletika was our Sept. 2013 Daring Bakers’ hostess and WOW did she bring us something decadent and delicious! Pastel de Tres Leches or Three Milk Cake, creamy yet airy, super moist but not soggy… just plain delish!

Low-FODMAP Pastel de Tres Leches cake

Low-FODMAP Pastel de Tres Leches cake

I have eaten Tres Leches before but I’ve never made it myself. Nonetheless, making it for the first time in a Low-FODMAP way wasn’t all that daunting for 2 reasons:

  • The base is a sponge cake and sponge cake is more about technique than ingredients. I have successfully made sponge cake before.
  • While 3 milks (the translation of tres leches) may be asking a lot of someone who needs to avoid lactose, it’s different than needing to be actually dairy-free, so I had some wiggle room.
the steps

Top row: The golden brown sponge cake and the spongy texture inside.//Bottom row: Rather than a brush, I used the small ladle that came with my gravy boat to gently spoon the three milks syrup onto the split cake layers and my carefully arranged mandarin oranges in the center.

The Sponge Cake

The recipe we were given to use started with 5 separated eggs and used only 1 cup of flour. That’s why I think a sponge cake is a great type of cake for gluten-free or Low-FODMAP baking because the whipped eggs whites are providing both the leavening (lift) as well as the majority of the protein structure, so I was able to use my go-to 5-Flour Blend and 3/4 tsp of xanthum gum (though I probably could have left that bit out) with no problems.

The technique for a sponge cake involves whipping the egg whites to stiff peaks and then gently folding the rest of the ingredients without deflating the whites. That’s where the danger lies. If you’re too forceful with that mixing, the eggs will lose the air trapped inside, the air that holds the place until the threads of protein coagulate (that really is the technical term) and can hold up the cake, and your finished cake will be dense and heavy and super-chewy. On the flip side, if you don’t mix it enough, you’ll have a streaky mess on your hands that won’t look or taste appetizing.

The Three Milks

No matter how well-made, a sponge cake is so named because it does have a texture than reminds one of a sponge and is usually a bit on the dry side. Which is why you should beware any recipe that does not come with or suggest a syrup or some other liquid be applied when the cake is still somewhat warm.

For Tres Leches the syrup is comprised of three milks, usually evaporated milk, sweetened condensed milk, and heavy cream, and our version suggested flavoring with cinnamon and rum. Since evaporated and condensed (evap + additional sugar) milks concentrate the High-FODMAP lactose levels, they were definitely not going to be in my version of this cake.

Instead, I opted to use 1 (13.5 oz) can of unsweetened coconut milk, 1 cup of lactose-free whole milk, and 6 oz of Velvet Cinn (a Horchata with rum and cinnamon made by Cruzan–reviewed on my cocktail blog). Now, the Velvet Cinn does contain milk, so there’s a little lactose in there (and rum is the only spirit not allowed on the Elimination phase of the diet, so can be problematic for some), but if you figure that a 9 inch cake yields 9 servings and there’s only 6 ounces of the liqueur in there, that’s under an ounce per serving and should be within tolerances for all but the most sensitive. Most of the alternatives I saw searching around included soy and almond milks, which aren’t really great from a Low-FODMAP standpoint. Rice milk is a good option, but you have to be careful which kind you get it to avoid High-FODMAP additives or sweeteners.

In the end, my syrup was thick and rich and soaked into the cake beautifully and I had no adverse reaction to the Velvet Cinn component.

A nice, respectable serving.

A nice, respectable serving.

The End Result

The Tres Leches cakes I’ve had in the past were not filled with anything and I don’t remember them being topped with anything other than maybe a swirl of whipped cream and a maraschino cherry. For our version, mandarin oranges were suggested and since citrus is one of the easiest options on a Low-FODMAP diet, I decided to run with it. For the topping I suppose I could have used non-dairy whipped topping but I really wasn’t wanting to go such an artificial route, I guess? So instead I mixed another can of coconut milk with some powdered sugar for sweetness, arrowroot to help thicken a bit, and a splash of vanilla. It wasn’t a thick topping, more of a glaze, really, but it worked.

After chilling for a few hours I cut a slice for a pretty picture and because I was curious to taste how it turned out! That first night there was still quite a lot of coconut presence which is really no surprise with the coconut milk x2 and even some coconut flour in the cake. The next day, however, when I brought it out for our gaming group, the Velvet Cinn’s influence had asserted itself and the flavor was much more mellow.

Overall it was a fabulous first-go with the Daring Bakers and I look forward to next month’s challenge!

Low-FODMAP Seeded Chicken Salad

Nibbles

jwalker_nb_seededchickensalad_crackersA lot of living with a medically-necessary restricted diet, is finding ways to enjoy our favorite foods in ways that fit our new needs. Some ingredients post more challenges than others, it’s true, but often it’s just a matter of knowing your ingredients.

Chicken salad–either as a salad topping, sandwich filling, or snack with crackers–used to be one of my favorite things to whip up for picnics or a weekend lunch. My preferred version’s not-so-secret ingredient used diced apples for their bright flavor and crunchy texture. Sometimes I’d also add walnuts, but not often. Since apples are ingredient-non-grata on a Low-FODMAP diet (they’re naturally high in fructose, fructans, and polyols), I needed to tweak my go-to recipe. And while walnuts are fine, in limited quantities, they don’t show up in our home very often due to Todd’s dislike of them.

Low-FODMAP Seeded Chicken Salad

1 celery stalk, small dice (~ 1/2 cup)
3 green onion tops, sliced (~ 2 Tbsp)
1/2 cup red seedless grapes, halved
2 Tbsp hulled sunflower seeds
1 1/2 – 2 cups shredded chicken breast
1/3 – 1/2 cup mayonnaise
salt & pepper to taste

Combine everything in a large bowl and stir until thoroughly combined. Serve atop mixed greens or with crackers. Makes about 2.5 cups.

Make sure that your mayonnaise is low-FODMAP–many include onion or garlic for flavor and if you’re sensitive to fructans this could be an issue for you. Hellmann’s seems to be a reliable choice (we buy the olive oil variety) but you need to always check the labels as formulas can change. Of course you can also make your own mayo or even substitute a lactose-free Greek-style yogurt for some or all of it.

You may not need a lot of additional salt if your sunflower seeds can fill that role, and the grapes add a touch of sweetness.

You may not need a lot of additional salt if your sunflower seeds can fill that role, and the grapes add a touch of sweetness.

To make this a quick recipe, I like to keep a few 13 oz. cans of chicken breast (water-packed) on hand. Drain the chicken and then break up the meat with your fingers and it’s perfect for a dish like this where you want the chicken distributed throughout the salad and not in chunks.

Artisan Nut Thins Group

When we have friends coming over it’s nice to put a bowl of this out with crackers. Wheat-free crackers often leave something to be desired, however, so I was pleased to receive samples of Blue Diamond’s Artisan Nut Thins to try with it. The crackers have a shiny look to them, are very crisp (almost brittle), but the flavors are quite tasty. I served up the chicken salad as a snack with some of the Sesame Seed, Flax Seed, and Multi-Seed Nut Thins and all seemed to go over very well. My favorite is probably the Flax Seed variety, though they’re all tasty.

jwalker_nb_lowfodmap_seededchickensalad_nutthins

(Keep in mind that Nut Thins from Blue Diamond are primarily almond flour, and almonds have recently been found to be higher in FODMAPs than originally thought. Because of this you need to gauge your own sensitivity to almond products, including Nut Thins.)

Brunch: Because Breakfast is Good Anytime!

Third Time Wife, Wedding Planning

In the Road Trip home the rule of thumb is: when in doubt, breakfast–at least when we need one more dinner plan for the upcoming week.

There’s just so many options with breakfast, be it for lunch, dinner, or at it’s regularly scheduled hour, and they all have one thing in common: they’re delicious! So when we needed to let go of the tapas reception idea, what do we fall back on but brunch, of course.

Before we booked Honey Lake Plantation, I needed to make sure that they were truly going to fit into the budget and that included settling on a price per person for the meal. Since they didn’t have a brunch option as part of their wedding package, we got to come up with our own menu, following the example of one of their sample menus that was at the price point we wanted to be at (just under $20 per person).

1st Course
Spiced Butternut Squash Soup served with a Bacon-Wrapped Breadsticks

2nd Course
Quiche Lorraine with a Salad of Mixed Green and Seasonal Fruit

3rd Course
Country-Fried Steak, Buttermilk Biscuits and Pepper Gravy

The third course was thoroughly Mr. Road Trip’s idea, but I had no objections to it whatsoever. There’s nothing necessarily show-stopping about the menu, but that wasn’t  really the point. Breakfast and brunch always have a cozy, comfort-food vibe to them and I think our menu will really play to that strength and let the quality of ingredients speak for themselves.

And speaking of ingredients…

I’ve mentioned in passing that I have some pesky digestive issues, always have in one form or another–it’s actually a very common issue on my dad’s side, they just call it the “family stomach”–but they’ve usually just been a nuisance more than anything. Just something that you deal with.

Until last summer when on a business trip, aka out of my usual environment, and I got very sick and I realized just how often I felt ill and just how much that affected what I did or didn’t do on a given day. And then I realized that I had been getting progressively worse for a couple of years–hindsight and all that. It should also be noted that I have two specialists I see throughout the year and have full bloodwork done every 6 months, in addition to annual check-ups, and since 2 of my diagnoses fall under the “rare” category, you can believe I’m pretty well monitored. So we still came back to it was just IBS–the catch-all of tummy troubles and not much you can do about it.

What this has to do with the reception menu, is that I heard about some research from Australia on FODMAPs, and that there was a fairly simple diagnostic diet protocol to try to see if it helped. You basically eliminate the known trigger foods for a while to reduce symptoms, then challenge the different groups to see if the symptoms come back. I talked it over with Mr. Road Trip (since he cooks every other week it would affect him, too, so I needed him on board) and right after Thanksgiving I started the Elimination phase, and it worked!  A week and a half in and I was feeling amazing, and my gastro was thrilled I’d taken it upon myself (the research is just starting to take hold here in the US) to try it and that it was working.

Then I started the challenges and failed every. single. one of them.

Which means, that in order to not be sick every day, I need to avoid a really long list of very common (and very tasty!) foods. I already knew I was lactose-intolerant, but now I needed to be stricter about that along with cutting out wheat, onions, garlic, apples, pears, mushrooms, honey, agave nectar, broccoli, asparagus, beans and most legumes, and a whole host of other foods that, in general, are very healthy and, in the case of onion and garlic, in so many things.

Let me tell you, having worked in professional kitchens before, I was not looking forward to telling a chef–any chef!–that he couldn’t use onions or garlic in my food!

Thankfully, my plan of figuring all this out way ahead of time (the main reason I was willing to give up wheat, etc. just before Christmas!) and giving the Plantation a 6-month heads-up has worked out well. They are doing their level best to accommodate my multiple food intolerances and, in fact, I spoke with Chef Bill just the other day about how we were going to handle some items (I’d requested a proposed ingredient list for the menu, just to try to spot any issues ahead of time). After our talk I’m feeling much more confident that it will be safe for me to eat at my own wedding, and am really looking forward to our tasting this week!

Did you find yourself throwing a vendor a curve ball at the last minute?

Low-FODMAP Graham Crackers

Nibbles

If you follow this blog’s cocktail companion, Sips & Shots, you already know that this past Saturday was National S’mores Day, and since 1/3 (or maybe even a full half!) of a s’more is the graham crackers, what’s a low-FODMAPer to do but make their own!

While I could look for a pre-existing gluten-free graham cracker recipes, I wanted to try the theory that my favorite flour blend would truly work in any given recipe. So I went with the first Google result: the Smitten Kitchen’s Graham Crackers. Did it work? In spades, my friends, in spades!

jwalker_nb_grahamcrackers

Here’s my adaptation of their adaptation of Nancy Silverton’s recipe:

Low-FODMAP Graham Crackers

2 1/2 c + 2 Tbsp Gluten-Free flour blend
1 c light brown sugar
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp xanthum gum
3/4 Kosher salt
7 Tbsp unsalted butter, cubed
1/3 c maple syrup
5 Tbsp lactose-free milk
2 Tbsp vanilla extract

Additional sugar for sprinkling

Combine the flour blend, brown sugar, soda, gum, and salt in the bowl of a food processor and pulse to combine, or stir together in a large bowl. Add butter and process until the butter has been reduced to small bits among the flour and resembles coarse crumbs or cut it in with a pastry blender or two knives–your standard pie-crust or biscuit method.

Stir together the syrup, milk, and extra and add to the processor or stir into the bowl until a soft, uniform, very sticky dough forms.

Wrap dough in plastic wrap and chill for at least 2 hours.

Flour your work surface with your wheat-free flour of choice and use plenty–this is a very sticky dough! I prefer white rice flour since I can get it in larger amounts at the Indian market, it’s got a fine, grabby texture and won’t change the texture or flavor of the baked goods. Roll out the dough to somewhere between 1/4 and 1/8-inch thick and cut into squares for the traditional graham cracker style or rounds (or any other shape you want) if you’d like to make your own moon pies and such. Dock each cracker with the tines of a fork, a skewer, or toothpick. Docking keeps the crackers from puffing too much, you want them to stay fairly flat and compact, so don’t skip that part. Transfer to a baking sheet lined with a parchment paper or a baking mat and sprinkle with sugar or cinnamon-sugar.

Bake for 20 minutes at 350° F. Makes a bit more than 2 dozen 3″ square cookies.

The distinctive flavor of a graham crackers seems to come from the combination of molasses (from the brown sugar) and vanilla, so you want to make sure the quality of these ingredients are fairly high. The Smitten Kitchen recipe called for a mild honey, but that’s naturally high in fructose so not a good option for a Low-FODMAP indulgence. Since I was substituting maple syrup, I dropped the dark brown sugar to light just to keep things more or less even. And if there was ever a time to bust out the premium vanilla, this recipe is it! For me it was a bottle of Neilsen-Massey Organic Fair Trade Madagascar Bourbon vanilla extract that I received for review. The Neilsen-Massey vanilla is subtle but lovely in a recipe like this that depends on basics, not show.

What amazed me about this recipe came the day after they were baked. The next day I opened the cookie jar to immediately be hit with that quintessential graham cracker aroma and it was amazing. Add to that the perfect texture and flavor–these grahams made for excellent s’mores and even better snacking–not too sweet, just sweet enough.

Low-FODMAP Pineapple Salsa

Nibbles

I was expecting company last week and had meant to do some baking but the week had just gone from hectic to all-out-insane and I just couldn’t summon the will to turn on the oven. Still, I wanted to offer my guests something so I figured I’d just pick up some nice cheese on the way home and call it done.

Until, that is, I got a hankering for something a little more tropical and came up with this:

jwalker_nb_pineapplesalsa

Low-FODMAP Pineapple Salsa

1 c diced tomatoes
1 c diced pineapples
1/2 c sliced green onion tops
1/4 c chopped cilantro*
juice of 1 lime
salt and pepper to taste

Combine all ingredients and mix well. Cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour or until ready to serve. Good for about 3 days or so.

If you like more heat in your salsa you can, by all means, add a diced jalapeno or other peppers to the mix. Not knowing the heat tolerance of my guests and wanting something a bit on the milder side I left it out. And if you’re in a hurry, many of these items can be found in your local grocery store already chopped and ready to go!

I served it with tortilla chips, of course, but the leftovers made amazing nachos with a bit of shredded cheese and some avocado crema on top!

*Cilatro or Culantro?

When I was picking up said supplies, I needed some cilantro but didn’t really want to buy an entire bunch as I knew most of it would likely go to waste. Dried wasn’t really an option for this sort of preparation, so I was looking among the smaller packages up on the top shelf and found a pouch of Culantro which I mistook for cilantro until I noticed the leaves were actually long, flat blades about an inch wide or so. The packaging mentioned that it had the same flavor as culantro but was hardier–making it a better crop for gardens and a better staple in the fridge.

Preparing this for the salsa I noticed the same taste and flavor as cilantro but the texture was incredibly different. It was more of  a crisp leaf that shattered almost as much as it sliced, and had a crunchiness almost like bay leaves. Still, sliced thin enough and once it’s macerated a bit with the pineapple et al. it’s perfectly fine.