November 20, 2011

Food Update

Today I managed to work on three food items I've blogged about recently(ish).

First I made another batch of Tapioca Pudding.  I went straight off of my recipe but the end results weren't quite right.  It had the amount of nutmeg written down at twice what it should be.  Doh!  I've edited the recipe I had blogged, so if you copied it, please make that change or re-copy the recipe.  Of course you may very well like the extra nutmeg, but I think it was too much.

The next thing I did was whip up some Apple Cake.  With this particular cake I tried something different by making it gluten-free.  One of the other players in our Sunday night HackMaster game is allergic/intolerant.  When making food for our game if I can make a gluten-free version I'll give it a go, if not, I don't lose too much sleep over it.  Switching this recipe over to use gluten-free flour was an extremely simple substitution.  I have a big jar of my gluten-free flour blend.  When I figured I might need/want to be cooking with substitute flour I made my own blend.  Someone told me that all of the alternative flours have their own particular issues, so I figured that making my own mix might help mitigate problems caused by a simpler substitution.  It seems to work well.

Christopher's Gluten-Free Flour Mix
All parts are by weight
4 Parts Corn Flour
5 Parts FuFu (Plantain) Flour
1 Part Tapioca Flour
1 Part Rice Flour
1 Part Mung Bean Flour

Sift together well.  When using, mix in approximately 1/2 teaspoon Xanthan Gum per 1 Cup Flour.

The last food item I worked on was that I cracked open one of the jars of Sauerkraut that I started at the very beginning of October.  They had been fermenting for just over 6 weeks and a couple of our gamers were bringing a nice ham with them, so now seemed like a good a time as any to break it out. The Sauerkraut was awesome.  It bore no resemblance to anything commercially produced I have ever tried.  It was good right out of the jar at room temperature and I couldn't resist having some immediately.  My wife, who doesn't really like Sauerkraut liked my version.  All there was in it was cabbage, salt, and time (not thyme!)  I did end up needing to make a little brine to help heat it up on the stove for dinner, so I guess by the time we got to it a third ingredient of water had been added.
Frugal by Choice, Cheap by Necessity
Shared 2012.10.01

I have a special dish I'm going to try later this week with the Sauerkraut.  I'll let you know how it goes.

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