Everyone can benefit from eating a wide range of gluten-free whole grains. Gluten-free cooking and baking goes beyond just replacing the few popular gluten grains wheat, barley, triticale, and rye in favorite recipes. It is a celebration of the earth’s bounty.
There are more whole grains that do not have gluten. This means more choices, more whole grains and whole grain flours to mix and match with local, seasonal produce for an endless variety of daily meals. Doing so isn’t as hard as it seems if you follow some basic tips:
Create Gluten-Free Makeovers.
You can make pasta dishes, pastries—just about everything that can be made with gluten—into delicious, nutritious, gorgeous dishes with a wide gluten-free whole grains and flours.
Go Beyond Toast.
Start your day with nutritional powerhouses: gluten-free grains such as millet, rolled oats, teff, quinoa, and amaranth make tasty porridges cooked in water or coconut milk with a variety spices like ginger and cinnamon, and dried fruits. Top with your favorite yogurt, milk, fruit, or maple syrup for a great breakfast.
Pancakes and waffles are delicious and super nutritious made with one or a combination of gluten-free flours: teff, sorghum, quinoa, brown rice, corn, buckwheat, maca, and coconut flour.
It is easy to make grain loaves, polenta, and croquettes with corn grits, millet, and teff. Once cooked and cooled, you can cut them like a brownie. Slice and serve or refry; the possibilities are endless.
Cook Like An Artist.
You can make beautiful dishes mixing and matching grains with nuts, seeds, and colorful vegetables. Decorate finished dishes with edible flowers, springs of herbs, and sauces.
It is rare for whole grains to be complete proteins; however quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat and oats are complete proteins making them ideal for main course entrees, and side dishes.
Employ a Variety of Textures.
You can create dishes with many different textures: running the gamut from dense, smooth dishes like polenta to chewy wild rice to crispy granola. In the realm of desserts alone, grains and their flours can be used to create textures ranging from creamy rice pudding, to dense and chewy hazelnut brownies, to crispy cookies made with teff flour.
Create Great Pastries Everyone will Love.
Bake delicious cookies, piecrusts, fruit crisps, muffins, and brownies with a great variety of gluten-free flours: teff, oat, brown rice, quinoa, coconut, ground nut and seed flours (hazelnut, almond, and flax seeds, etc).
Photo: Tracey Eller
Roll Some Sushi.
Vegetarian sushi, also known as nori rice rolls, are delicious and easy to prepare with a wide variety of rice: Bhutanese Red Rice, Forbidden Rice, brown rice, Jade Pearl Rice, sweet brown rice, among others. Mix and match fresh and sautéed seasonal vegetables (cucumbers, carrots, beets, salad greens, etc) with avocado, pickles, sprouts, seasoned tofu and ginger tempeh, and more.
Stake Out a Variety of Shapes.
Gluten-free pasta comes in many shapes and sizes and made from a variety of grains: rice, quinoa, corn, amaranth, and buckwheat. All are great topped with savory sauces: tomato, peanut, pesto, mushroom, among others.
Expand your Repertoire.
Say yes to abundance of choices: enhance your nutrition by including high fiber, whole grains in your diet. You can make pilafs, soups, stews, porridge, and marinated salads and more with gluten-free grains.
Enjoy Being Environmentally Friendly.
Going gluten-free can help you decrease your carbon footprint. Huge monocultures of wheat and other common grains have damaging impacts on the earth, especially when grown commercially using petroleum-based fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides.
Because many varieties of gluten-free grains are more closely related to their wild cousins than the hybrids we’ve come to rely on, they can often be grown more easily, using less intensive methods. Some gluten-free grains are drought resistant, requiring less land and less water to produce high yields. Others grow in harsh conditions, arid uplands to moist tropical settings.
As a bonus, many of them offer superior nutrition and higher-quality protein than wheat and other common grains. That means more net nutrition from the same amount of land. And best of all, this approach to easing our impact on the planet offers a delicious culinary adventure.
Worldwide, gluten-Free whole grains truly are the foundation of a healthful diet—healthful not just for us humans, but also for our planet.
You’ve probably heard about the devastation of rainforests to create grazing land, water pollution from feedlots, and the problems with methane from cattle. And chances are, at some point you’ve read or heard that eating lower on the food chain is more sustainable, so I’ll just offer the reminder that it’s far more efficient to eat grain than to feed it to animals and then use those animals for food. As food resources grow scarce for an ever-increasing human population, it becomes more important to eat less meat, or avoid it altogether.
All of that said, I do believe that there’s a place for organic eggs and dairy products, especially when the animals that produce them are allowed to range freely and fed a diet that’s more natural for them (for dairy cows, that means grass-fed).
Leslie Cerier, “The Organic Gourmet,” is a national authority on gluten-free cooking and baking specializing in local, seasonal, whole foods and organic cuisine with 20 + years experience: Chef, Educator, and Author of 5 cookbooks including Gluten-Free Recipes for the Conscious Cook (2010), and Going Wild in the Kitchen (2005). Leslie teaches exciting “hands-on” vegetarian cooking classes in some of the most prestigious centers of holistic evolution and organic lifestyle. She will be co-teaching a special workshop with 10.5 CEC; Thriving Gluten-Free July 6-8 2012 with Celiac Expert and Dietician Melinda Dennis at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, NY. Check out more at http://lesliecerier.com/blog/class-schedule/.
If you’re adhering to a gluten-free diet because you have celiac disease or other health conditions that benefit from avoiding gluten, this is one cookbook you’ll want on your cookbook shelf. But be sure to take a look at it if you’re interested in exploring a variety of whole grains, too — regardless of what else you eat!
Leslie tells us all we need to know about this dietary choice, even if we’re new to the topic. She explains what gluten is, she looks at the health issues that prompt people to adopt a gluten-free diet, and she introduces us to ancient and exotic gluten-free grains: amaranth, buckwheat, corn, millet, oats, quinoa, rice, sorghum, teff, and wild rice. A chapter is devoted to basic grain cookery, including everything from cookware to modifications to change texture or enhance flavor (such as including seasonings and toasting grains before adding the cooking liquid).
The Bountiful Breakfast chapter includes directions for making nut and seed milks, smoothies and shakes, granola (Vanilla Hazelnut Granola, no less!), porridges, muffins, scrambled tofu, pancakes, and waffles. There’s even a breakfast soup!
You’ll find a handful of savory stews in the chapter on Main course sensations, along with loaves, pasta dishes, a quinoa casserole, and much more. You’ve come to the right book to dispel any lingering doubts about gluten-free recipes being boring. In this chapter alone you’ll find Shiitake and Kale Lasagna with Marinated Dried Tomatoes and Chevre as well as Red Lentil and Teff Loaf with Red Wine and Porcini Sauce.
There’s a chapter devoted to Sushi, and another on Savory Sauces and Tempting Toppings. For readers who want to experiment a bit without committing to an entire gluten-free meal, the Super Sides chapter is a great place to start. How about a Lemony Quinoa Salad with Toasted Sunflower Seeds or Spiced Yams with Pecans? Sweet indulgences include an array of cookies, puddings, pies, crisps, and bars. (I’ve put Mocha Coconut Rice Pudding and Cashew Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies on my dessert menus for next week!)
This unassuming paperback includes over 100 intriguing recipes, with straightforward directions that put most of them in the easy-to-prepare category. A glossary of ingredients and a section of resources are helpful, too.
Leslie encourages the reader to cook “like an artist designing a meal, composing with gluten-free whole grains, flours, and pastas complemented by a rainbow of local, seasonal fruits and vegetables.” To get you started right away, we’re happy to be able to include on our recipe site three recipes from Gluten-Free Recipes for the Conscious Cook for you to try. (You’ll also find some recipes from a couple of Leslie’s other cookbooks.) Let us know what you think!
Amazing Fruit Crisp with Teff Flour, Maca, Almonds, Organic, Local Berries and Apples
Whether you are gluten-free, vegan, or omnivore, who can resist fruit crisp hot out of the oven? I have been baking and eating fruit crisps using teff flour for over 20 years and loving it. Here is a tasty variation, where I swapped a tablespoon of super food maca for some of the teff flour. You can do that with any flour; swap a little maca for about a tablespoon of flour. You will find yummy fruit crisp recipes in my cookbooks, Gluten-Free Recipes for the Conscious Cook and Going Wild in the Kitchen. Also, you can add some almonds to the sweet maple syrup sweetened crumble on top. I also love to use extra virgin coconut oil. Local organic apples, along with fresh picked then frozen strawberries, raspberries and wild cranberries line the bottom of the baking dish before the crumble goes on top. Delish! Feel free to mix and match seasonal fruits all year round! A generous touch of organic cinnamon and organic vanilla extract “Spices this Up” and makes this a “Great Meal with Great Grains”. “Improvisational Cooking for Health and Vitality and Pleasure, too. All major themes of my cooking classes and cookbooks.
Serve it for breakfast with yogurt on top, or for enjoy as a snack or dessert with whipped cream or ice cream. Since oats are a complete protein, this is a great meal with great grains any time of day!
Yams and collards combine with teff, herbs, and spices, creating a beautiful mosaic pattern in this robust grain loaf. Serve as a side dish or as a vegetarian main dish.
Makes: 8 slices Serving size: 1 slice
3 cups water
3 1/2 cups thinly sliced yams
1 cup teff
1/2 teaspoon sea salt, or to taste
1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
1 1/2 cups coarsely chopped leeks
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 cups coarsely chopped collard greens
2 cups coarsely chopped basil
1/2 cup coarsely chopped cilantro
1. Bring the water, yams, teff, and salt to boil in a 4-quart stockpot. Reduce the heat to low and simmer covered for 20 minutes.
2. While the teff mixture simmers, heat a medium-sized skillet over medium heat. Add the oil, leeks, fennel, and cumin, and satué 2 to 3 minutes or until fragrant. Stir in the collard greens and sauté about 3 minutes, or until bright green.
3. Transfer the collard mixture to the teff mixture, cover, and continue to simmer another few minutes, or until all of the liquid is absorbed.
4. Turn off the heat and stir the basil and cilantro into mixture. Adjust the seasonings, if desired.
5. Spoon the mixture into an 8-inch unoiled loaf pan, and let stand about 30 minutes, or until firm.
Gluten-free is a buzz word these days. Just last week one of the other producers I work with at Fox News was putting together a video about whether or not gluten-free diets are fads or actually beneficial. The answer is — they are actually both. Everyone can benefit from less gluten in their diet but for people who have a gluten intolerance — it will change their lives!
I’m pretty sure my hubby Jay has a gluten intolerance — and he’s finally taking my advice and going to see an allergist about it. If he has it we’ll have to change the way we shop, eat and think! But that’s OK — I’m up for the challenge. The Organic Gourmet, Leslie Cerier, who has guest blogged before and introduced us to 10 gluten-free grains for everyone to incorporate into our diets. Now here’s a checklist if you want to go gluten-free!
Ways to Go Gluten-Free
by Leslie Cerier, The Organic Gourmet
Everyone can benefit from eating a wide range of gluten-free whole grains. Gluten-free cooking and baking goes beyond just replacing the few popular gluten grains wheat, barley, triticale, and rye in favorite recipes. It is a celebration of the earth’s bounty. There are more whole grains that do not have gluten. More choices, more whole grains and whole grain flours to mix and match with local, seasonal produce for an endless variety of daily meals.
Gluten-Free Makeovers: you can make pasta dishes, pastries, just about everything that can be made with gluten can be made into delicious, nutritious, gorgeous dishes with a wide gluten-free whole grains and flours.
Beyond Toast: Start your day with nutritional powerhouses: gluten-free grains such as millet, rolled oats, teff, quinoa, and amaranth make tasty porridges cooked in water or coconut milk with a variety spices like ginger and cinnamon, and dried fruits. Top with your favorite yogurt, milk, fruit, or maple syrup for a great breakfast.
Pancakes and waffles are delicious and super nutritious made with one or a combination of gluten-free flours: teff, sorghum, quinoa, brown rice, corn, buckwheat, maca, and coconut flour.
Versatile vegetarian and vegan dishes: loaves, polenta, croquettes hold together well. Corn grits, millet and teff: once cooked and cooled can be sliced.
Cook Like An Artist: with earthy toned whole grains. You can make beautiful dishes mixing and matching grains with nuts, seeds, and colorful vegetables. Decorate finished dishes with edible flowers, springs of herbs, and sauces.
Protein: rare for whole grains to be complete proteins: however quinoa, amaranth, buckwheat and oats are complete proteins making them ideal for main course entrees, and side dishes.
Variety of Textures: You can create dishes with many different textures: running the gamut from dense, smooth dishes like polenta to chewy wild rice to crispy granola. In the realm of desserts alone, grains and their flours can be used to create textures ranging from creamy rice pudding to dense, chewy hazelnut brownies to crispy cookies made with teff flour.
Great Pastries Everyone will Love: Bake delicious cookies, piecrusts, fruit crisps, muffins, and brownies with a great variety of gluten-free flours: teff, oat, brown rice, quinoa, coconut, ground nut and seed flours (hazelnut, almond, and flax seeds, etc).
Vegetarian Sushi, also known as nori rice rolls are delicious and easy to prepare with a wide variety of rice: Bhutanese Red Rice, Forbidden Rice, brown rice, Jade Pearl Rice, sweet brown rice, among others. Mix and match with fresh and sautéed seasonal vegetables (cucumbers, carrots, beets, salad greens, etc) with avocado, pickles, sprouts, seasoned tofu and ginger tempeh, and more.
Variety of Shapes: Gluten-free pasta comes in many shapes and sizes and made from a variety of grains: rice, quinoa, corn, amaranth, and buckwheat. All are great topped with savory sauces: tomato, peanut, pesto, mushroom, among others.
Expand your Repertoire: Say yes to abundance of choices: enhance your nutrition by including high fiber, whole grains in your diet. You can make pilafs, soups, stews, porridge, and marinated salads and more with gluten-free grains.
Environmentally friendly, lessen your carbon footprint: some gluten-free grains are drought resistant, requiring less land and less water to produce high yields. Others grow in harsh conditions, arid uplands to moist tropical settings. Huge monocultures of wheat and other common grains have damaging impacts on the earth, especially when grown commercially using petroleum-based fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides. Because many varieties of gluten-free grains are more closely related to their wild cousins than the hybrids we’ve come to rely on, they can often be grown more easily, using less intensive methods. As a bonus, many of them offer superior nutrition and higher-quality protein than wheat and other common grains. That means more net nutrition from the same amount of land. And best of all, this approach to easing our impact on the planet offers a delicious culinary adventure.
Worldwide, gluten-Free whole grains truly are the foundation of a healthful diet—healthful not just for us humans, but also for our planet. You’ve probably heard about the devastation of rainforests to create grazing land, water pollution from feedlots, and the problems with methane from cattle. And chances are, at some point you’ve read or heard that eating lower on the food chain is more sustainable, so I’ll just offer the reminder that it’s far more efficient to eat grain than to feed it to animals and then use those animals for food. As food resources grow scarce for an ever-increasing human population, it becomes more important to eat less meat, or avoid it altogether. All of that said, I do believe that there’s a place for organic eggs and dairy products, especially when the animals that produce them are allowed to range freely and fed a diet that’s more natural for them (for dairy cows, that means grass-fed).
Leslie Cerier, “The Organic Gourmet” is a national authority on gluten-free cooking and baking specializing in local, seasonal, whole foods and organic cuisine with 20 + years experience: Chef, Educator, Environmentalist, Photographer and Author of 5 cookbooks: Gluten-Free Recipes for the Conscious Cook (2010), Going Wild in the Kitchen (2005), among others. Leslie teaches vegetarian cooking for health, vitality and pleasure nationwide. Leslie’s expertise in culinary nutrition has led to her being much sought after by natural food companies, health professionals and private clients to help them translate challenging dietary allergy issues into culinary success and meal satisfaction.
I love to teach vegetarian cooking for health and vitality. Mixing and matching the local, seasonal, organic harvest with sustainable raised whole grains is a fun way to go wild in the kitchen. Wildly creative that is! (Though, I love wild foods like mushrooms, sea vegetables, berries and more. Don’t you?) In cooking classes and in life, there’s always room for self expression. You can play and choose seasonal ingredients and even the the size and shape when chopping them. Include a rainbow of colors and automatically you have a balanced meal of 5 flavors: For example: black beans, carrots, daikon radish, collard greens and red bell pepper. When you prepare and eat a colorful meal, you are bound to be happily nourished. All your senses come alive and also nutrition is being served with a smile.
African-Spiced Coconut Teff & Red Lentil Stew with Collards & Yams
Gingered Tempeh & Shiitake Sourdough Sandwiches with Mesclun Mix
South American Red Quinoa with Green Beans, Pumpkin Seeds and Chiles
Coconut Curried Seitan with Carrots, Cabbage & Mung Bean Sprouts
Jade Rice Vegetable Pilaf with French Lentils & Toasted Walnuts
Asian Vegetable Stir Fry with Bhutanese Red Rice
Spicy Peanut Tofu.
Earthy whole grains like teff, quinoa, Jade Pearl Rice, Bhutanese Red Rice among other gluten-free grains are quick and delicious, especially when cooked with seasonal vegetables and spices. These easy to follow recipes were the ones that I taught all in one evening hands on cooking workshop in New York City’s Natural Gourmet and also these recipes from my cookbooks: Going Wild in the Kitchen and Gluten-Free Recipes for the Conscious Cook. They offer globally inspired flavors that novice cooks can prepare and inspire experienced cooks.
Yes, these dishes are nutritious, delicious, quick and easy to prepare from scratch. Here are photos from my workshop that sold out the Natural Gourmet in NYC for the 6th time.
Asian Vegetable Stir Fry with Bhutanese Red Rice from Going Wild in the Kitchen Asian Vegetable Stir Fry with Bhutanese Red Rice... YUM! Great with the vegetables of the season: onion, carrot and daikon radish. Serve with Spicy Peanut Tofu or Tempeh for a quick and easy Vegetarian meal
Sweet and Spicy Peanut Sauce with Tofu From Going Wild in the Kitchen, great on pasta and the Bhutanese Red Rice Stir-Fry , too
Jade Rice Pilaf with French Lentils and Toasted Walnuts from Gluten-Free Recipes for the Conscious Cook
Open Ginger Tempeh Sandwich with Shiitake Mushrooms and Mesclun Salad
Have a great organic feast with the local harvest!
I was featured as a guest blogger on ListProducer.com
Paula Rizzo says, “I became acquainted with Leslie Cerier, The Organic Gourmet, through The Medicine Hunter, Chris Kilham and his wife, Zoe Helene and she knows her stuff when it comes to gluten-free grains. Here’s a few that she thinks everyone can try with ease.”
10 Gluten-Free Grains For Everyone
by Leslie Cerier
Amaranth is a tiny, slightly nutty flavored ancient grain. The Aztecs believed it held the secret to long life and vitality and celebrated holidays by eating toasted amaranth. It’s a complete protein, has more iron than most grains, and is also a great source of many other minerals. Whole amaranth is delicious on its own or cooked in combination with other grains in pilafs, and in warming morning porridges with oatmeal, dried fruits, and coconut.
Buckwheat is a complete protein, rich in iron, selenium, and zinc, and a fair source of B vitamins. It cooks very quickly (just fifteen minutes). Buckwheat groats are white to pale green and have a mild flavor. You can cook them as is, sprout, or roast them, and buy them already roasted, also known as kasha. With its eastern European roots, kasha is a natural in stuffed cabbage rolls, in croquettes, marinated salads, and kasha varnishkes, a dish made with sautéed onions and pasta.
Corn is unusual in being both a fresh vegetable and a grain available in a rainbow of colors, each with a slightly different nutritional profile, so mix it up and cook with different varieties. Like amaranth and quinoa, corn has a long history of cultivation in the New World and was venerated as a sacred food. Because all varieties of corn are low in tryptophan and lysine, it isn’t a complete protein, but all varieties of corn are a good source of magnesium and thiamin, and a fairly good source of a few other minerals and B vitamins. Corn grits, millet and teff can be cooked together in the same pot since they all take 15-20 minutes. Corn grits and polenta are delicious for a quick breakfast, or at any time of day. For a super main dish made with grits, add sautéed onion, kale, and cheddar cheese.
Millet is a small, round, yellow grain originating about five thousand years ago in China, where it’s still a staple. Like most grains, it tends to be a little low in lysine, so it isn’t a complete protein. It is, however, a great source of magnesium, and a fair source of other minerals and some of the B vitamins.Millet has a wonderful sweet taste. You can toss it into any soup or stew about twenty minutes before it’s ready (this is a great way to thicken a dish that’s turned out too thin.) When cooked, it sticks together, and once it cools you can slice it, making it a great choice for polenta, croquettes, and loaves.
Oats are often grown in close proximity to wheat and also often processed in the same facilities. For those with wheat intolerance, this shouldn’t pose a problem. However, if you have celiac disease, be sure to look for packages labeled gluten-free, which are carefully processed and packaged to avoid cross-contamination. Oats have a variety of health benefits. They can help lower cholesterol, reduce blood pressure, and prevent heart disease and cancer. They also enhance immune system function, help stabilize blood sugar, and may even be helpful for insomnia, stress, anxiety, depression, and a variety of other health problems. Oats are a complete protein, high in fiber, thiamin, and minerals. Oats make a delicious breakfast cereal, cooked alone or with amaranth, teff, or goji berries, coconut, or whatever dried or fresh fruit you like, and maybe a sprinkling of cinnamon.
Quinoa, similar to amaranth and buckwheat, doesn’t come from a cereal grass, so it isn’t technically a grain. Like most of the other psuedograins, quinoa is a great source of protein—one of the best plant sources, in fact—because it contains all of the essential amino acids and is rich in folic acid and several minerals. Like corn, quinoa comes in a rainbow of colors: tan, red, and, black. Each has a slightly different texture and flavor, but generally speaking, quinoa has a light sesame-like flavor, cooks in 15 minutes; tastes great on its own or mixed with other grains, and it works beautifully in stews and salads.
Rice, Whole grain rice is fairly rich in fiber, niacin, a few other B vitamins, and several minerals. But when it’s processed into white rice, almost all of its valuable nutrients are lost, so it offers little beyond starch. For those on a gluten-free diet, rice comes to the rescue as pasta in the form of numerous types of Asian noodles, as well as a few good brands of rice pasta that you’ll find in most natural food stores. Rice has been bred to survive and thrive in a broad range of conditions, leading to countless varieties in existence today.
Sorghum, also known as milo, is a small round grain with the texture of pearled barley. While it isn’t a nutritional powerhouse compared to other grains, it is a good source of iron, potassium, and fiber, and also provides a few B vitamins. It’s even lower in lysine than most grains, so the quality of its protein isn’t as good. When buying sorghum, look for sweet white sorghum. It’s the best-tasting and most digestible variety. And don’t be put off by “white” in the name. That’s not white as in refined, it means the grain itself is a pale color. It has a flavor similar to untoasted buckwheat, and a texture that makes it a good stand-in for barley. Try it in marinated salads, pilafs, and soups.
Teff nutrients concentrate in the germ and the bran and because it is so tiny, smaller than the period at the end of this sentence, the germ and bran make up almost the whole grain, making it impractical to refine, so any form of teff is a whole-grain product, by default. It offers fairly high-quality protein, but like most true grains is somewhat lacking in lysine. It’s high in fiber, iron and some of the B vitamins and is also a good source of calcium, and other minerals. Teff’s tiny grains have a texture like poppy seeds and a mildly sweet flavor reminiscent of chocolate, hazelnuts, and molasses. (The flavor of ivory teff is milder.) Whole grain teff cooks quickly (just fifteen to twenty minutes) and blends well with a wide variety of vegetables, seasonings, other grains, and fresh and dried fruits.
Wild Rice is a better source of protein than most true grains, containing a fairly good amount of lysine. It’s also high in many minerals and some of the B vitamins. It has a delicious nutty flavor and a pleasantly chewy texture. It blends well with other varieties of rice, making it a natural for pilafs. True wild rice has defied domestication, so most of the wild rice sold in the United States is from hybridized versions grown in rice paddies in Minnesota and California. Support the natives (plants and human) and seek out truly wild rice.
Adapted and excerpted with permission from Gluten-Free Recipes for the Conscious Cook By Leslie Cerier (New Harbinger Publications) www.lesliecerier.com
