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).

Adapted and excerpted with permission from Gluten-Free Recipes for the Conscious Cook by Leslie Cerier (New Harbinger Publications)

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.

Hi all,

Hope you are thriving and eating local, seasonal treats like this one:

Here is a recipe for Pumpkin Pecan Pie. I also taught this pie with a gluten-free pie crust recently when I taught a gluten-free cooking and baking class at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health.

At the end of this post is also another gluten-free pie crust that you can mix and match with this pie filling or any pie filling you like. That is the fun of “Going Wild in the Kitchen” my cookbook and approach to cooking and baking: Creativity!

by the way, if you are looking for cooking classes, or giving the gift of an autographed copy of my ccookbooks: Gluten-Free Recipes for the Conscious Cook and/or Going Wild in the Kitchen, please email me at leslie@lesliecerier.com or go to my website: www.lesliecerier.com

Now here’s the delicious recipe:
Reprinted from Going Wild in the Kitchen by Leslie Cerier
A cheese pumpkin is a cross between a butternut squash and a pumpkin. It is sweeter than a pumpkin, and almost as sweet as butternut squash. This pie is like 2 pies in one: pecan and pumpkin.

Serves 6-8

Pie crust and see below for another pie crust from Gluten-Free Recipes for the Conscious Cook due out this summer.

2 cups spelt flour or whole wheat pastry flour
1/3 cup + 1 teaspoon canola oil
1/3 cup maple syrup
1 tablespoon vanilla or ½ teaspoon almond extract
1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Pie filling
1 small cheese pumpkin (about 2 pounds) baked, peeled and seeded (becomes 2 cups)
¾ cup pecans
3 tablespoons maple sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ginger powder

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Rinse cheese pumpkin and bake on a baking dish for about an hour, or until tender.
2. Mix all the piecrust ingredients in a bowl except 1-teaspoon oil.
3. Lightly brush 9-inch pie pan with 1 teaspoon oil.
4. Press dough with your fingers into pie plate.
5. Poke holes in dough with a fork.
6. Bake for 10 minutes.
7. Put the pecans in a food processor and grind into a meal.
8. When the cheese pumpkin is ready, peel, seed it, and add 2 cups to the food processor with the pecans. Add maple sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and puree together.
9. Adjust the seasonings, if desired.
10. Pour the sweetened pumpkin filling into the baked pie crust.
11. Bake for 5 minutes. Turn off oven and let pie sit for 10 minutes before removing to blend flavors.

Variations
Replace the cheese pumpkin with 2 cups cooked pumpkin or butternut squash.

Here is a new piecrust recipe from my  cookbook, Gluten-free Recipes for the Conscious Cook
1 1/2 cups raw hazelnuts
2 tablespoons hazelnut oil or melted coconut oil
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 teaspoon sea salt

To make the crust, put the hazelnuts in a food processor and blend until finely ground, like flour. Add the oil, maple syrup, and salt, and pulse to form the dough. Press into oiled pie crust and in above pie crust recipe.

Super easy and super good and this one is gluten-free. In the new cookbook, this is the crust for a Chocolate Mousse Pie.

For more recipes, cooking classes and lots more, please go to my website:

www.Lesliecerier.com

Amaranth Corn Flatbreads: from Leslie Cerier’s cookbook, Gluten-Free Recipes for the Conscious Cook.

This cookbook is an informative and fun approach to preparing a full spectrum of gluten-free foods.

Perfect for people with and without gluten sensitivities; people who cook for those with gluten sensitivities; and nutritionists, dieticians, and other health professionals. 

Included in the cookbook:
Cooking and baking with various sweeteners, oils, and seasonings

The magic of global flavors, using local produce, herbs, and spices
Delectable protein-based side dishes highlighting beans, soy foods, pasture-fed dairy, nuts, and seeds

Learn to cook like an artist as you master dishes ranging from appetizers to desserts and breakfasts to one-pot dinners, including pancakes, porridges, soups, salads, pasta dishes, pilafs, bread, sushi, and pastries.

www.lesliecerier.com 

Oats, amaranth, buckwheat, and quinoa are complete proteins, and gluten-free. You can make a delicious, quick morning porridge with rolled oats, amaranth, dates and mulberries… delish! Add a dollap of coconut butter and sheep yogurt to bring it to the next level of bliss. 

Interest in gluten-free eating has been steadily growing. While some suffer from Celiac disease, other gluten-free eaters choose to refrain from eating gluten simply because doing so makes them feel healthier and more vibrant. GLUTEN-FREE RECIPES FOR THE CONSCIOUS COOK is designed for anyone interested in enjoying delicious, well-prepared, and healthful vegetarian meals — not just for those who don’t eat gluten or meat. Even recipes like Banana Pancakes with Cinnamon and Hazelnut Brownies with Chocolate Chips focus on whole grains and proteins, featuring beans, soy products, pasture-fed dairy, nuts and seeds. Throughout the cookbook, Leslie Cerier emphasizes the importance of using organic and seasonal ingredients in cooking, encourages the reader to adapt recipes containing gluten for the gluten-free diet, and offers tips for the reader to develop new gluten-free creations of their own.

About the Author
Leslie Cerier is a gourmet caterer specializing in whole foods and organic cuisine. Her robust New England based business includes custom culinary work for private clients as well as private and group cooking instruction and coaching. Leslie Cerier is a pioneer and national authority on wheat-free baking, the entire spectrum of whole grains, and cooking with wild foods. Her specialty in grains has led to her being much sought after by health professionals and private clients to help them translate challenging dietary allergy issues into culinary success and meal satisfaction. Her previous books include Going Wild in the Kitchen (Square One Publishers, 2005), The Quick and Easy Organic Gourmet (Barrytown Ltd, 1996), co-author of Sea Vegetable Celebration (The Book Publishing Company, 2001) and editor of Taste Life! Organic Recipes (Square One Publishers, 2002). Find out more about Leslie Cerier on her website www.lesliecerier.com.