Oh my goodness! I am like a kid at the candy store at the Northampton Farmers Market: Pink and white salad turnips, watercress, morel mushrooms, radishes, kale, salad greens galore! Different veggies and different day from my Amherst Farmers Market, which I also love to support and feast from.
Farmers Markets are the best place to shop for local, seasonal, wild and organic produce. Unless, of course you can grow your own or belong to a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture).
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!
I am looking forward to being back in Salvador’s gorgeous organic gardens at Rancho La Puerta Organic Spa in Mexico. It is always my pleasure to create the menus for all my cooking classes from the local, seasonal harvest. Seed to Table cooking is a celebration of the earth’s bounty. Come celebrate with me!
For more information on my organic vegetarian cooking classes in Mexico and in the United States and also online course, too, please visit my class schedule: http://lesliecerier.com/blog/class-schedule/
Mocha Rice Pudding Garnished with Fresh Strawberries
The seasons change and with them the availability of fresh, local produce. Crisp fall apples, tart cranberries, juicy summer strawberries, fresh figs — would they be so special if we could eat them all year round?
Reinventing a recipe keeps it fresh and enjoyable. For example, you can make Apple Blackberry Pie in fall, Pumpkin Pecan Pie in winter, Lemon Tart in spring, and Blueberry Crumb Pie in summer. For variation, use the same pie crust and change the filling. Create a new variation to the pumpkin pie filling by adding sweet potatoes, or substituting butternut, or kuri squash. Use more cinnamon or cloves. Change the pie crust, too by switching the flour, oil, or sweetener.
Likewise, keep your basic minestrone new and inspiring all through the winter by swapping vegetables. Use butternut squash instead of carrots, leeks for onions for example. Other times change the beans from pinto to kidney to other beans. Cook the beans from scratch with a sea vegetable, like kelp. Another time, switch the sea vegetable to dulse, or skip the seaweed, and just use spices. And of course, you can vary the herbs, too. Finally, flavored oils can take the place of some herbs and spices.
My enthusiasm for creating new recipes and menus comes from the local harvest. For instance, in June the markets near my western Massachusetts home yield strawberries, spinach, baby red kale, arugula, radishes, lettuce, mustard greens, and mizuna (an Asian green leafy vegetable that you can eat like spinach). Perennial herbs like chives, oregano, garlic chives, sage, and sorrel abound. Simultaneously harvested, they become the natural choices to mix and match into savory salads, dressings, quiche, scrambled tofu, sushi rice rolls, and pasta dishes. During summer, crunchy fresh string beans, cherry tomatoes, and sweet baby carrots are wonderful in salads dressed with aromatic basil. The first zucchini and eggplant inspires me to fire up the grill. Come fall, collards, red peppers, and cilantro, revitalize the tofu scramble. The vibrant cool weather leafy kale, moist to the touch seduces me in winter when spinach is out of season. Kale becomes the green to use in quiche, soups and stews. When we take our cues from Mother Nature, she gives us plenty of guidance.
The weather affects our cooking methods, too. In hot weather, you may want to stay away from the stove. Quick grilled vegetables and tofu, refreshing smoothies, marinated salads with corn, berries, and chevre cool you off. To beat the heat, cook beans, pasta, or grains in the early morning or the night before when the house is cool. Cold winter days are ideal for long simmering soups, garlicky roasted vegetables and spicy stews made with the vegetables of the season: potatoes, carrots, winter squash, and yams. An attractive garnish can enliven any dish. For example, decorate summer pasta salads with yellow calendula flowers and bright red bee balm for a splash of color. Toasted nuts and seeds on top of green salads add a contrasting texture. Chopped herbs on cooked rice give a delicate fragrance. These simple pleasures charm the heart.
Recipes are not etched in stone in my kitchen, nor should they be in yours. The more you cook, the easier it becomes to improvise. Calm and confident, you can focus; choose ingredients, rinse and chop, mix and taste. Your inner wisdom will tell you when to follow pure intuition and when to stop and think it out.
Wishing you a great local, seasonal and organic feast!
Cilantro Pesto, recipe by Leslie Cerier from Gluten-Free Recipes for the Conscious Cook
Cilantro Pesto
Makes about 2 cups
Here’s a delicious pesto made with cilantro instead of the traditional basil. It’s great on any type of noodles, but especially delightful on Asian noodles, such as 100% buckwheat soba or bifun, quick-cooking clear angel hair noodles made from rice flour and potato starch. You may be surprised to learn that it’s also a fabulous dip and pizza topping. Spread it on top of a prebaked gluten-free pizza crust and top with sliced bell peppers, olives, and marinated dried tomatoes (see page 00 for a recipe for making your own).
1/2 cup raw almonds, presoaked if you like
1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds, presoaked if you like
2 1/2 cups tightly packed cilantro leaves
6 cloves garlic
1/2 cup water
5 tablespoons umeboshi vinegar
Put the almonds in a food processor and grind to a coarse meal. Add the sunflower seeds and continue grinding until they too have a texture like coarse meal. Add the cilantro, garlic, water, and umeboshi vinegar and blend until almost smooth. Taste and adjust the seasonings if desired.
For many women, what we eat and why are all in enmeshed into questions of self- image, and emotions. Eating a nutritionally balanced diet can seen like a simple matter of math next to eating well – consuming what our bodies need to be healthy and energized.
Food as Medicine: the idea that “you are what you eat” is not new… Deb Phillips (a nutritionist and member of the nutrition team at the Ultra Wellness Center in Lenox Massachusetts) explains that human bio- chemistry – especially understanding how fully diet affects health – is at the cutting edge of Western medicine. Her work deals with helping people adjust their diets to ameliorate physical or emotional problems. “If you never share body your chances of being healthy are better,” she says. “ Some people are incredibly resilient; their bodies can tolerate all sorts of insults. “ Some are more fragile. But no one’s body should have to tolerate these things. Ultimately, it’s going to catch up with you.”
Leslie Cerier is a Pioneer Valley-based cookbook author and cooking instructor. She emphasizes the importance of eating not just nutritionally, but seeking joy and vitality to diet. While this focus differs from Philips in considering emotional and energetic intangibles, both experts emphasize seeking overall balance, rather than cleaving to anyone dietary doctrine- though that balance might include avoiding certain foods and individual reacts to adversely.
The old saw about shopping the outer aisles (and therefore eating a diet based on minimally – processed foods) remains true, is recommended by both Phillips and Cerier. It is reflected in the USDA’s food pyramid concept. These government recommendations emphasize that diet based on whole grains, then fruits and vegetables, then protein sources, would limit intake of fat and sugar. (Mediterranean, Asian, Latin and vegetarian pyramids also exist, and followed the same general principles.)
Cerier goes a step further in her emphasis. “ If you can switch to real whole foods – local, seasonal, organic – that’s best.” She encourages her clients to reincorporate food prep into their busy lives arguing that making beautiful food is one of life joys and a part of the diet and vitality picture – as much about pleasure as it is about those recommended servings of leafy greens.
