Yesterday, I was part of the launch of ChefHangout.com — a brand-new venture in the world of cooking that allows chefs to deliver real-time cooking classes to you, in your kitchen!

I am honoured to be part of a the inaugural team of 24 chefs from around the world offering their expertise in a huge range of culinary styles!

As many of you know, I love using social media to connect with people, and am really stoked by the fact that ChefHangout has created this opportunity for me to share what I do with a wider audience, and more importantly has the capability to connect families and friends over food via Social Media!

Be sure to head over to ChefHangout.com and check out what I’ve got going on in the areas of gluten-free baking/cooking and home cocktail creation, but also check out the great classes being offered by the other chefs!

And so … In celebration of the launch, I am running a givewaway — I will be giving away two free classes from ChefHangout.com.

All you need to do to enter, is leave me a comment by FEBUARY 5th, 8 pm PST letting me know which class you would like to attend (the class must be one of the ones I am offering).

I would also love to hear from you, if you have something you are particularly interested in learning in the areas of gluten-free cooking and baking, and home cocktail-creation, I would love to hear your thoughts!

Janice Mansfield (A featured chef on Chef Hangout since Jan 2012)

Just at its bleakest though, a little ray of sunshine appears in the markets — citrus!  We’ve just started to see a steady supply of Meyer lemons here, and I’ve been waiting a few days for a quiet afternoon to whip up a batch of Meyer lemon curd!

Meyer lemons are originally native to China — cultivated in pots and prized for their flavour — but are a recent citrus introduction here in North America.  This is partly due to the fact that they have such delicate, thin skins that they don’t make good world travellers .  In the 1970′s we began to see some cultivation of Meyer lemons, and creation of new varietals in California, which has made them much more accessible.  Once chefs and bartenders in North America discovered them, they have been in hot demand, snapped up as quickly as they appear on the produce shelves.

They are an interesting mix — tart like a lemon, but sweet enough to eat on their own like an orange!  It is thought that they are an old Chinese cross between a mandarin and a lemon, which is a pretty good approximation of how they taste.

On to curd!  I love lemon curd, and scoring a box of Meyer lemons is just the excuse I need to whip up a batch of lemon curd!  I’m not going to give you a recipe today, but rather point you in the direction of the recipe I use most often — from finecooking.com.

The method is a little different than most recipes, BUT it is foolproof!  If, like me you hate washing dishes, you can use a deep enough saucepan from the outset (a 4 quart saucepan works well),  and actually mix everything together right in the saucepan.  Use the heaviest saucepan you have to avoid worries about scorching things, but it is a remarkably forgiving recipe, only requiring constant hovering once the butter has melted.   The only modification I make to the basic recipe is to add a pinch of salt.  I have made it with virtually every citrus fruit with great results, and it doubles (and even triples) just fine!

I put this batch of curd in these cute Weck Jars (I <3 these as they are not just cute but practical AND entirely BPA free!).  They are NOT BEING CANNED though — please note there is NOT enough predictable acidity in most fresh lemon juice to create lemon curd that will be safe for hot-water bath canning.  The good news is that you CAN freeze lemon curd for later use!

So go find a little citrus to bring a little sunshine to your day!

I’m not sure if its because people have had a horrible childhood experiences with eggplant, leaving them scarred and gun-shy  but I do know that many times, when I present people with the option of eggplant on a menu, its a hard sell!

And its a shame! Eggplant doesn’t just taste good, its full of vitamins and minerals, and many healthy properties.  Feeling anemic?  have some eggplant!  Having problems with water retention?  have some eggplant!  Having problems with your gall bladder? have some eggplant!  Feeling ennui of the kidneys?  … you get the picture

And, because eggplants are nutrient, but not calorie dense, they are perfect food for people looking to lose weight or minimize their carb intake (can you say Paleo friendly?!!)

While growing up, I had lots of opportunities to indulge in eggplant parmesan (a delicious cheesy, tomato-ey, eggplant-ey casserole), and thought I knew the many moods of eggplant.  Then one day in may later teens, I encountered an entirely new-to-me kind of eggplant preparation — one of my Chinese-Canadian friend introduced me to it at a family dinner one night.  I fell in love with the flavour combination at first bite, and it remains one of my favourite ways to prepare eggplant.  It’s very simple, and is, in my opinion one of those brilliant examples in Asian cuisine how opposite ends of the flavour spectrum come together in a dish that is oh, so much more than the sum of its parts!

Tonight’s recipe required a bit of improvisation, as we had no Tamari soy sauce. but this version worked equally well!  Try it out!  It has the benefit of keeping exceptionally well in the fridge, absorbing all the delicious flavours.  As leftovers, its delicious warmed or cold.  I adore it recreated into rice paper salad rolls, with shredded daikon and cilantro.

One of the advantages of having a stocked pantry is that there are plenty of canned goods and dry goods on hand — coconut milk being one those things that is usually stocked in both canned and powder form!

This is a pretty plain-jane recipe for a basic dairy-free ice cream — made into a custard and cooled before freezing.   For this recipe, it might be possible to freeze this and stir every 30 minutes or so during the freezing process, BUT it will not have that fabulous, creamy texture that comes from the contant stirring and introduction of air while this stuff is freezing.  It is not, however, a requirement to shell out hundreds of dollars for an ice cream maker — I have an inexpensive ice cream machine made by Cuisinart – it makes about 1 L at a time in a pre-chilled container, and does the stirring for me.

Sadly, hoisin sauce has one failing — it got wheat starch (and therefore gluten) in it   So what's a gal to do!  I've cobbled together this substitute out of staples I usually have on hand in my pantry.  Your pantry staples might look a little different, BUT if you crave the flavours of hoisin, it might be worth adding tamarind paste and miso to your pantry items for an easy to rustle-up dinner.  (Miso also makes a really easy soup option, works well brushed on fish, and tamarind is a great addition to curries)

Gluten-free "hoisin" chicken

(Janice Mansfield, 2011)

First prepare some tamarind paste – take a small block of tamarind, cover with boiling water to soften, strain out the pods and seeds. What you are left with with be a soft paste.. Extras will keep in the fridge for 2-3 weeks

This is an easy preparation — I mix everything in the baking dish it will be cooked in (because I hate washing more dishes than I have to!), BUT if you like a more refined looking sauce, you can mix in the food processor and pour over the chicken.  This sauce is also versatile enough to brush on fish, or to use as a marinade for pressed tofu 

Makes enough for 2-3 lbs bone-in chicken pieces, in a 9×13 pan.

• 3T white or red miso (note: yellow miso contains barley)

• 3T tamarind paste

• 3-4 T gluten-free soy sauce (I use wheat-free tamari, or Bragg's)

• 1 tsp pomegranate molasses

• 3T honey (up to 4T depending on taste)

• 2-3 cloves garlic, minced

• 2 tsp finely grated ginger

• 1 tsp sesame oil (optional)

- For added flavour and a more refined sauce, you can thin with 1/4 cup sake (pick a Junmai, rather than Ginjo for best results).

- if you like your sauce tart, you can also add juice of 1 lime.

Mix all ingredients together in a baking dish, place the chicken legs in the dish, coating with the sauce. Let stand at least 60 minutes, or cover and refrigerate overnight.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Cover the baking dish with foil, bake covered for 30 minutes. Uncover and bake another 15-20 minutes. For crispy skin, broil for 3-4 minutes at the end.

Part of the shortcoming, I think, is in the taste-memories I have of biscuits, fresh from the oven — some things imprint on the brain fairly emphatically, and I think biscuits are one of those.  Consequently, I've been muddling around with various flour combinations for a while, off and on, to come up with something that comes close to the buttery, flaky biscuit "gold standard" I have clearly bookmarked in my brain.

These come pretty close,  In my noodling around, I've been using amaranth flour more and more — partly for nutritional benefits, but also because of the taste, and hit on a combination the other day that came pretty close to the mark!.

A couple of helpful hints here

1.   Make friends with your pastry cutter!  Maintaining the structural integrity of the butter chunks is critical to creating flaky layers of biscuit — think pastry, only moister!  The pastry cutter is the most efficient way of doing this.  Yes, you can use a food processor, BUT for most home cooks, a batch of biscuits is small, AND the chunks of butter get processed almost too small (AND you will have a food processor to wash, as opposed to one bowl!)

2.   A silpat or silicone mat helps tremendously in the rolling/patting out phase — well worth it especially if you make gluten-free pastry for pies.

…and so, to the biscuits!

These can be made with or without dairy products — for this iteration, I used Earth Balance buttery sticks and Mimicreme Cream, But you can easily substitute an equivalent amount of real butter and buttermilk .

Gluten-free Millet, Amaranth Biscuits

• 3/4 cup cornstarch
• 1/4 cup sweet rice flour
• 1/2 cup millet flour
• 1/2 cup amaranth flour
• 1 1/4 tsp xantham gum
• 1/2 tsp sea salt (increase to 3/4 cup if using unsalted butter)
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1 stick Earth Balance buttery sticks (8 Tablespoons) — or an equiavalent amount of unsalted butter

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Combine all the dry ingredients in a medium bowl,  mixing well with a whisk to combine.  Cut in the Earth Balance buttery sticks with a pastry cutter or two knives, until the mixture resembles oatmeal.  Some slightly larger pieces of shortening are good.

Meanwhile, take

• 1 cup non-dairy cream substitute – I like Mimicreme cashew and almond based cream.  Add
• 1 Tablespoon cider vinegar and let stand 10 minutes to make clabbered cream.  (You can also substitute 1 cup buttermilk at this point if you are including diary)

Mix with a spatula until just moistened and the mixture comes together.  Dust a silpat mat with amaranth or millet flour, turn out the dough onto the silpat, and give it a couple of turns, kneading very lightly.  The dough will feel very soft and moist — resist the urge to add more flour!  Pat the dough out with floured hands to 3/4" thick, and cut into 3-inch biscuits.

Bake at 425 degrees for 20 minutes.  let cool at least 15 minutes before eating.

Winter is almost upon us, and I've been reading through Michael Ruhlman's new book Ruhlman's Twenty which is a recipe book that is really more about working from basic techiques.  And so, with thoughts of the benefits of hot water and its extractive powers, AND faced with this sitting in my fridge…

… lentil soup is born!

These are guidelines more than a recipe, and are easily changed (more veg, less meat, different legumes, substitute barley for legumes, lamb legbone instead of the pork hock … the combinations are infinite, and limited only by the flavour combinations that work for you!).  Go forth, and make some soup for dinner.  Its good for the body, good for the soul!

Take 1 smoked pork hock (this one was not too heavily salted) cook in enough waterto cover AND 1 onion, 2 stalks celery, 1 large-ish carrot in a pressure cooker, about 30 mins until the meat comes off the bone.  This made about 8 cups of smoked pork hock stock.  Set the pork hock aside while you get the rest of the soup going. 

In the pressure cooker, sautee 1 large onion, 2-3 cloves garlic, 2-3 stalks celery in some oil (salt as you go) until the onions are translucent, add 1 diced tomato (it was in the fridge, needing to be used up!), 1 cup dried lentils de puy.  Add 6 cups of the smoked pork hock stock, 2 tsp dried herbs de provence, 2 bay leaves, cook at high pressure for 35-45 minutes. 

Shred the meat off the smoked pork hock, add back into the soup.  Adjust salt as needed.  I like to season at the end with 1 T balsamic or sherry vinegar for a hint of acid.

This round I used pears and cranberries — Pears being plentiful (and delicious!), and cranberries providing a bit of zing!

Chutney is definintely a rainy-day venture, and fortunately the weather has obliged … windy, stormy, cold … perfect for when the kitchen will be steamed up with a day of simmering.  There are lots of variations on chutneys, but I think I fall in with those who like a classic, jammy chutney (really just a savoury jam — nice thick consistency, should be spoonable, and just hold its shape, with lots of slow-cooked fruit!  anything else in my book is relish!)

And so, without further ado …

Pear-cranberry chutney

Janice Mansfield, 2011

• 2.5 lbs pears, cored and chopped — I used red Anjou pears left the skins on
• 1.5 lbs cranberries – fresh or frozen
• 1.5 large onions, diced
• 0.5 lbs golden raisins
• 0.5 lbs. Thomspon raisins
• 3-4 cloves garlic, minced
• 6 c. cider vinegar
• 3 T sea salt
• 2 T mustard seed
• 3 T ground dried ginger
• 1 tsp dried coriander
• 1 tsp ground allspice
• 2 T freshly grated ginger
• grated zest of 1 orange
• 1.1 lbs light brown sugar
• 1.5 cups granulated sugar

Combine in a 6 quart Dutch oven, bring to a boil and simmer for 1.5 – 2 hours.  Can using a hot water canning bath.  (If you substitute another low-pectin berry such as blueberry for the cranberries, you may need to add pectin to get a good set).

 Makes approx 4 litres

This particular request though had to hit a number of addiitonal critieria, including being gluten-free, egg-free, dairy-free, nut-free and rice + potato free.  I've also been concurrently looking at options for reducing the amount of xantham gum used in various baked goods — it has a particular residual smell (very faint), which I think is the main reason my better half says he does not like gluten-free baked goods as much as their wheaty counterparts. 

In meeting this specific need, I've opted to go with a mix of teff + amaranth + tapioca starch + cornstarch, but if I weren't working with these restrictions, I might substitute the cornstarch for potato starch, or the amaranth for brown rice flour.  Everything is written in weights here, so if you feel like substituting, just stick to the same weight, and try and pick a flour or starch with similar properties.

I also decided to try out a Tapioca gel as an egg replacer (see Cake and Commerce's blondie recipe) at the same time as I was developing this recipe.  I have a couple of old handwritten standbys for gingerbread  I typically turn to using eggs and dairy, so it was a matter of several adjustments to convert to vegan AND gluten-free. 

I've been using flax gel for a while now, and was curious to see what the difference was with the tapioca gel.  Well!  we got moist, dark gingerbread that looks like it will be just as good the 2nd day around! and not a grain of xantham gum in sight!

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.  Line a square baking pan (8" x 8") with parchment paper)

Combine dry ingredients in a medium bowl and mix well:

• 90 grams teff flour
• 70 grams amaranth flour
• 85 grams tapioca starch
• 85 grams cornstarch
• 3/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon allspice
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cloves

Mix wet ingredients together in a larger bowl:

• 1/2 c cooking molasses
• 1/2 c brown sugar
• 1/2 c grapeseed oil
• 1/2 c tapioca gel (to make, cook 2 tsp tapioca per 1 cup water)
• 1/2 applesauce

Add wet ingredients to dry, mix well with a spatula to combine.  Fold in:

• 1/2 cup raisins

Pour gingerbread batter into the baking pan.  Bake for 40-45 minutes at 350 degrees.

Let cool in pan at least 30 minutes before removing from the pan.

A quick drive-by recipe here for gluten-free cupckakes that needed a little more modification than usual — no dairy, no eggs, no soy.   Take a careful look at the ingredients on your chocolate, and chances are it has soy lecithin in it.  Many chocolate manufacturers use soy lecithin as an emulsifier, making for a frustrating search for those who need to avoid soy and are looking for chocolate (and a world without chocolate is indeed a world that is little less joyous!).

If you are looking for soy-free chocolate, you can find Enjoy Life chocolate in a number of health food stores now, or if you really want a treat, the Tanzanian dark chocolate from Cacao-Barry is deep and complex and luxurious!  Make sure to check the ingredients list though, as not all the Cacao-Barry products are soy-free.

Before we dive in, a couple of observations:

• when you are not using butter, using oils can often result in a  muffin-like texture.  For best results, a denser oil such as coconut oil will give you results that are closer to that of butter.  For this recipe, there is so much chocolate in the recipe using coconut oil is overkill.
• there are a number of options for egg-replacements, including flax seed, flax gel, chia gel, applesauce, pumpkin or squash puree, extra baking  powder, or even blended silken tofu.  In this recipe, we were looking to add some binder, but also some texture to break up the denseness of the chocolate, so there is a combination of applesauce and flax seed.
• For best results in gluten-free recipes, a blend of flours helps provide the best texture.   Teff flour is a beautifully fine, high-protein flour that provides loft — the tapioca starch adds tenderness, and the potato starch helps add a nice moist crumb.

Gluten-free Vegan Cupcakes with Whipped Ganache

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a small bowl, whisk together and let stand 10 minutes until gooey.

• 1 T ground flaxseed
• 3 T water

In a medium bowl, whisk dry ingredients together:

• 90 grams teff flour
• 45 grams tapioca starch
• 45 grams potato starch
• 1/2 cup cocoa powder
• 2 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp xantham gum
• 1/2 tsp salt

In a heatproof glass bowl, melt

• 265 grams dark chocolate

when melted, stir in:

• 1/2 cup applesauce
• 3/4 cup rice milk (or other non-dairy milk)
• 3/8 cup grapeseed oil
• flaxseed mixture

Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and mix well.  Portion evenly into muffin tins or cupcake liners.

Bake for 25-30 minutes. Let cool completely before frosting with whipped ganache

Whipped Ganache

Take 1 tin coconut milk and heat just to the boiling point.  Pour the hot coconut milk over 454 grams dark chocolate and let stand, covered for 10 minutes.  Whisk the mixture together until it becomes dark and glossy.  Let cool to just above room temperature, and whip with a set of hand beaters until it is the consistency of icing, and holds a peak.  This will make enough ganache to frost at least 18 cupcakes.  If you have some leftover, make sure to warm it slightly first.