Almond Biscotti (Low Carb, Gluten Free)

I love almond biscotti. I learned to make it when I was young (like, middle school?) and somehow never got cut on gratter boxes. I also haven't had one in about 2 years, because traditionally they aren't very low carb.

But I have recently discovered the power of XANTHAN GUM. And yes it sounds like a space alien but it's 'all natural' and more importantly it acts like the protein/binder gluten, which DH can't have and isn't found naturally in any of my low carb flours, especially not my prefered one, almond flour.

The first step is to make almond paste that isn't full of sugar. Fortunately, if you have almond flour, egg whites, and your prefered granulated sweetener of choice (I like Splenda, because I don't have to convert the volume measurement, and erythritol makes my tongue break out, so goodbye Truvia) you can make almond paste! Just throw equal quantities of almond flour and sweetener into a food processor, pulse to combine, then add a couple of egg whites. Start with one and keep adding until it is roughly the consistency of play dough. Voila! Almond paste. If you want marzipan, add more sugar. A nice extra touch is to add about 1/2 tsp of almond extract per cup of almond flour.

After that, it follows standard biscotti procedure. How many it makes depends on how you cut them--if you like your biscotti thick there will be fewer. at about a 3/4 inch slice, I got about 18 large biscotti. They stay slightly moist on the inside. You could leave them in a warm oven, or slice them thinner

YUM

Recipe
 1 batch almond paste (1 cup almond flour, '1 cup' sugar sub, 2 egg whites, 1/2 tsp almond extract)
 4 tablespoons cold butter, cut into small pieces

 1 3/4 cup almond flour + 1 1/2 tsp xanthan gum
 1/2 cup sweetener (3 tbsp honey also works, but raises carb count)
 1/2 tsp baking powder
 heavy pinch salt (to taste)
 2 eggs
 1/2 tsp vanilla

Pulse almond paste and butter together in food processor (or stand mixer). Add almond flour, xanthan gum, sweetener, baking powder and salt. Pulse/mix until well blended. Add eggs and vanilla and pulse/mix until mixture is uniform. Form mixture into a large loaf measuring about 6 inches by 18 inches and 1 inch high for large biscotti,or two loaves about 4 inches by 12 inches by an inch for small biscotti, on a baking sheet lined with a silpat or parchment paper. Bake at 350 F about 30 minutes. It should be lightly golden and springy to the touch. Gently transfer to a cutting board and let cool 5 minutes. Use large, sharp knife to cut into even slices, 1/2 inch to 1 inch thick. Lay them cut side down on the baking sheet, bake another 10 minutes. Flip slices gently, and bake another 10 minutes. Cool on tray, then store in a dry place. May soften over time; if that happens, place in a warm oven(even a toaster oven works!) for 10 minutes, and the crunch should be restored.

Shifting Cooking Gears

Cooking has always been about experimenting for me. Going by the recipe is fine for somethings, like candy making or if I know I enjoy this person's particular formulation of the dish, but by and large I like to tweak recipes. Non-baking recipes I'll usually just make up as I go along. Baking recipes are more chemistry dependant and therefore harder to do on the fly.

Lately though, I feel like I am having to reinvent the wheel, knowing what a wheel looks like but having to make it with very limited and somewhat unsuitable materials. It's exhausting trying to do that for every dinner.

Lately I've been having PCOS flare ups, partly just because and partly because there has been some stress in my life, so I've had to switch back to a stricter low-carb/low-GI diet. This would be annoying but par for the course, if we hadn't started a gluten-free diet for DH. He's had 'stomach problems' all his life, which I have been trying to solve for the 3 years we've been married and I've been in charge of procuring his food. Gluten-free was the last on a long list of things we've tried, and so far seems to be the most successful. We'll look into having proper testing done at some point, but since he just took a new job in a new city, the timing is not right for finding a specialist in our current area.

So in short, I am facing the challenge of cooking both low-carb/low-GI (LCLGI) and gluten-free. Lots of LCLGI food is gluten-free because if you aren't using any grain-flours you aren't going to be including gluten. It's also rarely recognizable as analogous to its carb-loaded counterparts, and to a certain extent just requires recognizing that there is no substitute for pasta or bread. Gluten-free foods, of which there are TONS on the market right now all nicely labeled, are rarely LCLGI because they are made with rice starch, tapioca starch, potato starch, etc. Pretty much everything I can't eat. Thus I am faced with the choice to make two different dinners, or to try and find food that lies in the overlap that we both find palatable.

Of course, some things don't really change. Meat is gluten-free and low-carb. Vegetables, pace potatoes, ditto. But there is something so fundamental to having some kind of starchy thing, and that's mostly where the problem lies. DH can have rice, but I can't. There are both low-GI and gluten-free pastas on the market, but of course they occupy opposite ends of the spectrum. I can have rye or spelt bread in small amounts, but he can't. I can make risotto with rice for him and risotto with barley for me, but that seems absurd. The best LCLGI and gluten-free recipes feature coconut flour, which has a noticeable taste for me that I don't always want. Most of the recipes I've come up with use almond flour which is unavoidably gritty, or oat flour which is gritty and whole-wheat tasting unless you really work to hide it.

 Cookbooks are typically one or the other, and if they are both they are typically one of the crazier diet fads, like paleo. While that is the closest to what we are eating, I just can't say we are going paleo. The whole diet is based on bad or non-existent science, cheese is something I rely on, and I can't get over the absurdity whenever I see a paleo recipe call for things bananas or brussel sprouts. Those yellow bananas you get in the grocery store have existed for less than 200 years, and look nothing like a paleolithic banana. Brussel sprouts only popped into existence in the 1300s. Coconut flour also did not exist in paleolithic times.

In short, food posts are probably going to be a little less "here's a recipe I made up last week" and more musing on what works and doesn't work as I try to reformulate, replace and otherwise revamp my repertoire of foods in the coming months. A journaling of success and failures so I hopefully don't have to repeat the latter too often. Also most likely they will be shorter interludes as I work on my Basic Physics series. And if you happen to follow me on Twitter (@PhysicsGal1701), now you know what all the food posting is about.

Cheers!

Foods Falsely Feared: Souffle

There are certain foods that people will avoid making without ever having tried, or even read a recipe. Whether because it has a reputation for taking a long time to make, being particularly difficult in required technique, or just having a general air of requiring years of training to get right, people avoid making them like they will explode if done improperly.

Souffle is probably the best example of this. It is a dish that is beautiful in its simplicity, and demonstrates perfectly culinary aesthete which sits opposite to the over-the-top-must-be-huge-with-every-ingredient-possible-plus-bacon aesthete that seems popular right now. Whether savory or sweet, souffle is easy and pretty quick to make.

Cheese souffle, aka Friday's dinner

Taco Night!

Every now and then, I get a hankering for tacos. Which is strange mainly because they aren't a childhood comfort/fun food for me. I can't remember ever having tacos as a kid, but in college taco bar Wednesdays provided one of the few genuinely edible meals in the week, at least if you weren't the kind of person who could live off frozen pizza and chicken nuggets. And thus did I come to appreciate the lowly taco.

A year or so ago I found an even better way to make tacos than with the usual ground beef. Stewing beef and a crockpot or low oven and a lot of time. Yes, it means that taco night is no longer a quick I-forgot-to-plan-supper meal, but it has its advantages. No browning-meat grease splatter. Stewing beef has an extra beefiness compared to ground beef. It clings to the taco sauce a million times better than ground beef, and it stays in the shells instead of falling out.

And of course it couldn't be easier. Put chunks of stewing beef into your slow cooking vessel of choice, plus taco seasoning and enough water to cover it 3/4 of the way. Stir it a bit  to make sure the spices are mixed in, and then let it cook for hours, checking occasionally to how its coming, or cover it completely with water and just let it go. Its done when you can stir the meat with a fork and it just falls apart until it looks like this:

Now THAT is tender meat

Then its mostly a matter of assembling your tacos however you like. I like a using a low carb tortilla, a dab of refried beans, guacamole, tomato and lettuce if I have it on hand. But the beauty of tortillas is customizability. And so easy to make low carb. Enjoy!

Cooking with 1 1/2 hands: Soup

After Sunday's experiment cooking with Dear Husband, I knew that would not be tenable long term until the fingers on my left hand heal.

 So I decided to tap into my experimentalist side. What can I do in the kitchen? Lift things with my right hand if they are balanced or light enough. Hold light things in my left. I could cook anything that could be cooked on a cookie sheet in the oven, or anything that could cook slowly in the few pots that wont move on my stove.

The epiphany occurred when I realized I could brown things in the oven, on the cookie sheet, instead of in a frying pan. Not the most efficient, but it works, and thats all I need at the moment.

So today I set out to make a minestrone-type soup. Lately, I've been wanting soup, despite never really liking soup before. I now deeply regret not liking soup when I lived in NJ, the land of delicatessens and their marvelous homemade soup. No one makes soup in NC, even if its cold.

Step 1: Accept help from the grocery store.

Yes, that is store bought, prepackaged mirepoix. I ditched the celery, because I never liked the taste of celery. I normally avoid these things like the plague, but right now chopping isn't in my tool kit.

Step 2: Brown ground beef on a baking tray. Parchment paper makes clean up one-hand friendly.

Browning ground beef in the oven works shockingly well. If I ever need to do large batch browning, this is my new method.

Sweat veggies in heavy bottomed pan, add beef stock, diced tomatoes, spices, and add in the ground beef. Let simmer for however long you like. Bam, a filling, satisfying soup.

I can't say that this is how I will cook soup from now on. And I honestly hope to never have to cook one handed again after this period is over, but its nice to know I'm not totally helpless and can work around it. Now, just need to keep this inventive streak going...

Easy Tortilla Pizza

Saturdays have long been pizza nights with us. In college, it was a nice break from dining hall food. In married life, it was a night I didn't have to wonder if I had the ingredients to make something inventive. Even in my early days of insulin resistance, a pepperoni pizza, extra pepperoni, was low glycemic index enough that I could enjoy it. Now if we order in, I just eat the toppings (thank you chain pizzas with unlimited topping deals).

Some weekends though, I go the extra step and make our own. Homemade pizza is insanely simple to begin with, especially if you have a stand mixer or a food processor for making normal pizza dough. Of course, I can't have the normal pizza dough, so until I find a good low carb flour that acts like flour, I've fallen back on something I learned in childhood--the tortilla pizza.

I think I first learned to do this from one of those 90s kid shows that focused on doing stuff, and not melting our brains with hyper symplified topics (Cyberchase anyone?). Instead of using pizza dough for the crust, you use a large size tortilla, and then build the rest of your pizza like you normally would. It creates a super thin, crisp crust that while not entirely pizza like, is a much better crust than anything with cauliflower (sorry fellow low carbers, but there is no member of the cabbage family that belongs anywhere near my pizza).

Fortunately, there is a brand of low carb tortillas sold at my local megamart (mostly oat fiber and stuff like that), and so I expect in most grocery store. From a base such as this, you can get as fancy or as easy as you please. Last night, I chose easy, because I could. Top with canned tomato sauce, add some spices to make it taste like pizza sauce, shredded mozzarella (I like the part-skim for this because there isn't as much crust to absorb the extra oil), and toppings to taste (I like pepperoni, mushrooms and banana peppers). I like putting a little of the cheese over the toppings to hold them on).

Pizza before I added toppings. Tin foil or parchment paper makes clean up easier.

 Then it goes into a 425 degree (F) oven for 15-20 minutes until the cheese is bubbly and brown. Let it sit a moment before cutting into wedges, and eating as normal. Enjoy!

~PhysicsGal

Low Carb Manicotti

Italian-American food has always been a favorite with me. How can you go wrong with cheese, tomatoes, garlic and bread/pasta? And of course, that last part is why I haven't enjoyed anything like italian food for well over a year. I tried making zucchini noodles (they taste like zucchini, fall apart like zucchini and sauces do not stick to them). I tried miracle noodles (texture: rubber band. translucent color--off putting when combined with tomato sauce). I had frankly resigned myself to longer having my favorite savory comfort food.

Earlier this week I had a moment of desperation/inspiration. I had read about people using tortillas for lasagna noodles, but always thought the texture would be oh so wrong. But earlier this week, I was desperate enough to try. Low and behold, it wasn't too bad. I over sauced it, but that was my fault.

Last night, I realized that there is another flat-sheet pasta/cheese/tomato sauce dish that requires less sauce, and a higher ratio of cheese to pasta: manicotti. We didn't eat it much when I was a kid, not when lasagna was so much easier than try to shove a cheese mixture into an oversized penne noodle. But the important thing was same ingredients, less sauce.

Doing it with flat sheets of pasta or tortillas is easy as pie. Mix up your favorite italian cheese combo (I like half and half ricotta and mozzarella, with black pepper, nutmeg and basil), making sure that there is a hefty portion of good melting cheese or a couple of eggs in there to hold the filling together. Cut your tortillas into roughly square pieces, however big you like. You can save the scraps for baked chips or just munch on. Evenly distribute a generous portion of the cheese mixture on one side, roll, and place seam side down in a baking dish with sauce on the bottom. Repeat until your dish is full or your ingredients are used up. Cover with another layer of sauce, top with grated mozzarella and parmesan, and cover the dish with either a heavy lid or tin foil. Bake in a 375 degree oven until it is bubbling throughout, then remove cover and allow cheese to brown slightly, another 10 minutes. Allow to sit outside the oven for 10-15 minutes before serving,

I forgot to take pictures before I started dishing out, and lets face it, manicotti once you start dishing out is not the prettiest thing, so I'll add pictures later. But it looks like manicotti. And it by and large tastes like manicotti. If you have ever eaten whole wheat pasta, you are already familiar with the taste and texture rendered by the tortillas. The nutmeg helps smooth the contrast between earthy whole-grain-y-ness of the tortilla and whatever the opposite of that is in the cheese and sauce. Overall, thoroughly edible, and even delicious.

I'll count that as a win.

~PhysicsGal

NB: this is not a super low carb dish thanks to the cheese and the fruit sugars in the sauce, and the few carbs in low carb tortillas. But its low enough for me for dinner, so I thought I'd share.

Nearly-No-Sugar Almond Cookies

Pretty much anyone who has meet me in real life knows that I love to cook, and in particular I love to bake. Growing up it was kind of the household hobby to make cookies or cakes or pies on the weekends or whenever we finished the previous one. Cookies in particular were a near constant. We never had soda (unless we were sick or it was a holiday), or chips or any of the various colorful kid junk food, but there was always homemade cookies. In college, cookies were a kind of stress release. Exams were always accompanied by at least two kinds of cookies, one of which had to have chocolate. When I need to give people a thank you gift, I give them cookies.

So it was rather a blow to my reality when I was told that for health reasons, I shouldn't eat cookies. Not in the generic "don't eat junk food sense" but that I needed to avoid refined flour and sugar or suffer serious consequences in short order. Being determined and prone to culinary experimentation anyway, I tried a whole bunch of disastrous healthy cookies. Note: do not ever try to make cookies with rye flour. No amount of flavoring will help.

Earlier this week however, I was struck with inspiration, and an overwhelming desire for a shortbread cookie. A bag of almond 'flour' was sitting in the back of my pantry. Shortbread cookies are significantly less cakey than other cookies, containing in their simplest incarnation flour, butter, sugar and salt. Surely I could approximate it with almond flour?

Low and behold, it worked. As I was cutting the butter into the almond flour in the food processor, it came to me that I might need a little more binding power. What better than an egg? Add a skimpy 2 tablespoons of honey to 2 cups of almond flour and a handful of slivered almonds, chill in the fridge to firm up, and dole out teaspoons of dough to bake at 375, I had 6 dozen bite sized almond cookies that were halfway between a macaroon and a shortbread cookie. Keeping the dough in ball form let it stay softer in the middle and more macaroon light, flattening the cookie let it be more shortbread like.  I calculated that each cookie has just under a half gram of sugar, which is perfect for my needs, and probably most low-carb people. That half gram is the only carb in the whole cookie. If you can tolerate a little bit more sugar, dipping half the cookie in melted chocolate just makes it better. [If you can't have any carbs  whatsoever, I suspect, though have not tested, adding another egg and using an artificial sweetner would work as well]

I left the flat ones in the oven a little too long, but they still taste good. Just, toasted

Recipe for Nearly-No-Sugar Almond Cookies

2 cups almond flour

1/4 cup butter

2 tbsp honey (the darker the better)

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla 

Optional: 1/2 cup slivered almonds

In a food processor, combine 1 cup of the almond flour with the butter. Pulse until thoroughly combined. Add egg, honey and vanilla. Pulse until a wet dough forms. Add almond flour a 1/4 cup at a time until the dough is the consistency of  a chocolate chip cookie batter. Stir or gently pulse in the slivered almonds. Wrap dough in plastic and refrigerate at least 30 minutes until dough has firmed up. Dish out 1 tsp  worth of dough onto a parchment lined baking sheet (about the size of a grape). Leave in balls for a soft cookie, flatten for a crunchy cookie. Bake 20 minutes at 375 or until just beginning to brown around the edges. Let cool. 

Unlike grain based cookies which stale in a refrigerator from the crystallization of the starches, these cookies keep very well in a closed container in the chill chest. 

Enjoy!