Classes at Portland's Culinary Workshop

Last week I signed up for two classes at the Portland's Culinary Workshop. I took the Four Course Gluten Free Meal and Gluten Free Baking. Both were excellent! The chefs were great: Melinda and Susana both ex-instructors at culinary schools. The classes were small, hands on, and relevant to my cooking. I hope to go back soon!

Four Course Gluten Free Meal
Menu:
Arugula Fennel Salad with Pumpkin Seeds and Dijon Vinaigrette
Zucchini Fritters with Charmoula Sauce
Roasted Chicken
Squash Gratin with Poblanos
Chocolate Tart with Pecan Crust



We sat and feasted at the end of the night!



Roasted butternut squash for the au gratin.



Shredded zucchini for fritters.



Ingredients to the charmoula sauce



Blackened poblanos for the au gratin, yum!



Frying fritters!



Ingredients for the chocolate tart: agave, coconut butter, avocado, cocoa powder

Our FEAST:









It was all fantastic and I can put up their recipes eventually or per request. Class made me realize how much I LOVE to talk about food. I could do it for hours. :)

Gluten Free Baking
There were only four of in the class so we each picked some items and went for it. They turned out pretty good.

Menu:
Crackers-I hadn't had a cracker in two years!
Focaccia
Flourless Peanut Butter Cookies
Sandwich Bread
Pancakes
Fresh Egg Gluten Free Pasta
Chocolate Cake

This was certainly my first go at gluten free pasta from scratch. It worked great. It even made it through a pasta slicer. The pasta does taste like egg but that's ok.









Testing out two types for a plate of fun.



Mom came too and made sandwich bread.



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Wow it looked great! Good work mom!



Focaccia bread



Recipes are available per request. Class was great. I loved cooking class and can't believe I don't do it regularly. I recommend the classes at Portland's Culinary Workshop for fun, laid back cooking.

Bad idea...

So last week was my friend Christopher's birthday which, as tradition for four years means I make him a whole batch of cookies. They were not made allergy free and the task was more daunting than I thought. Nannying and cooking for the kiddos got me used to the idea of cooking without munching but it's SO hard with the family cookie recipe: oatmeal chocolate chip. Inquire for amazing recipe.



I made it through but was nearly driven insane by the lingering smell of baked cookies with butter and eggs. So I ventured to New Cascadia Traditional Gluten Free Bakery AGAIN on my way home from a 12 hour night shift. Look at this awesome breakfast:



Multigrain toast and a chocolate cupcake with vanilla frosting. SO good. The bread is quite thick but has a high quality 'bready' consistency. I would vote that the sourdough loaf is the best at the bakery. The cupcake is such a condensed sugar/carb infusion I ate it over 3 days. It was glorious and the fact that I can stop at this bakery on my way home at 7:30AM is just a formula for a bad habit. :) Love those.

My first allergy-free holiday

Well, I set out on my allergy-free, holiday baking adventure with enthusiasm. However, after 8 hours into the endeavor it was intimidating, nerve-wrecking and ended in several failures mainly due to me forgetting ingredients etc. I decided to still post this mainly to collect these mishaps so I can try them again when I'm less frazzled and maybe with help. For all the recipes I'm sure they would taste REALLY good if you added two sticks of butter and two cups of sugar but let's try not to overdue it. I attempted: snickerdoodles, rootbeer pinwheel cookies, flourless brownies, and sweet potato crumble bars.

GF All-Purpose Flour via VeganEatsAndTreats

1 1/4 cup white rice flour
1 cup sorghum flour
1 cup GF oat flour (I didn't have this so I used potato flour)
3/4 cup tapioca flour
2 teaspoons xanthan gum

Allergy Free Snickerdoodles via Eat the Love, a food blog who's motto really speaks to my cooking-just eat the love out of my cooking and then you can throw the rest away. :) These snickerdoodles were the best of my cooking attempts and I actually fed them to others. Considering I never made pre-allergy snickerdoodles it was interesting and exciting.

(I was house-sitting at the time, yay for a kitchen-aid!)





Cute as buttons



Rootbeer Pinwheel Cookies via VeganEatsAndTreats, seemed to bake well and freeze well with the main dilemma being... where do you find rootbeer extract? I tried Fred Meyer's, Safeway, New Seasons, Whole Foods, and Kitchen Kaboodle. Ridiculous. So in order to make my first pinwheel cookie anyways, I used cocoa powder for the brown dough. I did wish they had more sugar and I frosted them when serving them to others. Turned out good but I will search higher and lower for that extract.







Flourless Brownies via Whole Foods Market, I had seen this recipe a couple times and thought I would give it a go. The 'flourless' version uses a can of black beans instead to flour and though you are not supposed to notice a difference, I thought it tasted like ground black beans. :-P They were gooey and never cooked in the middle at all. Mostly a failure that I don't plan on trying again-it went straight into the trash. Other bloggers claim these to be amazing but, I will have to do some more research. I do love my sisters food processor-thanks sis! Also, these are the only chocolate chips that are safe for me, that I can find-the Enjoy Life brand found at Whole Foods.







Sweet Potato Crumble Bars via Affairs of Living, was to be the big kahuna. A busy recipe that I was looking forward to. Unfortunately I saved it till last and was exhausted and intimidated. I ended up forgetting the milk which, was important and was the sugar additive. I wish it tasted as well as it photographed but it ended up tasting like bad baby food. I wanted it to have more maple syrup or sugar or something to make it more of a dessert. Once I recover from failure I would like to attempt this again with the forgotten ingredients.

Toasted oats



Baked sweet potatoes





Crust



Filling



Crumble



And so ends my first holiday allergy-free baking adventure, a little worse for wear but more informed about baking and my own limits of being in the kitchen.

Update

So this is a picture of the wheat bread I baked last week. I've slowly been feeling sick again so I'm going to go back to gluten-free. No tummy aches please!

Thursday was my housemates' wedding, Marie and Ivan. The event was at Laurelhurst Park in Portland. I was a set up-er, caterer, server, tear down-er, and photographer.

The marriage certificate and a fun photo.

The BeaUtiful bride Marie.

Anna (Marie's sister) and I enjoying the party with guac' and 'rita.

Hamburger Buns!

SO I can eat egg yolk and wheat flour but they must be plain and separate. So if I separate the egg VERY WELL it's ok. Gramma got me an egg separator but, I think I need more practice. If I make the dough myself with just wheat flour, yeast and water it's fine too. So I made Lindsay's Hamburger Buns. I tried making them with wheat flour and egg yolks and sadly got sick so I made it with wheat flour and fake egg (BRM flaxseed meal). I also omitted the sesame seed since it's an allergy too and used soy milk. Mmmm! I had a sammich with fake-mayo already! ;-)


Nice and doughy after an hour and a half-ish.

My sweet dough scraper Gramma got me-without it this job is impossible!

Buns!

This is call speed-rising.

Mmmm and yay Gramma's camera for good shots!

Bread baking!

Hey, I made up a bread mix-Gluten Free Pantry Favorite Sandwich Bread, which turned out awesome! WAY better than the bread I've made from scratch. It's moist and delicious and fantastic and looks legit! I sliced and put half in the freezer (per directions). Mmmm!