Jack is Cooking Roast Potatoes

Posted on December 26, 2009 by jackiscooking under potatoes

Well Hello Internet!

Heres how to make Roast Potatoes!

unfortunately i forgot to take pictures! i was so busy making everything, that somehow it slipped my mind…

anyway parboil the potatoes. this means boil them until the surface is soft, but not the center.
strain. in the colander swirl them around. the idea here is to get the outside of the edges (which is now soft) all rough.

then take them and put them back in the pot, and add in a sprinkling of Gluten Free All Purpose Flour (or regular flour) swirl them around until they are coated.

take a roasting pan and put some oil. put this pan in the oven and heat up the oil.
when the oil is hot, take the potatoes and put them in the pan coating them in the oil. put the pan back in the oven and roast until they are golden brown. it should take an hour or so.(you’ll have to turn them every now and then)

mmm mmm delicious

Jack is Cooking Ginger Garlic Brussel Sprouts with Leeks

Posted on December 26, 2009 by jackiscooking under Uncategorized

Well Hello Internet!

Another side dish to the huge meal that is christmas is Brussel Sprouts. Now I love Brussel Sprouts, so i can eat them just plain old boiled. My dad however does not like them, and never has.
he has always been made to eat at least 2 of them however – first by his mom, and then by my mom!

The key in the last few years however is to make some kind of Brussel Sprouts that he will actually like,
and this year i succeeded

Julie gave me the beginnings of this recipe, and i added some stuff as i was cooking it just because i thought it would be good.

Here’s what you’ll need:

2 of those soup container thingys that brussel sprouts come in these days
2 or 3 leeks (cleaned and cut into small pieces)
1 head of garlic
2-3 inches of ginger
salt and pepper
sugar
lemon juice
olive oil
butter
champagne

so the trick here is that instead of chopping the brussel sprouts up you actually peel each individual leaf off keeping it intact. it takes like an hour. i took the sprouts and watched “Its Always Sunny in Philedelphia: a Very Sunny Christmas” while i did the task.

melt the butter in a pan and add some olive oil. add the sprout leaves and saute until beginning to get tender:

add in the garlic and the ginger, and the leeks

cook until the leeks are tender. add salt and pepper and sugar, and saute for a couple of more minutes

then pour a little champagne into the mix! we were having some very very nice champagne, which made these sprouts extra nice (and dramatically increased the value!! 😉 )

so anyways add the champagne, and steam for 4 minutes,

squeeze a little lemon juice in and stir around!

the leeks are all yummy and caramalized now!

mmmm mmmm delicious!

Jack is Cooking Gluten Free Pancetta Chestnut Stuffing

Posted on December 26, 2009 by jackiscooking under carrots, chestnuts, gluten free, pancetta, Stuffing

Well Hello Internet!

Another Huge part of any christmas meal, or any meal involving turkey for that matter is the Stuffing.
Stuffing also contains a huge amount of Gluten, so my sister and I set out to make a gluten free stuffing.

We started with a recipe we saw on the food network, and then changed just about everything to make it far more delicious and far more Gluten Free.

Heres what you’ll need:

3 cloves garlic
6 tablespoons butter
8 oz pancetta diced
2 large onions chopped
2 carrots peeled and chopped
2 tablespoons chopped Fresh Rosemary
1 large jar of roasted whole peeled chestnuts (coarsely chopped)
1 lb of crusty gluten free baguettes chopped up into little cubes(you can often find these in the frozen section of fancy-ish grocery stores. but if you are gluten-free you probably know where to get these kinds of things. Whole foods definitely has it, as do more and more stores these days)
1 cup of chicken/turkey broth
salt and pepper
2 large eggs beaten

First!
take 2 tablepoons of the butter and melt in a pan. fry up the pancetta until its kinda crispy.

drain all the grease out and put into a bowl

Next,

take the rest of the butter and melt into a pan. cook the onions, carrots, rosemary, and garlic together until the onions are tender.

stir in the chestnuts.

put everything in the bowl with the pancetta and stir until mixed.

add in the bread chunksand toss to coat. add the broth until its nice and moist, season with salt and pepper, and then mix in the beaten eggs.

pour into a baking pan

If you are cooking a huge meal (as we were) it is advisable to do this the day before, and refrigerate until the next day when you are ready to cook.

next day!

put some of this stuffing inside the turkey! yum yum

the rest of the stuffing cover with tinfoil and bake at 350 for 30 minutes then remove the tinfoil and bake another 15 minutes

Heres a tip: if you are cooking this stuffing as part of a larger meal, remember this takes only 45 minutes to cook, and the turkey takes like 4 hours or something. so cook this at the end!

in my larger conglomerate post about Christmas Dinner i will talk about the timing of everything!

mmmm mmmm delicious!

Jack is Cooking Gluten Free Chipolata Sausages

Posted on December 26, 2009 by jackiscooking under chipolata, gluten free, pork chops, sausage

Well Hello Internet!

In England, a traditional part of any Christmas Lunch/Dinner is Chipolata sausages. these sausages are extremely delicious, and go along very well with all the other deliciousness that is the traditional English Christmas Dinner. Sometimes they are wrapped in bacon and served as an appetizer, and sometimes they are just served right along with the turkey.

Two problems have arisen with chipolatas however!

the first problem is that, they are impossible to find in the good old U.S.A except for in a few specialty shops in NYC. (after all, New York City is not really part of America, but really just a buffer between America and the rest of the world. I have come to realize this more and more, every time i venture inland and visit the landlocked states. woah! this is a blog about cooking! enough of this topic!)

Anyways, the Second problem with Chipolata sausages is they are inherently filled with Gluten!
so we can’t go to the fancy specialty shops in the city to buy them. our only option is to make them from scratch!

so heres what you’ll need to make these delicious Gluten Free Chipolata Sausages:

(i used half this because i didn’t want to make 8 or more lbs of sausages!!)

7.5 lbs pork butt
1 lb pork fatback
(if you don’t have a meat grinder, just use ground pork, but make sure its kind of on the fatty side. like 85% lean, or maybe even less. these sausages need fat in them. when they cook it all melts out, but its very necessary for the authenticity)

1 tablespoon sage
1 teaspoon dried onion flakes
1 teaspoon thyme
1 teaspoon mace (mace is the outer shell of a nutmeg… nut. if you cant find any you can grate some fresh nutmeg instead)
1.5 tablespoon salt
6 oz GLUTEN FREE bread crumbs
1 tablespoon pepper
1 pint water
Sausage casings!

so grind up the meat if you are grinding it yourself. then put it in the fridge. if you have preground pork, skip this step just put it in the fridge…

next in a bowl put the water, and all the herbs and spices and breadcrumbs. mix together into a kind of mush.

then take the ground meat out of the fridge and in a food processor, blend the meat and the spice mixture together. until its totally mixed!:

The next part is getting this mixture inside of the sausage casings!

i recommend a sausage stuffing machine…

i did not have one.

after many different failed attempts of this my dad figured out a solution.

what you’ll need is a large soda bottle. and a small soda bottle.

the large one we used was plastic. cut the large bottle in half to make a funnel

the small one was glass.

heres the machine at work:

Pull the sausage casing all the way up the spout of the big bottle. fill the big bottle with meat, and use the small bottle to push it down forcing it out into the casings. it takes a little while, and a lot of patience!

but in the end, you have sausages! yay!!

mmm mmm delicious!

Jack is Cooking (Baking) Gluten Free Croissants – That taste like REAL Croissants

Posted on December 26, 2009 by jackiscooking under croissants, gluten free

Well Hello Internet!

Normally on Christmas morning we all wake up early and open our stockings (YES Santa still comes and visits our house even though we are all grown up! 🙂 ) and then eat some kind of delicious pastry before moving on to the more serious presents that have piled up under our enormous Christmas Tree.

However, in the last few years we have been at a loss as what kind of pastry to eat because both my mom and my sister can no longer eat gluten.

so i took it upon myself to figure out how to make Gluten Free Croissants.

i’ve never even made regular croissants before, but how hard could it be i figured…

haha! apparently croissants are complicated! but i did it anyway.
and i did it gluten free.

and guess what! they were perfect. they were more than perfect. they are so perfect that im not even going to put the recipe here, because i feel like i’ve discovered some kind of Gold!

Gluten Free Croissants people! all the gluten free people out there are gonna be breaking down my door to eat these things.

and since it was the first time, i know that i can make them even better, and even more perfect than they were before!

Anyhow,
here are some pictures of the process – minus the ingredients…

Here i am preparing the dough: it takes lots of pounding and punching!