The Humble Kitchen

Our chicken Honey. Ariel takes the greatest pictures.

-Jennifer

We had a great visit with family outside of Chicago, in Batavia. While looking through photographs I found this ad for our great grandfather’s butcher shop.

Great Grandfather.

-Jennifer

I am not sure how this keeps happening, but for whatever reason people keep giving me old bananas.

First, I gave myself old bananas by not eating them, then my Mother drove them 150 miles to me, then my neighbor, then the ex when he brought the kids back. All of them alluded to the fact that I “could make banana bread or something” to which I replied, “There is only so much banana bread a person can eat you know.” But, not wanting to waste the food, I had to find another use for all these poor, unloved bananas.

Enter banana and rice gratin with coconut and cardamon.

I had my little pods of green cardamom, split them open and revealed their sweet-spiciness. The littlest chef lent her tiny hands to help to grind them with the mortar and pestle.

After some work with the spice and the reminder talk about sneezing into food one cooks, she determined the work would make her sneeze too much so she set off in search of something more princess-like to do. I continued on.

I made these with my friend Miriam in mind, but I also wanted the kids to have something different for breakfast. As much as we all love pancakes, one should not eat them everyday. Same goes for eggs, oatmeal, cold cereal, it all gets old after awhile…

This was a neat detour. Ultimately this gratin was based on two recipes from Gluten Free French Desserts and Baked Goods.

In a small pot, cook 1/3c of rice semolina with 1c of hemp milk over low heat for about 7 minutes. Distribute evenly on the bottom of your ramekins or bowls.

Coarsely chop about a cup of almonds and make a layer of those in the ramekin, reserving some for the banana mixture and the top of the finished gratin.

In a medium bowl, coarsely mash up four bananas and add about 6T of coconut cream. Mix well.

In a small saucepan over low heat, combine 4T of rice flour with 2/3c of hemp milk and heat until thick. Then add 4T maple syrup. Pour this into your banana-coconut mix and add about 2-3t of ground cardamom, depending upon your preference and 3T of chopped almonds.

This is the third layer of your gratin. Sprinkle with almonds and cardamom and bake in a 350 degree oven for about 10 minutes or so. Alternatively you could use the broiler, I just happened to already have the oven on. Enjoy while they’re warm.

~Sarah

Sometimes baking is the best thing I can do when coming down off a migraine. As my neighbor says, “It must be doing something creative that helps.”

Being the kind person she is, she made dinner for the kids and I and I told her I felt up to making a skillet apple pie. I have never made a skillet pie of any kind, much less an apple one. The only  interesting dish I’ve ever made in a skillet is Potatoes Anna, but that’s not really a pie.

Aesthetically, the results were stunning, but the filling had a bit too much apple cider vinegar for us. Don’t get me wrong, we ate it all, just in the future I’ll cut back some. The recipe below has it cut back to an amount that I think would be ideal. It was almost a refreshing pie, if there was such a thing. The apple cider vinegar really gave it a crisp, spicy taste that kept the ungodly sweetness of most apple pies at bay. I will definitely keep the acv in future pies.

This was one of the easiest crusts to work with. I combined two recipes to make one and of course de-glutinized it.

Crust

1c of gluten free flour mix. (I suspect almost any mix will work in this recipe but I used rice, tapioca, potato and a bit of cocount flour)

1 T sugar

1/4 tea xanthan gum

1/2 tea salt

2 T shortening, cold

6T frozen butter

2T vodka (I actually only had tequila on hand because, well, that’s a longer story)

2 or 3 T water

In the bowl of your food processor, pulse the dry ingredients until well mixed.Then pulse the butter and shortening until the mix gets crumbly looking. Then add the liquid  and mix until it comes together some. Turn it out onto a flour dusted cutting board and push it together with your hands. Then flatten into a disc and refrigerate until you are ready to use it.

Filling (based on a recipe from Cook’s Illustrated magazine)

1/4c apple cider vinegar

2T maple syrup

1/4c brown sugar

2 T lemon juice

2 tea cornstarch

1/8 tea cinnamon

2T unsalted butter

5 medium apples, cut into 1/2 in thick wedges

Preheat your oven to 500 degrees. Over medium high heat, melt the butter in an oven-proof skillet and add the apples, cooking about 5 minutes. While they are cooking, whisk the cornstarch with the cider, syrup, lemon juice and sugar. Take the apples off heat and stir in the cornstarch mix.

Roll out the dough and place it over the top, scoring in a pattern of your choosing.  Bake until brown.

~Sarah