aplough, Author at Eat Simply, Eat Well

Gluten-free Whole Grain Sandwich Bread

October 2, 2015 by aplough

For the last 13 days, I’ve been on a dietary experiment – a detox, if you will. I decided to eliminate all caffeine (yep, no coffee), sugar (no fruit either), gluten and dairy from my diet. Yup. No sugar, coffee, gluten or dairy for at least 2 weeks. Why in the world would I do that, you might wonder?

Well, all of the above food groups are known to either be common allergens or to cause known health issues in people, and I wanted to know what it would feel like to go without for a while. It needed to be long enough to really feel the detox, so we started with 14 days, with the idea of extending it if it felt great (it does). I’d gone off coffee (my only source of caffeine) before, so I knew what I was in for there: the first day is miserable. If you’re going to do this, start on a Saturday morning and make zero plans to see anyone, anywhere. You’ll be feeling pretty antisocial. On day two, the fog begins to clear and you’re feeling halfway functional. By day three, you’re not 100%, but your back up and rolling, and if you’re not feeling like your normal self, you can at least act like it. So if day three is a Monday, you’ll at least be able to be civil to your colleagues and loved ones. By day four, you start to feel really great. Light. Refreshed. Sleeping better than ever. Clear-headed. It’s pretty amazing. You may never want to go back to the old you.

I didn’t have any experience with getting rid of dairy, sugar and gluten, though, so I wasn’t sure how I’d react. We’ve been free of white and other refined sugars for a while now, but have used other, natural sweeteners: dates, maple syrup and honey, mainly. We also ate a lot of fruit, and on this detox program the only fruits allowed would be berries and pomegranate seeds. Whole wheat sourdough bread has long been a mainstay of our diet; that had to go too. Dairy was something I consumed every day: yogurt in the morning; cream in my coffee; milk in my latte; kefir as an afternoon snack or in a smoothie. It turns out that detox from sugar, dairy and gluten has some of the same effects as a detox from coffee does. Anytime we remove a substance from our diets that our bodies have become dependent on, we suffer withdrawal symptoms. Of the foods we removed, coffee (or caffeine) and sugar or known to feel the most difficult. But we got through it, and so can you. And really – I’m not interested in adding either sugar or coffee back in very soon, because so far, I like where things are going. Is this a forever thing? Maybe not. But it’s the way we’re cooking and eating for now.

So we were talking major lifestyle change. How do you prepare for that? Here’s the good news: protein sources, vegetables, and gluten-free whole grains were still OK, so actually, we had a lot of fun coming up with new recipes trying different types of vegetables: pumpkin, eggplant, cabbage, tomatoes, red peppers, carrots, brassicas and more – the vegetable world has such an incredible array of delicious options, we’ll never run out of ideas. We’ve also included sustainable animal protein: mainly beef, chicken and fish. We don’t actually eat very much animal protein anymore, so we leaned more towards the occasional tofu dish and then consumed a lot of different, colorful beans like black beans, chickpeas, kidney beans and lentils. And of course gorgeous whole grains: buckwheat, brown rice, whole oat groats, quinoa, and amaranth. Our main courses were really satisfying, and you’ll see some of them showing up on the blog in the coming weeks.

Breakfast posed a bit of a problem: what do you eat when you’re used to have yogurt and muesli (sweetened with maple syrup)? The answer: sugar free coconut muesli with almond milk, rice milk, oat milk or cashew milk. Smoothies with protein powders, avocado, coconut milk, berries, and nuts or seeds have been so delicious. Or, we’d have an egg scramble with vegetables and on those days, we felt like we were on vacation. I stopped missing coffee by the end of the first week, incredibly.

What I missed most was fruit…and bread. Whenever I’d cook up a soup, I’d want bread to go with it. We had gluten-free crackers that I make all the time anyway, but that didn’t really fit the bill. I checked local shops for gluten-free breads, and all I could find were pre-packaged shelf varieties that were both expensive and unappealing.

But we live in age of digital information at your fingertips. I turned to one of my favorite blogs, Cannelle et Vanille, because I know all of her recipes are gluten-free. This led me to the Martha Stewart web site and a recipe for Gluten-free Sandwich Bread. Hope was on the horizon.

I made a few tweaks to the recipe, and the result is a bread that would make me happy whether I was allowing myself to eat gluten at the moment or not. It has the great texture you expect in a good sandwich bread, with a crunchy crust and a soft crumb, and satisfying heft. It’s great fresh or toasted, and goes with everything. I’m calling it a winner.

So if you or someone in your life can’t eat gluten, make this bread. You’ll be so glad you did.

Notes:

The original recipe called for tapioca flour which is hard to find in Finland, and expensive. I subbed in potato flour, but you could also use cornstarch (make sure it’s non-GMO).
The original recipe called for soy flour, but I’m not a big fan of using soy in everything, so I used millet flour instead. If you can’t find millet flour, you can use buckwheat flour or oat flour in it’s place
If you’d rather use dry yeast instead of fresh yeast, use one sachet of dry yeast, roughly 11g

With bread like this, I’m ready to continue my detox experiment for a few days longer, though next week, we’ll be adding fruit, with the exception of bananas, grapes and melons, back into our diet. Happy Days!

Gluten-free Sandwich Bread

adapted from MarthaStewart.com

1/2 cup millet
1/2 cup cold water
1 cup brown rice flour
1/2 cup millet flour (could use buckwheat, quinoa or oat flour – or soy, if you use it)
1/2 cup Teff flour
1/2 cup potato flour
2 1/2 teaspoons xanthum gum
2 teaspoons salt
25 g fresh yeast or 1 sachet dried yeast (11g)
3 eggs
2 tablespoons good quality vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 200°C/400°F. Grease a 1.5 liter / 8 1/2″x 4″ loaf pan and line the bottom with parchment paper

Combine the millet and 1/2 cup water in a small pan. Bring to a boil; remove from heat; allow to sit for 20 minutes
Combine the yeast and 1 cup warm water (45°C/115°F) in a small bowl and allow to sit for 5 minutes. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs and oil together.
Combine the flours, xanthum gum and salt in a large bowl. Pour the yeast mixture and the egg mixture over the top of the flour mixtures and stir well to combine. Add the cooked millet, and continue to stir the mixture (or use your stand mixture with the paddle attachment) for an additional 3-5 minutes. The mixture will be like a thick, smooth muffin or cake batter. Use a spatula to scrape the mixture into your prepared loaf pan and smooth the top. Cover with a clean dish cloth and allow the bread to rise in a draft-free place for roughly 1 hour – until the dough has risen slightly above the top of the pan.
Place the bread into the hot oven, and immediately lower the temperature to 175°C/350°F. Bake for one hour, or until the bread is golden brown and makes a hollow sound when you tap on the top. Remove the bread from the pan, loosening the sides with a knife if necessary. Cool completely on a wire rack.

Makes 1 loaf.

Visit South Coast Finland: Gårdskulla Manor & Black Angus beef

September 29, 2015 by aplough

There’s a beautiful place in western Finland, just 50 kilometers outside of Helsinki, that’s well worth a visit. Drive past the dense Finnish forests and beyond the waving fields of oat, wheat, rye and barley, along a winding road and then you’ll see it.

Gårdskulla Gård or Gardskulla Manor is farm set deep in the hills of West-Uusimaa: 700 hectares of rolling green pastures (or arable land as owner Gustav Rehnberg calls them) where the the farm’s main product: large herds of Black Angus Cattle, graze and wander nearly year-round. I visited the farm with five other bloggers during a food tour of the south coast of Finland on invitation from LUMO and Visit South Coast Finland a little over a week ago, on a drizzly, cloudy, and dramatic early Autumn day.

Gårdskulla Manor is one of the largest farms in Finland, and has been in the Rehnberg family since 1840 when Erik Johan Rehnberg purchased it. It is now being run by the fifth generation of Rehnbergs: Gustav Rehnberg, who was our guide for the day, and his brother. While they’ve grown strawberries and offer Christmas trees for sale each year, what keeps people coming back week after week is the high quality, organic Black Angus beef, which for the most part they sell directly to consumers every Friday afternoon between 3 PM and 6 PM.

The Rehnberg brothers made the decision to go organic because if they were going to produce beef, they wanted it to be the best quality beef available; they’ve been organic now for four years. As Gustav said “There’s a lot of discussion around whether or not eating beef is good for you. Whatever it is you believe about that, if you’re going to eat beef, make it really good beef!” A sentiment I agree with wholeheartedly. I eat very little beef nowadays, but if I’m going to have beef on my plate, this is the kind I want to be eating.

Rather then selling to a beef conglomerates that place no premium on organic beef versus factory-farmed beef and pay a low price to farmers, the Rehnbergs realized they could better maintain the quality of the product reaching the customers, get the best prices and have the most control if they keep a close eye on the entire process. They brought the beef cuts back in-house, and created a farm-to-consumer market themselves. “Now you can buy any part of the animal you want”, Gustav laughed, “from tongue to tail.” While most of the meat is sold directly from the farm, their products are also sold in shops in the area, and occasionally through local CSA groups (REKO). Follow them on Facebook to get the latest updates on this.

They slaughter two animals per week; 100 animals per year. Early in the week the animals are sent to one of Finland’s two slaughterhouses in Orimattila to be slaughtered. The animals are then taken to Lihakonttori in Sörnäinen, a neighborhood in Helsinki, to be cut and packed into the portions and meat cuts requested by the farm. Since the meat is killed, cut and packed the same week it’s sold, it doesn’t dry hang. Instead, the Rehnbergs suggest that you keep the meat in it’s sealed package in the refrigerator for a few days where “it just gets better with time,” explained Gustav, “you can keep it for up to 6 weeks and it improves. When it turns blue – then it’s very good.”

Gustav warmed the grill and soon came back into the cafe with a steaming plate of house sausages and ground beef patties. The meat was delicious, tender and flavorful, just as you want good beef to be. And knowing that the cows were being well treated in the pastures below, free of hormones and the diseases that plague factory farms made each bite that much more enjoyable.

Gårdskulla Gård has a large facility for entertaining and can be booked in advance for special events and conferences. They have the Stallcafe area for up to 60 people; a Bilkabinett, connected to the cafe, for up to 50 people, and a sauna at Fårträsk available for rent that fits 10-15 people at a time.

But there’s more. Behind the cafe in a gigantic barn, a surprise awaits. Following the green carpet across the lawn from the cafe, you would never guess that behind those tall red doors lies the most complete collection of farming history and paraphenalia I have ever seen: hundreds of tractors from all brands, in all colors, from all eras, glistening in the afternoon sun beaming in through the barn windows. Plows of various shapes and sizes. Grain harvesters from days gone by. Saws and farm tools and decorative tractor seats.

Upstairs, you get a sense of life in the main house on the large farm – with well-preserved kitchen and home tools on display – everything from the coffee and flour mills, to the kitchen knives and tools, to the butter urns and churns. At the top of the stairs, a well-curated collection of boxes, containers, bottles and advertisements are set up to represent the village store. Hartwall soda bottles, soda still inside and caps firmly secured sit jauntily on one cabinet. Towers of spices line the walls. The display case is filled with sweets and treats for the discerning housewife with extra pocket money, or the child lucky enough to have a few pence to spend on Salmiakki, Finland’s salted licorice. Gustav’s father was a collector of all things farm-related, and “got bitten by the collecting bug,” explained Gustav. Now Gustav and his brother are the caretakers of this giant and impressive collection.

Go to the farm for the beef, but don’t skip the Farm Museum. It’s one of the things that makes this place really special.

Oh, and stop along the long driveway up the house and get out say hello to those cows. They and you will love it.

Gårdskulla Gård, 02750 Sjundeå, Finland, www.gardskulla.fi, Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Gardskulla

And since you’ll be in the neighborhood, here’s where you’ll find more delicious, farm-fresh food:

Myllyniemi: Perched on the edge of the river, with the rushing water streaming between the gleaming oak trees, with a few friendly lambs, this is a old mill and sawhouse is place for rest and relaxation. Owner and host Tuula Sornainen, gave us a tour of the place including the original electric generator, old sawmill and guest rooms. If you’d like to visit, you’ll need to call ahead an make reservations. It’d be perfect for a weekend getaway for two, a friends’ retreat, or as a corporate off-site destination or a wedding. www.myllyniemi.fi

Apple Festival in Lohja. I love harvest festivals, and this one is well worth the visit. Each year, roughly 6000 visitors make their way to Lohja to taste the apples, visit the scarecrows on display for the scarecrow competition, taste a broad variety of Finnish apples, and eat and peruse their way through the 100+ market stalls. The atmosphere was friendly and celebratory, with traditional folk music playing in one section; old acquaintances catching up along the way, and for me, a lot of sampling of the goods on offer, starting with a delicious pulled pork sandwich from Saskatoon Restaurant washed down with a perfectly sweet-tart glass of saskatoon-lingonberry juice to kick off our wanderings through the market. Put it on your calendar for next year! It’s the perfect way to spend an Autumn Saturday. www.lohja.fi

Ciderberg apple orchard – a beautiful, well-tended orchard with over 10,000 apple trees of 50 different varieties. The place was full of visitors who had stopped into enjoy the buffet lunch, purchase apple cider and apple wine, and enjoy the idyllic atmosphere of the restaurant, farm and surrounding fields. We were shown the room where the sort and package the apples, the apple press, and the giant storage coolers where the apples wait to be distributed all over Finland. www.ciderberg.fi

At Purnus, we stopped to sample the house-made Sjundby ice cream (the flavors of the day were strawberry and blackberry – delicious!), but Purnus’ Seaction also offers 2 guest cabins and one larger cabin for conferences as well as canoe, snowshoe, skating and skiing trips. There is a Summer theatre near by and activity tracks all around, to suit every taste. Especially that ice cream! Stop in for a day or for the weekend. You won’t be disappointed www.seaction.com

Four Seasons Fish sits in a nondescript building just off the highway looking more like an old gas station house or a biker’s bar than the best place to buy fish in Southern Finland. Don’t let the looks fool you: step inside. Run by Marja Blank-Haga , her husband Rainier Haga and son Joni Haga, this family operation has been in business since early 2000. There are more than 100 varieties of fish items on offer: fresh, smoked, pickled, grilled, baked, and all of them beautiful displayed, tempting the customer to fill her bag. We sampled the peppered smoked salmon, salmon chateaubriand, salmon rice pastries, fish roe, shrimp sauce in mayonnaise and a house-made dill sauce that went perfectly with cold smoked salmon. Also on offer were the dark brown, rich, sweet archipelago rye bread and local farm fresh eggs. If you’re in the area, don’t miss this. It’s a hidden gem. www.fsfish.fi

Like it? Share it! And leave me a comment below.

Rosemary Hasselback Potatoes

September 24, 2015 by aplough

If you want to impress your dinner guests (or just yourself) without slaving all afternoon in the kitchen, consider adding these handsome potatoes to your dinner menu.

Hasselback potatoes aren’t a new concept, but they are a good one. Basically, you take any good baking potato, slice it thinly across the top, stopping just before you cut through the potato, about 1/4″ / 2 cm from the bottom. You sprinkle on a little salt, a little pepper, a few herbs, and drizzle olive oil, and let the oven do the rest of the work for you. As the potatoes bake, the spaces between the slices expands and the the potato begins to fan out just a little. Bake for the length of time you would a standard baked potato, and then finish under the broiler so the top gets nice and crispy and golden. These could actually be the star of your dinner, if you wish – serving them with traditional baked potato toppings, with a smoked salmon dip; a little kicked-up ketchup, or, of course, alongside a roast chicken…or less traditionally, next to a roasted celeriac. They are really good.

They also reheat really well, so although this recipe makes four, you can easily increase that quantity and then reheat them in the oven the next day to maintain the crispness, or make them a day ahead and reheat them to serve.

Potatoes often get a bad rap in nutrition world, but they are actually a great option, particularly if they are served with the skin on, as they are in this recipe. Too often, they are slathered with butter in cream or deep fried within an inch of their life making them something that’s a far cry from healthy food.

Cooked properly, however, potatoes are a delicious, healthy whole food. They have:

low-calorie: roughly 160 calories per potato (approximately 1 cup)
a very good source of vitamin B6 (for building cells; cardiovascular protection; brain cell and nervous system activity; and for breaking down glycogen – aiding in athletic performance)
a good source of dietary fiber, potassium, copper, vitamin C, manganese, phosphorus, niacin and pantothenic acid
phytonutrients with antioxident capacity, e.g. carotenoids and flavonoids
potential to help lower blood pressure (because of presence of kukoamines)

Source: whfoods.com

Eat up! Potatoes are good for your health.

Notes:

most of the potato’s fiber is in the skin, so make sure you consume the entire potato
it’s worth repeating: french fries and potatoes chips are not real food: they are in fact really bad for your health. If you want to enjoy the health benefits of potatoes, eat them baked, roasted, boiled, lightly pan fried, or steamed, but avoid the processed foods that will only make you sick.
Any good baking potato can be used for this recipe, including sweet potatoes!

Rosemary Hasselback Potatoes

4 large baking potatoes
1 large sprig rosemary, leaves picked and finely chopped (about 2 teaspoons)
1 teaspoon sea salt
olive oil

Preheat oven to 190°C/375°F.

Wash and scrub your potatoes to remove all dirt from the skin. Lay a potato on its side, and make thin cuts from one end to the other, cutting down into the potato almost to the bottom, but being careful not to cut all the way through. Place the potato on the baking tray and repeat with remaining potatoes.

Combine the rosemary and sea salt in a small bowl. Sprinkle a half teaspoon of the mixture over each potato, using your fingers to push it into the cuts a little. Drizzle a thin layer of olive oil over each potato. Place the potatoes into a hot oven and bake for 30 minutes.

Remove the potatoes from oven, and using a basting brush, dip into the oil in the bottom of the pan and brush it over the tops of the potatoes. Return the pan to the oven, increase the heat to 215°C/425°F and continue to bake another 10-15 minutes until the potatoes are golden brown, tender in the center and crispy on top.

Serves 4.

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