SRC: My Judy The Foodie’s Bean Salad

For January’s Secret Recipe Club, I was paired with Shari of My Judy the Foodie. Shari started getting into the kitchen after her mom (Judy, her blog’s namesake) passed away and as a way of preserving her memories, decided to cook through her handwritten recipes.

After ready through Shari’s story, I really want to take my mom’s cookbook of recipes she copied from her mom when she got married and cook through the whole lot. It might be challenging given my food restrictions, but it would totally be worth it and a good way to remember my Grannie. Perhaps a 2013 challenge?

Shari has tons of delicious recipes – while I was sick, I literally clicked through over 50 pages of her blog because everything looked so good and I couldn’t decide on anything! There are things like her mom’s legendary banana bread, this homemade nutella, these slow-cooked beef tips and this blueberry cucumber feta salad. I eventually ended up choosing her Bean Salad.

It’s not your traditional bean salad as it only has green beans and chickpeas instead of a whole assortment of other beans. I didn’t mind as it was definitely very tasty! I used less marinade/sauce as I am really not a sauce person and added a bit of honey to take away the zing of raw onions/leeks.

Salad
1/2 to 3/4 package frozen beans
1/4 red onions, thinly sliced
3 green onions, sliced
1/3 yellow pepper, thinly sliced
1/2 c. thinly sliced leeks
1 rib celery, sliced
1 small can of chickpeas
1/2 c. parsley, chopped

Dressing
1/4 c. white vinegar
1/4 c. olive oil
Juice of one lemon
1/4 – 1/2 tsp. dry mustard (could use 1 tbsp. dijon mustard)
1 tsp. honey
1/4 tsp. black pepper
Pinch of salt

Lettuce Leaves

1. Place beans in a pot, cover with water and bring to a boil. Once the pot boils, drain and rinse with cool water.
2. Place beans in a large bowl with the remainder of the ingredients. Toss.
3. Whisk together dressing (below) and pour over salad. Toss salad to even coat.
4. Let sit for a few hours, stirring occasionally.
5. Serve over leaves of lettuce or plain if you desire.
6. Enjoy!

Please make sure to check out the rest of Group D’s recipes below for January’s Secret Recipe Club!

Gluten, Dairy, Refined Sugar and Soy Free Orange Ginger Honey Cranberry Upside Down Cake

A few days after Christmas, I got the flu, which then morphed into viral bronchitis (fun, eh?), so I haven’t spent that much time making anything other than tea and chicken soup. However, I was really itching to bake something before I go back to work, so I thought: “why not make something that is full of cold-fighting ingredients, so it doesn’t make me feel worse?” (Any excuse works when it comes to me justifying my desire to bake!)  Things like:

• Honey – can soothe sore throats, is full of antioxidants and is anti-bacterial (source)
• Oranges & cranberries – contain vitamin C, which helps you fight colds (source – a book written by my favourite chemist, Linus Pauling. Yes, I am a nerd.)
• Ginger – is an antihistamine and decongestant (source)
• Coconut oil – helps your immune system and isn’t soy. (source)

Since sugar is known to not help your immune system, I wanted to reduce the amount used and use honey instead for its illness fighting properties. I did include a small amount of unrefined granulated sugar as I know that cakes get part of their fine crumb from granulated sugar. Plus, I’ve never really baked with honey so I didn’t want to stray too much from the original recipe.

The cake turned out quite well – it wasn’t overly sweet, the cranberries and orange flavour played off each other wonderfully, the cranberries were sufficiently goopy and delicious (look at the edge of the cake – upside down cakes can’t get better than that!) and the cake texture is moist and delicate. It wasn’t overly ginger-y, so if you like ginger, please feel free to add more!

I’m pretty sure that you can make this recipe to be egg free easily – either add two egg replacers or increase the xanthan gum to 1 tsp, add an extra tsp. of baking powder and increase liquid by ~ 4tbsp or until your batter reaches the desired consistency. If you try this, please let me know!

The cake was inspired by this honey cake from Free From Kitchen. The upside-down-ness was inspired by this Cranberry Upside-down Cake by The Daily Dietribe, this cake from Hungry Cravings and the pineapple upside down cake in the Joy of Cooking.

Gluten, Dairy, Refined Sugar and Soy Free Honey Orange Ginger Cranberry Upside Down Cake

For Cranberry Upside-Down-ness
~ 3 tbsp coconut oil
1/3 c. honey
Grated fresh ginger (~ 1/2″ x 1″ knob, more or less to taste)
1 – 2 tbsp. sucanat
1 package fresh cranberries

For Cake
45 g brown rice flour
40 g sorghum flour
20 g millet flour
30 g sweet rice flour
40 g tapioca starch
1/2 tsp. xanthan gum
2 tsp. baking powder
Pinch of Salt
100g coconut oil
150g honey
35 g sucanat
1 tbsp. orange zest
1 tsp. grated ginger
1 – 2+ tbsp freshly squeezed orange juice
2 tbsp. almond milk
2 large eggs

1. Preheat oven to 350F.
2. Place the 3 tbsp. coconut oil in a 9″ cake pan and place in the oven until melted (about a minute). Swirl around to coat the bottom.
3. Combine honey, ginger and sucanat in a measuring cup. Pour into pan and spread out over the coconut oil.
4. Place pan back in oven, stirring every few minutes until sugar mixture bubbles a lot. Remove from oven.
5. While pan is heating, wash cranberries and remove the gross ones. Once pan is out of oven, spread cranberries over pan until it is entirely covered in a single layer. Set aside.
6. Zest orange and squeeze the juice out of one half. Grate the ginger.
7. Whisk together the flours, xanthan gum, baking powder and salt.  Set Aside.
8. In a small saucepan, mix together the coconut oil, honey and sucanat. Heat up, stirring, until the sugar starts to dissolve. The coconut oil will stay separate from the honey and that is okay.
9. Pour mixture into bowl of a stand mixer. Add zest and ginger.
10. Alternate adding flour with the orange juice/almond milk, adding more liquid if needed. Beat until combined. Don’t over beat as you’ll end up with channels in your cake like I did.
11. Add eggs one at a time and beat until smooth.
12. Scrape into pan over cranberries and spread evenly.
13. Bake in oven for 25 – 35 minutes or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Place a pan on the rack below to catch any drips.
14. Let cool for a few minutes on a rack before placing a serving plate over the pan and inverting. Remove pan and let cool.
15. Enjoy!

What do you do for sweets while sick?

SRC: K&K Test Kitchen’s Warm Potato and Green Bean Salad

For July’s Secret Recipe Club, I was paired with of Kelsey and Kim of K&K Test Kitchen. They are a mother-daughter duo who started off testing recipes they had collected and come across and sharing them on their blog, which then opened the door to much more experimenting the kitchen. Despite claiming that they aren’t gourmet chefs, they  cook meals for everyday, which focus on quality, using common ingredients and everything delicious.

Both of them have lots of wonderful recipes, including the tasty looking Raspberry and Apricot Crostata, Potato, Corn and Green Bean Salad with Chipotle Honey Vinagrette, Street Slaw (slaw made without mayo – my kind of thing!) and their family recipe for Chocolate Peanut Butter Balls. Ultimately, I ended up choosing their Warm Fingerling Potato and Green Bean Salad and it did not disappoint!

I did make a few changes.

• I didn’t have any shallots, so I sauteed up some white onion with garlic. I also added some green onions.
• We couldn’t find any fingerling potatoes, so I used baby yellow potatoes instead.
• I’m not a huge sauce person, so I only made half the sauce the recipe called for and didn’t use all of it and found it to be plenty saucy.
• It’s been quite hot, so I didn’t want to turn on the oven, so I cooked the potatoes on the BBQ.

I made it for dinner and served it with grilled pepper and chicken bratwurst from a local European Delicatessen. It was definitely a wonderful summery dinner!

I imagine you could also make it a meal by itself by adding some bacon or prosciutto and/or Parmesan cheese for some protein.

Have you tried any good summery salads or meals lately? Please Share!

Please check out the rest of Group D’s recipes below:

SRC: Fried Ice and Donut Holes Ooey Gooey Single Serve Brownie

I feel like I am a terrible person. Due to a misunderstanding, thinking I was no longer in the club and me being crazy busy, I pretty much missed this month’s Secret Recipe Club. Thankfully due to April’s graciousness, I was re-given my assignment: the lovely and entertainingly named Fried Ice and Donut Holes.

Even though time was not on my side, I did manage to take a quick look through Melissa’s wonderful blog. She has some amazing recipes like Peanut Butter Chocolate Chunk Blondies, French Macaroons with Nutella Buttercream and these vegan Double Coconut Muffins. Can you tell I’m on a bit of a sugar kick? Finally, I decided on this Single Serve Ooegy Gooey Brownie and it did not disappoint!

Obviously, I had to make a few changes to make it me friendly, but it was pretty simple, especially since she used almond milk.

For the 1/4 c. whole wheat flour, I used 2 tbsp. sorghum flour, 1 tbsp. brown rice flour, 1 tbsp. tapioca starch and 1/8 tsp. xathan gum. Instead of brown sugar, I used 1 1/2 tbsp. raw cane sugar.

Melissa, I am so sorry that this is posted a day late – I hope my pretty photos make up for it.

You can check out everyone else’s May SRC recipes here:

Vegan Gluten Free Ginger Crackle Cookies

Do you ever have a strong desire to make cookies? Yesterday I was feeling fairly Christmas-y and decided that Christmas cookies were severely lacking in the Bean household and I needed to remedy that! Instead of defaulting to the usual Bean-family Cherry Almond Crisps, I asked Mr. Bean what his favourite cookies were. As you can probably guess, they’re Ginger Crackle Cookies, one of his family staples.

Given that I am unable to make the cookies exactly how his mum does (the gluten free requirement is pesky like that sometimes), I decided to embark on the adventure to make a similar, more healthy gluten free ginger crackle cookie. I also wanted it to be vegan as I’m saving up my dairy and egg quota for eggnog later this week! I think I was pretty successful – the cookies are quite soft on the inside and slightly harder on the outside, chewy and had the appropriate amount of crackling. They are also pretty delicious to boot!

I based my recipe on this one from In the Kitchen with Kath. I made them vegan, refined sugar, soy, cinnamon and gluten free so that everyone in my family could eat them (as frankly neither Mr. Bean nor I need to eat that many cookies ourselves!)

Vegan, Gluten and Refined Sugar Free Ginger Crackle Cookies

50g brown rice flour
75g sorghum flour
25g millet flour
50g sweet rice flour
50g tapioca starch
20g potato starch
1 1/2 tsp. xathan gum
2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
2 tsp. ginger
1/4 – 1/2 tsp. cloves
1 1/2 tsp cinnamon (if you can have it – I didn’t add it)
Scant 1/4 c. soy-free buttery spread, melted and cooled*
Scant 1/4 c. canola oil*
Scant 1/4 c. grapeseed oil*
3/4 c. sucunat sugar, finely ground
1/4 c. molasses
1 egg replacer (or 1 egg if you can eat them)
Sucunat or other granulated sugar – make sure that your sugar is coarse enough so that they don’t dissolve onto the cookie like mine did!

*I just poured about the same amount of each in the same measuring cup until I had 2/3 c. oil. Anything more than that is too much!

1. Whisk together the flours, xathan gum, baking soda, salt and spices. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, beat the oils, sugar molasses and egg replacer until combined.
3. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the wet and beat until well blended and smooth
4. Cover dough and refrigerate for one hour.
5. Preheat oven to 375F.
6. Shape the dough into 1 – 1 1/2″ balls. Dip in granulated sugar then place on parchment lined cookie sheet.
7. Bake for 8 – 12 minutes.
8. Then cool on a wire rack.
9. Store in a plastic bag or sealed container.
10. Enjoy!

What is your favourite Christmas Cookie?

Shared at: Slightly Indulgent Tuesdays, Traditional Tuesdays and Gluten-Free Wednesdays.