Recipe: Friday Night Chile with Santa Maria Pinquitos and Ancho

It’s pretty hot outside today. In honor of that, and the fact that I ignored vegetable and fruit shopping in favor of enjoying my backyard today, I made something with ingredients that I had on hand tonight: chile.

In our house, we like to shop at discount grocers for staples like canned tomatoes and tomato paste (we find a surprising amount of organic stuff in these places and buy it by the case), and we have a cache of dried spices, beans, gluten-free grains, and raw nuts. We keep most things, including our spices, in mason jars. Some of these jars, like the spice jars, we purchased at a discount grocer by the case (anywhere from $6-$10 dollars for 12 jars and lids) and some we saved over the years when we still purchased pasta sauce. Certain brands sell their products in jars that are great to keep. You can simply purchase a package of lids from the Ball® company. These are typically sold in grocery stores everywhere.

For Christmas this year, my lovely brother and sister-in-law sent us an order of beans, exceptional chile powder, and Oregano Indio from Rancho Gordo™. I had never heard of them before, but they grow and sell a lot of heirloom varieties of beans, grains, spices, and other ingredients like vanilla and even banana vinegar. For this recipe, I used Rancho Gordo™ Santa Maria Pinquitos beans and cooked them in a pressure cooker before adding them to the chile. The Oregano Indio and Chile Powder are also from Rancho Gordo™.

You will not find Pinquitos in stores, but you could use Pinto beans or Pink Beans or any other combination of multiple bean varieties to make your chile and I guarantee it will be just as good! (Really, though, Rancho Gordo™. Can’t say enough good things!)

If we had more veggies on hand, I would probably add kale and red or orange chopped peppers to this, but they are really not necessary!

     

Friday Night Chile with Santa Maria Pinquitos and Serrano 

 1-2 tbsp. olive oil

1 tbsp. Oregano Indio

2-3 tsp. Hungarian Paprika

As many shakes of Colgin Liquid Smoke as you like (I used Mesquite. Colgin is vegan and gluten-free.)

2 tsp. Mexican Red Chile Powder

1 tbsp. cilantro paste

4 tsp. cumin

2 oz. pimento (I used half a jar of Goya pimento)

1 large Vidalia onion, chopped

1/2 red onion, chopped

4-5 large garlic cloves, smashed and chopped

1 whole dried Ancho chile pepper (We purchase Poblano peppers and dry them ourselves. A dried Poblano pepper is called an Ancho chile.)

2 carrots, chopped

1 tsp. red hawaiian salt or kosher salt

28 oz. can peeled ground tomatoes or diced tomatoes (I used Classico Organic brand)

14.5 oz can of Fire Roasted tomato with green chile (I used Muir Glen Organic brand, but you can use whatever 14.5 oz can of tomatoes you have and simply add diced jalapeno to them)

1 cup TSP (Textured Soy Protein), cooked in water according to directions (TVP, which is not the same as TSP, is not gluten-free. If you are gluten-free or cooking for someone who is, you cannot use TVP. I use Bob’s Red Mill.)

1/2 lb. Santa Maria Pinquito beans or other kind of dried bean, cooked until done (If you use canned beans, all you have to do is drain them)

1. Saute ingredients from oregano indio through carrots in the olive oil for 5 minutes on medium high heat. The chile will soften in the oil and flavor the dish.

2. Add the ingredients in Group B and cook for 5 minutes on medium high heat. Remove the chile pepper and throw away.

3. Serve over brown rice with a dollop of Vitamix Not-so-Cheese Sauce (pictured), Daiya, avocado, cashew crema, or other vegan toppings.

This is the author’s recipe. 

Recipe: Legitimate Waffles

There are some food paradigms that are hard to duplicate when you have to leave gluten behind, like I did. Our expectations that foods should taste a specific way and texturally feel a certain way are powerful, but they fade a little over time. One of the foods that it took a while to get right and that I didn’t eat for well over a year and a half into being gluten free, were waffles. Then finally, all of the sudden, a legitimate waffle! All it took was critical analysis of a couple of recipes and the use of a technique that yields light, fluffy cupcakes and cookies in vegan, gluten free and dairy free baking. By adding apple cider vinegar to rice milk, you’ll achieve a light fluffy waffle.

Legitimate Waffles

1 3/4 cups GF flour mixture*
2 tsp. gluten-free baking powder
1 tbsp. raw organic sugar
1 1/2 cups rice milk with 2 tsp. Bragg’s apple cider vinegar
1/4 cup of canola oil
1/2 tsp of vanilla
2 Ener-G ‘eggs’ (3 tsp of Ener-G with 3 tbsp of warm water, instead of 4)


1. First, mix the apple cider vinegar into the rice milk. Let it sit.
2. Combine dry ingredients, then add wet ingredients, adding the rice milk last.
3. Fire up the waffle iron! (I used a thin waffle maker, as I don’t have a Belgian waffle maker to test out this recipe. If you do, let me know how it goes!)
3. Lightly whisk the batter until mixed, taking care not to over-whisk. You’ll see tiny bubbles form.
4. Use a ladle to ladle an appropriate amount of batter onto the iron and bake until golden brown.

Voila! Serve with Maine Maple Syrup, or your own vegan toppings like chocolate sauce, vegan whipped cream and fresh fruit or peanut butter and jam.

*I used some of a batch of Cybele Pascale’s lovely patented Baking Mixture, which I keep pre-mixed in my kitchen. It consists of Brown Rice and Tapioca flours and Potato Starch and is published in her cookbook, The Allergen-free Baker’s Handbook.

This is the author’s recipe – please be respectful if you plan to share and give credit where credit is due.