Glutenous Maximus

In the last couple of weeks I've tried out a few recipes from the two gluten-free cookbooks I borrowed from the library. I picked out those two because they were North American and family-oriented (rather than British and gourmet). One is The Kid-Friendly Food Allergy Cookbook, by Leslie Hammond and Lynne Marie Rominger; the other is Incredible Edible Gluten-Free Food for Kids: 150 Family-Tested Recipes, by Sheri L. Sanderson. They sound similar and they both feature things like mini-pizzas and cookies; otherwise I've found them quite different.

Leslie Hammond's book, as the Amazon reviewers seem to agree, is not exactly what its title sounds like. In other words, if you're allergic to EVERYTHING plus want low sugar, this isn't the solution to all your problems. It's mostly gluten/wheat-free-oriented, with suggestions for dairy and egg substitutions (and sometimes nuts). So if you're looking for gluten-free recipes and also want to use commercial egg substitute, this could be a great resource; in fact, I'm thinking about getting my own copy just because I like the recipes I've tried and some of the others sound good too. But if you are looking more for creative dairy and egg substitutions rather than gluten-free, I agree with the reviewers that a good vegan cookbook or website would be a better resource, because this book never even gets into a lot of the things you can experiment with as egg alternatives: soy flour, tofu, flax seed and so on. As far as the low-sugar claim goes, in the sweet-type recipes the main suggestion (if you want a lower-sugar version) is to use a product called Whey-Low; I don't even know if that's available around here.

However, what I do like is that most of the baking uses rice flour rather than (as in the other book) a rather complicated and un-kid-friendly mixture of tapioca flour, potato starch flour, Xanthan gum and so on. If you're using this book to cook along with your kids (and I think it would be great for that), I think that step towards simplicity means a lot. Of course you can't get into yeast breads just with rice flour, and she doesn't; but it seems to work fine (so far) in her muffin and cookie recipes where the need for gluten to hold things together is not so much of an issue. I know there are other flours beyond rice (another friend sent us a chocolate chip cookie recipe using bean flour), but rice flour seems an easy way to get started.

We've tried her Fun Cut-Outs cookie recipe (for Easter) and thought they were acceptable (not if you're avoiding processed foods, though, because they include commercial pudding mix); I made banana muffins (from the recipe for Banana Bread) and really liked their slightly crumbly but not weird texture especially when they were reheated briefly in the microwave. Mr. Fixit actually thought they were too sweet and caky. In general I've avoided some of the sweeter recipes since nobody around here seems to want them right now (with or without gluten); maybe I'll get a chance to experiment with them later on.

Sanderson's book (I think of it as the Blue Book, while Hammond's book is the Orange book) is, as I said, a bit more complicated at least in terms of baking; it does include yeast bread recipes, and the other baking generally uses the same combination of ingredients. I tried her Biscuits Supreme recipe on the weekend (trying to make strawberry shortcake) and would give it an 8 or 9 out of 10 for appearance and texture, but only about a 6 for taste. I don't know if they needed some sugar or what, but I could taste every bitter thing in those biscuits. With strawberries and whipped cream, they were at least edible, but that's the best I can say about them.

Both books--once you get out of the baking issues--have some good-sounding main dish recipes and helped remind me of some standard recipes that never did have gluten in them--like porcupine meatballs. The Orange Book also helps with something that some gluten-free friends have mentioned: that rather than fiddling much with their own baking or trying to find reasonably-priced and acceptable breads and other items in the stores, a lot of them have simply shifted their eating patterns and don't eat as many bread-centered meals at all. Simple example: soup and salad rather than soup and sandwich. There are quite a few good suggestions there for non-bread-centered lunches that kids would (probably) eat: like tuna salad on a bed of lettuce, served with tortilla chips as dippers.

Final thing: one of my friends who had gluten issues when she was younger mentioned that she can't stand the thought of puffed rice anymore since she had to eat so many rice cakes and so much puffed rice when she was growing up (not much else available). I've never been fond of puffed rice either (not much flavour!), but we did have half a bag in the pantry and I was happy to use it up in Leslie Hammond's two variations on puffed rice snack mixtures. Both of them are good (I tried the Honey-Mustard version with cashews, and one of the girls particularly likes the cinnamon version)--maybe even good enough to make my friend forget her grudge. I don't want to post those recipes here because of copyrights, but I will say that if you do a Google search for "Leslie Hammond+gluten", you should get a Google Books excerpt of the "Orange Book" and I think they will show up in the excerpt.