You can prepare this simple-yet-elegant chicken dish the night before, when no children are around to chuck stuffed animals at you, or crab crawl in your path, or shout odd phrases like “Banana juice!” at you. So peaceful, so quiet. Just you and the chicken in the kitchen.
After perfecting our recipe for allergy-friendly cornmeal pancakes, it only seemed logical to move on to waffles. Aside from the shape and cooking method, they’re largely made up of the same stuff. But there are a few differences. Waffle batter is usually a little runnier, and has more oil incorporated. But what about the egg whites?
Brown bean soup was my favorite bean soup growing up, and to this day it’s still comforting to me. It’s an easy soup to make well. For the adventurous cook, these beans are a blank canvas. You can do so much with them.
There are a lot of reasons to get into gluten-free baking right now. Maybe you’ve recently discovered that you have a wheat allergy or gluten intolerance, or maybe you know someone who has. Or maybe you’re just so desperate to find flour during the COVID-19 pandemic that you’ll try anything.
We are seriously living in strange times. I recently had to venture out of the house to make a much needed trip to the grocery store. Barren shelves. Face masks. Vinyl gloves. Going to the grocery store without my 3 kids in tow used to feel like such a luxurious experience. Now, I’m trying to get in and out as quickly as possible, trying not to touch anyone or anything other than the few items the store managed to restock since people lost their minds and snatched up all the toilet paper. But I was able to find ground beef, so looks like meat’s back on the menu, boys!
My inspiration for the following recipe came from seeing a bag of Bob’s Red Mill 1-to-1 Gluten Free Baking Flour in the grocery store. I’d long been trying to make pancakes that don’t trigger any of my son’s allergies, but prior attempts using non-wheat flour had resulted in frustration. What I eventually realized was that most non-wheat flours can’t simply be substituted into a recipe; you kind of have to re-engineer the recipe around it.
Here comes another quintessentially Cuban dish: Meat and Potatoes! No seriously, that’s the name. Carne con Papas sounds like it could be anything that involves meat and potatoes, but it’s actually a pretty specific dish recognizable to Cubans and Cuban Americans like me, and lots of families have their own variations on how to cook it. It’s a tomato-based beef stew with quartered potatoes, served over a plate of white rice.
I’ve tried to find this dish in various places. I’ve asked Latino friends about it. I scoured the internet. I’ve read old Cuban cookbooks I’ve had the joy of receiving from my mother, and all I can say is nobody seems to make the dish quite like this.
For me, Black Bean Soup is a bowl of Home. It’s the ultimate comfort food—warm and savory, it’s the taste of my childhood. It’s traditionally served over rice, and is enough of a meal to stand on its own, but pairs beautifully with Cuban pork chops or Cuban steak.
Garbanzos are chickpeas. This humble little bean is relegated to the salad bar in American cuisine, but it is a powerhouse of protein, vitamins, and minerals, and deserves a brighter spotlight.