Therapeutic scrubbing

My cast iron pans were super neglected and abused by moi. I haven't been really cleaning them properly since I've bought them and have been using them for almost a year now. Today, I decided that I should be a responsible owner and give them a good scrub to get rid of the year-old stains and burnt crusts.

So I made a paste with salt+water and used my detergent free sponge to really give the pans a serious scrub. It wasn't so hard after all, I wondered why I hadn't done this much earlier....the coarse salt paste worked like a charm to rid even the toughest crusts. After several minutes of muscle power, the pans were starting to look as good as new again.

I gave them a good rinse with tap water and dried them with some paper towels. As I needed the pans to be completely dry....I put the pans on the hot stove for a couple of minutes. Then, I poured a little vegetable oil on a piece of paper towel and used it to wipe on the surfaces of the pans to lightly coat them with oil. There, now they are looking all spiffy and screaming to be used.

It was a nice workout for my right arm and kinda therapeutic to see my favorite pans looking so great after the scrubbing.

Call me silly....but such are my simple pleasures.

Today's lunch

Using the leftovers from Tuesday's gf dinner.....I made myself a gf pulled beef burger topped with coleslaw, onion and tomato.....it's one juicy drippy burger and I needed a handful of napkins to clean up the liquidity mess that I had made.

Attempting a gluten-free meal

I've never really understood what it means by a gluten-free (gf) diet until a week ago when RG informed that one of our dinner guests is allergic to gluten. For a couple of days, I panicked as I had absolutely no idea what I was going to cook. I did tonnes of research online regarding gf-diet and realised to my horror that so many of the stuffs that we eat would contain some trace amount of gluten in various forms.

It was really hard to come up with the dinner menu 'cos I wanted everyone (gf or not) to be eating the same food. Sure I could've just made some safe gf stuffs for the gf-guy, while everyone else tuck into yummy "regular food" but I really didn't want him to feel left out. On the other hand, I wasn't sure if the other guests would mind chomping on just salads and hummus. My guests are young guys and I want a main dish that they can all enjoy together.

So I finally decided on pulled beef burgers, coleslaw, potato-egg salad and baked corn. Although these are regular foolproof stuffs that I make occasionally, I've never attempted to make them entirely gf. Certain ingredients had to be substituted for gf, the cooking style of the pulled beef was a little different from what I'd normally do 'cos of certain different ingredients and the pot that I used (I avoided using cast iron pots 'cos I read that it could result in cross-contamination).

I started off with buying some gf condiments. I managed to find some gf stuffs in the whole foods section of SHAW'S. I also checked the ingredient labels to double-check that the stuffs are really gf.

I normally use agave nectar as a natural sweetener and I'm glad it's gf.

I read that not all mayo are gf so I decided to make my own instead 'cos I needed mayo for both the coleslaw and potato-egg salad. It's amazingly simple to make your own mayo (no preservatives or whatsoever!). Just blend 1 large egg + 1 egg yolk + 1 tsp gf Dijon mustard + 2 tsp lemon juice and then pour in canola oil (SLOWLY!) while continuing to blend. Finally you can add some salt/pepper but I normally don't so as to reduce our salt intake. The recipe makes approx 2 cups of mayo. I suppose you can store the mayo for up to a week but I usually try to consume it within a couple of days for maximum freshness.

I also put aside all the cast ironwares and non-stick pans that I normally use for my cooking and used stainless steel pots/pans instead...after I've scrubbed the living-daylights out of them. Wooden/silicone spoons were also substituted with stainless steel utensils. I used a glass chopping board instead of a wooden one. I also bought a new knife and aluminium trays. The kitchen countertop was thoroughly cleaned with a fresh rag to ensure that there were no leftover bread crumbs, flour or other "contaminants". I even checked to make sure that the handwash in the guest bathroom does not contain wheat.

As I was serving pulled beef burgers.....I had wanted to buy some gf burger buns but the only thing that I could find were these gf bagels in the frozen whole food section...but I figured it was good enough.

I bought regular burger buns for my other guests and to avoid cross-contamination, I served my gf-guest separately with his food on individual small dishes.

For dessert, I made a flourless chocolate cake using this recipe from allrecipes.com (it's an awesome site for recipes if you don't already know!!!). It's a super rich (& I say SUPER) chocolate cake so you can serve it with some plain old vanilla ice-cream to take the chocolately edge off if you'd like.

Here's an after-dinner photo.....I'm glad to say that the guests seemed happy and that I hadn't screw up big time by causing my gluten-allergic guest to have flare-ups or anything. I have learnt a lot about gf-diet from the preparation of this one meal....while my kitchen won't be going gf anytime soon, I might make some healthy changes to the ingredients that I use in future and perhaps to try to reduce gluten in our diets.