Lucini gluten-free chickpea frittata mix

We receive a lot of food via UPS in this house. Companies with good intentions send us their cookies or pancake mixes to make, hoping that if we like it, we'll tell you about it.

We don't tell you about most of them. In fact, I'd say 90% of the food we get ends up at the food bank or in the hands of friends. We're picky. We hope you know that means you can trust us.

Last week, a box of goodies arrived at the house again. At this point, I don't expect much.

This time, however, we want to sing it to you here. This box full of food made up part of Lu's dinners for the week, our pastas late at night, and is still drizzling on top of our risottos and flatbreads.

Lucini  imports foods from Tuscany to the United States. "Our passion is creating authentic, handcrafted gourmet foods inspired by the culinary traditions of Italy." Well, as you may know, Danny and I spent our honeymoon in Italy and we are still smiling at the memory of our meals. (I also sigh at how easy it was to live gluten-free there. We're still working for that here.)

One of our favorite bites of food during la luna di miele was a chickpea crepe. Now, granted, it was spread with truffle butter, rolled up and dolloped with chestnut honey, but still. It was outstanding. (Being with Judy Witts Francini as our food guide didn't hurt either.) Never having eaten anything like it before, Danny and I both talked about it for weeks. In Florence, or at least at the restaurant in Florence where we ate, that crepe was called cecina. In the rest of Italy it's farinata.

They make something similiar in the south of France, apparently. There, it's called socca. It's street food, cooked on big cast-iron pans, sometimes in wood-burning ovens, meant to be eaten immediately. David Lebovitz posted a recipe for socca on his blog last year and I have made it frequently after reading his guidance.

However, it wasn't until this week that I realized I have not been eating quite the same food as what we ate in Florence. I had to make it from a mix to have that Italian feeling again.

Lucini makes a farinata mix they call Cinque e' Cinque, which refers to the five cents the chickpea crepe cost on the street in the early 1900s. The chickpea flour is milled until it is extra fine. The flavors are wonderful -- bold without any musty bean taste. And the directions, specific and clear, yielded a great crepe every time.

My only note about the mix is that the instructions call for making a full batch and pouring that into a hot pan. We preferred pouring half the prepared batter into our hot cast-iron pan for a thin crepe that still had body, instead of a thick frittata. But that's no problem. You get twice as much mix for the same price!

Every Lucini food we tried was wonderful. The red sauces come in easy-rip pouches. With that kind of packaging, you'd expect them to be thin and tasteless. Instead, these sauces come roaring out, full tomato slow simmered with good olive oil and salt. Pasta was easy and delicious this week.

The Lucini olive oils taste of olives warmed by the sun. And we loved the fig and walnut balsamic vinaigrette.

We will definitely be buying these mixes on our own. That's why Danny and I feel comfortable recommending them to you. We think you'll love them too.

Of course, they're all gluten-free.

The good folks at Lucini were thrilled we wanted to tell you about their foods. They will send a box full of sauces and oils, plus a few versions of the Cinque e' Cinque mix to one lucky reader here. Just leave us a note about why you'd like to try these foods and we'll pick a winner at random this weekend. Also, you can enter a contest to win a year's worth of free Lucini foods by clicking here.

gluten-free zucchini bread

We love potlucks in this house.

There's something humble and lovely about a potluck. Sure, dinner parties are great: the day of prepping and anticipation, the smells coming from the kitchen, the moment of lowering the main course onto the table and listening to everyone's happy sighs. But the only problem with dinner parties? You only eat your own food.

We're lucky to have friends who are good cooks and food lovers. They're not all chefs or food writers, thank goodness. (It's good to have some variety in our lives, after all.) They're people who love to laugh, sit around on the deck and talk about the lack of sleep we're all getting with toddlers, have strong opinions and gentle hearts, and don't mind a slightly messy house. Nobody worries about what to bring to the potluck. They all love food.

We love our friends. We never get to see them enough.

So, just a few weeks ago, we started a new tradition at our house: open Sunday potlucks.

Every Sunday, from 9:30 to 12:30, our house is open. Whoever can make it that week with a dish of delicious gluten-free food is welcome. This means that every Sunday, we have a different group of friends, a table laden with food, and small children running around the yard giggling.

Plus, to be honest, it forces us to spend a couple of hours every Sunday morning cleaning the house. If you want a clean house, throw a party. This place is actually starting to look pretty good!

Last week, we went to the thrift store on the island and bought a big stack of plates and a box full of coffee cups (wow, there are a lot with kittens on them), each for 50 cents. We keep them in the laundry room, after we have washed them, and bring them out for the next potluck. No more paper plates to throw away. Plus, the person who receives the Golf Maniac coffee cup always laughs.

Each week I have been trying out new baked goods on the crowd. A couple of weeks ago I made what I thought was the first attempt at a zucchini bread, with dried cherries and sunflower seeds. Every one of the people there — none of them on a gluten-free diet — told me, "You're done. This is amazing." None of them missed the gluten at all.

We know that soon the weather will turn chilly. (It started to feel like fall this week, that certain slant of light, as Emily Dickinson called it.) We'll have to move all the food, the children, and the cups into the house. We can't wait. The laughter will be bouncing off the walls.





Gluten-Free Zucchini Bread with Dried Cherries and Sunflower Seeds, adapted from Simply Recipes

The deer ate our zucchini this year. They pretty much ate everything in the garden. So of course, the summer I am bereft of zucchini is the summer I just HAVE to make gluten-free zucchini bread for the first time.

This zucchini bread recipe is adapted from the lovely Elise Bauer at Simply Recipes. You know about Elise, right? She is humble and smart and incredibly generous. More pertinent here, her recipes always work. If I ever want to make something for the first time, I check out what Elise has done first.

This recipe makes two small loaves of zucchini bread, if you have 5 x 9 pans. Baking this zucchini bread is what made me realize we have gargantuan loaf pans, much bigger than 5 x 9. If that's your story too, then you can make one big loaf, as we did. (The baking time will be longer.)

Buying zucchini is worth it for this bread.

Reminder: I give you the flours in weight because that is the only way to ensure the recipe works for you. If you still haven't bought a kitchen scale, please do! In the meantime, try this conversation chart if you insist on measuring in cups.

60 grams teff flour
60 grams oat flour (make sure it's certified gf)
60 grams superfine brown rice flour
240 grams sweet rice flour
1 teaspoon guar gum
1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

2 eggs, at room temperature, beaten
1 1/3 cup sugar
2 teaspoon vanilla
3 cups fresh-grated zucchini
2/3 cup (10 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted
2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup dried cherries
1/2 cup sunflower seeds

Preparing to bake. Preheat the oven t0 350°. Grease 2 5 by 9 loaf pans.

Mixing the dry ingredients. Sift the teff flour, oat flour, superfine brown rice flour, and sweet rice flour into a large bowl. Mix in the guar gum, xanthan gum, the cinnamon, and the nutmeg. Set aside.

Making the batter. Combine the eggs, sugar, and vanilla in a large bowl. Add the grated zucchini and melted butter. Stir, gently. Sprinkle the baking soda and salt over the top of the mixture, then gently stir them in. Add the flour combination to the mix, 1/3 at a time, stirring after each addition. Add the dried cherries and sunflower seeds and stir until they are combined.

Baking the bread. Slide the loaf pans into the oven. Bake the zucchini bread until the tops are browned and a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean, about 50 to 60 minutes, depending on your oven. Allow the bread to cool for 20 minutes, then turn the pans over and gently release the breads onto a waiting cooling rack.

Makes 2 loaves of zucchini bread.

gluten-free nectarine-blueberry buckle

I look forward to that first perfect peach every summer.

You know the one I mean, right? That firm-fleshed peach that yields to the teeth, the one that is not entirely soft but not as hard as a toddler's head either. The peach that is so bursting with juice that you have to stand over the sink to eat it, and let the juice run down your wrist to your elbow.

That peach.

I haven't had one yet.

Oh, I've had some decent peaches. We have a farmstand here on the island that buys fruit and veg directly from about 20 farmers in Eastern Washington. This couple is in their 70s (I think), yet they are so dedicated to bringing great produce to the island that he drives over the mountains every Thursday to pick up the zucchini, peppers, corn, and nectarines. Last year, they had fantastic peaches. This year, not so much.

It has been a lousy summer, weather wise. (Life wise? Far sunnier than the skies.) It was the coldest, rainiest spring in Seattle history. June was grey and dripping. We've had only 2 several-day bursts of truly hot weather the entire summer. Sigh. These are not the best peach-growing conditions.

(Our cherry tree? No cherries. We saw some green cherries, in the continual process of spring -- bare black branch to dark cherries — but none of them ripened. None. All our neighbors said the same. It has been a lousy year for the garden.)

The farmers in Eastern Washington must be wanting to smack the weather guy. No good weather means lousy year for their crops means horrible financial situation. So the fact that I haven't had my platonic ideal of a peach yet? I'm not suffering that much.

Still. It's one of the benchmarks of my year. Walking through a pile of leaves and trying to resist the urge to kick. The first time I hear Christmas carols and feel like singing along (that's never as early as the stores want me to sing). The first green vegetables appearing at the farmers' market in spring. And that peach.

(Okay, I should admit that our friend Jon Rowley brought us a box of peaches from Frog Hollow Farm, the legendary farm in California. We were so grateful. They were a couple of days away from Jon's recommended ripeness, so we let them sit. And then life grew busy. We remembered them a couple of days past perfect ripeness, which is why you see that touch of brown up there. Still. Those peaches are astonishing. They just aren't from here.)

It hasn't truly felt like summer around here.

Oh well. That's okay. Just more stone fruits that need to be baked in a buckle.

How You Can Join in Summer Fest:

So now it’s your turn: Have a recipe or tip that fits any of our weekly themes? Starting with our posts of Wednesday, July 28, for five Wednesdays, you can contribute in various ways, big or small.
Contribute a whole post, or a comment—whatever you wish. It’s meant to be fun, viral, fluid. No pressure, just delicious. The possibilities:
Simply leave your tip or recipe or favorite links in the comments below a Summer Fest post on my blog, and then go visit my collaborators and do the same.
The cross-blog event idea works best when you leave your recipe or favorite links (whether to your own blog or someone else’s) at all the host blogs. Yes, copy and paste them everywhere! That way, they are likely to be seen by the widest audience. Everyone benefits, and some pretty great dialog starts simmering.
Or think bigger: Publish entire posts of your own, if you wish, and grab the juicy Summer Fest 2010 tomato badge (illustrated by Matt of Mattbites.com).

Next week: tomatoes!

This Week’s Stone Fruit Links

• Marilyn at Simmer Till Done: Cherry Apricot Pie with Ginger-Almond Crunch.
• Sara at Cooking Channel: Savory Stone Fruit recipes.
• Todd and Diane of White on Rice Couple: Riesling Poached Pluots.
• Caroline at The Wright Recipes: Ginger and Vanilla Poached Peaches.
• The FN Dish: Paula’s Perfect Peach Cobbler.
• Alison at Food2: Peachy Party Foods.
• Kelly at Just a Taste: Peaches & Cream Cupcakes.
• Liz on Healthy Eats: Puttin’ Up Peach Pickles, Compote and More.
• Food Network UK: How to Poach a Peach.
• Judy of Divina Cucina: Chocolate Amaretti Baked Apricots.
• The Gilded Fork: dossier & recipes featuring peaches, apricots, nectarines, plums, cherries, almonds, coconuts.
• Cate at Sweetnicks: Blueberry Peach Smoothies.
• Tara at Tea & Cookies: Making Peach Jam.
• Alana at Eating From the Ground Up: Stone fruit slump.
• Caron of San Diego Foodstuff: grilled peach parfait and coconut peach gazpacho.
• Paige at The Sister Project: A Summer Fruit Whatchamacallit (not a pie, not a crisp, but delicious).
• Tigress in a Jam: nectarine preserve with summer savory and white pepper.

Nectarine-Blueberry Brown Butter Buckle

When I saw the nectarine buckle recipe that Deb at Smitten Kitchen had left this out of her upcoming cookbook, I knew two things: 1) now I want that cookbook even more than I did before, and 2) I have to adapt this to be gluten-free. Today.

I must admit that this summer is the first time I have ever baked a buckle. Crumbles? Crisps? Pies? Dozens of times in one season. But a buckle? What is a buckle? And is it very different than a slump? (It turns out that a slump is different as a buckle, but it is the same as a grunt.)

I'll tell you what a buckle is: so wonderfully good that I don't care what you call it. (One of my friends always tells this tired old joke: "I don't care what you call me, as long as you don't call me late for dinner." I still laugh.) But if you must know, a buckle is a soft cake -- think sort of sponge cake, sort of angel food cake -- with a layer of fresh fruit and a streusel topping.

Danny agrees. This nectarine-blueberry brown butter buckle makes an incredible summer treat, soft and sweet, cake and streusel topping, and the perfect chance to make use of those stone fruits that are less than impeccable. He has been making this as one of the desserts at his restaurant for the last couple of weeks. They don't sell it as a gluten-free dessert. It's simply one of the desserts of the day. It always sells out.

Do you have some not-perfect peaches or nectarines lying around? How about blueberries? Read this recipe for nectarine-blueberry brown butter buckle, then start moving toward the kitchen.

170 grams (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
40 grams superfine brown rice flour
40 grams amaranth flour
55 grams potato starch
55 grams sweet rice flour
1 teaspoon guar gum
1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum
9 grams (2 teaspoons) baking powder
4 grams (3/4 teaspoon) fine sea salt
6 grams (1 teaspoon) powdered ginger
200 grams (1 cup) sugar
2 large eggs, at room temperature
150 grams (2/3 cup) milk (we used soy milk here)
about 4 cups nectarines (pitted and sliced thick) and blueberries combined
1 teaspoon lemon juice

for the streusel topping
brown butter leftover from the cake
100 grams (1/2 cup) sugar
32 grams superfine brown rice flour
32 grams sweet rice flour
1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon fine-grain sea salt

Browning the butter. This takes patience. In a small saucepan set over medium-low heat, melt the butter. Don't touch it. It will start to foam and bubble. Don't touch it. Suddenly it will turn clear, and you'll think you are there. Don't touch it. When the butter turns brown and smells wonderful, touch it. At this stage, the butter can burn quickly. Take the pan off the heat and set aside the butter to cool.

Preparing to bake. Preheat the oven to 350°. Line a 9-inch cast-iron skillet with a circle of parchment paper, buttered on both sides. (Michael Ruhlman just put up a useful sort of post about how to cut a circle of parchment paper.)

Making the buckle batter. Guess what? You won't need a stand mixer for this. Whisk the superfine brown rice flour, amaranth flour, potato starch, and sweet rice flour together, along with the guar gum and xanthan gum. Add the baking powder, salt, and ginger to the bowl. In a separate bowl, stir 1/2 cup of the brown butter and sugar together. Plop in one egg at a time, stirring in between. Stir in the soy milk. Sprinkle the dry ingredients over the wet ingredients, then stir until just combined.

Pour the batter into the pan.

Toss the nectarines and blueberries together with the lemon juice. Arrange them loosely over the top of the cake batter. (If you want to be precise about the arranging, you'll have a beautiful buckle. Me? I wanted to get this cake into the oven. So I'm calling it rustic.)

Making the streusel. Combine the remaining brown butter, sugar, brown rice flour, sweet rice flour, cinnamon and salt. Stir them until the mixture looks like large, damp crumbs. Spread this mixture evenly over the top of the buckle.

Baking the buckle. Slide the cast-iron skillet into the oven. Allow the buckle to bake until the top is golden brown and the cake part is firm. (If you put a toothpick in, you're going to hit wet fruit, as Deb said. Listen to her -- don't overbake this.)

Allow the buckle to cool for 15 minutes, then slice it up.

Feeds 8.

even with the deadline, there are cookies

(We're thrilled that this recipe is being featured at Oprah.com's roundup of holiday recipes for 2009. For more of our featured posts, visit Oprah.com today.)

No time to write a story. Pushing against the deadline, Christmas. Breathing. Still refusing to grow frantic. Instead, I will stay mostly silent here. I will simply say...

these are fantastic.

Read this, then start baking, right now.


SPICY GINGER COOKIES, adapted from Chez Panisse

2 sticks unsalted butter, softened
1 1/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/3 cup molasses
1 1/2 cup sweet white sorghum flour
1 1/2 cup sweet white rice flour
2 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1/2 teaspoon table salt
2 1/2 teaspoon strong cinnamon
3 teaspoon dried ginger
1/8 teaspoon cracked black pepper

Combine all the dry ingredients together. If you have a stand mixer, use it here to mix the flours together well. Move to a separate bowl.

Put the softened butter into the mixer and whirl it around, just a bit. Add the sugar and cream the butter and sugar. Not too much, however — too much will make the cookies spread. ADd the eggs and molasses. Combine everything until has become a coherent mixture.

Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix them until they are just combined, and no more. Stop the mixer.

Prepare a loaf pan by placing a piece of plastic wrap on the bottom, with at least two inches of overhang on either side. Spoon the cookie dough into the loaf pan, then smooth the surface with a spatula. Cover the top with the plastic wrap. Put the loaf pan into the freezer and freeze overnight.

In the morning, preheat the oven to 350°. Remove the loaf pan from the freezer and take the log of dough out of the plastic wrap. Carefully, cut thin slices from the loaf of dough and lay them on a silpat on the baking sheet. (If you don't have a silpat, use parchment paper.) Bake for ten to twelve minutes. The cookies will feel slightly soft to the touch, and possibly underbaked.

Leave the cookies on the baking sheet for at least ten minutes before you try to move them. Transfer them to a cooling rack. Allow them to sit there for another fifteen minutes before eating. (Really. You have to try!) At this point, you can leave the cookies this size, or you can cut them into smaller rectangles for little spicy ginger bites.