Quick, Delicious, Dairy and Soy Free Indian Food

First let me start by saying I'm sorry I haven't had time to take pretty pictures for my posts. The fact that I'm able to find time to post still amazes me, given that I'm juggling so much at home these days. That being said, I'll try in the future to get some good pictures of the food I make, as that's one of my favorite things about looking at other blogs. HA!

But back to the subject of this post....Indian food. I love it. I've never cooked much at home, but I like going to Indian buffets a lot. At least I used to. Now that I'm dairy and soy free, I don't dare, since most Indian food has yogurt in it, and you can never be sure at a buffet what's in the food you're eating. So last week I was shopping at Costco with my father, and started perusing products looking for things I could eat...and boy did I hit the jack pot. In the refrigerated section where they sell pesto, salsa, etc. I found Maya Kaimal Indian Cocount Curry Simmering Sauce. It's dairy and soy free (not that the ingredients list on their web site says it contains vegetable oil (which is usually soybean oil), but the ingredients on the actual package say canola oil, so it's OK).

Tonight, we tried the sauce, along with homemade roti (a sort of Indian flat bread) that I made from scratch. It was AWESOME!!! If you like Indian food and have a Costco near you, run run run out and buy this sauce. It's super tasty and really fast to throw together for dinner. Here's the rundown....

Indian Coconut Curry with Chicken and Green Beans

Serves 3-4

1/2 container Maya Kaimal Coconut Curry Indian Simmer Sauce

1 1/5 lbs. skinless boneless chicken breast, cut into bite-sized pieces

1 cup fresh green beans, trimmed
Canola oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Lightly coat the bottom of a nonstick pan with canola oil, and cook the chicken until it's mostly done. Pour the coconut curry sauce into the pan with the chicken, and simmer for 5-6 minutes. Add the trimmed green beans, and simmer until the beans are just slightly tender and the chicken is cooked through. Season with salt and pepper as needed.

Serve over white rice, with Roti on the side (I used this recipe for roti, following it exactly, except I used canola oil instead of vegetable oil).
Next time I'm going to toss in some cauliflower too - and potatoes would also be awesome.

Quick Tip: Make your own cooking spray

Today I thought I'd share a great tip that really helps make cooking dairy/soy free easier - especially baking.

As many of you probably already know, cooking sprays, such as PAM, contain soy lecithin, so they're off limits. This is a real bummer, since most baking recipes call for cooking sprays to grease the pans.

Well, no problem! Simply invest in an inexpensive oil sprayer, like the Misto, and fill it with canola oil, and you're good to go. These sprayers aren't great, but you can get one for under $10, so who cares if they break or don't work perfectly. Other than having to pump mine repeatedly to coat a large area, I've been happy with mine. So happy baking!

Tasty Scones

This weekend I had some leftover sweetened MimicCream that I wanted to use up, so I decided to try it out in baking (something I hadn't done before). I wanted to substitute it 1:1 with cream in a recipe, to see how it tasted, and I needed it to be in something sweet, since the MimicCream was the sweetened version. I decided to make scones, and after some looking online, I found an Alton Brown recipe with good reviews. My 3-year-old and I whipped up a batch with minimal modifications. The end result - really tasty scones that I would definitely make again! In fact, I had my husband try one, and he really liked it. And I should note that he hates nuts, and confirmed that you could not taste the almonds or cashews in the MimicCream.

Overall, I was really impressed with the baking ability of the MimicCream. The only disappointment was in the recipe itself - these are not traditional scones - they really seemed more like a sweet biscuit, but they were still really good hot out of the oven, and heated up in the toaster oven the next day.

Note: I have found MimicCream at Whole Foods. If you can't find it locally and want to give it a try, you can get it from Amazon.com.

Dairy and Soy Free Scones

recipe adapted from Alton Brown's Scone recipe

Ingredients

• 2 cups flour
• 4 teaspoons baking powder
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 6 tablespoons Spectrum brand shortening
• 3/4 cup Sweetened Mimic Cream
• 1 egg

Directions

Heat oven to 375 degrees.

In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, baking powder, and salt. Mix well. Cut in shortening. In a separate bowl, combine Mimic Cream with beaten egg then add to dry ingredients. Turn dough out onto a floured surface. Roll dough out and cut into biscuit size rounds. Bake for 15 minutes or until brown.

RICE PUDDING!!!!

Before I cut dairy and soy from my diet, I was a total rice pudding junkie. I made it several times a week and ate it for breakfast, dessert, and snacks. I was addicted. And my favorite (only) version was Dave Lieberman's. So when I had to stop eating diary and soy, I searched and searched for a decent rice pudding recipe that I could substitute nut or coconut milk in. Saddly, nothing compared to my good Dave Lieberman standby.
Now fast foward to a recent Whole Foods shopping trip....while in the "dairy" section, I came across a product I hadn't seen before...MimicCreme.
The product claims you can substitute it where ever you would use cream...in your coffee, in recipes, to make ice cream, etc. It's made from almonds and cashews, but unlike the other nut milks, it doesn't have a strong nut flavor (in my opinion). I got the unsweetened, but it also comes in sweetened and sugarfree sweetened.
Last night I tried my Dave Lieberman rice pudding recipe, subing equal parts unsweetened MimicCreme for the milk. It came out GREAT! My only complained about MimicCreme is it's color...it's a bit dirty looking, and my rice pudding ended up looking a bit gray...but it tasted FANTASTIC!

Here's the recipe, with my minor modifications for a dairy/soy-free diet...enjoy!

Dave Lieberman's Rice Pudding

1 cup water
Pinch salt
1/2 cup Arborio rice
2 cups unsweetened MimicCreme
4 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
Few dashes ground cinnamon
Plain rice milk, for thinning (if serving cold)

Directions
Bring water and salt to a boil in a medium saucepan. Add the rice, return to a boil, and then reduce the heat to the lowest setting. Shake the pan occasionally and cook until rice has absorbed the water but it still al dente, about 15 minutes.
Bring MimicCreme, sugar, vanilla, and a few dashes of cinnamon to a simmer in a separate saucepan. Add the cooked rice and cook at a simmer over medium-low heat until rice absorbs most of the liquid and mixture starts to get thick and silky, about 10 to 15 minutes.
Transfer pudding to a large bowl and cool to room temperature. Place in refrigerator until cool and set. Pudding will thicken in the fridge - so thin it with some plain rice milk when you're ready to eat it. Tastes great served with fresh raspberries or blueberries (or mix in some frozen ones). YUM!

Impatiently waiting....

There are a bunch of new dairy and soy-free products about to hit the market that I'm REALLY excited to try. The two biggies include a new yogurt called Nu Lait.

They have 5 flavors, 4 of which are coconut-based and 1 that is nut-based. The flavor combos sound really interesting. They have a Web site, but it's still under construction. You can read a review by an early taste tester here.

The other product I'm incredibly excited about is a soy-free margarine by Earth Balance. As you probably have already discovered, there really isn't any version of margarine avaliable to soy-free folks. Being able to cook, bake, or simply add a pat of "butter" to a baked potato is going to make life so much better! I know it sounds silly, but it's easy to feel sorry for yourself when you can't butter your toast in the morning.

This soy-free Earth Balance is suppose to hit stores in May, so keep your eyes peeled! I'll be stalking the local Whole Foods until it turns up!

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly - My Thoughts on Hemp Milk

I'd been hearing a lot about hemp milk as an alternative to soy milk and dairy, so I finally got around to buying a box and giving it a try. I'll be honest. I thought it was completely undrinkable - tasted exactly like drinking chalk...OK, I've never actually consummed chalk, but at least it tasted like what I imagine drinking chalk would taste like. I threw the box away, discouraged and alittle irritated, since it was dang expensive!

Then the other day I was on a shopping adventure in the local Whole Foods. I don't usually shop at Whole Foods, but when I want to load up the pantry and fridge with dairy/soy free stuff, I drag myself over there since they have a great selection.

Anyhow, I was perusing the frozen food section when I stumbled upon a new product...Tempt by Living Harvest. It's ice cream made from hemp milk.

Now, I realize I just finished saying how nasty hemp milk is, but I've been on a quest to find a good alternative for vanilla ice cream. The coconut-based ice creams make vanilla, but they have a pretty distinct coconut flavor that just doesn't work when you're looking for a pie a la mode experience. And most rice milk based ice creams contain soy. So I was willing to give hemp milk another try. Even the guy bagging my groceries was excited by Tempt. He hadn't seen it on the shelves yet and wanted to know what I thought. So grocery bagging guy, if you're reading this, here's what I thought....vanilla hemp milk ice cream by Tempt is....YUM!

It is really the closest thing I've found to vanilla ice cream. It's got a good creamy taste and texture, and there aren't really any strong flavors coming through, other than vanilla. Managed to get the hubby to taste a tiny bit (he was resistant), and he said it was actually decent, although perhaps a bit thick for his tastes. But that's pretty high praise, since I can't even get him to sniff the coconut and rice milk based ice creams. HA!

I had some with a piece of pear pie and it was really good. I'm going to try it in a root beer float this weekend. I've been craving one of those for months now!

So long story short, I'd steer clear of hemp milk for drinking, but if your local grocery store happens to carry Tempt, I'd encourage you to give it a try. I've heard hemp milk is good for cooking, but I haven't tried that and if I'm honest, I probably won't. Sorry.

Really Good Chocolate

I've found that treating myself is even more important, now that I'm dairy and soy free. I just need that extra little something decadent. Finding dairy-free chocolate isn't that hard, but finding chocolate that also happens to be soy-free can be challenging. Lucky for us, there is some excellent, organic, and fairy traded chocolate bars that fit the bill. Introducing Equal Exchange Chocolates!
Not all of their chocolate bars are dairy and soy free. Of course you have to avoid the milk chocolate varieties. But they do have a good selection of "safe" chocolate. My personal favorites include:

• Dark Chocolate with Almonds
• Dark Chocolate with Pure Cocoa Nibs
• Chocolate with Espresso Beans

Go ahead - have some chocolate!

Purely Decadent and Soy/Dairy Free!

One of my biggest hurdles with a dairy/soy free diet is that ice cream is off the menu. I LOVE ice cream. When I was pregnant with my daughter, it was one of my biggest cravings...cliche, I know, but true. So giving up ice cream was hard. Still is. I miss it. Thankfully, life as I know it is not over because...drum roll, please....there are alternatives.....

First let me say that it is absolutely imparative that you read labels. Things that seem like they might be safe are not always. For example, there are a lot of rice milk-based ice creams on the market. They taste pretty good and there are a plethora of flavors to satisfy most cravings. But many of them contain soy. So always check. I think that should be my motto. HA!

In any case, this post is suppose to be a product review, so I'll get to it.

The best alternative I've found to dairy ice cream is coconut milk ice cream. It's actually really good, although not exactly the healthiest of choices...but hey, who ever said ice cream was healthy? Am I right?

Purely Decadent has several coconut milk ice cream flavors. My favorite is their chocolate.

They also have vanilla bean (which has a pretty strong coconut flavor, in my opinion), coconut, passionate mango, and mocha almond fudge, which is quite good. If you don't like coconut, this product is probably not for you. The chocolate and mocha almond fudge flavors have a pretty subtle coconut flavor, but if you're a coconut hater, like my husband, you will taste it.

Now back to my motto - always check the labels! Purely Decadent makes a few delicious sounding coconut ice creams that DO contain soy...the above mentioned flavors are safe though. OK. 'Nough said. Happy ice cream eating!

Product Review: Lake Champlain Mocha Hot Chocolate Mix

I mentioned this product in my post on making iced lattes and mochas. So if you haven't read that post, be sure to check it out.

As you may have already discovered, it's hard to find a hot chocolate mix that doesn't contain dairy or the ever evil soy lechtin. Recently, I discovered this great brand at Whole Foods: Lake Champlain Mocha Hot Chocolate Mix

I tried making hot chocolate with it, using both rice milk and oat milk, and neither was particularly appealing. Rice milk works OK, but it doesn't mask that rice milk flavor - if you've tried using rice milk in lattes, you know what I mean. :)

However, I have found a great use for this product! It's excellent added to your morning cup of coffee. I find oat milk makes a nice replacer for half and half, so if you want a good cup of coffee, make a nice strong cup with your favorite beans, add some oat milk, and a heaping spoonful of this mocha hot chocolate mix. Yum! Definitely a good way to start the day.