Gluten Free Brined Roast Turkey

Because of our Thanksgiving tradition and the Pilgrims, most think the turkey is an American bird. While it is true that wild turkeys were found in America, it was the Aztecs who first domesticated the bird.  

Long before America was settled, the Aztecs had domesticated turkeys for food and for religious sacrifices. They even used their feathers for headdresses, When the Conquistadors came across the Aztecs, they took many riches, including the birds, back to Spain where it was widely accepted. Turkeys eventually made their way to England where, by the 1570s, they were raised throughout the country. They were already part of the Christmas dinner fifty years before the Pilgrims left for the America.

14-15 pound turkey

½ cup Kosher salt

One gallon water

2 carrots, chopped

1 teaspoon dried thyme

2 yellow onions, chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped

2 cups Swanson Chicken Broth

½ cup Chardonnay

½ stick butter, melted

Black pepper

The Night Before: In a large pot, add one gallon of warm water and ½ cup of sea salt to make a salt water solution. Place turkey in water. Add more water if the bird is not completely submerged.

Cooking Day: Remove turkey from water, rinse well under cold running water, and pat dry with heavy paper towels. Preheat oven to 350°F.

In a small bowl, mix together carrots, thyme, onions and celery. Stuff most of the vegetables inside the turkey cavity. Scatter remaining vegetables around the bottom of the roasting pan. Pour chicken broth and Chardonnay over the vegetables in the pan.

Place a rack (flat or V) over the vegetables in the pan, and set turkey on top (breast side down). 

Melt butter in a small sauce pan then brush half the butter over the entire turkey; season with pepper. Set the remaining butter aside. Roast turkey for two hours, breast side down, basting only once.

Remove turkey from oven, and turn the breast side up (Try not to pierce the skin). Brush turkey with remaining butter and season with additional pepper. 

Return turkey to oven and roast for another 2 hours or until a thermometer inserted in the thickest part of the thigh reads 165°F.

Remove turkey from oven and set aside to cool for about 30 minutes. Carve and serve sprinkled with pan droppings.

Gluten Free Cajun Style Southern Fried Okra

 

Okra probably originated somewhere around Ethiopia, and was cultivated by the ancient Egyptians by the 12th century B.C. Its cultivation spread throughout North Africa and the Middle East. The seed pods were eaten cooked, and the seeds were toasted and ground, used as a coffee substitute (and still is).

Okra came to the Caribbean and the U.S. in the 1700s, probably brought by slaves from West Africa, and was introduced to Western Europe soon after. In Louisiana, the Créoles learned from slaves the use of okra (gumbo) to thicken soups and it is now an essential in Créole Gumbo

 

  

  

 

When okra is fried, it takes on a whole different flavor. Most recipes call for the okra to be breaded in a mixture of cornmeal and flour. From a gluten-free perspective, cornmeal does a great job all by itself and yields a crunchier end product. A word of warning: Buy corn meal...not cornmeal mix. Cornmeal mix includes wheat flour, baking powder, and baking soda...normally for those who use it to make cornbread. The packaging looks the same...... so be sure to read the packaging and the labels very carefully.

 

1 lb. fresh okra

cornmeal

canola oil

salt

1/2 tsp. Cayenne Pepper (or to taste)

Using a large cast iron skillet, pour in about an inch of oil and heat over medium until the oil sizzles when you drop a bit of cornmeal in. Trim the ends off of the okra, and cut into ½ inch slices. By the time you finish cutting the okra, it should be getting slimy. This is the glue that holds the cornmeal to it okra. If the okra is not getting slimy, add a splash of water and stir.

Place okra into a large plastic freezer and pour in enough cornmeal to completely cover the okra. Add the cayenne to the bag and toss the okra and cornmeal so that all of the pieces are coated. If you need more cornmeal (or cayenne), don't hesitate to add more.

Once the oil is hot enough, use a slotted spoon to remove a few pieces of okra from the bag and place it into the oil. Continue adding okra to the oil until the skillet is almost full. Leave room for the okra to move around as it cooks. Fry the okra for several minutes; stirring gently occasionally to encourage even frying on all sides until golden brown.

Once brown on all sides, remove and place on a place covered with paper towels.

Season with salt and serve immediately.  

 

 

 

 

Gluten Free Maryland Pan Fried Oysters

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Oysters & the Chesapeake Bay

The word “Chesapeake” actually means “Great Shellfish Bay” from the Algonquian Indian language. Oysters have influenced the nature of the Chesapeake and those who live near it for centuries. While oysters can be found around the world, most are most familiar with the American oyster that lives the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. 

Now, low in numbers, oysters in the Chesapeake were in such abundance that an early English settler wrote in 1612, “Oysters there be in whole banks and beds, and those of the best. I have seen some thirteen inches long.” (Strachey 1953). In 1701, Francis Louis Michel a visitor to the Chesapeake from Switzerland, wrote, “The abundance of oysters is incredible. There are whole banks of them so that the ships must avoid them. . . . They surpass those in England by far in size, indeed, they are four times as large. I often cut them in two, before I could put them into my mouth.”

The earliest evidence of the oyster being used as food dates to around 4,500 years ago. Shell deposits, called “middens”, were formed as people harvested shellfish and dumped the empty shells in the same location repeatedly over the centuries. The earliest middens have oysters mixed with soft shell clams, ribbed mollusks, periwinkles and other shellfish, showing that the Chesapeake Indians were initially eating a wide variety of species. Over time, use of the other types declined, and oysters became the preferred shellfish and a permanent element in the annual food cycle of Chesapeake people (Waselkov 1982; Potter 1993). 

Despite the oyster’s currently low numbers, it remains a central figure in our collective sense of the Bay, deeply imbedded in the culture, heritage, and lore of the region.

1 pint raw, shucked oysters

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup Bob's Red Mill GF All Purpose Flour 

2 tsp Rumford Baking Powder 

1 tsp salt

½ to 1 tsp Old Bay 

2 medium eggs 

2 tbsp milk

cooking oil

In a large bowl, mix cornmeal, flour, baking powder, and salt.

Beat eggs and mix with milk in a small bowl.

Dip oysters, one at a time, in egg/milk mixture.

Dredge oysters (individually) through flour mix until thoroughly coated.

Carefully place oysters in a large skillet in oil at medium-high temperature. Cook until golden brown on each side.

Makes eight

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Gluten Free Eastern Shore Style Sweet Potato Biscuits

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Sweet Potato or Yam?

The confusion between yams and sweet potatoes dates from European contact, when Columbus encountered sweet potatoes for the first time and conceived them to be a variety of yam—the edible West African tubers of the Dioscorea family had been well known to Europeans since the Portuguese voyages along the continent’s west coast in the 1460s and ‘70s. He brought examples to Europe from the second voyage. Yet African yams never established a substantial presence on the North American mainland; but sweet potatoes did. When enslaved Africans encountered sweet potatoes in the West Indies, they processed them as they did the yams that they brought with them over the Atlantic. They did not eat them raw, as livestock did. They shredded, pounded, leached, boiled, roasted or fried them—the cooking processes designed to counteract the toxicity of the raw African yam. Though baking was not a West African culinary technique, contact with Europeans and their bread fixations taught West Indian slaves to bake the sweet potatoes into breads, pones, and pies.

Beth Messick, Contributor

1 heaping c. mashed sweet potatoes
(about 3 or four medium sized potatoes)

2 Tbsp. sugar

1 tsp. salt

1/2 c. shortening (or butter, if you prefer)

3 c. Bob's Red Mill All Purpose Gluten Free Flour

3 tsp. baking powder

Boil potatoes in skins, peel and mash. Add sugar, salt, and shortening to warm potatoes.

Sift flour and baking powder together. Add to potato mixture.

Add water to make consistency of biscuit dough.

Knead a few times to make smooth. Form into biscuits.
Place on a well greased baking pan.

Bake at 450 degrees about 12-15 minutes until light brown.

Makes about 16 biscuits