Sometimes You Are The Stick And Sometimes You Are The Pinata, But You're Always Gluten Free.

    A few days ago @AlecBaldwin who I follow on Twitter, and who is probably one of the wittiest guys out there, sent out a Tweet that I found truly inspiring. "Sometimes You Are The Stick and Sometimes You Are The Pinata." It gave me pause. It was short and sweet and almost "Dudeist" in it's purity. Pure Alec. I had him on my radio show in Los Angeles as co-host a couple of times and he always rocked the house.
  Stick, pinata, that's it in a nutshell. And it was one of those sorts of days. I was thinking about a few friends of mine who were truly having their paper mache donkey moment. Of course we've all been there, where fate is an over-sugared 5 year old with a baseball bat and we're just twisting in the wind.
  A very good friend of mine is recovering from a pretty bad horse back riding accident. She's been flat on her back for the last couple of months and all of us have been trying to help out as best we can. But if that weren't enough a few weeks before her accident, she discovered she was gluten intolerant! So picture this. Flat on your back with a busted whatever and not even the comfort of a brownie or a cookie. Stick, meet pinata.
   Luckily a lot of the Indian recipes that I make regularly are naturally gluten free, but I really was searching for something outside my regular recipe list. I started reading up on how to make gluten free treats, cookies, cakes, shortbreads and pies. I stocked up on gluten free flour and xanthan gum, tapioca flour and almond meal.
   So there I was with all these gluten free tools and not too sure how to use them. I know I'm going to eventually master the art of Western style baking without the gluten, but I needed to be able to make something like...yesterday.  I needed to bring Terri something sweet and crunchy that would be easy to make with readily available ingredients that I didn't have to study up on. I wanted a fast train to cookie town. And boy howdey! Did I get a great answer to my gluten difficulty. Right through the email ether I got a recipe from my friend Bibi in Katmandu with the golden cookie of desire.
   A few weeks ago I happened to have made some very delicious though gluten-riddled Rose Pistachio Cookies. The next day Bibi sent me an email. It turns out her mom-in-law makes a very similar cookie to the one I wrote about. She also passed along a couple of intriguing cookie recipes, one of which was gluten free! I'm going to be making all the various cookie recipes she sent me, but the first one I decided to try was the gluten free one made with besan, or chickpea flour aka garbanzo flour. I tested it this last weekend on our guests for my Indo-French, Bastille Day Feast and it was a hit. See. All gone. Fast. And just to be honest, not a single person at the lunch had any gluten issues.

   The cookies came together almost as fast as they were gobbled up. They're just as easy to make as any old gluten cookie, and did I say they were good? They are. If you want to venture into the gluten free arena, here's what to do.

 In a large bowl mix together:
   2 sticks of unsalted butter
   1/2 cup of sugar
   1/4 cup of brown sugar or jaggery. If you'd like a crisper more shortbread-like cookie (I did) use    1/4 cup of powdered sugar instead.
 Beat the butter and the sugars together until it's all light and fluffy.

Add in:
 2 eggs
 1/4 tsp of salt
 1/2 tsp of baking powder
 1/2 tsp of baking soda
 1 tsp of ground cardamom
Keep beating until it's smooth.
Gradually beat in 3 and 1/4 cups of besan (chickpea or garbanzo flour) at a low speed.
 Just a note: This can be difficult as things tend to get rather stiff and sticky, but keep a goin'. You"ll finally get a nice thick dough.
 Add in:
  3/4 cup of grated dried unsweetened coconut

Divide the dough into three sections and roll each into a ball and then into 10 inch long logs of dough.

Set the logs of dough on some waxed paper and roll them up

Tuck the logs into the fridge for at least 30 minutes. If you'd like to bake these cookies later, the cookie dough logs can also be frozen. When you want to bake the cookies, just take them out, slice off as many cookies as you'd like and bake away.

But say you'd like to have these cookies right now. Immediately, almost. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Wait the 30 minutes and line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. Slice off the number of cookies you'd like to bake and pop them into the oven.
 Bake them for about 10 minutes, turn off the oven and then let them rest for about 5 minutes before taking them out.
 Crunchy, crispy, delicious, I served them with a kaffir lime mousse.

 The cookies were so popular they were all gone. Boom! What Alan doesn't know (well once he reads this he will) is there are 2 other cookie logs in the freezer all ready to go. I'm going to be baking them up tomorrow. Stick. Pinata. Here's hoping that when she gets these cookies Terri will not feel like she's leaking Tootsie Roll Pops anymore.
@kathygori

Flowery Cookies For A Summer Party

   
"The road to hell is paved with good intentions", ever hear that one? It's usually delivered by someone who's very, very disappointed in you, like Sister Mary Juanita who's noticed that the flowers you brought in to class so that you could have the honor of crowning The May Queen still have the roots on them... and dirt. And the lady down the street from you has called the school about the little girl who had climbed over her fence in her school uniform and was ripping flowers out of her front yard. It's not about you wanting to crown the statue of Mary, it's about flower thievery, and Mary doesn't roll that way.
   So what did I learn from that? Don't break into the neighbors yard in your sailor collar, middy blouse and little navy blue beret with a stem, school uniform (note to Little Kathy: Next time go ninja.) And always have a back-up plan. Yes, the road to hell truly is paved with good intentions...it's also paved with desserts as I recently discovered.
   I'd set out to make a coconut pudding, but alas had no young coconut, and you know what they say about mature coconut...not flattering. So I moved on to pineapple pudding. Sounded good and I had plenty of "Telephone Brand" agar agar I'd gotten at my favorite Thai market. Yeah sure. "Telephone Brand." Word to the wise: Don't buy food items that are named after appliances or hardware. Also don't buy a bag of something with no printing, directions or illustrations of any kind on it. And also while I'm at it, don't think that you are so freaking smart you don't need anything like that. Pure hubris. I plunged into the pineapple pudding experiment with both left feet.
  So, as I was pouring my wretched, rancid, grainy-tasting pineapple pudding into the garbage, I realized I had company coming in a few hours, 7 or 8 dishes as part of my Indian dinner, and no dessert. I needed a back up plan. Fast.
   I learned long ago when in doubt...make ice cream. The Cuisinart ice cream maker I bought a few years ago has been worth it's weight in gold or at least gelato, and whenever I'm in a pinch I grab it. I decided to make a rose water ice cream, but somehow it seemed like it wasn't going to be enough.
   I turned to Lord Google and grabbed a cookie wave. It washed me ashore at the UK paper "The Telegraph" and their food writer Diana Henry. In among stories about who catered the Queen's Garden Party, (no, not Guy Fieri. Greggs) and a restaurant giving back a Michelin star to attract local diners who wanted lower prices... sort of like Lady Gaga taking the veil. Oh wait, she already has, multiple times...

In the middle of a this I found a recipe for rose pistachio biscuits, (cookies in Ammerricun) I was in!

Rosewater Pistachio Cookies

Here's what to do:
 In a large bowl mix together
  1 stick of softened unsalted butter
  4 and 1/2 Tbs of powdered sugar
 Beat them together with an electric mixer on low (mustn't over mix)
 Then add in:
  1/4 cup of roughly ground unsalted pistachios

 1 cup of plain flour
 1/2 tsp of baking powder
 1 Tbs rosewater

Mix them in by hand (mustn't over-mix.)

  The recipe warns this may be a little difficult, but I felt that the dough came together pretty easily.
Roll it into a ball, wrap it in a bit of saran wrap (clingfilm if you're classy) stick it in the fridge for about 20 minutes so that it firms up, (If only life were as easy as cookies) and the dough is made.
  While that is going on....
 Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
 Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper.
After the dough has firmed a bit, break it into walnut sized pieces and flatten them into rounds.

 Bake the cookies for 15 minutes or a little more. They're done when they start to turn a bit golden. They should still be a bit soft, they harden as they cool.
While the cookies are cooling, sprinkle them with a bit more rosewater.

 When they're a bit cooler, slide the cookies off the sheet and onto  a cooling rack.

Sift the cookies with a bit of powdered sugar.

Before serving the cookies, sprinkle each with a tiny bit of ground pistachios and ground cardamom.
Serve them up.

 Our friend Heikki enjoyed them.

And that's even before he got his tea...

  And his ice cream.

   So did the fall-back cookies do the trick? You bet. They were a perfect match for the ice cream and the perfect finish for a spicy, South Indian dinner. I can't wait to make them again. Sometimes the road to good intentions is paved with cookies. Coming up next, an unexpected treat that may push potato chips off the table. Yes, really. Follow along on Twitter @kathygori