Kreplach (dumplings) GF/ Super-Easy non-GF way

Kreplach are little doughy dumplings stuffed with different fillings and usually served in a clear soup or broth. They are a traditional dish for Rosh Hashana and for the pre-fast meal on Yom Kippur.

This post contains two versions of kreplach: first, an easy trick (not really a recipe) for making regular kreplach very very quickly and with minimum hassle. Then a gluten free version, taken from here. 

For both versions I'm not including a recipe for filling, because there are various fillings you can try. My family usually uses one of those eggplant-based vegetarian  "chopped liver" spreads as the filling because it resembles the original meaty filling usually used in kreplach. You can also use sauteed mushrooms with onion. Since I'm a fan of neither mushrooms nor eggplants, I use mashed potatoes with golden fried onions as my fillings. Whichever filling you choose, you can use it for both the regular and the gluten free versions of this recipe.

One final word: Kreplach are a traditional dish, and a result it is perfectly ok if they look a bit "rustic". Don't worry about it if you don't get perfect, beautiful shapes, especially with the gluten free version. They will be just as delicious if the look a bit wonky.

Kreplach 

Above: Gluten Free version 

 Above: Regular (but easy) version

For regular kreplach: 

As I said, this is not so much a recipe as a "trick" for making them quickly and easily. Instead of working hard to prepare a dough, chill it, roll it thin and cut it... go to your local market and buy a pack of prepared and pre-cut wonton skins.

To make the kreplach, lay a wonton skin on your cook surface. Place about 1 heaping teaspoon of filling at its center. Take another skin and brush it with water place it (water side down) on the first skin and press down. To make a pretty envelope shape, fold two sides of the wrappers into the middle, sticking them down with water. If you prefer smaller, more delicate kreplach, use just one wrapper, put less filling, brush the sides with water and close it in on itself.

Boil some water in a pot, lightly salt them, then cook the kreplach in the water for just a few minutes, until they are soft and vaguely translucent.  You can prepare the kreplach in advance and freeze them.

For gluten free kreplach: 
Ingredients: 

- 150g (5 ½ oz ) Rice Flour
- plus a extra to help roll.
- 75g ( 3oz) Chickpea (garbanzo) flour
- 2 large eggs
- 2 tablespoons water
- Pinch salt
- Kreplach filling

 Preparation: 


1. Combine the flours and salt in a bowl. Make a well in the center and add the eggs and water. Stir until a dough forms. If it is too dry, add a little bit more water. If too wet, a bit more flour. Cover and allow to rest for at least 30 minutes in the fridge. 


2. If after 30 minutes your dough seems relatively workable (a bit sticky, but not too much) follow this step. If it seems too sticky, go to #3. Place a piece of parchment paper on your work surface and generously flour it with GF flour. place your dough on it, flour the top of it, and cover with another piece of parchment paper. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough out until it is quite thin (as thin as you can manage without the dough sticking completely to the paper. 


2b. Slice the dough into squares. Top each square with some filling, wet the sides with water or egg whites, and close it by folding it into a triangle, making sure to stick the edges. Repeat this for all of the dough.


3. If after 30 minutes the dough seems too sticky to roll out : generously flour the top of the dough, and also your hands. Take a little round of dough in your hand and pat it down until it is relatively thin (as thing as you can manage without it falling apart or sticking). Put a bit of filling in the center of the dough, and then using your hands close the dough over the filling. If necessary, add a bit more dough to close it over. 


4. Regardless of how you formed your kreplach, boil some water in a pot, slightly salt them, add a bit of oil to prevent sticking, and cook the kreplach for about five minutes, or until fully cooked. (If they came out relatively thick, you may need to cook a bit longer). 

Gluten Free Round Challah

It's the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashana) tonight, and round challah bread is a traditional holiday food. The roundness of the challah symbolizes the circular nature of time, the fact that one year ends and another begins.

Several years ago I was determined to serve a gluten free challah for Rosh Hashana. I tried five different recipes, all of which came out wrong. Some looked pretty but tasted awful, while others tasted reasonable but baked up completely flat and failed to resemble a challah at all. And then I found this recipe from Gluten Free Sox Fan. The dough it made was sufficiently workable that I could actually create a nice round shape and the resulting bread was a decent approximation of challah.
I won't lie to you - it's not as good as the real thing. The bread is denser and less fluffy than real challah bread. But, it was good enough that when I served it to a table full of non-GF people, they all ate it and asked for seconds. 

Shana Tova!

Gluten Free Round Challah 

Ingredients (for one medium sized challah): 

- 1 cup warm water
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1 1/2 teaspoons yeast
- 1 egg
- 2 egg yolks
- 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1 teaspoon vinegar (I used apple cider vinegar)
- 3/4 cup brown rice flour
- 3/4 cup white rice flour
- 1/2 cup corn starch
- 1/2 cup tapioca starch
- 1/4 cup potato starch
- 1 tablespoon xanthan gum
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 egg, beaten, for egg wash (I used egg yolk, just because I had some left over from another recipe)

Preparation: 

1. Put the warm water, sugar and yeast in a small bowl and set aside until the yeast begins to rise and bubble (a few minutes).

2. In another small bowl, whisk together the egg, egg yolks, oil and vinegar (the egg may take on a strange consistency. This is fine).

3. In a large mixer bowl combine the brown rice flour, white rice flour, corn starch, tapioca starch, potato starch, xanthan gum and salt. Mix for a minute or so just to combine. Add the egg mixture and the yeast mixture, and knead using your mixer's dough hook until a dough is formed. (If you don't have a mixer, you can do this using a spoon/hands).

4. Lightly flour a piece of parchment paper with GF flour. Turn the dough out onto the floured surface and turn into a ball. Oil a bowl (I used the used mixer bowl) and put the dough in it, rolling it in the oil to coat. Cover the bowl with a clean kitchen towel and leave to rise about 30 minutes or until dough has doubled in size.

5. Preheat oven to 350 F/175 C. Line a baking tin with parchment paper. Gently take the oily dough out of the bowl and form into a rough circle. I found the dough was slightly difficult to work with, but sufficiently handable that it was possible to create a round shape, albeit not a very perfect one. Cover with a kitchen towel and allow to rise again for about 20 minutes. 

6. Brush the challah with egg wash, and bake for about 20 minutes, or until the challah looks ready and makes a slightly hollow sound when tapped on the bottom.

 

 

Caramel Ice Cream Sandwiches

This amazing (and sinful) dessert appears in the most recent Food and Wine magazine.It's a delicious hazelnut cookie, topped with a crunchy mixture of nutella, white chocolate and ice cream cones, and filled with caramel ice cream. Store-bought ice cream will do fine, but of course if you really want to invest, make some of your own. In case it wasn't obvious from the description, these are very sweet, so cut them into small rectangles and be forewarned.

It looked so good that I just had to try making it, and it tasted even better than it looks, which is one reason for posting it. The other reason is that I made this entire thing gluten free.

Caramel Ice Cream Sandwiches 

Ingredients (for 18 ice cream sandwiches): 

- 1 cup hazelnuts (The recipe calls for whole. I used chopped)

- 1 cup confectioner's sugar 

- 2 tbsp all purpose flour (gluten free all purpose also works) 

- 4 large egg whites

- Pinch of salt 

- 1/4 cup granulated sugar

- 4 oz (about 100 grams) white chocolate

- 1 cup nutella (I actually only had about 3/4 cup and it was fine)

- 6 ice cream "sugar cones" (gluten free cones work well), crushed

- 1 pint (a few scoops) caramel ice cream, soft enough to scoop 

Preparation: 

1. Preheat oven to 375 F/180 C. If you are using whole hazelnuts, put them in a pan and roast in the oven for about 12 minutes, until the skins split. Put the nuts in a clean kitchen towel, cool, and then rub them together to remove the skins. If you are using chopped hazelnuts you can just roast them for a few minutes on a dry pan on a medium flame or in the oven. Either way, put the roasted nut in a food processor, add the confectioner's sugar and the flour, and process until the nuts are finely ground. 

2. In a large mixer bowl, beat the egg whites with the salt until soft peaks form. Beat in the granulated sugar gradually, and keep beating until the whites are stiff. Gently fold in the nut mixture. Cover a baking tin with baking parchment paper and spread the batter on the parchment in a 9X2 inch (about 23X30 cm) rectangle. Bake in the still-hot oven for 20 minutes, until golden. Turn off the oven, open the oven door, and let the pastry cool in the oven with the door open for about an hour. 

3. In a microwave safe bowl, melt the white chocolate in 30 second increments, stirring between each increment, until smooth. Add the nutella and the crushed ice cream cones and stir.

4. Invert the cooled pastry onto a surface, peel off the parchment, and spread evenly with the nutella filling. Cut the pastry rectangle in half, so that you have two smaller rectangles. freeze both until the filling is set (this doesn't take very long). Spread ice cream over one half of the pastry, then close the sandwich and freeze for at least 4 hours. Slice into smaller rectangles and serve. The sliced rectangles will also keep quite well in an airtight container in the freezer.

Rice-crust Tart with Tomato and Goat Cheese

First, apologies for the long delay since the last post. Things have been getting a bit busy lately, so I'll be posting a bit less, but I'm still here and cooking.

Now on to the food: Rice makes for a lovely, crispy, filling tart crust, without all the butter associated with proper pastry crust. Not to mention, it's naturally gluten free! I make all kinds of different tarts with rice, but this particular recipe is modified from The Essential Vegetarian Cookbook.
The crispy rice crust is topped with freshly roasted tomatoes, garlic and goat cheese. For the version in the picture I used a bit too much rice, which made it difficult to fill and so less elegant to look at, but still delicious.

Rice-crust Tart with Tomatoes and Goat Cheese

Ingredients (for one 25cm/10 inch tart, serves 4-6): 

For the rice crust:

- 1 cup brown or white rice (uncooked)

- 1/2 cup (60 grams/2 oz) grated cheddar cheese or similar cheese 

- 1 egg, lightly beaten 

For the filling:

-5-6 small tomatoes or plum/roma tomatoes, cut into halves

-6 cloves of garlic, unpeeled

- 1 tbsp olive oil or olive oil spray 

- fresh ground black pepper

- salt 

- fresh thyme and/or chives

- 50 grams/about 2 oz fresh goat cheese, crumbled 

- 3 eggs, lightly beaten

- 1/4 cup of milk 

 Preparation: 

1. Preheat oven to 200C/400 F. Cook the rice in plenty of boiling water until tender (about 20 minutes for white rice, 30-40 minutes for brown). Drain and allow to cool slightly. 

2.  While the rice is cooking, place the tomato halves, cut-side up, on a baking tin. Also place the whole garlic cloves. Lightly brush/spray with olive oil and season with pepper. Bake for 30 minutes, remove from the oven, and allow to cool somewhat. Peel the garlic.

3.  Add the cheese and egg from the crust recipe to the rice and mix well. Season with a bit of salt and pepper. 

4. Lightly grease/oil a pie or quiche tin, 25 cm/10 inch in diameter. Line the bottom and sides of the dish with the rice mixture, to create a crust. Bake the crust in the oven for 15 minutes, then take out.  

5. Reduce oven temperature to 180 C/350F. Arrange the tomato haves and garlic on the crust. Sprinkle the crumbles goat cheese over and between the tomatoes and garlic. 

6. In a bowl, combine the milk and the eggs. Finely chop the herbs and add to the mixture. Season with a bit of salt of and pepper, then pour the mixture over the tart filling. Don't worry if the egg mixture doesn't cover the tomatoes. The dish will still taste great. Bake in the oven for 45 minute to an hour, or until the egg mixture sets.