gluten free – UrbanMonique

Pão de Queijo – Brazilian cheese bread

Just got home from a brief biz trip to New Orleans. It was in the 70s and 80s, mostly sunny, humidity not too bad. And here, well… Let’s just say that the Great Pacific Northwet is living up to its name – It’s 44° F, raining heavily, and the next week’s forecast is for more of the same. As M headed for work, she gave me the lowdown, “There’s crack ham in the fridge, (AKA, honey baked – She worked there for a time back when, and she’s right – it is), so if you want to make split pea soup, go for it.” I do, and I am, but this kinda weather calls for serious comfort food reinforcements – In this case, Pão de Queijo – Brazilian cheese bread.

How I ended up here is lovely serendipity. I planned on making either biscuits or corn bread, but was plowing through some social media food groups I belong to, and in of all places, my favorite Vietnamese cooking group, somebody mentioned having made Brazilian cheese bread. One of the many reasons I love this group is that stuff like this shows up all the time – They’re incredibly talented Vietnamese cooks, but fearless and curious in any and every other cuisine that floats their boats. I was introduced to Pão de Queijo years ago at a churascaria down in Texas, and hadn’t thought of or made them in quite a while, so this was a pleasant reminder.

Pão de Queijo is part of a truly delicious branch of cheese breads fueled by cassava (AKA yuca) flour, rather than wheat. As we outlined pretty thoroughly in our post about Guarani Cuñapes, cassava is a dominant starch down south, and for good reason – It’s abundant, works well in place of wheat flour, and tastes great – For gluten intolerant folks, it’s a champ.

Påo de Quiejo - Brazilian Cheese Bread — Påo de Quiejo – Brazilian Cheese Bread

The Pão variant differs from Cuñapes in recipe and construction. While they’re similar, the texture and flavored each is unique, so it’s genuinely worth adding both to your arsenal. To me, the pão de queijo is denser and chewier than a cuñape – More like Yorkshire pudding, for my mind. Best of all, they’re super easy to make – Maybe thirty minutes from start to finish, so they lend themselves to last minute inspiration, as any good side should.

I’ll share the simplest method of many for making these little gems. Like all signature foods, everybody’s Mom makes them, and their way is always best, naturally. Some folks use potato starch in lieu of yuca, and you can get very nice results that way. I’ve also seen these done up with the French pâte a choux method – They were delicious indeed, but really, those are gougères rather than pão de queijo. The method I’ll share is far less fussy and time consuming than that, especially in light of the cassava flour – That stuff behaves quite differently when employing the pâte method, and can be a handful if you’re not ready for it – It’s extremely fine, almost powdery, and when mixed with liquids, its, well, seriously glutinous stuff. Truth be told, my Brazilian cooking pals tell me that what I’ll share with y’all is the way they do it most of the time, because it strikes a perfect balance between taste, texture, and ease of preparation.

Påo de Quiejo - It’s a glutinous batter, even if it’s gluten free — Påo de Quiejo – It’s a glutinous batter, even if it’s gluten free

Finally, we must discuss cheese as well, sim? Down south, the traditional choice is either a quiejo de Canastra, or a quiejo de Minas. Canastra is a yellowish, cows milk cheese, fairly soft when it’s fresh and ripening to semi-hard. It has a buttery base flavor with a nice acidic tang – Very much like high quality Monterey Jack. Quiejo de Minas is also a cows milk cheese. When fresh, (Minas Frescal), it’s soft and very subtle, like a queso blanco, and lends itself well to adding fresh herbs into the mix. Once it’s aged into a Minas Curado, it’s a whole ‘nother world – rich and subtle like a good Asiago. While the vast majority of pão de quiejo recipes you find use Parmesan, for my two cents worth, a good Jack or Asiago will fit the bill much better, in both authenticity and flavor. Down the line, you can and should experiment not only with cheese, but with herbs as well. Cilantro, fennel, spring onion, parsley, and dried chiles are all delicious and opções muito autênticas, (very authentic options).

This recipe is fairly large, for good reason. The batter is stable and stores well, so you can use half tonight, refrigerate the rest, and it’ll be good for a week or so in a clean, airtight container. If you prefer to let ‘er rip, you can make the whole shebang and refrigerate or freeze whatever you don’t eat right away, (but be forewarned – They’re addictive little beasties, and you’ll easily be tricked into chowing down.) The recipe will make about 16 muffins.

NOTES: It’s best to have your milk and eggs at or near room temperature, so plan ahead accordingly. You’ll also need a muffin pan or two – They come in various sizes, but you’ll fare much better with ‘mini’ sizes, (muffin or loaf), as these guys will come out very dense indeed if you use regular size pans.

Påo de Quiejo, Brazilian Cheese Bread

3 Cups Cassava Flour
1 well packed Cup Monterey Jack or Asiago Cheese
1 1/2 Cups Whole Milk
1/2 Cup Avocado Oil
2 Eggs
2 teaspoons Sea Salt

Set a rack into a middle position and preheat your oven to 400° F.

Wet a paper towel with avocado oil and lightly wipe the insides of each muffin cup.

Add all ingredients to a blender or processor vessel, (either truly works fine, so use what you’re most comfortable with.)

Pulse the batter until it’s smooth and consistent, scraping batter down into the mix as needed. Allow plenty of mixing time, until you’ve got a consistent smooth batter – This also allows some air to get integrated into the mix, which is important for helping these unleavened breads rise.

Fill muffin cups to roughly 1/4” from the top.

Bake, undisturbed for about 20 minutes, until the muffin tops have visibly risen and are light golden brown. There’s no leavening agent, so steam plays a roll here – Opening the oven will screw with that, so don’t!

Påo de Quiejo - Perfect accompaniment to soups and stews — Påo de Quiejo – Perfect accompaniment to soups and stews

Remove muffins from oven and set on a wire rack to cool for 5 minutes, then chow down.

Apreciar!

Good Gluten Free Piece

Thought provoking piece from I Fucking Love Science. Worth a read!

Gluten Free – Myth or Reality?

Read this excellent New York Times piece by Moises Velasquez-Manoff. Click, read, and consider, (and dig the marvelous illustration by Bruno Zocca).

Thanks to my friend, retired Journalist extraordinaire John Stark, for this link. I’ve had a piece in progress about this for quite a while now, but real cooking and current events writing have set in on a perpetual back burner – no mas.

The topic is still a hotbed, without a question. Rare is the day that a customer at my Cafè doesn’t ask about gluten and gluten free. In response, my staff is trained to ask the following, “Just so we know how to best help you, are you allergic or medically intolerant to gluten, or is this a dietary issue?” 99.9% of the time, the answer is ‘diet.’

My primary complaint with the trend is that it is exactly that – A trend and nothing more – No different than the Atkins, South Beach, or any other diet fad – Paleo, etc, etc. While all those things I mentioned may have nutritional value for some folks, they all became over the top sensations due predominantly to media hype, and that’s exactly what’s fueled the gluten free craze. So, the question naturally becomes this; is removing gluten from your diet actually beneficial? The answer is, ‘not necessarily.’ The fact remains that choosing a diet because of input from mass media is not a sound method. Choosing to remove gluten from your diet without understanding what that truly entails, and what it truly does and doesn’t do to your body is equally unwise. I’ll just come right out and say it – The vast majority of those 99.9% of folks going gluten free for dietary reasons are doing nothing more than lining the pockets of specialty food makers and diet book authors – If you’re cool with that, more power to you. If not, read on.
Beyond the health consideration, there lies the economic; gluten free stuff isn’t cheap. It’s found in stores in the health food section, and those products are generally quite a bit pricier than their pedestrian neighbors. While heading to that aisle for good dressing or other condiments makes sense, paying top dollar for some thing you don’t need and that isn’t necessarily better for you does not. You only need to note how many things now say ‘Gluten Free’ to understand the hype – From cat treats to popcorn, and bottled water to eggs, a blizzard of packaging now exclaims their virtue thus – And the scary thing is, I’m truly coming to believe that the average human doesn’t know that many, if not most of these items never contained gluten and never will…

Actually going gluten free means a hell of a lot more than giving up bread, pasta and frosty ales; it means reading the labels and excluding a myriad of stuff, from soy sauce to toothpaste, and vitamins to common medications. Without knowing the specifics of literally everything you ingest, it simply can’t be done; as such, presumed results, positive or negative, are more likely than not unattributable to the presumed removal of gluten from one’s diet.

Next critical aspect for consideration – What does removing gluten from your diet actually do? The answer is that it may well inadvertently remove things you need to remain healthy. Whole grains are an excellent source of dietary fiber, which your guts need to do their job correctly. You can certainly get fiber from fruit or alternative grains like quinoa, but again, that stuff is pricy and becoming radically over-harvested due to trendy popularity, stressing the environments of the countries that produce it.

Many, many folks in this country eat store bought breads and cereals daily. Most of those are vitamin fortified. If you don’t take vitamins daily, you need that fortification. Vitamin B9, (Folate or Folic Acid), is one of the critical things supplied thereby; pregnant women need it to help avoid birth defects. The folks at Gallup report that roughly 50% of Americans take vitamins, but that’s skewed notably by us folks over 50 years of age; the younger crowd is a minority in that regard, as the chart below shows. The bottom line for dietary considerations is this; you can compensate for all things gluten, but it takes serious work and focus to do it. If you don’t truly need to remove gluten from your diet, then why do it?

The fact remains that what is dooming the vast majority of Americans isn’t gluten, it’s the excess found in processed foods and drinks. Although it doesn’t cover the whole issue, my piece on Dissecting commercial ranch dressing is a good starting point. Drop the huge amounts of sugar, fat, preservatives and additives found in highly processed and refined foods, and your diet gets a lot healthier – My running joke about shopping, like all the best humor, is grounded in reality – Just go around the outside of the store, and avoid all the inner aisles – That way, you get your basic food groups and beer – All the other stuff is processed crap anyway.

So, who really can’t tolerate gluten? People with celiac disease or a genuine gluten insensitivity. Even a little bit of it will cause problems for those folks. In celiac sufferers, it triggers an auto immune response that physically damages the lining of the small intestine. That damage in turn interferes with the intestine’s ability to absorb nutrients from the food we eat, and triggers a potential raft of secondary issues, from osteoporosis to nerve damage and seizures. True gluten intolerants have symptoms similar to celiac, without the intestinal damage. I have three friends that have ciliac, and it’s a nightmare indeed.

So, in that regard, consider this: Were you truly to contract the disease, and had been pursuing a gluten free diet, you would have resigned yourself to roughly a year misery – It would take your system that long to recover sufficiently from that diet to be accurately assessed for celiac – No joke, in any sense of the word. Either condition can be identified with a blood test that checks for a specific antibody, tissue transglutaminase; if this is found, a biopsy of the intestine is done to confirm the diagnosis. Again, with a gluten free diet, the accuracy of that blood test is impaired enough that the results are at best questionable.

Folks who are burdened with the disease are easily the most intolerant of listening to others blithely ask about gluten free options. Having had to deal with with the long term frustration, cost, and restrictions of the diet they must follow to remain healthy, the last thing they want to hear is someone chirping about what a joy it is.