Mom's "Notzah Balls"

Dairy-free/Egg-free/Nut-free

These aren't really matzah balls, but they're kind of like matzah balls. If you have your eyes closed. And you haven't had a matzah ball in a really long time. And you can't eat egg.

After what seemed like an endless variety of substitutes and (what we thought were) clever ideas to replicate the fluffy dumpling-ness of an egg-laden matzah ball, all without success, our mom suddenly had an epiphany. Our mom's mother passed away when our mom was just a little girl, and just when we needed it most, a memory surfaced of yummy dumplings that our grandmother used to make way back when our mom was a youngster.

They're not quite matzah balls. Matzah balls are mixed, rolled into balls, then cooked in boiling water. These are mixed, and then not formed but cooked (like hot breakfast cereal) to the consistency of polenta, then cooled in a baking dish. Just before serving, cut them into circles or squares (we don't like to waste any, so we always go with squares) and add them to your warmed chicken broth.

For egg-eaters, the hardest part is choosing whether you want your soup with matzah balls, or with notzah "matzah balls."

We're not really versed, at all, on being gluten-free. But, if you wanted to give these a shot with gluten-free chicken broth and Cream of Rice (is Cream of Rice gluten-free?) it just might work.

Ingredients

• 1 yellow onion, chopped, about 3/4 cup
• Olive oil
• 4 cups chicken broth
  
• 1 cup Cream of Wheat, not instant
• Salt and pepper to taste
• Just a smidge of garlic powder - not garlic salt
  
• Chopped fresh herbs - we used dill and flat-leaf parsley
• Chicken base, to add chicken-y salty flavor if the broth and salt aren't enough
  

Method

1. Slowly saute the onion over low heat, until they're just barely starting to brown.
2. Meanwhile, bring the chicken broth to a boil.
3. Once the broth is boiling, whisk in the Cream of Wheat. Take care to make sure the Cream of Wheat doesn't clump up. That's no fun.
4. Cook the Cream of Wheat for 2 1/2 to 3 minutes. If you're using Cream of Rice, follow whatever cooking instructions are on the box.
5. Add the cooked onions and olive oil to the Cream of Wheat, then add the chicken base (if you're using it), the seasonings and any chopped fresh herbs you'd like. It's probably best to avoid the dried stuff here, although you might be able to add it to the broth as it warms.
6. Move the mixture to a rectangular baking dish - ours was 11 X 7 - then put it in the fridge to cool.
7. When you're ready to serve, cut into squares and add to hot chicken soup. Mmm, smells like Yom Tov.

Brisket Tacos

Egg-free/Dairy-free/Nut-free

This falls way outside of the range of foods we normally blog about. But these tacos were awesome. So awesome, that one of us ate WAAAY too much and had to take the dog for a walk, just to move around a bit. This is an amalgamation of a bunch of recipes found online, so there's no one to credit. But thank you anyway.

Ingredients:

1 3 lb brisket

2 to 3 garlic cloves, minced (or the same in the delightful frozen crushed garlic from TJs)

1 T taco seasoning

1 t ancho chili powder

1 t dried oregano

1/2 t dried onion powder

1/2 t cumin

bottled green salsa

1. Brown the brisket on the cook top.

2. Put the browned brisket in a crock pot.

3. Add the garlic, then the dry seasonings, and finish with the green salsa (enough to cover the brisket).

4. Cook 10 to 12 hours on Low.

I put the brisket in the crock pot fatty side up. Then, about 8 or so hours into the cooking, I (gasp!) opened the crock pot (!) and scraped off the fat. Yes, I also scraped off some of the seasoning, but enough was already in the meat that it didn't matter. I shredded the meat on a cutting board and returned it to the remaining juices in the crock pot until we were ready to eat. I served it with soft flour tortillas, guacamole, cheese, sour cream, and salsa. Finicky son LOVED it!

Leave off the offending toppers to maintain the dairy-freeness of this meal. The meat was so tasty, you probably won't miss them.

Sunnut Butter Buttons

Dairy-free/Egg-free/Nut-free

Holiday cookie season. Before we had food allergic-children, any day leading up to the holidays were easily among our most favorite times of the year, along with any one of the other 364 days on the calendar. 

Things are necessarily different now, but there's no need to despair. On a recent trip down the candy aisle at our local grocery store, as we were walking by the Hershey's Kisses, we were met by a recipe card for Peanut Butter Blossoms, starring melt-in-your-mouth but very much off limits Hershey's Kisses, and sometimes toxic and highly offensive peanut butter.

Our recent discovery (thank you Ms Lauren!) of sunflower seed butter, aka sunnut butter, has made these cookies much easier to replicate in a food allergy-safe way. Straight out of the jar, our kids want nothing to do with sunnut butter, but baked into a cookie, the taste is somewhat mild and very well tolerated by our otherwise sunnut butter-hating children. It's very bewildering, why they don't like sunnut butter. Except for the finish, it is very very very close in taste to peanut butter.

We considered making our own version of Hershey's Kisses, but opted against it. After all, that would have entailed a LOT of effort, and we go for easy whenever we can. Instead of melting safe chocolate and solidifying it into coins to later press into the cookie tops, when the time came we just pressed three or four chocolate chips where one much larger Hershey's Kiss would have gone. Worked like a charm.

We're providing the recipe as written by Hershey's, and noting the changes we made where appropriate.

Ingredients

• 48 Hershey's Kisses (we used about 200 dairy-free/nut-free chocolate chips)
  
• 1/2 cup shortening
  
• 3/4 cup Reese's Creamy Peanut Butter (we used 3/4 cup creamy sunnut butter)
  
• 1/3 cup granulated sugar
  
• 1/3 cup packed light brown sugar
  
• 1 egg (we used one egg worth of Ener-G Egg Replacer)
  
• 2 tablespoons milk (we used soymilk)
  
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract (we used this, even though our soymilk is vanilla flavored; you could omit it)
  
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
  
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
  
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
  
• granulated sugar, for rolling the dough in
  

Steps

1. Heat oven to 375 degrees. Remove wrappers from chocolates. 
   
2. Beat shortening and peanut butter in a large bowl until well blended. Add the 1/3 cup granulated sugar and the 1/3 cup brown sugar; beat until fluffy. Add the egg, milk, and vanilla; beat well. Stir together flour, baking soda and salt; gradually beat into peanut butter mixture.
   
3. Shape dough into 1-inch balls. Roll in granulated sugar; place on ungreased cookie sheet.
   
4. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Immediately press a chocolate kiss into center of each cookie; cookie will crack around edges. Remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely.  About 4 dozen cookies.
   

Notes

• Egg Replacer works best if you prepare it with water before adding it to your other ingredients, so be sure to do that for optimal results.
  
• Our recipe made nearly 6 dozen cookies, so maybe they were a little on the small side, but the baking time didn't change. The three or four chocolate chips we added created the exactly right ratio of chocolate to cookie, so consider this when rolling balls of your cookie dough. Adjust the size of your cookie dough balls to suit your taste. 
  
• When the cookies came out of the oven, we enlisted adult help in the kitchen to get the chips on the cookies before the cookies got too hard and crumbly. The edges are supposed to crack, but we did have to act fast to get the chips to stick.
• After a day or two on the counter, store these in the refrigerator. There was some weird ingredient reaction as they sat out, and the center of the cookie had a funky green tinge. We tested multiple cookies and they all had it. Since mold doesn't grow in such a uniform fashion, and since the cookies smelled and tasted fine, we moved them to the fridge, and the green business cleared up. Anyone know an Alton Brown we can ask about that?