Tonight I made dinner for my family from The Gluten-Free Gourmet Cooks Comfort Foods, by Bette Hagman. Her cookbook had been recommended to me by several other dietitians, so I thought I'd try one of her recipes and see what my family and I thought. I made her Chicken in Sherry Sauce. I figured it would be hard to go wrong with a recipe that included sherry wine!
I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to make the dish. First I had to mix up a batch of her Creamed Soup Base, which is a dry, powdered base that can be used in a variety of her recipes. Then it was just a matter of browning the chicken breasts in some olive oil, adding the soup base mixed with water, fresh mushrooms and sherry, and cooking until done. It was delicious! My husband and mother-in-law enjoyed it, and they never even knew that it was gluten-free!
I think it would be easy to make without the soup base if I learned a gluten-free way to create a roux (maybe the rice flour?). I'm going to work on that next, because once I know how to make a roux without wheat flour, then I can take a lot of recipes and make them gluten-free. I paired the chicken with mashed potatoes, per her suggestion, so they could soak up some of the sauce. Then I added roasted asparagus with grated parmesan cheese on it, because that's what my MIL likes. Here's a picture of the dinner all put together.
The chicken dish is only 215 calories per serving, with 18 grams of fat. Not bad at all! That's good news for anyone who is working on losing a few pounds (and who isn't these days?).
Have you tried making anything gluten-free lately? What suggestions do you have for cooking family favorites without wheat?
