Lately, I have been trying to eat cleaner and stay away from processed foods. I'll admit I'm not very successful since I love me some good food, but I'm giving it the old college try here and there.
The other night I made two recipes from the book Instant Loss Eat Real, Lose Weight by Brittany Willams.
This is a cook book that focuses on eating real (non-processed) food. The overall mantra is Just Eat Real Food (JERF).
I chose these two recipes because they seemed to go together and I didn't want to have a lot of leftovers.
In this post I'll share what I learned while making the recipes and how I modified them, if applicable.
Also, please note that since these recipes are copyrighted I can't post them here. At the end of this post I have included some additional information about the book I used and the author Brittany Willams.
Thai Pizza - Page 232
This was a reasonably easy dish to make. As you can see from the stock photo from the book there are lots of veggies and it appears to have a relatively thin crust. The ingredients were pretty normal except for the dough called for cassava flour.
When I decided to make this recipe I thought I had cassava flour in the pantry as I had purchased most of the flours, spices and oils this book called for. However, I was wrong and had to substitute gluten free flour for the cassava flour.
What I learned about cassava flour is that it is closely related to all-purpose flour in its texture during baking. A lot of sources mentioned it was a 1:1 substitution rate between the two flours.
There were, however, a couple of sources that mentioned cassava flour tended to soak up more liquid than all-purpose flour. Their suggestion was to use slightly less than the 1:1 substitution ration. This could be why Brittany's recipe stated 2/3 cup cassava flour instead of 1 cup. Because of this suggestion I used 1 cup of the gluten free flour.
Now that I think on it, I probably could have used 1 cup of all-purpose flour as well and the dough would have turned out just fine. Maybe next time I will make it I will give it a try just to see.
The other ingredients the crust called for were: arrowroot flour, onion powder, garlic powder, sea salt, an egg, water and olive oil.
I used avocado oil instead of olive oil, because I was out of olive oil (again I should have checked my pantry better, but oh well).
The dough was pretty sticky and tough initially, but man oh man did it smell yummy. The onion and garlic powder were really nice additions.
I think I could have added some additional spices like rosemary or sage to change the flavor profile of the dough or maybe parmesan cheese and it would have been good as well. That, though is for another time and another cooking adventure.
After the dough sat for 5 minutes or so it was time to shape it. Brittany Williams, the author of this book said to sprinkle cassava flour on parchment paper before putting the dough on it to rollout. Since I didn't have cassava flour I looked at another of her pizza dough recipes and she mentioned using coconut flour. Now I did have coconut flour in the good ol' pantry (score one for me) so I used that.
I have never used coconut flour before so I wasn't sure what to expect. This flour is kinda gritty. It probably has about the same texture as a fine corn meal or semonlina flour.
When I got the dough on the parchment paper I kind of had to push it out to pizza size (about 10 inches). The directions on how to do this are in the book, and Brittany does a wonderful job explaining it.
Once the pizza stone in my oven was heated I put the dough on and cooked it for about 5 minutes.
Now let's jump to getting the rest of the ingredients prepared . . .
Earlier in the week I had thought to prepare the spicy peanut sauce which calls for: peanut butter, rice wine vinegar, maple syrup, coconut aminos (think soy sauce), and sriracha. It was really easy but called for an immersion blender. I think I could have used a whisk or maybe my little bullet blender instead.
My mistake though was failing to pre cut the vegetables as it took a fair amount of time.
I think it took me about 45 minutes to an hour to prep the veggies for both the spring rolls and the pizza. In hindsight I shouldn't have cut as many vegetables that I did and I might have saved myself some time and left over vegetables.
Side Note: I had a hard time finding snow peas so I bought a fairly large container of them thinking I might need them. In all honestly, though I probably only needed about 10 or so snow peas (maybe a small handful) so I should have just gotten them individually instead of in a package. I will have to remember this for next time.
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| spring roll veggies (aren't they pretty) |
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| veggies for the pizza |
The vegetables differed for the two recipes in that the spring rolls called for cucumber, mint, cilantro and purple cabbage and the pizza called for snow peas. Luckily, both called for peppers and carrots.
If I had to organize cutting the veggies differently I would have shredded all the carrots like in the pizza (this was tons easier than julienning them as directed for the spring rolls). Then set aside a small handful of the peppers, carrots and snow peas for the pizza. With the rest of the peppers, carrots and even snow peas, I would have mixed them with the cabbage, mint, cilantro and cucumber and called it good.
Shoot thinking back instead of julienning the cucumber I probably could have shredded them like the carrots. I might not have gotten as much of a crunch, but I think assembling the spring rolls might have been easier - less hard chunks of veggies to pole through the rolls wrapper. Lesson learned maybe I'll try that next time and see how it works.
Had the veggies been a little sparse for the spring rolls, I could have been made up with the micro greens and lettuce. Instead I ended up with way way way too many vegetables left over after I had finished assembling the meal. I guess I'll have to figure out how to use them.
Jumping back to the Pizza . . .
Once the pizza came out of the oven I put mozzarella cheese on it and put it back in the oven for another 7 to 8 minutes. You want the crust to get brownish . . . Think nice golden tan.
After my timer went off I took the pizza out of the oven and topped it with the veggies and peanut sauce.
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My finished pizza - doesn't that look yummy!
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Spring Rolls - Page 224
Once I had the pizza out of the oven cooling (
no one like to burn the top of their mouth on hot pizza). I started on the Spring Rolls.
I have never in my life made spring rolls before, so luckily the directions in the book were once again really good. while reading through the direction I noticed that all the veggies I had so nicely cut and put on the plate needed to be tossed together in a bowl.
Opps! my bad.
So, I dumped all the veggies in a bowl (including the leftover pizza veggies) and gave it a good toss. Then I started making my spring rolls.
The spring roll wrappers were pretty stiff, initially (its just a dried rice paper), so the first one I made I let the wrapper soak too long (maybe 45 seconds to a minute). It rolled nicely, but the wrapper was pretty slimy. The next few I adjust the time the wrapper soaked and the sweet spot seemed to be probably around 30 seconds. (I just counted to 30 in my head.) It got the wrapper soft enough to roll, but not very sticky.
I did learn that as the wrapper soaks up more water it does loosen up. I guess you could soak for 30 seconds, then put it on your cutting board for another 5 second to loosen up more with the residual water before you add your greens and vegetables. This would allow time for your wrapper to soak up any additional water to make it more pliable without getting it too sticky.
I used spinach instead of lettuce because, again you guessed it, I had spinach and didn't want to buy a bunch of extra stuff. The spinach worked great so don't be afraid to try different greens or shoot no greens at all.
Brittany, even mentions in her book that you can put just about anything in a spring roll wrapper for a light delicious lunch. I concur with her assessment and can't wait to see what else I can put in these little bundles.
I also added some chopped up shrimp to about half of my Spring rolls.
Hey my husband likes meat and so far this meal was looking very vegetarian. As it turned out the shrimp was a great move.
I assembled the rolls like this: spinach (3 leaves), veggies from the bowl, shrimp (if I added it), micro greens, and then rolled it up like a burrito.
Overall, the spring rolls were very easy to make.
The most time consuming part was chopping all the vegetables. So my advice here would be chop everything earlier in the day or week if you think you might be pressed for time.
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Some of the finished Spring Rolls with leftover Peanut Sauce from the pizza
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Family Food Review
Husband - He loved the Spring Rolls with Peanut Sauce. He pretty much ate them all, all by himself. He thought the pizza was good too. However, once he found out the crust was gluten free he was a bit on the weary side. He's a bit old fashioned that way.
Me - I really liked it. I had Gastric Bypass with an additional stomach surgery about 5 years ago so pizza. tends to make me feel a bit sick if I eat too much of it. I had two slices of this pizza and felt fine. The peanut sauce was just spicy enough to remind me of the satay peanut sauce which I love love love.
The crust was soft, but not gummy. It't kind of hard to describe . . . I guess it was a mixture of cornbread and sandwich bread. It stayed together really nicely like sandwich bread but was more dense like corn bread. It was delicious. You know this pizza kind of reminded me of an asian pizza I used to get at California Pizza Kitchen (CPK for those who are familiar with this chain).
The spring rolls were good ( I had one with shrimp and one without), but they were on the bland side, in my opinion, without the dipping sauce. I am a woman though who likes dressing on her salad. I wish they would have been able to stand more on their own without the sauce. I think I could have added a slight dressing to the veggie mix, maybe a little lemon, oil, salt and pepper, and the spring rolls wouldn't have needed the sauce as much.
Fifteen year old daughter - She did not like the spring rolls (it was probably too much salad for her), but she loved the pizza. She asked that I make the pizza again. Oh and she was gone when we ate so she had leftovers. She had no idea the crust was gluten free which I consider a win.
Three year old daughter - She wouldn't even try it. We tried, but "it has green things on it!" was her cry and "I don't love it!" - oh well what can you do. . . she's three. Next time I will try to make the pizza and leave a slice for her that doesn't have any veggies on it. Maybe then she will eat it.
19 month old son - He tried the spring rolls but wasn't impressed with the greens. He kept pulling them out of his mouth like it was hair or something and scrunching up his face. He did however eat three slices of the pizza and loved dipping it in the peanut sauce. He doesn't talk much but he kept pointing to the peanut sauce and wanting more on his plate. I, of course, obliged.
Conclusion
Overall, I think this meal was a success! Four out of the five family members ate it and even enjoyed it. I will definitely make the pizza and peanut sauce again.
I didn't need to have any special equipment, but some of the ingredients were tricky for me to find in Southern Utah (spring roll wrappers, snow peas and micro greens). I found everything, but not until I went to three different stores.
Note to self just start at Harmons. They are pricier, but had everything I needed.
As for the spring rolls . . . I will probably make them for myself and my husband, but I'm not sure I will waste the time for my kids. At least until they get a bit older.
If you think you would like to try these recipes you can get Brittany's book on Amazon (as I did) or any number of fine retailers she has listed on her blog. You can also find some free recipes and more information on her through her blog
Instant Loss.
Disclaimer: This is my unbiased opinion of the recipes and simply for my own benefit. There is no compensation and I have no affiliation with the book, recipes or blog mentioned.
