We love living in Calgary. It's a great city that is about an hour's drive from Banff. The beautiful Rocky Mountains is literally in our backyard. The town of Canmore, which is just outside of Banff, is a great spot to hang out in. We have a couple of friends we like going to Canmore with, particularly when we go to Crazyweed, this cool little restaurant that has the most interesting and delicious food and drink. The first time we went, the bartender made us a Thai Basil martini that made us beg for more, and more, and more...we still talk about that evening, to this day.\
Last November, we were coming back from a fundraiser in Banff, and stopped in for lunch at Crazyweed. No martinis for us that day, but the soup de jour, a roasted garlic and potato soup - great vegan soup and also gluten free inspired me to try this at home.
It was so easy to make...I roasted garlic and yukon gold potatos in the oven.
Then threw it into a pot of boiling water, added onion, celery until
some of the water evaporated. Then I pureed everything together, put
back into pot, added salt, pepper, garlic salt, nutritional yeast (for
color and flavor) and a little cumin and let it simmer a bit to mix in
all the flavor. Once it was ready to serve, it was ladled into a bowl,
drizzled with a little truffle oil (if you like), garnished with cilantro
and voila! Yummy, roasted garlic and potato soup...
I have recently spent some time on Pinterest looking up wedding ideas (since I am getting married in less than a week and I will post wedding stuff later!) and in the process found a really yummy looking recipe for bacon and corn pancakes.
In my effort to make my lactose intolerance tolerable, I have begun to adapt many recipes to become lactose-free. But with some friends who are gluten intolerant as well as my own interest in reducing the amount of gluten in my diet, I am also looking to find recipes that can be gluten free as well. So, this morning, I decided to try making the bacon and corn pancakes but decided to adapt it.
I realized I also wanted to make this quickly and didn't have time to thaw out my bacon, so looked in the fridge and saw I had some spicy capocollo ham on hand as well as some leftover "cowboy corn" (aka, corn roasted on the BBQ). I cut the ham in strips and sliced the corn off one full cob. I quickly pan-fried the ham strips to get it a little crispier.
While the ham was frying up, I put my gluten free flours together to get my batter:
1 cup rice flour, 3 Tbsps tapioca flour, 1/3 cup potato starch, 1/2 tsp guar gum (can also use xantham gum)
To this, I added 1 tsp kosher salt, 1/2 tsp baking soda, 1 1/2 tsp baking powder, a tsp of cayenne pepper (I love spicy food, but this can totally be eliminated), 1 tsp onion powder a pinch of black pepper. After mixing the dry ingredients well, I added 1 egg, 1 cup of lactose free milk, and up to 1/2 cup more of water to get a pancake batter. Then, the corn and ham and 1/2 cup of grated lactose-free cheese (any lactose free cheese can be used) went in.
In the already hot skillet (from the ham), I added coconut oil, put in about 1/3 cup scoop of batter to make my cakes.
Once they were the perfect golden color, I put on a plate, poured maple syrup on it and voila! Instant happiness...
The griddle cakes were so named because Steve said it sounded fancier. I agree...Enjoy!!
