Product Review: Sonoma All Natural Gluten-Free, Wheat-Free Wraps in Ivory Teff

Since going gluten-free, I miss flour tortillas. Really good ones, the type that melt in your mouth, the type patted out by hand at The Original Donut Shop on Fredricksburg, in San Antonio. The type that Chevy's restaurant chain makes on tortilla machines. The type you can buy at HEB groceries--usually still steaming--if you live in Texas. I even miss the less-than-stellar fresh flour tortillas I'd occasionally make (mine usually turned out overworked, but I was getting the hang of it, right about the time I figured out I should probably avoid gluten).

To fully understand this you should know: for me growing up, Mexican food was comfort food. We were homesick Texans--and for a time, in grad school, I was a regular follower of Homesick Texan's blog. My family made tacos on the weekends. Pretty much every weekend. We made tamales and fresh salsa and huevos rancheros and moles. We ate fish tacos and occasionally smoked things in plantain leaves. We made corn tortillas and sometimes drank horchata. You've probably got the point. Even when we stopped eating as much Mexican food--we replaced it with Indian, to some extent, we still probably had something Mexican once or twice a week. Rick Bayless visited our house weekly via his public television show and my dad tried his recipes. We would find new favorites and replace old ones.

So giving up flour tortillas, in a way, was hard. Fortunately, I'd also moved to the Midwest, where I couldn't seem to find fresh flour tortillas unless I'd made them myself. That made it a little easier just because I wasn't eating as many.


When I moved again, I found La Tortilla Factory's Sonoma brand ivory teff wraps (they also apparently come in dark, but I haven't seen those at my local grocer). The full name is a mouthful and in the title for this post, so I'm not repeating it here. These wraps, when heated, become very soft, smooth and pliable, have a rich, complex flavor and just enough chewiness to be reminiscent of gluten. They almost melt in your mouth and leave a slightly sweet aftertaste, the way a good flour tortilla will. When they're cold, they're less pliable. I might almost describe the mouth-feel as a bit rubbery. Not in a bad way, but in a way that makes me just not want to eat them cold if I have the option to eat them hot. The flavor is less complex because there's no steam rising to your nose, helping you smell the grains.

These wraps--really not tortillas, unless you subscribe to the "burrito size" jumbo tortilla idea so many people seem fond of right now--only come in a size I'd call "too large." I never want a full one, which is good since a 6-pack of the ivory teff wraps runs $4-5 depending on which store I buy them at. Not outrageous (at least by market standards) for an organic, gluten-free product, but pretty expensive on my budget.

These wraps, like many gluten-free products, start with a lightweight flour (usually either cornstarch or tapioca flour--in this case, tapioca), and also include teff and millet flours, and guar gum--plus a number of other ingredients, including among other things: soy lecitihin (this is in almost every processed food you eat), canola oil, corn syrup solids, and "colloid powder" which is cellulose gum, maltodextrin, carrageenan), honey. You can just taste that note of honey if you're eating these wraps plain (but heated), or with a mild spread, such as cream cheese.

If you can't find these wraps in your local store, that might be because their distribution outside of Northern California is spotty, at least according to the website. If you're craving flour tortillas though, and are gluten-free, it's worth talking to your local grocer(s) and seeing if they can get their hands on some. I don't eat mine particularly quickly, if you're concerned about that, and they store just fine in my refrigerator, as long as I'm careful to reseal the bag properly. I suspect that like many flour tortillas--and an obscene number of gluten-free products--these wraps also probably freeze pretty well, but I haven't given it a shot yet.

Homemade Crockpot Yogurt

My friend Marissa, over at We*Meat*Again recently suggested I should post about making yogurt. I've been making yogurt pretty regularly for about 18 months now--when I'm in a good habit of it, I make it once a week, every week. But since moving, I've fallen back out of the habit until recently.

Needless to say, at this point I've probably made 40+ batches of yogurt, just under 2 quarts at a time. And it's always come out well, except once when it turned into buttermilk and this past time, when I oops left my crockpot on too long after adding the starter cultures (procured from the last batch of homemade yogurt--but originally just from "live, active culture" yogurt). By too long, I mean overnight. On low. I came downstairs in the morning and had a brown, gloopy, bubbling mess.

Well shoot. Good thing I inherited the milk I'd used from a friend, I guess. It was going sour anyway, which made it pretty ideal for yogurt-making. It wasn't bad yet, but another 24-36 hours and it would've been. It felt less like a loss that way. And thankfully, since the way I make yogurt is pretty low maintenance, but does take a few days, I have a good supply of too-many-additives yogurt.

Marissa wanted me to create a blog post about making yogurt after she realized everything her yogurt had in it--a commercial brand I'll allow to remain nameless. Corn syrup, gelatin, starch, and food dye, among other things. A mutual friend told her she should make yogurt, like I do, in a crockpot. Other friends mentioned brands that are less processed.

To be fair, after making my own yogurt for the past 18 months, I do realize why food companies use some of these thing. I have yet to figure out a really effective way of getting thick yogurt without straining it (this is how Greek yogurt is made--at least if you're making it at home). Fermentation time is a major part of this process though--if yogurt ferments quickly, then it's less likely to hold its whey. More bacteria generally = a faster fermentation time (but this is also dependent on the number of active bacteria) and potentially more runny yogurt. Fewer bacteria = slower fermentation and a thicker yogurt. I've added things like powdered milk (which thickens it some, but also sometimes leaves clumps if I don't get it dissolved enough), but that only somewhat works. Food starch (often wheat-based if it doesn't specify) and gelatin both allow yogurt to come out the way we, as Americans, expect it to be. Thick. And well, gelatinous.

Each batch of yogurt you make will have a little different flavor, based on time, bacteria, and even the milk! That's one of the things I like about making yogurt (and even just buying yogurt, for that matter).

Other things I like about making yogurt:

• I know exactly what goes into my yogurt.
• It's easy & straightforward to make in a crockpot.
• It can use milk that is about to sour, but it's better to use super-fresh milk. 
• It's about the same cost of buying yogurt where I live now, but everywhere else I've lived it's been significantly cheaper to make yogurt than buy it. Even here, it's still a little cheaper.

Heidi, over at 101 Cookbooks wrote a great post about making yogurt back in 2005 and this was the recipe I started with when I started making yogurt. I've never had my yogurt thicken as quickly as she indicates her yogurt fermented (4-5 hours) and re-reading that post so that I wouldn't repeat too much of her information here, it made me a little jealous. But only a little, because honestly since this is crockpot yogurt, I don't exactly invest a lot of time and effort into yogurt-making. Heidi recommends using a yogurt-maker if you plan to make your own yogurt often. I, however, haven't been able to make myself invest in this. Yet. 

Milking Shorthorn in Iowa

The main thing about making yogurt is to keep it at the right temperature while the culture multiplies. This is about 85 degrees. You can wrap a heavy towel around your unplugged crockpot to help keep it at this temperature in most places, most of the year. When I lived in the (very cold) Midwest, I got in the habit of turning it to "warm" or "low" for a few minutes (where I screwed up this time!) a couple of times during the culturing period during the winter because my apartment was too cold for proper culturing--even with the towel (or, a towel and a jacket, even). The other thing to make sure of is that you heat the milk enough to begin with--various sites will tell you between 170 and 185 degrees. Try to avoid letting it boil (but, if it does, you'll probably wind up with a lightly caramelly flavor in your yogurt), though the milk should look frothy.

After your yogurt has cultured, you can move into a new container and store it in the fridge. The recipe below assumes you have a crockpot that can hold about one-half gallon of milk.

Crockpot Yogurt

3 1/2 cups organic milk

1/2 cup organic yogurt with active cultures (your starter--I've used Stonyfield, Nancy's, Mountain High, and others that are locally available)

Heat your milk in your very clean crockpot on high for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Turn off & unplug the crockpot and leave covered until the milk cools to about 100 degrees. Depending on the time of year and the heat of your house, this will probably take about 2-3 hours.

Meanwhile, bring your starter yogurt to room temperature (this helps it mix better into the warm milk). When you do this, make sure that your starter yogurt is in a clean, covered container.

Stir your starter yogurt into your cooled milk, then wrap your crockpot in a heavy towel. Let sit 4-8 hours. If your home is particularly cold, you should probably turn the crockpot to warm or low for 3-5 minutes about halfway through the culturing process. Check your yogurt. If it looks thick* (be careful not to jiggle or stir it at this point--this might result in stringy yogurt) then it's done. If not, heat the crockpot just a little (another 3-5 minutes on low or warm and then unplug the crockpot again and re-wrap it) and leave up to another 8 hours.

Transfer the crockpot to the refrigerator to allow the yogurt to fully set** and then transfer yogurt into a container for storage.

*I can usually tell by the drops of moisture from the crockpot lid that drip when I lift it up.

**I've only done this a couple of times and it results in a slightly thicker, creamier yogurt, but I haven't experimented with this often enough to know if it's a thing that always happens, or if it's dependent on the type of culture I'd created those times. Usually I just transfer it straight into the container meant for permanent storage. If you experiment with this, please let me know your results!

Brown Rice Risotto with Butternut Squash & Swiss Cheese

Sometimes, the road you're on seems to lead no where.  That's when
it's time to decide whether you want to forge your own path, or
just continue down the road and hope for a scenic detour.
(Photo taken October 25, 2011)

I wanted to make a brown rice risotto because I really, really like brown rice--at least as far as rices are concerned. And I've been enjoying the lemon risotto E's been making, but last time she made it, she said we needed to try another risotto recipe--and I thought she was right. I also wanted to figure out how to use up the remaining Swiss cheese I bought for another recipe.

The interwebs didn't tell me much about brown rice risotto that used Swiss cheese. Or about risottos that used Swiss cheese without using other cheeses. And for the brown rice risottos, many seemed to use cornstarch to make it creamy (ick! I'm sure it's fine, but it doesn't sound appealing). I finally a recipe that used just a splash of cream (okay, 1/4 cup) at the end to create this effect and I liked the idea (if nothing else, it would potentially smooth out the flavor at the end) and co-opted it, using milk instead--the milk we had in our fridge. Normally, I might use skim milk if I used a dairy-based milk at all.

I added nutritional yeast to increase the sort of bright flavor that parm usually lends to risottos, and because E said I'd have to be pretty sneaky to get her to eat it (second night in a row, E, second night in a row!). The Swiss lends a lovely nuttiness to the risotto, which complements the natural flavor present in brown rice and also the earthiness of the butternut squash (which for the record, pretty much disappears by the time it's been cooked with the rice, if you're the type that needs to hide veggies from your family).

Because brown rice takes longer to cook than white rice, this risotto takes longer to cook than risottos based on arborio rice. I cooked it while talking on the phone to a friend in the Midwest (who, when he learned I was adding cumin, encouraged me to make it into a palak dal--and I'll admit, it was tempting and maybe a soon-to-eat meal with E) for a while and the rest of the time while E sat our kitchen table talking with me and knitting. I think, from start to finish, I spent perhaps 90 minutes on it (including prep!), which makes it a very time-intensive meal, even for a risotto, but I think it was pretty worth it. It tastes rich and creamy (and is rich and creamy) and has a salty-savory kick that seems especially appropriate for autumn.

This could easily be served as a main dish (how E and I ate it) or as a side dish. Although it's time intensive, it's also pretty easy to make -- you stir often, but not constantly, you can get other things done if you want (such as making puppy chow, like I did). The key is mostly not to get too distracted because brown rice isn't as traditionally starchy as arborio, which is a big part of what makes risotto so creamy.

A quick note about the herb water -- I don't tend to buy veggie broth or keep it on hand. This was my variation of making a vegetable broth. The fines herbes, once the water begins to simmer, steep into a weak tea-color and the salt gets absorbed slowly into the rice. I didn't find it overly salty, but depending on your rice and on your Swiss cheese, you might need more or less.

The picture I was able to get isn't super-great -- the risotto didn't work with the lighting in my kitchen. If I remember to take a picture again next time I make it, I'll post a better photo!


Brown Rice Risotto with Butternut Squash  & Swiss Cheese
6 ounces frozen butternut squash, cubed
1 teaspoon olive oil
1 tablespoon butter
1/3 large onion, chopped
2 large or 3 medium cloves garlic, sliced thinly
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes
1 1/2 cups long grain brown rice
1/4 cup nutritional yeast
6 cups water heated to simmering with 1 tablespoon fines herbes and 2 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup white wine (optional, but deepens the flavor)
3 ounces Swiss cheese, cubed
1 teaspoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons milk (preferably whole)

Saute the butternut squash in olive oil and butter, over medium heat, for 1-2 minutes, until defrosted and beginning to brown. Add the onion and garlic and saute until the onion turns translucent. Add the cumin and pepper flakes and saute about 30 seconds (until fragrant) then add the rice. Stir occasionally until the rice begins to turn white. Add 1 1/2 cups herb-water and the nutritional yeast to the rice. Stir constantly until the water has mostly been absorbed. Add the remaining herb-water 1/2 cup at a time, stirring frequently between additions, until the water has been used up and the rice is plump and tender. Add the white wine and stir until absorbed. Add the Swiss cheese and stir until the cheese is melted and well incorporated. Add the lemon juice, stir to incorporate, and then add the milk. Taste and add salt, if necessary. Serve hot.