The Dinner Special podcast

  • Episodes
  • Contact

095: Tessa Fisher: Gluten-Free Baking with Whole Ingredients

November 30, 2015 by Gabriel Leave a Comment

Tessa Fisher of Salted Plains on The Dinner Special podcast
http://traffic.libsyn.com/thedinnerspecial/TDS095.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Tessa Fisher of Salted Plains on The Dinner Special podcast talking about gluten-free baking with whole ingredients.

Salted Plains

Tessa is fascinated with turning her love of baking into creating gluten-free treats that taste good. On her blog Salted Plains she shares recipes of her gluten-free creations many of which are also dairy-free or vegan. Tessa strives to use whole ingredients and refrains from baking with refined sugar whenever she can.

I am so happy to have Tessa Fisher of Salted Plains joining me here on the show today.

(*All photos below are Tessa’s.)

On Her Interest in Baking:

Tessa Fisher of Salted Plains on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her interest in baking.

Baking was something that I always did growing up. My mom was a really great cook, she was always creating new things for us at dinner but she didn’t do a whole lot of baking. That was something that I always really liked experimenting with, probably putting weird combinations together when I shouldn’t have been. But it’s always been something that I’ve really just enjoyed doing.

I’ve always felt more comfortable baking than cooking and from preparing meals for sure.

I think the idea of just creating something sweet, I kind of have a sweet tooth, and then being able to share those things with other people, has always just been a lot of fun for me.

On Being Gluten-Free:

Tessa Fisher of Salted Plains on The Dinner Special podcast talking about being gluten-free.

About middle school, high school, I started getting severe migraines and they would just put me out for a whole day and then make me pretty sick, very nauseous, dehydrated, just really awful. As I went through high school they kind of became more frequent. In college, they were very frequent, and so I tried everything. I did acupuncture and saw a chiropractor and saw ear, nose and throat doctors, and allergies and all sorts of things to try to figure out what was going on and no real an answer. Some things helped calm symptoms a little bit but nothing really ever got rid of them. I just became okay with the idea that I was always going to have migraines but at the same time when a special event was coming up, I’d get nervous that one would come and it would just ruin the day.

So I really came to be gluten-free because I had a friend mention that they had read that there was a connection between gluten and migraines and maybe I should check it out. So I did. I did some reading and I decided to cut gluten out for a couple of months just to see what would happen. I really didn’t think anything was going to change and I started feeling better and so I kept going and the migraines lessened. I’ve been a few years migraine free now, so kind of life changing.

On Baking Gluten-Free and Being Self-Taught:

Tessa Fisher of Salted Plains on The Dinner Special podcast talking about learning to bake gluten-free.

My biggest adjustment, I think, with the absence of gluten–that kind of glues everything together–is just figuring out, “Okay, so how does that work exactly? And what do you use to replace it?” Just the very basics, really, of it. That was probably the toughest part for me and a little bit overwhelming.

When I went gluten-free and I started seeing the positive effects for me of that, I then also at the same time realized, “Oh, so that means no cookies and cake and all the stuff that I loved.” I was okay with maybe not having bread so much, but the other things seemed kind of dire so I started looking things up online. That’s how I became acquainted with bloggers that were dealing with being gluten-free and that kind of thing and really just did a lot of reading online about it.

On Some Good Resources for Gluten-Free Baking:

The blogs that I was going to initially over and over again for baking gluten-free and cooking gluten-free were Gluten-Free Girl, I learned a lot through what she was doing. Also Against All Grain, Danielle Walker’s site, I learned a lot there. Tasty Yummies, I went to all the time.

Against All Grain and Tasty Yummies are both, I think, more Paleo-based, but obviously grain free, gluten-free and so I learned a lot through reading their blogs.

On Baking Without Refined Sugar:

Tessa Fisher of Salted Plains on The Dinner Special podcast talking about baking without using refined sugar.

One of my favorite substitutes for just regular granulated white sugar would be coconut sugar. You can use it as a one-to-one substitute, it’s also a lower glycemic but it also has a little bit more nutrients than just regular white sugar so you can feel a little bit better about using that. I really like coconut sugar. I use honey a lot; I also use maple syrup a lot. Those three are probably my top unrefined sugars.

Usually honey and maple syrup are pretty interchangeable. It will change the flavor a tad bit, but for those recipes that could be converted to vegan, obviously maple syrup would be a great way to go.

I have some recipes on my site that are using coconut sugar and people try to use maple syrup or vice versa, the liquid, the granulated, usually don’t always transfer very well.

Coconut sugar is more similar to brown sugar, it has a more caramel-ly taste to it which I really like. I think it gives a whole different depth to your baked goods. So that’s something I wasn’t initially thinking about when I started using it. Now I will purposely use it in something that I think could use that flavor. Sometimes I use sucanat also, which is a little bit lighter. It doesn’t have so much of that caramel-ly flavor but is also unrefined.

Learning those little nuances with the sugars has helped a great deal.

On Her Blog:

Tessa Fisher of Salted Plains on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her food blog.

I was riding myself ragged with my full-time job and I was also coaching swimming. That schedule in general was pretty intense. Early mornings, working all day and then late evenings and weekends. I was feeling just totally worn out which wouldn’t make you think, “Let’s start a blog,” but I was feeling the need for something creative, something to look forward to, to cause myself to learn about something on daily basis. It really was born out of that. I had started playing around with gluten-free baked goods by then, taking them to our weekly girls’ night and getting really good feedback and I thought, “Well, maybe this is the way to go for now and just see what happens.”

A lot of inspiration I get from just the seasons – the fruit and vegetables that’s out there seasonally, but also just what I’m craving a lot of times goes into what’s the next thing that I’m going to work on. Or, what have I not attempted yet that I think other people might want to have a gluten-free version of? Or, what not gluten-free grain could I use that I haven’t really played much with? That kind of dictates what I do next.

The Bojon Gourmet, I love her blog, her photography, what she does with her food I think is amazing, always getting really good ideas from her. The cookbook Flavor Flours by Alice Medrich is fantastic and she has chapters on, maybe seven or eight, different grains–gluten-free grains–and how to use them. So I go to that a lot to get ideas on the texture and what you can use for cakes, and what’s good for cookies and that kind of thing.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t really watch a whole lot of TV and I don’t have a particular food show, but if I turn on the TV and I’m flipping through and there’s something related to food on, I’m going to stop and just watch.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

Well, one quick blog that I came across recently that I loved is called Appeasing a Food Geek and Kelsey is the writer of the blog. She breaks things down from a scientific point of view, how things work and react and because I wish I knew more about that, I love that she does that.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook or Snapchat that make you happy?

I guess Instagram is probably my favorite. I love seeing photos from Food Stories. Also Adventures in Cooking–Eva Flores. She just does beautiful photography. There are so many and I love also following travel photographers on Instagram. Alex Strohl is a travel photographer and he just goes to amazing places so I would have to say those are my top.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

Well, this is pretty simple. But my Silpat that you use for baking on your cookie sheets. It’s a reusable replacement of parchment paper, but I use it over and over and over again and it’s great. It cleans super fast and it’s always handy.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

Well, one food for sure is brussels sprouts. Never liked them growing up and now they’re probably one of my favorite foods.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Well, this is not a cookbook but Ratio. The book Ratio has been really helpful for me. My Paleo Patisserie that came out this last year has been fantastic and again I think I mentioned Flavor Flours, one of my all-time favorite cook books.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

Well, Josh Ritter–he’s coming out with a new album and one of his new singles is Getting Ready To Get Down. That pretty much gets you ready to do anything I think, so love that song.

On Keeping Posted with Tessa:

Tessa Fisher of Salted Plains on The Dinner Special podcast talking about keeping posted with her.

I really love Instagram, I’m on there a lot. Also on Pinterest and Facebook, and those are all @SaltedPlains. Those are probably the best places to find me, and Twitter.

 

Subscribe to The Dinner Special podcast

 

Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: Adventures in Cooking, Against All Grain, Alex Strohl, Alice Medrich, Appeasing a Food Geek, Baking, Flavor Flours, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Food Stories, Gluten-Free, Gluten-Free Girl, My Paleo Patisserie, No Refined Sugar, Ratio, Salted Plains, Tasty Yummies, Tessa Fisher, The Bojon Gourmet

071: Kate Taylor: Whole Sustainable Foods and Healthy Eating

August 26, 2015 by Gabriel 10 Comments

Kate Taylor of Cookie and Kate on The Dinner Special podcast talking about keeping posted with her.
http://traffic.libsyn.com/thedinnerspecial/TDS071.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download | Embed

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

Kate Taylor of Cookie and Kate on The Dinner Special podcast talking about whole sustainable foods and healthy eating.

Cookie and Kate

Kate is a self-taught photographer and cook who daydreams about new recipes and devours cookbooks. She believes in eating whole, sustainable foods that delights the senses and nourishes the body. On her blog Cookie and Kate, she shares her vegetarian creations while keeping things fun and recipes flexible.

I am so delighted to have Kate Taylor of Cookie and Kate joining me today.

(*All images below are Kate’s.)

On Her Passion for Food:

Kate Taylor of Cookie and Kate on The Dinner Special podcast talking about her passion for food.

It’s funny because when I was a kid I was the pickiest eater of all time. We’re talking peanut butter sandwiches, no jelly and no crust for a while. Before I got sick of that and then it was just like mac and cheese. So I think that my taste buds expanded exponentially once I went off to college and tried new things, and it was kind of a whole new world. We just live in this awesome time where we can sample all these different ethnic cuisines, and sample the world in any decently sized city. So coming from, like, a suburb in Oklahoma, I just hadn’t tried any of that and it was kind of a revelation.

I think that my learning how to cook was more just out of necessity. In college, I was trying to live really, really cheaply. Actually I spent a semester in France that really got me interested in cooking because we’d walk all the way to the grocery store and we’d just come back with what we could carry. And we did not have a refrigerator, we did not have a microwave, we just had a stove.

The two girls I was with were pretty content just eating spaghetti with marinara sauce every night. But I’d be like, “What would happen if I added these vegetables, or what’s that sauce taste like?” And so I’ve just always been a creative person who likes to make stuff, and I found, especially in that situation, that cooking could be pretty fun. It was like I had all those constraints and I just sort of played around with them.

On Her Blog:

Kate Taylor of Cookie and Kate on The Dinner Special podcast talking about starting her food blog.

I would say my blog kind of had a different story than most. Most food blogs start because the person already has a passion for cooking and loves to try recipes and share recipes with their friends. My blog just started when I was really bored at an office job, like, maybe a year and a half after college. I was working in online marketing, so I was learning a lot of stuff that was relevant to the more technical side of blogging. And I just felt sort of creatively stifled. I had always enjoyed writing and photography, I had taken several photography classes in college, and just wasn’t using those passions and skills. So when my friend introduced me to a lot of blogs that were out there I was like, “Oh, this is really fun.” And eventually it was like, “Hey, I can build websites and I like all the stuff that goes into a blog so why don’t I just start one?”

Cookie and Kate was just the only catchy name I could come up with for a blog that had no focus really. But I knew that myself and my dog would be involved somehow.

I wanted it to be really unique content that you could only get there. And when I started the blog I thought, “Oh, well, maybe I’ll dabble in interior design or, you know, some other topics that I enjoy, but there were other people out there doing a really good job with that.” It was like, “How do I add my own spin on this?” So one day I shared a salsa recipe that I’d been making at home and it was kind of a lightbulb moment, because I was like, “Oh, this is something I get to photograph, I get to wrap stories around it, I get to write about it. I kind of get to geek out because I really love projects that I can immerse myself in.” I also felt really, really good about sharing healthy recipes. You might not be able to buy that $200 top that I said was cute last week in a blog post I didn’t feel good about because I can’t even buy that $200 top, but you could probably stop by the grocery store and spend $4 on ingredients.

On Whole Sustainable Foods:

Whole foods, the basic definition, is just that they’re foods that are as close to the source as possible. In this day and age there are just processed foods everywhere you go. Even most breads out there have like 25 ingredients when there should only be five. So I just feel like somewhere in the last 100 years we’ve gone from whole foods, which didn’t even need definition, until now I just feel it’s really important to eat unprocessed, unrefined, whole grains. All the nutrition I have read reinforces the importance of getting enough vegetables and fruits and whole grains. It’s really just, we need more plant-based foods in our diet and less processed foods. If I have an agenda it’s just to try to get people to eat more healthy, whole foods and less processed foods.

I grew up in a pretty health conscious household. I mean, granted, for a while I only ate peanut butter sandwiches, but my mom was also really good about always just having a simple salad on the table, and fresh fruit, and she appreciated whole grain bread versus plain white bread. And I can tend to be hypoglycemic, so my blood sugar levels just get out of whack easier than other people, and so I learned very early on, if I just ate plain Bisquick pancakes with a lot of fake maple syrup on top for breakfast I would be seriously ill in a few hours.

For me I felt like the connection between what I ate and how I felt was more apparent than it is for other people. I guess my grandmother and my mom have been interested in healthy cooking and back then it was low fat so when I went to college I eventually picked up a book by Marion Nestle who’s a well-known nutritionist and I was just really surprised to learn, “Oh, maybe I don’t need three glasses of milk a day” and, “Oh, we need fat in our diet.” It’s not something I need to be scared of or avoid.

Another writer that I fell in love with his books is Michael Pollan. Very influential in convincing me to eat less meat.

On Misconception About Healthy Eating:

Kate Taylor of Cookie and Kate on The Dinner Special podcast talking about some misconceptions about healthy eating.

I think that the low-fat craze really did a number on everyone’s concept of healthy foods, because once you take the fat out of anything, it’s not going to be satisfying. So I would say don’t be afraid of healthy fats like olive oil or even some butter. They are fine, we need them in order to feel satisfied. I’d also say don’t even be too afraid to salt the recipes. I suggest to salt them, because I mean, really, you’re not going to get as much salt in anything you make at home versus the processed foods. And also just fresh flavors like fresh lemon, which I add to tons of stuff, like a squeeze of lemon juice or garlic, herbs, those aromatics just are bursting with flavor. There is no reason to think that healthy means flavorless. Also, vegetables are super tasty if you ask me, and if maybe you need to add some cheese to help you get there, go for it!

On Eating Vegetarian:

Kate Taylor of Cookie and Kate on The Dinner Special podcast talking about eating vegetarian.

Well, I eat fish on rare occasions. I don’t have any problem in eating fish. I went vegetarian over five years ago. It was before I started my blog. I don’t really push vegetarianism much on my blog, it’s just that everything so happens to be meatless.

I think a lot of people that, maybe even most of the people, who follow my blog just appreciate healthy, wholesome, produce-driven meals like I do. I became a vegetarian, a lax one really, after reading Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma. I just felt like he presented a really well-balanced view on it and frankly when I went to college and my taste buds expanded I was still very picky about meat, so I never ate a ton of it, if I did it was like chicken. I eventually learned to like burgers just because there is ketchup on them. It wasn’t a lot of meat that I loved, and once I learned more about it, was like, “Okay, well this is a really relatively easy way for me to do the environment a favor, because meat takes a lot of energy to produce. It’s another way to avoid antibiotic exposure, and just the growth hormones and the stuff we put in the animals these days.” It was just easier for me.

For a while after I went vegetarian I decided I would eat some bacon and pepperoni every now and then, but I don’t do that anymore. Those are the only meats that I really missed just because they are really tasty. I never once missed chicken. I missed some comfort food, stuff that my mom would make like chicken enchiladas but now she just puts beans in mine.

On Some Resources for Learning More About Eating Vegetarian:

The book that I’ve been referencing most often is a new one that came out from America’s Test Kitchen called The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook. They just have a vegetarian version of almost anything you can think of. If you’re just dying for pad thai they’ll tell you how to make it. I think that would be a good book for anyone who wants to eat less meat. I really love Michael Pollan so if you want to learn more about food. I always feel like learning more about the reality of what you’re eating, makes it so much easier to make good choices. So I would recommend anything by Michael Pollan.

The Pressure Cooker:

Which food shows or cooking shows do you watch?

I don’t have cable, but recently I’ve gotten into Mind of a Chef on Netflix. I’ve only seen season one so it’s all about David Chang and he’s just, like, kind of blowing my mind with his ideas, so that’s been fun.

What are some food blogs or food websites we have to know about?

Well my friend Tessa has a really awesome gluten-free baking blog. She has convinced me that gluten-free baked goods can be super tasty and she works really hard on them. So I would say Salted Plains, that is the name of the blog. And then I recently met with a researcher from Harvard and she told me about a newsletter that Harvard sends out that has like really solid nutrition advice in it. So I would say subscribe to that.

Who do you follow on Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook that make you happy?

I am kind of a sucker for Instagram accounts that are full of animals. So, I like The Dogist on Instagram, and I like Esther the Wonder Pig.

It’s this pig that these two guys adopted thinking it was going to be a little pig, but it’s like a giant pig.

They even moved to a farm so she would have more space and they dress her up. I watch my friend’s little girl some afternoons and we always catch up on Esther the Wonder Pig.

What is the most unusual or treasured item in your kitchen?

I have this little spatula with a little wooden handle that I inherited from my grandmother. My dad said she was always walking around with that spatula in her back pocket. So I’m pretty attached to that one.

Name one ingredient you used to dislike but now you love.

I use to dislike fennel, I really like it now.

I am so sure my mom never put fennel on the table. If you slice it super thin it becomes really palatable and kind of a surprising ingredient to add to salad.

What are a few cookbooks that make your life better?

Yeah well I definitely reiterate America’s Test Kitchen Vegetarian Cookbook. I also really love the Vegetarian Flavor Bible, which also came out recently, it’s like a flavor thesaurus and I use it for almost everything. If I’m wondering what to do with a tomato, I’ll open it up and see what goes well with tomatoes. Honestly, I just have the most enormous pile of cookbooks and it’s kind of just rotating inspiration.

What song or album just makes you want to cook?

I would say anything by Otis Redding just makes me want to move and hop around in the kitchen.

On Keeping Posted with Kate:

Kate Taylor of Cookie and Kate on The Dinner Special podcast talking about keeping posted with her.

I would suggest definitely subscribing to my blog posts by email or RSS. I post everything on Facebook. You can get some behind the scene stuff from Instagram.

 

Subscribe to The Dinner Special podcast

 

Filed Under: Podcast Tagged With: America's Test Kitchen, Cookie and Kate, David Chang, Esther the Wonder Pig, Food Blog, Food Blogger, Healthy, Kate Taylor, Marion Nestle, Michael Pollan, Mind of a Chef, Omnivore's Dilemma, Otis Redding, Plant-based, Salted Plains, Sustainable Foods, The Complete Vegetarian Cookbook, The Dogist, The Vegetarian Flavor Bible, Vegetarian, Whole foods

Hello! I'm Gabriel Soh, home cook, food enthusiast and your host of The Dinner Special podcast.
Everything here on The Dinner Special is an experiment, just like with cooking. Thank you for listening and being part of the adventure.

Enjoy the podcast?

Click HERE to subscribe, rate and review on iTunes now.

Let’s Keep in Touch!

Copyright © 2022 · Epik on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in