Linda Blanchard's Cooking Links

Cooking Links

Gluten-Free Comfort Foods Cookbook Cover

Here are my favorite online cooking resources.
SOAR Recipe Archive: This is always the starting place for any search I do for an unusual recipe. You can find "fakes" of things you had in your glutenous days but have missed. It was here that I found a couple of Oreo recipes that I combined and converted to gluten-free.
Mimi's Cyber Kitchen: Another great recipe archive. Also a good place to ask questions whether you're looking for a recipe, or need to know something about equipment or techniques. These are really nice, helpful people.
Gail's Recipe Swap: Is yet another place to search for base recipes to convert to gluten free.
Top Secret Recipes: This site by Todd Wilber convinced me to buy his books full of recipes that imitate commercial and restaurant food, much of which we cannot have anymore. Some of the recipes "cheat" as far as I am concerned, using other premade items to make the imitations (so you go buy a breaded fish block to imitate someone's fish sandwich; what I really wanted to know was how to make the breaded fish stick in the first place). Still, I bought all three of Todd's books and have really enjoyed them, as much for his attitude and the food industry history he provides as background to most of the recipes, as for the recipes themselves. The web-site is a lot of fun, too.
Copycat Recipes: Here's another site for Recipe Secrets of the Rich and Famous Food Makers.
Cook's Illustrated: Another favorite source for information. Subscribe if you believe you'll be cooking a lot. The recipes here are not gluten-free, but the in-depth descriptions of how they arrived at their recipes, what ingredients do what, and the use of cooking equipment and gadgets are a great resource when you're trying to work out your own recipes from scratch. The focus here is on home cooking, though a few gourmet meals are thrown in for balance. I am so glad they've made it up onto the Web, and I look forward to watching this site grow.
King Arthur Flour Baker's Catalog: Okay, so what they are most famous for is wheat flour, you can ignore that and instead indulge in the many other treats they offer, as well as a great selection of baker's tools. It's here you can find English Muffin Rings, pastry cloths that will make your dough easy to roll, even bread machines. As for goodies, they offer fruit cake mix year-round, canned egg whites and whole egg that can make setting your bread machine to start baking in the morning a lot safer, and a gluten-free macaroon mix, plus much much more.