Whole Broccoli Cheese Casserole

This new year finds us making some diet modifications.  These are primarily for our 2 year old Zachariah, though they extend to the rest of us at times too.  It is my goal that he not feel deprived by his restrictions or overly set apart by them.  For the most part removing gluten and all refined sugars from his diet is not particularly difficult.  The benefits have been nothing short of amazing, and by far outweigh the effort of rethinking and reworking our menus.
I am on the learning curve for creating with gluten free flours and starches. This is sometimes frustrating as I am quite proficient with wheat and whole wheat flours in making just about anything I can think of, and am pretty much at the point where I can make things without a recipe...just by feel and intuition.  Anyhow, I do feel a bit of grief at basically starting over entirely!

Tonight's dinner is broccoli cheese casserole. 
I long ago gave up the can of cream of mushroom soup in favor of making my own 'cream of xyz' soup base. I also am finding I can make a decent white sauce with my coconut flour AP mix.
'Cheese product' is not in my vocabulary nor shopping cart! 
We have not had white rice in the house for at least 3 years...hubby says he misses it occasionally.
So this is pretty close to as whole food as you can get.  I would love to have access to raw cheese and the financial means to purchase it, but for now the giant block of cheese from Costco will have to do.  With the 7 of us (5 hungry boys) we easily put away 6-8 lbs of cheese a month!

Here is my recipe
First the rice. I like Alton Brown's recipe for brown rice, it never has failed me. I always double it.

Preheat oven to 375. Bring 5 cups of water to a boil, add 1 teaspoon of salt and 2 tablespoons of butter. Place 3 cups of short or medium grain brown rice in a 13X9 baking dish (an enameled dutch oven works great for this too) and carefully pour in the very hot water/salt/butter mixture. Cover tightly with foil or another lid. Bake at 375 for about 1hr, then remove and let stand for 10 minutes before fluffing.

Next, the broccoli.
In the same pot you boiled your water in for the rice, bring 2 cups of water to a boil.  Blanch 4 cups cut up broccoli, drain and put on top of the finished rice.


Now the sauce.
This is a mix I make ahead of time and keep in the freezer with my other GF mixes.
Here is the recipe for the mix 
2 c. instant non-fat dry milk
2 tbsp. onion flakes

1 tsp. basil and thyme

1/4 c. chicken bouillon  (I leave this one out as very nearly all bouillons have gluten and or MSG)

3/4 c. cornstarch

1/2 tsp. pepper

This makes 3 cups dry equal to 9 cans of soup. Mix thoroughly and store in cool dry place.

To replace one can soup add 1/3 cup mix with 1 1/4 cup water  (I use homemade stock or broth here because of having left out the bouillon). You can add celery or broccoli for cream of celery soup same for mushroom soup. Heat until thick as soup. 

For tonight's recipe I use 2/3 cup of mix and 3 cups of stock, and salt to taste. I make this up in the same pot I used for the water and broccoli.
Pour over the broccoli and rice in the 13X9 pan

 

Cheese, glorious cheese!
Shred approx. 1/2 lb of sharp cheddar, and top the casserole.

Bake at 325-350 for 25-30 minutes until all hot and bubbly. Let it sit 10 minutes while you set the table and then call  your family to dinner. :)