Gluten-free Gourmand

If you've never tried guanciale, you should check it out.  It's like bacon, only better.  Made from the jowl of the pig, guanciale is the best part of the animal once it's cured. Guanciale is the central umame flavor in Pasta Amatriciana, a rustic pasta dish from Italy.  It's simple to make and, thanks to the guanciale, it's incredibly delicious. If you use the concept of prepping and cooking at the same time, this easy dish is very quick to make. Pasta Amatriciana Recipe Prep/Cook time: 30 minutes Serves 2-3 Set your water to boil for the pasta and, at the same time, put a large pan on the stove to heat up on medium heat.  Toss in the pan: some lardons of guanciale While all that is heating up, cut up some: shallots Toss those in the pan with the guanciale that's rendering.   Cut into chunks: 1 pound fresh or frozen tomatoes By this time the water should be at a boil.  When this is indeed the case, start cooking: 8 oz. pasta...

To my faithful readers who have been patient with me, I'll finally explain why I took a long break from blogging. My grandfather recently died and my life has been in a bit of a frenzy with work, love, family, and a funeral. In memory of my grandfather, who loved this tomato sauce recipe so much, I am going to share with you my version of my grandmother's spaghetti sauce. My grandmother usually used a mixture of stewed tomatoes, tomato paste, and tomato puree from a can to make this. However, I have multitudes of fresh tomatoes from my garden to use for this. I have adapted the recipe to call for fresh tomatoes, which was probably the origin of the recipe anyway. You can use a food mill (pictured right) or tomatoes concasse as explained in my gazpacho recipe to make this. For ideal texture, use both. I chose to essentially juice my tomatoes this time, since most of my harvest was made up of small tomatoes which don't produce much flesh after skinning and de-...

I used to have a roommate named Rosaria who is from Naples. She really enjoys cooking and she was nice enough to show me how to make a few traditional Italian recipes. Pasta Carbonara was one of them. Pasta Carbonara (also known as Spaghetti Carbonara) is a fast, easy, and extremely filling dish. It's basically bacon and eggs for dinner.  It's delicious. Rosaria and I went through a few tries before we got this dish to work gluten-free. The trick is to use a pasta that can withstand a lot of handling after it's cooked. I recommend using either a quinoa pasta, a corn pasta or a white rice pasta. Both fresh pasta and brown rice pasta gave poor results. I used Ener-G brand white rice spaghetti for this meal, and it worked rather well. I have a full review of this pasta in another post. Traditional recipes are very specific for Italians, meaning that if they call it pasta carbonara, they do not experiment with substituting ingredients or techniques when ...