Gluten-free Gourmand

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-...

You may know by now that I'm into pasta. I've done several reviews now, including Ener-G White Rice Spaghetti , Tinkyada White Rice Spaghetti , Tinkyada Brown Rice Fetucini , and a round-up of the Best and Worst of Gluten-free Pasta , in which I declare my favorite gluten-free pasta to be Ancient Harvest Quinoa and Corn pasta. This is still my favorite. However, I was glad to find a new quinoa pasta to try because I was pretty sure I'd like it. I did. This is a very good pasta option, and perhaps the only quinoa pasta available for people who can't tolerate corn. The look, feel, and flavor of the Andean Dream quinoa pasta are all very neutral - even more natural than the Ancient Harvest, which tends to look a little yellow. The Andean Dream is almost semolina colored, but it may have a touch of gray to the color which I don't find overly noticeable. The flavor is surprisingly neutral without being bland. The texture is the stand-out feature of this quinoa pas...

I haven't been posting as often lately. Summer is here, and I've been busy with projects and experiments. In lieu of a solid product review or recipe, I'll give you an idea of what's coming up. I'm still working on some variations for the gluten-free pancake recipe I created. The next iteration will involve buckwheat, (like my waffles ) one of my favorites. I'm almost there! I just have to eat all the reject batches of quinoa pancakes inhabiting my freezer, then get over being tired of pancakes, then I'll make a new batch and complete my recipe variation. I added this tip to the post "Tips for beginners on the Gluten-free diet:" Talk to everyone about being gluten-free. When I first started on the diet, I had a customer who would bribe my staff and me with these delicious-looking chocolate cookies. I wouldn't try them, assuming they were full of gluten. After weeks of constant bribing, I found out that the customer was on a wheat-free ...

I'm going to classify my Eggplant Parmesan (Eggplant Parmigiano) Recipe as kind of traditional and sort of easy. Here are the ways that I make this fairly labor-intensive dish easier: 1) I don't salt or otherwise prep the eggplant in any way. I just buy a fresh, firm-fleshed one and slice it just before battering. 2) I don't use bread crumbs; I just use flour. I was surprised to learn that this is how Italians do it. 3) I use jarred tomato sauce. Classico is my favorite. If I have frozen leftovers, I use some of my own marinara sauce. 4) I don't mix anything for the cheese filling. I just use mozzerella, usually fresh. My former roommate who is from Naples made this for me once, and her boyfriend at the time (now her husband) also made me a gluten-free version. Both came out rather well. Paolo made his with rice flour, which was very crispy and light. For some reason I've found that gluten-free flour mixes don't work very well for deep-fryin...

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 ...