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Start with one container of coconut yogurt (that’s 2/3 cup if you like to make your own.) I’m doing this in a mixing cup with my immersion blender, but you could just as easily do it in a regular blender.

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Add one Tablespoon of lemon juice.

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Now add half of a small avocado. You know how to cut open an avocado, right? Just  slide the knife all the way around in a circle, then pry the two halves apart. Whack the knife into the pit (it makes a very satisfying thok sound,) and pull it out. You can use the other half for a sandwich, salad, or any number of things (including doubling this recipe,) or you can press the exposed side into plastic wrap or foil to seal the air out, and it will keep in the fridge for a few days until you decide.

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Score the avocado in both directions all the way down to the peel, but not through it. Then flip the whole thing inside out, and all your avocado pieces will fall right off, perfectly neat and formed.

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Which is not strictly necessary in this case, since we’re going to blend it all up anyway, but it’s nice to know, if you’re ever trying to fan out some pretty avocado slices on a fancy plate somewhere.

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Finally, add one Tablespoon of water. This will still leave it moderately thick; feel free to adjust the amount of water up or down to get the consistency you’d prefer.

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This, for example, is the perfect consistency for dipping carrot sticks, which is my personal favorite use for this tangy delight. But you may have noticed that my quantity mysteriously doubled here. You may also recall that I mentioned this sauce could be used, among other things, for casseroles. That, my friends, is what we in the business refer to as foreshadowing. Stay tuned.

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Happy Eating!

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Avocado Cream Sauce

2/3 cup coconut yogurt
1 TBS lemon juice
1/2 of a small avocado
1 TBS water

You can make your own! Seriously. It’s way easy, and costs about 1/3 as much.

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This isn’t a recipe so much as it is a process, which is to say, having the right kitchen equipment is key, including a yogurt maker. But before we get to that point, you’ll need a double-boiler. (If you’ve never heard of one, that’s a special kind of pot that is actually two pots, one nestled inside the other. You put water in the bottom pot, and this allows you to warm things in the top pot extremely evenly and carefully without scorching. It’s generally used for melting chocolate and other delicate things like that.)

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Anyway, pour in two cans of coconut milk, turn on the heat, and watch the temperature with a thermometer until it gets to exactly 180 degrees. Don’t forget to stir occasionally so you’re getting an accurate reading.

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Meanwhile, get out your yogurt starter. This is the polite name given to the living bacterial critters that make yogurt what it is, also known as probiotics. But be careful! Anything that is officially sold as “yogurt starter” almost certainly has dairy in it. If your kid already takes a good probiotic supplement (and they probably should be,) you can just open up one of those capsules and use it. Or if they don’t, and you’re not sure where to start, Culturelle is a good brand that is gluten- and dairy-free, and comes in individual packets you can use for each batch of yogurt.

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Just as the temperature is right at 180, pull the top pot off of the double-boiler. You just want to graze that upper limit; any higher and it might start boiling, which we don’t want. The only reason we’re heating it up at all is not to cook it, but to sterilize it. Making yogurt involves creating an ideal environment for bacteria to grow, so we have to make sure that there are absolutely no bad bacteria hanging out anywhere near our coconut milk before we start.

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Now it’s sterile, which is great, but it’s still so hot it would kill our good bacteria too if we put them in there, which is not so great. So we have to let it cool down again, to 110 degrees, which happens to be the perfect temperature for making little buggies happy. (The same goes for when we’re baking bread with live yeast, you may recall.) You could just set the pot aside and be very patient, or you could be like me and dip the pot in a large bowl of water to cool it down faster.

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Once you’re back down to 110 degrees, scoop a small amount out of the pot and mix it with your probiotics. Make sure all the powder dissolves thoroughly.

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Then mix the dissolved concoction back into the pot.

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Pour the whole thing into your yogurt maker’s inner container…

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Then close up the outer container around it and let it hang out on your counter for 24 hours. Some instructions might tell you that you only need a few hours, but in my experience that just doesn’t give the bacteria enough time to flourish unless you’re using multiple doses of probiotics. Ideally, when you open that container up, it should be noticeably thicker than it started, and that’s how you’ll know the probiotics have really multiplied. If it’s still completely runny, you may need to use a double-dose of your probiotic, or you may have accidentally killed it at some point, perhaps by adding the bacteria in while the milk was still too hot, or by using a questionable brand of probiotics that was mostly dead to begin with.

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But even the heartiest of probiotic colonies probably aren’t going to result in the kind of yogurt thickness you’re used to buying at the store. To achieve this, you have to strain the yogurt, also known as dripping it. Your yogurt maker should come with a bag of cheesecloth (so named because it’s what you use to make cheese!) Set the bag inside a large bowl, pour the yogurt in, and then lift the bag and hang it by the strings, allowing the clear liquid to drip out.

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I usually tie mine to the microwave door handle. If we were making yogurt out of milk, that liquid would be what’s known as whey, but as it is, it’s just coconut water.

How long you let it drip depends on how thick you want it; at some point enough liquid will come out that you’ll move beyond yogurt into the consistency of cream cheese, which may even be something you want to try to make sometime. I’ve never been able to get it anywhere near a truly firm, grate-able cheese consistency, but I suppose it might be possible if you let it sit long enough. Some people also prefer to drip it in the refrigerator rather than out at room temperature, but my refrigerator doesn’t have nearly enough space for that.

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Ultimately, you’ll have to turn the bag inside out and do a fair bit of scraping to get the yogurt into a storage container. Make sure you make a big mess while you’re doing that. It’s what I would do.

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And I figure, if I’m going to all this work just to have yogurt in the house again, I deserve to be downright decadent in enjoying it. That right there is a banana, topped with coconut yogurt, drizzled with honey. I could eat that for breakfast every single day, y’all.

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Happy Eating!

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Homemade Coconut Yogurt

2 cans coconut milk
1 packet/dose of GFCF probiotics, or more as necessary
banana (or other fruit as desired)
honey (not optional!)

Both!

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First, the runny peanut butter kind. I promise I won’t think less of you if this is the kind you prefer. Well, I promise I’ll try. Start with 1/4 cup of peanut butter. There are a very small number of peanut butters that do contain gluten, believe it or not. Ideally you should just choose one where you can recognize (and pronounce) every ingredient listed, but if you don’t have a fancy organic one available to you, Jif is one national brand that’s GF. [As always, the products I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

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Mix in 1/2 cup of coconut milk. If you’re looking for something to do with the rest of the can, you could make Tandoori Chicken, or a partial batch of Mango Rice.

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Whisk them together until the peanut butter is totally blended. Then add 2 Tablespoons of Thai Kitchen fish sauce, and 3 Tablespoons of rice vinegar. (Do be sure that you’re using real rice vinegar and not some fake “flavored” vinegar, because it might be fermented from barley – malt is the key word you want to always avoid.)

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Mix in 2 teaspoons of minced ginger, and 1 teaspoon (2 cloves) of minced garlic.

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Finally, add in 4 Tablespoons of brown sugar. You would think this makes it sweet enough for me… but it doesn’t.

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You can keep this in the refrigerator for a good week if you store it in a nice airtight container. But enough of this nonsense! On to the better — er, I mean other version of peanut sauce.

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Alright, I confess. I don’t bother to replicate this elusive sauce from scratch, I cheat and use a bottled base. Actually, “I don’t bother” is misleading, because I have tried many times and failed. I just can’t get that awesome flavor of restaurant-style peanut sauce on my own. If you can’t find this Premier Japan sauce at your local health food store, it is available online as well.

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Start with 1 cup of the hoisin sauce, and mix in 1 Tablespoon of creamy peanut butter.

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Also add in 2-3 teaspoons of water to thin it out just a bit. And that’s it!

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Of course it helps if you have some spring rolls on hand to dip into your batch of delicious peanut sauce. If you don’t know how to make spring rolls… stay tuned.

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Happy Eating!

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Peanut Sauce #1

1/4 cup GF peanut butter
1/2 cup coconut milk
2 Tbs Thai Kitchen fish sauce
3 Tbs rice vinegar
2 tsp minced ginger
1 tsp minced garlic
4 Tbs brown sugar

Peanut Sauce #2

1 cup Premier Japan hoisin sauce
1 Tbs GF peanut butter
2-3 tsp water

Granted, plain white potatoes are not really that nutritious in the grand scheme of things, but they can be an excellent vehicle for a wide variety of toppings. Like a lot of meals, they aren’t traditionally GFCF, what with all the butter and cheese and sour cream, but who wants to be traditional anyhow? A little creativity goes a long way.

But before we can revel in our topping choices, we have to get our potato into a baked state of mind. First, jab it liberally on all sides with a fork. (If you don’t, you will have yourself an exploding potato instead.)

Then wrap it loosely in a paper towel, and microwave it for 4 and a half minutes. Now, this is important: take it out of the microwave and let it sit for another 5 minutes. It will continue to cook as it rests, so that by the end the middle will be perfectly cooked without the outside being overdone.

If you are making several potatoes instead of just one or two, you may want to do it the slow but simultaneous way, which is to put all of them in a 350 degree oven for one hour. Of course you don’t want to put a paper towel in the oven, but the fork-jabbing step is still quite necessary, believe me.

Now, on to the toppings! Today I decided I was going to go with kind of a modified version of a BLT, because I had some leftover bacon in the refrigerator. “Leftover” is a bit disingenuous, actually, since it’s always part of my plan when I make bacon to cook a few extra slices so I’ll have some ready to use in a salad or whatever later in the week. See here for a description of how I make bacon in the oven with zero effort and very little mess. Unfortunately, this wasn’t destined to be a true BLT, because I didn’t have any lettuce, and I wasn’t convinced the texture would be that good on the potato anyway.

But I did include what I consider to be a vital part of a BLT, and that’s chipotle mayo! The chiles in Sriracha (also sometimes known as Rooster Sauce) are not truly chipotles, but they get the point across. You could mix in real chipotles in adobo, or even dried chipotle spice or chili powder, whatever you have on hand. The proportions are a little fuzzy; start with 1 teaspoon of spicy stuff in 2-3 Tablespoons of mayonnaise, and go from there. Not all mayonnaises are gluten-free, but Hellman’s actually prints it right on the label for us, isn’t that nice of them? [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!] And, if you mix it up in one of these tiny single-serving disposable tupperware things, then you can just pop a lid on whatever you don’t use and save it for a sandwich or GF tortilla wrap later in the week. Efficiency is your friend!

And here we have my completed Bacon-Tomato-Chipotle-Mayo potato. (Read that out loud once or twice, it’s fun.) I was really wishing for some fresh green onions to go with it as well, but my empty refrigerator mocked me in this regard. But what’s important to understand is that anything, absolutely anything, can go on a baked potato. Meats, beans, veggies, GFCF dressings, guacamole… If you’re not up for baking gluten-free hamburger buns, for example, you could just fill a baked potato with ground beef and hamburger fixings. Or rather than always buying the expensive gluten-free pastas, you could fill one with chicken and spaghetti sauce. Why, just a few days ago I even made one with Thanksgiving leftovers:

That’s turkey, cranberry sauce, and some extra deviled egg filling I still had hanging around after I’d already filled all my egg halves to overflowing.  This was one of my favorite baked potato combinations I’ve ever eaten, and believe me, I’ve made a lot.

Happy Eating!

But we can handle it, right? Of course we can.

First, you’ll want to grab yourself a bottle of GFCF salad dressing. Mine’s a local brand, but there are a whole ton of options out there. If you want to go with a French dressing like I’m using here, you could use Marzetti “Country French,” or Kraft “Creamy French,” or Ken’s Steak House “Creamy French,” “Country French,” or “Lite Country French with Vermont Honey.” Ken’s Steak House really likes the French dressing, eh?

Of course there are a lot of other flavors too–various national brands carry safe versions of Thousand Island, Honey Mustard, Vinaigrettes, pretty much whatever you want. Just do your research and be safe, because as always… the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change their ingredients without warning. Say it with me now: Always check your labels!

Anyway, marinate a couple of chicken breasts in about 1/4 cup of your dressing for as long as you can manage. (Make sure to get all-natural chicken breasts that aren’t injected with broth, or you run the risk of gluten.) Then drop them in a greased baking dish, and liberally sprinkle slivered almonds over the top. There’s no point in trying to coat the whole chicken breast like you might imagine a typical “crust” would be, because the nuts on the sides just fall off and the ones on the bottom will get soggy. This is more like an “upper-crust” kind of crust, know what I’m saying? It’s superior, is what I’m saying.

Pop the uncovered dish into a 350-degree oven for about 30-40 minutes, and you’re good to go. The almonds aren’t the most graceful of toppings, I’ll admit, but they really are the highlight of the dish, so light and perfectly toasted. But if you or your kids aren’t into the big jagged pieces, you could crush them a bit before sprinkling, or even go so far as to use almond meal instead for a more traditional-looking breading.

Not surprisingly, this chicken goes really well with a side salad. I always end up adding a little more dressing to the chicken as I’m pouring it on the salad, but I’m decadent like that. Feel free to exhibit more restraint, if you can manage it.

Happy Eating!

Easy Almond-Crusted Chicken

2 chicken breasts
1/4 cup GFCF French dressing
1/4 cup slivered almonds

Lamb! If that gives you an initial shudder, just remember: a baby lamb is no cuter than a baby cow, and we cook those little guys up all the time, right? Right. I get this stuff frozen at my normal grocery store, and I bet yours has it too. You just have to ask someone who works in the meat department, because it’s not going to be on some big obvious display. In an ideal homage to Greek food, it would actually be a lamb roast rather than ground lamb, but the important thing is the flavor.

Season it with 1/2 teaspoon of paprika, and 1/2 teaspoon of oregano.

Also add in 1 Tablespoon of dried, minced onion (or onion powder, whatever you have.)

Mash it all together so the seasonings are evenly distributed. Really stab at it; cooking is a great way to let your aggression out.

Okay, while that browns, we’re going to prepare the tzatziki, that yummy cucumber yogurt sauce that is a necessity for Greek food. Start by peeling one whole cucumber. You could use a peeler, but I find that with such a thick skin, it’s pretty easy to just cut it in half and then slice downward around the edges with a sharp knife.

Then we want to cut the seeds out. First quarter your long pieces…

And again, slice vertically to neatly remove the core of seeds all at once. (Don’t go thinking I do this one-handed though, I just paused mid-cut to take a photo. You do have to brace the top with your fingers for this to work right.)

Throw away the seeds and peel, and dice up everything you have left.

Now, you could just blend this into a pre-made casein-free yogurt and call it a day. But for us, that doesn’t work. I personally think soy yogurt is the most disgusting thing on the planet–I seriously can’t even stand to smell it in the kitchen. I don’t know what it is, but my tastebuds completely reject all soy “dairy” products on a very intense level. And while the flavor of the cucumber might not clash too badly with the mild flavor of coconut milk yogurt, the GFCF Boy is severely allergic to coconut, so that option is out for us too. But if it works for you, go for it!

Instead, I just make a modified version of my Ranch dressing. You can’t see it, but underneath the cucumber is 1/4 cup of Bob’s Red Mill finely ground almond meal. Then on top we add 1/2 Tablespoon of canola oil…

1/2 Tablespoon of potato starch, 1/2 teaspoon of salt…

And 1/4 cup of water. (This is less water than the dressing recipe uses, because the cucumber is going to add a ton of liquid to the mix.) You should also add in 1/4 tsp of garlic powder for a more authentic flavor–we’ve recently discovered that one of the GFCF Boy’s other longstanding, hard-to-pin-down allergies is garlic, so we’re avoiding it for now, but please don’t skimp on flavor just on my account.

Blend thoroughly, and pour into a small saucepan.

Cook over low heat for a few minutes until it has thickened to the right consistency, stirring frequently. As with the Ranch dressing, this is not a perfectly smooth dip, there is a little bit of graininess to the texture. But the flavor is great, and when it’s all mixed up with the other ingredients in the wrap it shouldn’t be an issue.

Oh yeah, did you forget we were making wraps, here? Your meat should be about done by now, and man, does it smell good. Just like Tino’s! (But I wouldn’t say that where he can hear you.)

I have tried and tried, but so far all of my GF pita experiments have been whopping failures. I’ve basically given up at this point, especially because these Food For Life brown rice tortillas are awesome. Even the GFCF Husband raved about how good they were. It’s not a thick doughy pita, it’s true, but for a GF bread product, it’s a darn good substitute.

One other tip, if you’re not using all the tortillas at once, don’t try to separate them in the package while they’re still frozen, you’ll just break them. Microwave the whole stack (outside of the plastic bag, of course) for about 15 seconds until you can peel off the number you need, and then refreeze the rest. It won’t hurt ‘em.

Add in some diced tomato and greens and you’re ready to go! Strictly speaking, romaine lettuce is the most authentic, but I just use the same baby greens I make salads out of. And if you have any tzatziki left over, it makes a great dip for chips or carrot sticks, or even a sandwich spread.

Happy Eating!

Greek Wraps with Cucumber Tzatziki

1 lb. ground lamb
1/2 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp oregano
1 TBS dried minced onion (or onion powder)

1 cucumber, peeled and seeded
1/4 cup Bob’s Red Mill almond meal
1/2 TBS canola oil
1/2 TBS potato starch
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup water
1/4 tsp garlic powder (optional)

tomatoes
lettuce
Food For Life brown rice tortillas

I think this is perhaps my favorite photo I have ever taken (excluding certain photos of my adorable offspring, towards which I have an obvious bias.) Just goes to show that if you take enough pictures, some are going to turn out great no matter how mediocre of a photographer you are. Funny side note: a friend of mine asked me recently about what sort of lighting I use for the photos on this site. Uh, it’s just my kitchen fluorescents and the camera flash, y’all. I mean, I love you and everything, but I’m not going to work that hard at it. I’ve got food to cook!

Here’s a less gorgeous photo of that same pasta so you can see what the bag looks like. I think we’ve settled on this as our favorite GF pasta, but I reserve the right to change my opinion in the future.

So, while we boil about 8 oz. of that pasta, let’s make the sauce. The base is Marie’s Coleslaw dressing, which is absolutely delicious. It’s over in the refrigerated section with the pre-bagged lettuce in my grocery store, not on the shelf with the other dressings. Not all Marie’s flavors are dairy-free, so don’t just grab one willy-nilly, it has to be the Coleslaw flavor. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

Pour half the jar into a bowl, and save the rest for a salad (or another batch of this pasta, once you discover your family has devoured it all.) Then add 6 Tablespoons of Hellmann’s mayonnaise.

1 Tablespoon of sugar…

And 1 Tablespoon of almond milk.

Then, dice 2 ribs of celery. I like the pieces pretty small, so I cut the stalk into fourths before dicing along the ends.

Then add 1/2 cup of dried cranberries. If you use a different brand, make sure you double-check that they’re not dusted with flour to prevent sticking.

Finally, add 1/2 a teaspoon of dried, minced onion. (Onion powder would work too.)

Now, meanwhile, your pasta will have produced this nasty sludge, because that’s what GF pastas do.

I actually like to drain it about halfway through, give it a really good rinse, and refill the pot with new water before returning it to the heat.

This gives the pasta a chance to clear the coooked-rice sludge out of the middle of the tubes while it finishes cooking, which I think helps the flavor and texture dramatically. Plus, it just looks a lot less gross sitting there on the stove.

See? All clean! When the pasta’s really done cooking, make sure you rinse it in the strainer until it’s not hot anymore, otherwise it will do funky things to the mayonnaise.

Now this step is critical: cover it and put it in the fridge for at least 6-8 hours. It needs time for the flavors to blend and mellow, especially the cranberries and the celery. Plus, the sauce will thicken, which is good because right now you’re going to be thinking, “What the heck is this nonsense? It’s way too watery!” Trust me, the cranberries and celery are going to soak up all that extra moisture.

I wish I had a picture of this all displayed nicely on a plate, but the truth is, I took it to a potluck that night, and it was basically all eaten. And keep in mind, this was not some weird GFCF potluck, I just put this on the table next to all the other food and only the people who knew it was mine had any idea.

Happy Eating!

The GFCF Lady’s Pasta Salad

8 oz. GF pasta elbows
1/2 jar (6 oz.) Marie’s Coleslaw dressing
6 TBS Hellmann’s mayonnaise
1 TBS sugar
1 TBS almond milk
2 ribs celery
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 tsp dried, minced onion (or onion powder)

First, take a can of navy beans. If you’re really hardcore you can cook your own–it’s certainly cheaper that way–but that assumes you’ve got an extra day to pre-soak the dried beans, then another couple of hours to cook them. Plus, it assumes your children will let a large bowl of tantalizing liquid sit undisturbed on the counter for 15 minutes, let alone 15 hours. Ain’t gonna happen in this household.

Do be careful to check your brands, but this is another one of those foods where you ought to be able to just pick the right label off the shelf: it should basically say “Navy Beans, Water, Salt.” Don’t even bother with anything else.

Dump the whole can in the blender. If you cooked your own, you’ll have to estimate how much of the cooking liquid to use to get the right consistency.

Now, add 2 Tablespoons of nutritional yeast. (You may notice the picture shows a smaller measuring spoon, but that’s because all my tablespoons were dirty. 3 teaspoons = 1 Tablespoon, in case you ever find yourself in a similar situation.) Now what on God’s green Earth is nutritional yeast, you ask? Well, I’m glad you asked. Most people are familiar with the concept of the “good bacteria” in your stomach that aids digestion. It’s the healthy stuff you find in yogurt, as opposed to the nasty bacteria that can give you food poisoning. Well there’s actually a form of good yeast, too, which is totally different from the bad yeast (Candida albicans) that can cause intestinal distress just like its bad-bacteria counterpart. The scientific name for this good strain of yeast is Saccharomyces cerevisiae–which is precisely why people call it “nutritional yeast” instead.

You can buy nutritional yeast at health food stores, usually stocked in those big self-serve bins in the bulk department. Buy a half a cup or so, and you can store it in an airtight container in your pantry indefinitely. The flavor is just sort of… magic. It’s kind of like salt, in that it somehow brings out and complements the flavors of whatever it’s added to. But it doesn’t taste like salt. The closest way to describe it is it tastes like Cheetos. (And it is, in fact, what they use in these things, one of the best GFCF snacks out there.) Anyway, it tastes so good, I even know people who eat it straight out of the container. And just like the good bacteria in yogurt, your body needs the good yeast to maintain the right digestive balance, so it’s got benefits beyond flavor.

Blend again, and it’s ready to go! At this point it’s a basic white sauce: you can add sage and cooked ground sausage, and all of a sudden you have a flour-free sausage gravy. Or you can mix it with chicken broth and use it as a base for any kind of cream-based soup. Or cook it on the stove to thicken it a little bit, and you have a “cheesy” filling for enchiladas. Or mix in some tahini, garlic, and lemon juice, and you have a dip for veggies or chips that’s very similar to hummus. The possibilities are endless! (But if they’re too endless to manage, don’t worry, I’ll be posting some recipes that incorporate it in the near future.)

Happy Eating!

Cream Sauce

1 can plain navy beans
2 TBS nutritional yeast

As promised, here is a handy little cilantro pesto recipe, good for using up leftover bunches, sneaking cilantro into your children’s diet for its detoxifying effects, or both. You may notice I was relying heavily on the “use it up” excuse this time, as my cilantro was getting a little wilty. So much so, that I figured it wasn’t even worth it to try to pick out the good parts from the bottom half, I just chopped it right off.

Of course, even when you try to take the lazy way out, you still end up having to pick out tons of thick stems from the top part. Learn from the error of my ways, people.

Once you’ve got a tightly-packed cup’s worth of usable leaves, throw them in the blender, and add 1/2 cup of Bob’s Red Mill ground almond meal. Or grind up your own almonds in the food processor, but really, that’s so much more work. And you already did all that work pulling out the stems, you deserve a break.

Add one clove of minced garlic…

2 Tablespoons of lemon juice…

And 6 Tablespoons of olive oil.

Now make a bunch of noise with your blender, and pray it doesn’t wake the kids up from their nap.

If it’s too thick, you can add a little more liquid. Just remember to keep the ratio of lemon juice to oil at 1:3. So one 1/4 teaspoon of lemon juice…

And three 1/4 teaspoons of oil.

Repeat as necessary until you have a lovely green paste. The lemon juice acts as a preservative, so it will keep in an airtight container in the fridge for weeks. Dip tortilla chips in it, use it as a spread for burgers, add some extra oil and toss it with rice pasta, or mix it into ground meat–whatever your kids will let you get away with.

Happy Eating!

Cilantro Pesto

1 cup packed fresh cilantro
1/2 cup of Bob’s Red Mill almond meal
1 clove of garlic
2 tablespoons lemon juice
6 tablespoons olive oil

I make this in pretty small batches, but you can double it for a more reasonable quantity. Start with 1/4 cup of finely ground almond meal. You could use cashews or sunflower seeds if you prefer, but then you’d have to grind them yourself in a food processor. I already have this stuff on hand, so that’s what I use.

Then, 1/2 Tablespoon of potato starch. I don’t recommend substituting corn starch here, because it just doesn’t get as smooth, and this recipe needs all the smoothness it can get. Actually, I often end up using potato starch in my recipes that call for corn starch for this very reason. It’s one of the few specialty ingredients that costs about the same as its mainstream counterpart, so why not?

If you want, you can blend it a little at this point, just to see if you can get that almond meal any smoother. I can’t really decide if it helps or not, since I’m usually not the one eating it. Then add 1/2 teaspoon of salt. Please note that this photo is not incredibly washed-out, it is actually an artistic statement on the blinding simplicity of our most fundamental seasoning. I did it on purpose, I swear.

Then 1/2 Tablespoon of canola oil…

And about 1/2 cup of water. I tend to leave it a little on the short side, because you can always add more later if it’s too thick, but you don’t want to have to cook it for too long trying to thicken a mixture that’s too thin.

And 1/4 teaspoon of garlic powder.

And blend away!  (Man, my kids and I could spend all day watching videos on that site. Brutal destruction of objects never gets old.) You could also do this in a food processor, it’s your choice. Blend for at least a few minutes on the highest speed, in order to get it as smooth as possible.

Pour the resulting mixture into a small pan, and cook over low heat while stirring constantly.

Okay, not quite constantly, you can take a few seconds to add in the seasonings. This is 1/4 teaspoon of parsley.

1/4 teaspoon of dried chives…

And just a pinch of dill. Or a couple of shakes, or whatever. A really tiny amount.

It will look like too much seasoning at first, because everything will be floating on the top. But don’t worry, as the sauce thickens the little green flecks will settle into the middle and bottom of it too, and have a more balanced appearance. And speaking of thickening, it should be starting to do that already, so make sure you keep stirring. Burning the bottom of this is the last thing you want to do.

Once it’s nice and thick like Ranch dressing ought to be, pour it into a container of your choice and chill it in the fridge. This little plastic tub actually came from a specialty food store in my neighborhood, and I tricked my kid and just kept refilling it after I figured out how to make this stuff myself–at a much cheaper price, I might add. You know how much that original container cost me? $9.00. … Nine. Dollars. I had no choice but to learn how to make it myself, after I ran out of arms and legs.

Happy Eating!

GFCF Ranch Dressing

1/4 cup Bob’s Red Mill Almond Meal
1/2 TBS potato starch
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 TBS canola oil
1/2 cup water
1/4 tsp garlic powder
1/4 tsp parsley flakes
1/4 tsp dried chives
pinch dried dill