You can easily make this an appetizer recipe too, if you happen to be lucky enough to have a party to attend. Just put the stuffing we’re going to make into a bunch of small mushrooms instead of 4 big portabellas. Portabellas will need a few minutes of pre-baking, though, so if you are keeping this meal all to yourself, then brush them with a little olive oil, and put them in the oven for 5 minutes at 350 degrees while you mix up the rest of it.

Can’t have crab stuffing without crab, can you? Important note: fake crab, sometimes labeled as “krab” but more often masquerading as the real thing, is made with wheat. Lots of it. Those crab sticks that go in sushi rolls are a prime example, they are jam-packed with gluten. Most of the crab you see in the market these days is going to be the fake stuff, so be very careful to choose a container that is only 100% real crab meat. You’ll want about 6 to 8 ounces of it.

Finely dice half of a red onion. Red onions tend to be stronger than white, which is good if you’re trying to balance a strong flavor like crab. But if you don’t like a lot of onion flavor, you can substitute a white one, or even sautee it before adding it in so it can caramelize a bit. Did you know that process is called pyrolysis? Well it is.

Slice up 2 green onions, and add them to your bowl along with 1 teaspoon of minced garlic, 1 teaspoon of lemon juice, and 1/2 teaspoon of Lea & Perrins worcestershire sauce. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change recipes without warning. Always check your labels!]

Dump in 1 teaspoon of parsely, 1 teaspoon of dill…

1/4 teaspoon of salt, and 1/4 teaspoon of pepper.

Now then, mix it all together with 1/2 cup Hellman’s mayonnaise. You can add a little more if the consistency is too dry, but don’t try to take any out because that totally won’t work.

Spoon your mixture into your mushrooms, be they big portabellas or little creminis.

Sprinkle with crushed Rice Chex or your preferred brand of gluten-free breadcrumbs, and bake them at 350 for about 12 minutes. Little ones may be done a minute or two sooner, big ones may take a minute or two longer. Serve them to your guests or eat them all yourself, I won’t tell.

Happy Eating!

Crab Stuffed Mushrooms

4 portabella mushrooms, or about 36 cremini mushrooms
6-8 oz container of 100% crabmeat
1/2 small red onion
2 green onions
1 tsp minced garlic
1 tsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp Lea & Perrins worcestershire
1 tsp parsley
1 tsp dill
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1/2 cup Hellman’s mayonnaise
1/4 cup crushed Rice Chex

First, we’ll prepare the hollandaise sauce. The basic ingredients are butter and egg yolks, so it is not exactly a heart-healthy menu item. But boy, does it taste good. Here we will start with one whole stick (1/2 cup) of Fleischmann’s Unsalted Margarine (NOT the Original flavor, as that contains casein.) Your list of possible substitutes is going to be a bit truncated here, since it will need to be butter-flavored, but some other options include ghee, Earth Balance spread, and Spectrum butter-flavored shortening. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

Gently melt it in the microwave, inside a measuring cup. We’re going to need that handle and pouring spout later.

Separate 4 eggs, and place the yolks in a metal bowl. To separate an egg, crack it over a bowl and pass the yolk back and forth between the two shell halves, and the white will just fall off. I throw the whites away, but I guess you could make an egg-white omelette with them, or maybe whip them into a meringue for that pie you just had sitting around.

Add 1 Tablespoon of lemon juice, and whisk the egg yolks very rapidly for a few minutes, long past when your arm starts hurting and you have to switch the other one. They say it’s done when the mixture has doubled in volume, but I’m not a good judge of that sort of thing, so I just do it until I can’t stand it anymore.

Now, this is why it needed to be in a metal mixing bowl. If you don’t have a metal bowl, you can use the top half of a double-boiler, or just a regular metal pot that will fit snugly inside the rim of another pot like we have here. But it’s easier to whisk in something that has a rounded bottom, especially when it’s turned sideways so you can whisk in an up-and-down motion instead of around in flat circles.

That bottom pot contains water, heated to just barely simmering. This way we will gently heat the sauce without allowing it to get above 212 degrees F (the boiling point of water,) and thus not end up with scrambled eggs. And yes, I know my pot isn’t actually on the burner anymore. I was turning the handle around this way and that, trying to get a good angle on the bowl-inside-a-pot for you to see. That, or maybe my super power is getting water to boil without any heat, and I’ve just blown my cover.

Keep whisking — yes, more! — while you gently stream in the melted margarine from the microwave. I only stopped whisking to try to take a quick picture, don’t be like me (unless you, too, have a website with lots of people wondering why you haven’t updated in over two dang weeks!)

Look, more whisking! When the sauce has thickened from the gentle heat and again doubled in volume, you’re done.

Well, almost. Add in a pinch of salt and a pinch of cayenne pepper, unless you’d rather garnish the final product with the cayenne on top. There’s only so far I’ll bother going for presentation, and I’d rather not delay eating for even a moment once these babies are ready. Also, my kids are usually like, “OMG that’s got spices on it, it must be spicy!” and I’d rather not listen to it.

Cover the pot and stick it in a warm spot while you assemble everything else. This is not something you want to make ahead of time and store in the fridge for awhile, since it’s made with raw eggs. (Though before you go freaking out about the thought of eating raw eggs to begin with, remember that fried eggs with even slightly runny yolks are also technically raw.) If you’re really concerned, you could buy those pasteurized eggs they have at the store now.

Okay, so! The rest of the meal. Properly speaking, this should be on English muffins, and there are a few gluten-free brands out there. But they’re harder to come by, so I go for the simpler solution and just put them on O’Dough’s hamburger buns instead, which are appropriately dense. And of course Canadian bacon is a processed meat, so you have to make sure it’s GF as well. This Hormel product says it right on the back of the package, so that’s convenient.

Put several inches of water in a wide pan, bring it to a simmer, and ignore the rest of the photo. The chef who told me to do that thing you see me doing above is a complete liar. It has no quantifiable effect. The man is a charlatan and a scoundrel, and I have told him so to his face. He suggested pistols at dawn, or something, I can’t remember.

If you’re really deft, you can crack the eggs directly into the poaching pan. But I find it helpful to crack them into a little measuring cup first…

…and very gently slide them into the water, which should be just barely simmering by now.

Boy they do look ugly while they’re cooking, don’t they? But you see how the one on the right has a clearly defined central blob of egg white, with the thin skirt around it? That skirt bit is going to mostly fall away and cloud up your pan some more, the blob is the real part of the egg we want.

Cook them for exactly 3 1/2 minutes to achieve soft-set but still slightly flowing yolks, then scoop them out with a slotted spoon. Also, let’s blame the blurriness of this photo on the steam from the pan, rather than my palsied, uncoordinated hands.

Drizzle with hollandaise sauce, and dig in! You might want to serve this with some fruit or something, so you don’t feel guilty about all that extra sauce you know you’re going to put on.

Happy Eating!

Eggs Benedict

4 egg yolks
1 TBS lemon juice
1/2 cup Fleischmann’s Unsalted margarine (NOT Original)
pinch of salt
pinch of cayenne pepper

6 eggs
1 pkg GF canadian bacon
3 GF english muffins (or GF hamburger buns)

Indeed, when shellfish are the main course, they can be quite lovely, as I will demonstrate today. First, we have to prepare three bowls. In bowl number one, we will start with 1/3 cup of potato starch (or tapioca starch, or cornstarch, or arrowroot starch… yeah, it totally doesn’t matter.) Then with a fork, blend in 1 teaspoon of salt…

…and 3/4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper.

Bowl number two should contain 3 egg whites. To separate an egg white from the yolk, just crack the shell over the bowl, and carefully pass the yolk back and forth between the two halves a few times. The white will slip right off and fall into your bowl. Toss the yolks in the trash with the shells, unless you have some other random thing you want to do with them. But please don’t tell me what it is; this is a family blog.

Beat the egg whites aggressively with a fork for a minute or two, until it gets really foamy.

If you did this long enough, you’d end up with a meringue. But it would take a long time, your arm would get sore, and you’d have no lemon pie to put it on anyway. So this right here is foamy enough for our needs.

And finally, in bowl number three we will put about a cup of flaked coconut. I like this kind from Bob’s Red Mill, because it contains no preservatives, added sugars, or anything else gunky, just plain coconut. But you can get the wet kind from the baking aisle too, if you want.

Finally, we’re ready to start cooking! Don’t worry, it goes fast from here on out. The amounts we put in the bowls will cover about 3/4 lb of shrimp, though of course you could do more or less to suit your family’s needs. I bought my shrimp pre-shelled and deveined, because I have neither the dexterity nor the time for such a ridiculous task. Grab one by the tail…

Flop it around in the starch mixture…

Dip it in the frothy egg whites…

And stick a bunch of coconut to it. Make sure you get your hands all messy too, that’s important.

Repeat the tar-and-feathering process, placing each shrimp on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper as you go. Technically foil will work too, but you have to oil it pretty thoroughly to prevent the little guys from sticking. Nothing ever sticks to parchment paper. Then, bake them in the oven at 400 degrees for 15-20 minutes, turning them over about halfway through.

Look how golden and crunchy they are, with absolutely no frying necessary! It’s kind of this weird tradition that you’re supposed to eat coconut shrimp with orange marmalade. I really don’t know where that idea came from, but the GFCF Husband considered it important, so I tried to oblige as best I could. I used Cascadian Farms apricot jelly (which I have on hand because I also use it in this fantastic recipe,) and mixed in a few drops of lemon juice for more of a citrus-y tang. It worked well enough I guess, since their plates were almost empty before I even got to sit down.

Happy Eating!

Coconut Shrimp

1/3 cup potato starch
1 tsp salt
3/4 tsp cayenne pepper
3 egg whites
1 cup shredded coconut
3/4 lb shrimp, peeled and deveined

Optional:
1/4 cup Cascadian Farm apricot jelly
1/4 tsp lemon juice

On the one hand, I would say this is not a cookbook for beginners. This is the one you’ll want to have around when you’re ready to really show off your mad skillz. Say, when all this hard work you’re doing finally pays off, and your formerly-autistic, recently-engaged child wants you to bake them a GFCF Champagne-Cointreau Chiffon wedding cake. (I’ve got that page bookmarked, myself.) But on the other hand, the whole first half of the book is an incredibly detailed breakdown of how to get started on the diet, including a whopping 34-page shopping guide. So I sure could have used it back in the early days, too. C’est la vie.

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The thing is, being a European, Chef Braux gives all the ingredients by weight. Fortunately, I speak French-measurements (as opposed to actual French, which I definitely do not speak,) and have translated for you here. Start with 2 cans of Thai Kitchen coconut milk. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!]

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I do actually own a little kitchen scale, for occasions such as this. All the recipes in this cookbook are in American ounces, but if you’re going to bother getting a scale, it’s important to choose one that can convert to metric (grams) as well. The truth is, weight is often a better way to do things, especially when baking. First off, you can fit up to 50% more or less flour into a “cup,” depending on how much you pack it down; what’s more, different flours have different densities, so if you substitute one GF flour for another you’ll end up with a completely different result — unless you use the same number of ounces, rather than the same size. But for things like sugar… meh. The recipe called for 12 ounces…

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…which ended up being exactly 2 cups of sugar. Go figure.

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Next, we’re going to mix in some shredded coconut. The more familiar bags of wet coconut that you find in the baking aisle should be gluten-free, but they’re also packed with preservatives. I prefer this stuff, but whatever floats your boat.

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Important lesson here: the recipe called for 4 ounces of coconut, or 1/3 the weight of the sugar. But because coconut is so much lighter, this ended up being a little over 1 cup of shredded coconut, or more than half as much quantity as the sugar. You definitely can’t switch back and forth between weight and size on an even ratio.

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Anyway, dump your coconut into your bowl, and add 1/4 teaspoon of salt.

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Also mix in 2 teaspoons of Adam’s Extract vanilla. Vanilla is one of those sneaky things that can often contain gluten, but Adam’s Extract is gluten-free in both liquid and powder form.

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Scramble six eggs and blend them thoroughly into your custard batter, making sure there are no random yellow streaks left floating around in there.

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Now, a proper gourmet chef would use ramekins to cook their individual servings of custard. But if I have taught you anything, it is that I am not a gourmet chef, and most of the time I’m not even proper. So instead I am using these silicone baking cups, which happen to be heart-shaped for added cuteness. They’re great for muffins and jello too, by the way.

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Set them inside a large baking dish with sides, and fill each cup with batter.

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Then carefully pour water into the baking dish, until it comes halfway up the sides of the custard cups. This will ensure an even temperature around your delicate little desserts. Pop them in a 350 degree oven for about 30-40 minutes, until the tops feel somewhat firm and the center is no longer jiggly. The larger your baking cups, the longer it will take to cook.

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While that’s cooking, we’re going to make a delicious fruit sauce to go on top, which I’m told is a coulis in French. The recipe suggested raspberries, but I didn’t have any, so strawberries it shall be. Thaw about 1/2 cup of whatever fruit you want for one minute in the microwave (or use fresh fruit, and use the extra minute to feel smug about it.)

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Then add 1/4 cup powdered sugar. Watch your ingredients carefully here! Sugar doesn’t actually come in “powder” form, instead they take cane juice and add it to an existing powder base. Usually it’s corn starch, but it can often include regular flour as well, so double check. The best ones will use tapioca starch instead.

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Add 1/4 teaspoon of lemon juice to the mixture…

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And blend away! It’s hard to do such a small quantity in a regular blender, but a food processor or immersion blender will get the job done.

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When your coconut custards come out of the oven, refrigerate them until you’re ready to serve, at least an hour or two. Drizzle some of your strawberry coulis on top, and revel in your gourmet skills. Heck, I might even buy myself a tall white hat.

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Bon Appetit!

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Coconut Custard with Strawberry Sauce

2 cans Thai Kitchen coconut milk
2 cups sugar
1 cup shredded coconut
1/4 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla extract
6 eggs

1/2 cup strawberries
1/4 cup GF powdered sugar
1/4 tsp lemon juice

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First, put two boneless chicken breasts on to boil in a small pot. While that gets going, dice up a medium yellow onion.

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Add a little oil to a very large skillet and begin sauteeing your onion pieces on low heat while your chicken continues to cook. (It should stay at a rolling boil for about 15 minutes, maybe more depending on how thick your chicken pieces are.) Add 1 teaspoon of salt, and 2 cloves of minced garlic to your onion.

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Also add 2 teaspoons paprika, 1 teaspoon cumin, and 1/2 teaspoon black pepper. Stir it so the spices are evenly distributed, then let the onions settle in to get nice and translucent.

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Meanwhile, chop up about 1/2 cup of fresh cilantro. Unless you are morally opposed to cilantro, don’t skip this step. It completely makes the dish. Then, while you continue to tap your toes waiting on your onions and your chicken (will this 15 minutes never end?!) whip up a double batch of avocado cream, for a total of 2 cups. Set it aside for now, we’ll get back to it in a minute.

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About this time your chicken breasts should be done, so yank them out of the water and give them a quick chop job. Then dump both chicken and cilantro into your giant sautee pan (you did choose a large enough one like I told you to, right?) Mix everything together thoroughly, then let it hang out and keep warm while you start to assemble your layers.

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First, start with a gluten-free tomatillo salsa, also known as salsa verde. This is kind of a specialty food, so there aren’t any nationally-recognizable brands I can suggest for you all (mine’s actually made in Mexico, so you’re not likely to be able to find it unless you live near the border like I do.) Of course the best thing is if your label contains nothing but whole, recognizable ingredients, but in a pinch I’ve even pulled out my cellphone and called a manufacturer’s customer service number right there in the grocery store aisle. Whatever gets the job done.

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Pour about 1/4 cup of the tomatillo salsa on the bottom of your greased 9″ by 9″ baking dish. This is just a thin little drizzle that’s going to help keep your bottom layer from sticking, it doesn’t really count as a layer. Your official first layer will be corn tostadas, broken up and overlapped a bit as necessary. You could also use soft corn tortillas, or even tortilla chips — though both are going to get soggier than these nice thick tostadas — as long as it’s 100% corn, whatever it is.

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Next, grab your avocado cream, and dollop half of it (or about 1 cup) on top of the tostadas, using the back of a spoon to spread it out evenly.

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Next, add a layer of tomatillo salsa. It’s about 1/2 cup, I think, but I just kind of eyeball it.

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Then, layer on half of your chicken mixture. Press it down a bit so it’s not full of air bubbles.

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Now, the final item in our layering scheme is diced green chiles. “But GFCF Lady,” I hear you say, “that can says whole chiles.” Well, yes, so it does. My son really, really likes the grocery store, you see, and shopping trips with him can be classified anywhere from mildly hyperactive to a Category 5 hurricane. In my hurry to get out of there on this particular occasion, I grabbed the wrong can. But no biggie, I just diced them up on my cutting board. Whether you buy them whole or diced, however, this is another one of those items that should contain nothing but the chiles. Don’t settle for added junk.

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Sprinkle half of your chile bits over the chicken, then start the layers over: tostadas, avocado cream, tomatillo sauce…

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…chicken mixture, green chiles. Bake uncovered in a 450 degree oven for 25 minutes, and the result will be the creamiest, tastiest enchilada casserole this side of the Rio Grande.

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Happy Eating!

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The GFCF Lady’s Enchilada Casserole

2 chicken breasts
1 medium yellow onion
2 cloves minced garlic
1 tsp salt
2 tsp paprika
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 cup chopped cilantro

8 corn tostadas
2 cups avocado cream
1 1/4 cups tomatillo sauce
1 can chopped green chiles

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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

What-what-what? Is that a fresh garlic clove I see? Yeah, sometimes I end up going the extra mile. I was going to be making something later in the week that called for whole cloves of garlic, so I had the extra garlic lying around and figured I shouldn’t let it go to waste. Anyway, I snipped the ends and got them peeled, but I’ll warn you, I did not even come close to properly mincing them, probably out of defiance more than anything. My mother has told me I was very contrarian as a child too.

Where was I? Oh yes, Greek Flank Steak! We’re making a flavorful marinade here, so we’ll need at least three cloves of garlic, chopped into whatever consistency you can manage.

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Next we’re going to add the juice of two lemons. Again with the fresh stuff! Don’t worry, that little plastic container of lemon juice still has a home in my fridge. But they were having a sale on lemons, and I figured why not? In general, a medium lemon will produce 2 Tablespoons, so this equals about 4 Tablespoons (or 1/4 cup) of lemon juice.

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Now toss in 1/2 teaspoon of pepper, and 1 Tablespoon of salt.

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Also, 3 teaspoons of dried oregano (which is the same as 1 Tablespoon, if you’re into measurement conversions.)

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Pour in one cup of quality olive oil, and mix everything thoroughly.

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Now put the whole concoction into a ziplock bag with a 2-3 pound flank steak, and let it marinate overnight in the fridge. This is important, because flank steak is generally a fairly tough cut of meat, and the acidity of the lemon juice is going to slowly break it down and tenderize it. If you shorten the marinating time, you will still have an excellent flavor, but the meat may end up pretty chewy.

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The next day, just place the steak on a rack and broil it in the oven for 6-10 minutes on each side, depending on how thick your cut of meat is. Of course you can also do it on an outdoor grill if you’re into that sort of thing.

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I like it best sliced very thin, which for the record, this is not. The GFCF Husband didn’t realize I was photographing this meal, and started cutting in his own quick-and-dirty way before I had a chance to do it. Certainly can’t fault him for trying to help me get dinner on the table faster, though.

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Happy Eating!

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Greek Flank Steak

2-3 lb flank steak
3 cloves garlic
1/4 cup lemon juice
1 Tbs salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 Tbs oregano
1 cup olive oil

Fast forward to the beginning of our GFCF adventure, and I learned some very important equivalencies: gram flour = chickpea flour = garbanzo bean flour = the main ingredient in Bob’s Red Mill All-Purpose Gluten Free Flour Blend. All of a sudden, this whole book of recipes was useful again!

Confession time: that whole introduction was a bit disingenuous, because this recipe did not in fact come from the Indian cookbook in question. But it is an Indian recipe, so I stand by the moral of my story. I’m an “ends justify the means” kind of gal.

Anyway, here we have a can of coconut milk, which is in general an excellent milk substitute. Pour one cup of the liquid into a bowl, which should be about half the can. (Save the other half for later in the week, when you are compelled to make this recipe again because it was just so dang good.) Make sure you stir the contents of the can thoroughly before pouring, because coconut milk has a tendency to separate.

Then add 1 1/2 Tablespoons of McCormick curry powder. Because curry is a spice blend rather than an herb in and of itself (there is no curry plant,) you must be extra careful about buying a brand without gluten. Manufacturers will often add flour to spice blends to help keep things from clumping. Not all McCormick spice blends are safe, but the company has committed to always clearly labeling the presence of gluten on their spice jars. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change ingredients without warning. Always check your labels!]

Then add 2 teaspoons of paprika, and 3/4 teaspoon of salt.

3 Tablespoons of lemon juice…

1 1/2 Tablespoons of minced ginger (I’d show you how to mince it, but I get mine out of a jar. Life’s too short, you know?)

And 2 cloves of minced garlic (or 1 teaspoon of the jarred kind.)

Now dice up a medium onion, and get out 6-8 boneless chicken thighs, or a couple pounds of whatever kind of boneless chicken parts you prefer. Always make sure your chicken is all-natural and not injected with broth.

Throw the chicken, sauce, and onions all together in a giant Ziplock bag, and punch it around until everything’s mixed.

Seal it up and let it marinate in the refrigerator for several hours, or however much time you can spare.

Later, when you’re gearing up to actually cook the meal, peel three medium potatoes and chop them into big chunks.

Pull the chicken pieces out of the marinade bag and set them aside on a plate. Don’t worry if some of the onions stick to the chicken, it’s all going to back together in a minute. Add an extra 1/2 teaspoon of salt into the bag, and toss in the potatoes so we can get a quick coating on them.

Shake it (like a Polaroid picture, even,) then dump the whole bag into the bottom of your dutch oven. (You don’t have a dutch oven yet? For heaven’s sake, why not?) Make sure to squeeze out all the extra sauce too, like the world’s largest ketchup packet.

Lay your chicken pieces on top of the potatoes, and give the top a good sprinkling of paprika. Put on the lid, and place the whole thing in a 450-degree oven for one hour.

Look how beautiful that is! And those potatoes are perfect, I’m telling you right now. You will practically be able to hear the sitar music right there in your kitchen.

Happy Eating!

Tandoori Chicken with Potatoes

1 cup coconut milk
1 1/2 TBS McCormick curry powder
2 tsp paprika
3/4 tsp salt
3 TBS lemon juice
1 1/2 TBS minced ginger
2 cloves minced garlic

1 onion
6-8 boneless chicken thighs
3 medium potatoes
1/2 tsp salt
additional paprika for garnish

Look, it’s my favorite kind of meal: a quick weeknight dinner that can be made with little-to-no effort! Tonight on the menu we have Lemon Chicken. It only has five six ingredients!

First, one diced onion. Sautee it in some olive oil until it’s nice and golden, about 8-10 minutes. (And no, the oil doesn’t count as an ingredient. It’s a kitchen staple.)

You’ll want to be using a deep skillet with a lid, because once the onion is done you’re going to place one pound of boneless chicken pieces on top. These are thigh fillets, but you could do white meat instead, or a mix of both. All that matters is they’re boneless, because bone-in meat takes much longer to cook (the tradeoff being that it’s more moist with the bone still in, but that’s not necessary for this recipe.) Do be sure you’re using quality chicken meat that hasn’t been “injected with broth,” because that broth usually contains gluten.

Are you keeping count? Here comes ingredient number three: rosemary. I think it’s about a teaspoon, but I just sprinkle it on all willy-nilly like this. It’s hard to mess up rosemary, just make sure the coverage looks good and it will taste good too.

Now add a Tablespoon of water to the pan. I’m cheating and not counting this as an ingredient either, even though it does get a measuring spoon dirty.

Then close the lid and let it continue to cook over medium heat for about 15 minutes. It won’t look like there’s much liquid in the pan right now, but the chicken’s going to give off a lot as it cooks.

Meanwhile, get your lemon sauce ready. We start with two egg yolks. You can buy a little kitchen gadget that will separate your yolks for you if you want, or you can do it the old fashioned way, passing the yolk back and forth between the two shell halves while the white falls into the bowl below.

Just gently pour it over…

And let the white drip out behind it. Shouldn’t take more than a couple passes to get the yolk left by itself.

Then set the yolk aside in another bowl, and do the second egg the same way. If you have an immediate use for the egg whites, use them by all means, but don’t try to keep that stuff in the fridge for a long time or anything.

Then measure out 1/4 cup 2 Tablespoons lemon juice. I’m not a lemon juice snob, you can get it from the little yellow bottle too. I just happened to have real lemons available this day. One advantage of the bottle is it will never squirt your camera lens unexpectedly.

Thoroughly mix the lemon juice and the egg yolks. Also, mix in 1 Tablespoon of Cascadian Farm apricot jelly.

Once the chicken is cooked, lower the heat on the pan, and gently pour the sauce in, making sure to stir well and get everything evenly distributed among the chicken and onions. Cook for another minute or two until the sauce thickens, raising the heat a bit if necessary. But don’t go too hot, or the sauce will set like a custard.

Oh yeah. There aren’t gonna be any leftovers for this one, I promise. This is a good one to pair with yucky vegetables, because the sauce can be used on top of them too, and it does a pretty good job of getting them in the little mouths with minimal complaining.

Happy Eating!

Lemon Chicken

1 med onion
1 lb. boneless chicken pieces
1-2 teaspoons dried rosemary
1 TBS water
2 egg yolks
2 TBS lemon juice
1 TBS Cascadian Farm apricot jelly

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