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In my defense, I do call it Tomato Carbonara to help avoid confusion. So it should not surprise you to learn that there are, in fact, tomatoes in the recipe. 4 small-to-medium ones, to be precise.

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Quarter the tomatoes and throw them in a blender. You do want to slice off the little stem bit at the top, but the rest should go in, seeds and all.

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Chop up three or four big leaves of real basil, and add 2 cloves of minced garlic.

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1 teaspoon of salt, and 1 Tablespoon of olive oil, and you’re ready to blend! Don’t forget to put the lid on.

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Now me, I like to do this part ahead of time, and save it in the fridge until I’m ready. It makes my last-minute dinners that much more triumphant. But there’s no reason you have to do that. If you’re going to use your sauce right away though, you should be more efficient and get the bacon cooking before you work on the sauce.

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Take a pair of kitchen shears and cut cross-wise several times over a whole package of Hormel Natural Choice bacon. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change formulas without warning. Always check your labels!] The pieces will separate as it cooks, and now there’s no need to wash a cutting board. Notice that it’s a deep pan, so it can hold everything else once the bacon’s done.

Of course “done” is a very subjective term when it comes to bacon. I like mine pretty soft, while others like it burnt to a crisp. I’ll leave the negotiations in your family up to you.

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At any rate, once it’s reached the state you desire it to be in, just dump in your tomato sauce and 12 ounces of cooked gluten-free noodles (pasta shape negotiations are, again, up to you.) These King Soba brand, if you’re curious.

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Let it simmer a bit until everything’s warmed through. If you want to make your dish taste like something gourmet rather than gussied-up marinara sauce, add 1-2 Tablespoons of white cooking wine. I usually serve the kids first, and then add this to the pot for the adults at the meal. For one thing, the kids don’t appreciate the flavor, and for another, you have to boil something for a good 20 minutes if you want the majority of the alcohol content to be cooked away, and the whole point of this meal is it’s not supposed to take that long.

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Happy Eating!

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Tomato Carbonara Pasta

4 medium tomatoes
3-4 leaves fresh basil
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp salt
1 TBS olive oil
1 pkg Hormel Natural Choice bacon
12 oz. gluten free pasta
1-2 TBS white cooking wine (optional)

Anyway, my nightly cooking has reflected this uncontained chaos, and the truth is I haven’t been cooking much at all, let alone trying to experiment with new recipes. On the other hand, I was forced to be a little more creative most nights given my lack of time, and did actually manage to throw together something that turned out unexpectedly great.

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First, start grilling two chicken breasts in a pan with a little olive oil. Make sure you are looking at something more important when you season them, so you waste a bunch of salt and pepper in the pan like I did. Don’t be nervous about seasoning without measurements, it’s only salt and pepper. Just make it look like the picture does.

Resist the urge to turn them too early; you want the cooked part to be crawling more than halfway up the sides, and the underside to be good and browned before you flip them over.

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Meanwhile, start boiling about 4-8 ounces of gluten-free pasta. Given the color I’d say mine was at least partially corn-based, but the truth is I have no idea what brand this was.

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After it’s cooked and drained, drizzle 2 Tablespoons of olive oil in and stir well. I’d blame the steam for the blurry photo, but really it was just my unsteady hands.

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Now then: lazy secret ingredient number one. This is a random jar I found near the spaghetti sauces in my grocery store. It’s basically chopped up artichokes, garlic, oil, and salt. I think it’s supposed to get dolloped onto little toasty rounds of bruschetta at a fancy dinner party or something. But instead, I scooped about 1/2 cup of it directly into my pasta. I bet your store has something similar. Of course you should always be extra careful to check the label on any unfamiliar foods you buy.

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And lazy secret ingredient number two, a pre-made pico de gallo, which you may remember seeing before. I’m nothing if not consistent. Adding in the mango bits is a local thing, but if you’re too far north of the border to get anything remotely like this, you could always make your own. It’s literally just one red onion, one tomato, one small jalapeno, (one mango,) and a little cilantro, diced finely. I think I probably dumped in about a cup. I was not measuring this evening, believe me.

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Around this time your chicken breasts should be close to being done.

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Cut them into slices, lay them neatly across your bowls of pasta, and you might even get away with looking like you put some effort into this.

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Happy Eating!

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The GFCF Lady’s Artichoke Pasta

2 chicken breasts
salt and pepper
4 ounces gluten-free pasta
2 TBS olive oil
1/2 cup diced artichoke mix
1 cup pico de gallo

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Okay, it’s not quite so simple right at the very beginning, I admit. There’s a fair number of ingredients in the sauce. But it’s extremely simple once the sauce is put together, and the thing is, this sauce will last in the fridge for up to a month or more, so you could make a big batch and have it handy in a jar for those nights when you’re in borderline-collapsing mode.

We start with a veritable Who’s Who lineup of Asian sauce ingredients: 1 1/2 Tablespoons of rice vinegar, 1/4 cup sesame oil, 3 Tablespoons soy sauce (or a reasonable substitute,) and 2 cloves of minced garlic.

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This is a case where an immersion blender will definitely come in handy, but you can get away with doing it in a traditional blender if that’s all you have. After assembling the first set of liquid ingredients, add some crushed red pepper flakes, depending on your spice tolerance. 1/4 teaspoon is a good average place to start, noticeable in flavor but not too hot. My tastebuds have been dulled by years of Mexican food, so I put in 3/4 tsp for a real kick. But to balance it out, we’ll also add 1 teaspoon of sugar, and 1/3 cup of water.

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Lastly, dump in 1/2 cup of dry-roasted, unsalted cashews. Raw cashews will work too, just make sure you don’t get any that are “honey-roasted” or otherwise coated in junk.

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The cashews are the reason you’d rather use the immersion blender here, because it’s going to get all those tiny nut pieces nice and smooth. Ultimately, we’re going to add some more whole cashews to the meal, so a little graininess shouldn’t be too distracting, but another alternative is to use about 1/3 cup prepared cashew butter instead of the whole cashews.

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Once you’re done blending, your sauce is ready for the plate or the mason jar, whichever you prefer. I vote plate, because I’m not very good at delayed gratification. These here are some Schar gluten-free noodles. They’re made with a mixture of corn and rice flours, so they’re a little starchier and firmer to chew than straight-up rice noodles, which is nice.

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The drawback is, like most blended-flour GF noodles, they release a ton of that starch into the cooking water, so you may find you have to drain, rinse, and refill the pot halfway through the cooking process. But it doesn’t add more than 2-3 minutes to the cooking process.

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While your pasta is boiling, finely chop 1 1/2 cups of fresh cilantro, also known as coriander.

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Mix the cilantro and the cashew sesame sauce into your drained noodles, and stir gently.

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And finally, garnish with another 1/2 cup or so of cashews for crunch. This simple little noodle dish may look light and unassuming, but it is surprisingly filling, and makes great leftovers too, either cold or hot. If you’ve never sent real leftovers in your child’s lunchbox, this might be just the meal to start with.

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Happy Eating!

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Cashew Sesame Noodles

1 1/2 TBS rice vinegar
1/4 cup Asian sesame oil
3 TBS soy sauce
2 cloves garlic
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1 tsp sugar
1/3 cup water
1/2 cup + 1/2 cup dry roasted cashews
12 oz. GF spaghetti noodles
1 1/2 cups chopped cilantro

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Of course my version is GFCF. (That’s kind of my thing. Did you know that? Sorry if it was too subtle.) So we start with a package of Applegate Farms hot dogs. They also make a decent turkey hot dog if you happen to prefer that.

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Slice the hot dog into bite-sized chunks, and jab half-sticks of uncooked gluten-free spaghetti into each piece. I’m actually using this cool new King Soba pasta my store started carrying, made out of sweet potato and buckwheat. Now before you go into palpitations, remember that buckwheat is not actually wheat. It’s a completely different plant, contains no gluten, and is one of the better GF flours to work with, in my opinion. It just has a stupidly inaccurate name, that’s all.

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Speaking of inaccurate, octopuses might not be the best name for these, since most of them end up having more than eight legs. You can call them jellyfish if your anal-retentive kid is gonna call you on it. When they’re still uncooked like this, I actally think they look like little Sputniks (which makes sense, because they’re Russian, remember?)

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Toss them into boiling water and cook according to your pasta’s package directions.

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And voila, we have noodly appendages! Do I think it looks appetizing myself? Well no, not really. But I don’t have a Y chromosome. Little boys think this stuff is hysterical, and they eat it right up. Literally.

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Happy Eating!

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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, some spices: 1/2 teaspoon of ginger, 1/8 teaspoon paprika, 1 teaspoon of garlic powder, and 1 teaspoon of Five Spice. If you’ve never heard of Five Spice, it’s a Chinese blend of cinnamon, anise, ginger, fennel and pepper. There are some traditional regional variations, but it should always include the key flavors of cinnamon and anise. If you’re lucky you might be able to find it at your grocery store, but if not any Asian market should have it. It’s so good, there are areas of Hawaii where it’s just served on the table right alongside the salt and pepper.

Chop up two chicken breasts (make sure they’re not injected with suspect “broth” in the packaging) and toss them with the spices until everything is evenly coated.

Set the chicken aside for a moment while you get out half a cup of dried cranberries. Like chicken breasts, dried fruit is another tricky ingredient that they can sneak gluten into–make sure yours aren’t dusted with flour to prevent sticking. [As always, the brands I use were GFCF at the time of posting, but manufacturers can change recipes without warning. Always check your labels!] We don’t really want them to be totally dried in this dish though, so fill the little cup with water and let them soak while you cook the rest of the meal.

While the cranberries soak, you can start sauteeing the chicken pieces in some olive oil.

Once they’re opaque (but not necessarily cooked through all the way,) add in about 8 oz. of mushrooms. Fresh is better, of course, but when you’re desperate, canned works too. As it turns out, I’m often desperate because I’m really no good at planning ahead.

Then, start to boil your pasta. This is 8 oz. of Tinkyada brown rice pasta, but I forget what cute name the Italians gave to this shape. I’m pretty sure it doesn’t count as penne, even though that’s what the package said, because penne is supposed to be ridged lengthwise and cut diagonally at the ends. But anyway, pretty much anything other than spaghetti will work–macaroni, fusilli, those little twistie shapes that I also can’t remember the name of…

Now! While your pasta is boiling, and your chicken and mushrooms are continuing to sautee, and your cranberries are still soaking over on the counter, it’s time to toast some almonds. Put half a cup of slivered almonds in a bowl, and microwave it for one minute at a time, stirring them around a bit in between. It should be around 2-3 minutes, but you’ll know when they’re done because they will start to smell good, and when you bite into one it will crunch instead of squeak.

This was the part of the recipe I was terrified to try to emulate. Used to be, we’d be pouring in 2 cups of half-and-half at this point. Is it any wonder we loved the dish? How could a milk substitute ever hope to compare? But I’m over the grieving process. I am completely and totally happy using 2 cups of almond milk instead. Mostly.

Fortunately this part didn’t have to change: 1/4 cup of Grey Poupon dijon mustard.

And 2 Tablespoons of honey.

Of course plain almond milk is just not robust enough to make a cream sauce by itself, so add in 1 Tablespoon of potato starch to thicken it up (and like corn starch, you want to dissolve it in a minimal amount of water before pouring it into your pan, otherwise you’ll never get the lumps to dissolve properly.)

Drain your cranberries, and add them to the pan while the sauce thickens.

Only add the pasta once the sauce is the right consistency, or it will continue to cook in the sauce and get mushy.

Toss in the nuts just before serving so they stay crunchy. And there you have it! I will admit, it’s much less visually-appealing than it used to be. Rice pasta just has a kind of grayish tint to it that no amount of sauce seems to be able to cover. But the kids agree that the taste is pretty close to the original, so I put it in the win column.

Happy Eating!

Creamy Penne Pasta

1 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. ginger
1/8 tsp. paprika
1 tsp. Five Spice
2 organic chicken breasts
8 oz. rice pasta
1/2 cup slivered almonds
1/2 cup dried sweetened cranberries
2 cups almond milk
1/4 cup Grey Poupon
2 TBS honey

Bet you never thought you’d see this again, huh? So creamy and delicious. Pasta covered with cheese sauce is pretty much the mortal enemy of the GFCF diet, the antithesis of everything it stands for. But it doesn’t have to be…

First, we start with an acceptable pasta: corn macaroni. There are several brands of rice pasta available as well. Generally we prefer the corn, but it depends on the recipe. Since the cheese sauce we’ll be making is rice-based, it just seems preferable to me to switch it up with the pasta ingredients. But they’re both pretty bland, so whatever floats your boat.

Get the pasta boiling, like you do with pasta.

Now, here comes the cheese sauce. These are Galaxy Foods Rice Cheese slices. Important note: NOT ALL Galaxy fake-cheese products are casein-free. Many fake-cheeses (of all brands) are aimed at people who only need to avoid lactose, and they are actually chock full of casein. Be extra, extra careful when buying cheese substitutes. This is the pepper jack flavor, but you may prefer the cheddar flavor–I think the peppers help to hide the not-cheese taste, but it definitely has a bit of a kick to it.

This recipe is extremely scalable, you can mix up enough for ten people or just one. I’m making three servings, so I’m tearing up three slices of rice cheese in my little bowl.

Now a little almond milk: 1/2 Tablespoon per serving, so for three servings, this is 1 1/2 TBS.

And fake butter. Use 1/2 teaspoon per serving, so 1 1/2 tsp for me. This stuff in a tub is nice because you can scoop out exactly the amount you need, and don’t have to worry about trying to cut skinny little slices off your sticks of fake-butter. (Once again, it’s important to note that not all of the Smart Balance “buttery spreads” are casein-free, and some of the packages look remarkably similar. I think this one marked “now with flax oil” might be the only one, in fact. Always check your labels!)

Microwave on high for 30 seconds at a time, until everything is melted. Why am I stirring this with a knife? I have no idea.

Then just add it to your drained pasta. Couldn’t be easier!

And hey, the yellow color of the pasta even makes it look like I used a yellow cheese! In the interest of full disclosure, I will tell you that I’m not personally in love with this recipe. It doesn’t taste bad by any means–it’s by far the best one we’ve tried–but I just can’t get past the fact that it still doesn’t taste “right.” This is why I generally advocate the philosophy of Avoid, Rather Than Replace. But all the kids love it, and so does the GFCFHusband, so clearly it’s just my own hangup. Sometimes the kids just gotta have their mac and cheese, you know? When they’re happy, I’m happy.

Happy Eating!

Quick GFCF Mac and Cheese (Makes one serving)

1/2 cup corn macaroni elbows
1 slice Galaxy Rice Cheese Slices (double check for casein-free kind!)
1/2 TBS almond milk
1/2 tsp GFCF margarine