Gluten-Free Noodle Recipe Round-Up

It's the end of March- and that means it's time for the Gluten-Free Noodle Recipe Round-Up. A few weeks back, certain individuals saucily tossed out an invitation to fellow gluten-free bloggers: Show off your gluten-free noodle love!

So grab a fork, some chopsticks, and a good sized spoon. These recipes are not only gluten-free, they're twirl and slurp worthy.

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Purple Potato & Carrot Quiche

A gluten-free flourless quiche with purple potatoes.

Purple Potato and Carrot Quiche Recipe

A small brown bunny hopped by the casita early this morning. Fruit trees by the Chama River are blooming, laced with soft pinks and cream. Spring is arriving in tiny steps. I found some young purple potatoes at the market in town this week. Slim crisp carrots. Organic eggs. Perfect ingredients for an easy spring supper.

After five years of making flourless quiche recipes, I no longer miss the pie crust I used to love. This surprises me, but I'm not unhappy about it. Quiches filled with roasted vegetables are beautiful. Every slice reveals its own mosaic of edible jewels embedded in a creamy custard. Purple, yellow, green and orange. The colors of spring.

First, roast your veggies:

3 baby or smallish purple or blue potatoes, sliced into wedges/slices

2 small gold potatoes, sliced into wedges

1 medium carrot, peeled, cut into thin sticks

A handful of small broccoli florets

Half a medium zucchini, chopped

1-2 cloves of garlic, minced

Toss the veggies and garlic in a roasting pan, drizzle with olive oil, and season with sea salt and freshly ground pepper; roast in a 375 degree F oven until fork tender, about 40 minutes or so. Remove and set aside. Keep the oven on.

Prepare the custard:

5 large organic free-range eggs

1/2 cup Half and Half, sour cream, or milk

Pinch of fresh grated nutmeg

Whip the custard ingredients with a whisk till frothy.

Grate your favorite cheese: Swiss, cheddar, Gruyère - it's all good. You'll need about a cup of grated cheese.

Lightly oil or butter a 9-inch pie plate.

Spoon the roasted veggies into the plate and arrange them evenly. Sprinkle the grated cheese on top. Pour the custard over the veggies and cheese, allowing it to seep in and around all the vegetables.

Options:

Add a half cup chopped sweet onion to the roasted vegetable mix.

Add some chopped chives or spring onions to the custard.

Add a tablespoon of fresh chopped herbs to the custard - parsley, marjoram, or basil.

Bake the quiche in the center of the oven till set and golden, about 25 to 35 minutes. Test doneness with the wiggle method [jiggle the pie plate a bit to see if the center shimmies; if it does, cook for five more minutes] or if it's very close to done, insert a small thin knife into the center - if it emerges clean, you're good to go.

Set the hot quiche on a wire rack to cool a bit before slicing and serving (this allows for a more precise slice).

Serve with a salad of baby spring greens and glasses of crisp white wine. Raise your glass and toast spring.

Serves 6.

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Sour Cream Apple Cake

A moist and sweet gluten-free apple cake with sour cream.

Tis the season for flourless cakes, so I thought I might reprise one of my first gluten-free recipes, based on a traditional Jewish apple cake recipe I had used for years. Using nut meal instead of flour is a baking tradition in Eastern Europe and a favorite way to make a cake during the season of Passover. Almond meal makes this cake a dense, chewy and delicious dessert or a perfect snack with tea.

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Vegetarian Enchiladas Griegos with Spinach + Feta

Rain clouds above the mesa, toward Abiquiu.

Today is our anniversary. It is raining here in the high desert. Cloud cover blankets the mesa in a soft dove gray that is flirting with lavender. We married in this weather twelve years ago, sprinting through Cape Cod wind and mist to reach the antique door of our local Justice of the Peace without getting wet, the four of us stepping over the threshold to become a family.

Me and my three men- my love and my two sons.

I look at the photographs taken by the Justice's husband, our single witness. We are so young, all of us. Arms linking. There is palpable tenderness.

The boys are now men. They stand taller than my five-foot-eight. My husband and I, well. We are wiser. And weathered. And we remain expectant. This has been a year of enormous change.

We have sold most of our belongings (except books and paintings) and moved west. From the eastern shore to the high desert. From what was predictable and safe to what is unknown. What is possible. What might be.

After thirteen years together we are still exploring, still traveling, still on our way to somewhere. We are painting less and writing more. We are listening to each other with deeper affection, having shed many old expectations. We have come through a lot this year, on many levels. And so have our sons. Their own lives have not stood still. They too have faced changes and embraced risk.

I look out the window of my studio and exhale. I say a silent prayer for twelve more years. And twelve more years.

And twelve more years.

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Gluten-Free Gypsy Soda Bread

Gluten-free soda bread, gypsy style.

By the time I attended art school and launched into life on my own I had moved ten times and attended nine different schools in four different states. Not all that unusual, I imagine, for many Americans. And for those of us with nomadic ancestry it simply feels natural to do so, to gather up and move in sync with the wheel of the seasons, aligned with winged migrations and turning stars.

I have always kept a gypsy heart, even when it wasn't easy. Even when I let her out only in my deepest dreams, inside a brushstroke, or as I stirred a makeshift dough with one of my young sons, improvising ingredients on a budget so small every dollar bill mattered.

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A Simple Bowl of Rice

Simple rice bliss.

A simple bowl of brown rice and veggies. Not even a recipe bliss.

Inside this humble gluten-free goddess is an on-again off-again vegan/vegetarian. For almost forty years I politely declined meat- though I did eat eggs and cheese, and during my pregnancies, I ate fish. During the prickly years of peri-menopause I added small amounts of chicken or turkey into my weekly menu.

Celiac is an interesting twist in all this life-long veggie love. It has deepened my gratitude for simple joys, like sitting outside in the warm spring sun, holding a bowl of short grain brown rice topped with roasted vegetables. On a day like this I cannot help but feel so damn lucky.

So today, as the warm sun lingers longer than it did yesterday on our small casita tucked into the junipered hill by the mesa, I thought I might celebrate a simple bowl. A bowl of chewy, earthy gluten-free goodness, satisfying and fabulous.

A Simple Bowl of Rice

Leftovers make this hot lunch super fast and easy. So plan ahead and cook a little extra rice for dinner.

3/4 cup cooked short grain brown rice, per person
1 cup of assorted stir-fried fresh veggies, per person
Extra virgin olive oil
Sea salt

Heat a splash of extra virgin olive in a skillet and add the cooked brown rice and veggies. Season with sea salt. Stir with a wooden spoon until heated through and sizzling.

Spoon into your favorite bowl and sit outside, if you can, breathing in the spring. Or find a spot by a window, and sit in the sun.

Hold your bowl. Smile. Eat!

[GF] Goddess Cookie Bars on BBC Slink? Cool.

Today's BBC - Slink featured an upbeat-offbeat [and often tongue-in-cheek] article on food allergies and intolerances titled, A-List Allergies, and linked to this [GF] Goddess recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookie Squares, listing said delights as reason numero uno to look on the "Bright Side" of having a food allergy, cuz, and I quote: "Tons of people have them - You immediately belong to a secret club full of people coming up with kickass special recipes. So next time your mates are stuffing their faces with junk you can bust out some tastier and healthier gluten-free cookies.

Very cool.

Fresh Vegetable Soup with Lime

Here's an easy fresh vegetable soup recipe you'll love.

It's still soup weather here in northern New Mexico, so certain individuals lugged out their Crock Pot this week and pondered the gentle, slow art of vegetarian potage. This new soup recipe is fresh tasting and full of flavor, kicked up with spicy green chiles a generous squeeze of lime.

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Easy Mediterranean Tuna & Artichoke Pasta

Pasta and tuna comfort food.

The moment I knew my first marriage was failing faster than you could murmur blueberry pancakes on a stick was the minute my moody first husband shoved his untouched plate of tuna noodle casserole across the lemon-waxed bridal table and declared, I'm not eating this crap.

A man who cannot fathom the comfort- albeit guilty pleasure- of a Wednesday night sixties classic is a person who might also belittle your favorite actor in a role so crackling in its own shiver of guilty pleasure that the hair on the back of your neck stands up when you hear Point Break is on HBO again.

In other words, Dear Reader, if a guy mocks your noodles and your Keanu, it might be time to stiffen your spine and rustle up the courage to reconsider your choice of a life partner.

Yup. You gotta go down, Brah. Vaya con Dios.

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Gluten-Free Smackdown

Our very own gluten-free blogger Jennifer (of Jennifer Ate) has written a mouthwatering wrap-up and review of the very first Gluten-Free Cooking Spree over at Epicurious.

The New York event was the first of several Iron Chef-style cook-off fundraising events planned and sponsored by the National Foundation for Celiac Awareness. Hustle on over to the NFCA website to find out when and where the next fun and fabulous Cooking Spree will take place. Maybe you'll be lucky enough to snag a ticket (the New York event sold out!).

PS: And if you go, you just might win an original gluten-free apron designed and donated by yours truly. I'm donating two gluten-free themed aprons to each event.

Roasted Vegetables on Broiled Polenta

Roasted veggies on broiled polenta. Yep. Gluten-free delish.

I'm still shaking off the February blahs, so bear with me, intrepid g-free campers. Please accept this super easy recipe as a tiny gift. Make this celiac-friendly dish on a busy weeknight when you're cranky and tired or feeling lazy or simply and utterly couldn't be bothered to crack open a cookbook (never mind, actually shop for groceries) because all you really want to do is kick off your Rocket Dogs and sink down into your favorite viewing chair with a bowl of salted popcorn and a glass of Irish whiskey to watch A Scanner Darkly again- this time with the filmmakers commentary (not to mention the intuitive insight of Keanu and Jonathan Lethem). Dude. What more could a geek girl like me ask for?

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Gluten-Free Beer (and a pizza crust recipe)

After five years of living strictly gluten-free, I can honestly tell you, Dear Reader, there are very few things I still miss from my pre-celiac diagnosis. From melty chocolate brownies to delicious gluten-free bread, I've managed to recreate and reinvent many old favorites.

But there is an archetypal pairing I do, indeed, miss. It's a simple want. Nothing fancy. And it's not some precious, tiny cuisine perched on a plate with a few stingy drips of - insert latest food infusion fad - trying to pass as art. Nope.

It's pizza and beer. A slice with a cold one. That's what I want. That's what I miss.

Well, guess what? One half of my burning desire has been quenched and this humble gluten-free goddess couldn't be happier. I am pleased as proverbial punch to report on the new sorghum lager now available from Anheuser-Busch, called Redbridge - Babycakes, it is beer-tastic! I had my doubts, I'll admit (being part Irish, who can blame me?), but when I read about Redbridge beer over at the NFCA website, the photograph alone made my mouth water. Come to Mama! I had to find some. I looked everywhere, but no store in Santa Fe carried it. Bummer.

Imagine my delight - when visiting our son, Colin, in Los Angeles - I stumbled upon a six pack of Redbridge happily chilling away amongst dozens of off-limits brewskys in an LA Whole Foods. Dude. I was stoked.

Later that very night I rustled up some easy - but tasty! - nachos and cracked open my first beer in five years. It did not disappoint. It did not taste “gluten-free”. In fact, when Colin - who is not celiac, or gluten-free - knocked back his first sip, he declared, “This tastes just like beer. Just like the real thing.” And I, ever the U2 fan that I am in my part-Irish bones, answered, “Even better than the real thing”.

Over at my cool and chic gluten-free home girls' blog aka The Celiac Chicks, I learned the proper way to pour a Redbridge. Pour the beer into a glass so that it smacks the bottom of the glass. This releases carbonation and produces a perfect foamy head. I did this last night, and, indeed, it does! (Thanks, Kelly!)

Next? Now that the Santa Fe Whole Foods is finally carrying Redbridge in their beer section, I gotta create that perfect gluten-free pizza crust recipe to go with it. And now that I have the beer, Dear Reader, it’s cake.

Here is the recipe I'm going to try - sent in by Lydia. The good news is - it is egg and dairy free.

Lydia's Gluten-Free Pizza Dough

Karina, here is my recipe for GF pizza crust. If you're not crazy about xanthan gum, perhaps you could use guar gum, or one egg white instead. I think it tastes like the crusts of old I used to eat, and I've only had compliments from gluten-eaters.

In a measuring cup, proof:

1 cup warm water (following temp. directions on your yeast package)
1 package dry, active yeast
1 tablespoon sugar

Whisk together in a bowl and let it sit for 5-10 minutes as the yeast proofs and begins to foam.

In mixing bowl, combine:

2-3 tablespoons olive oil
1 teaspoon each: dried basil, oregano, rosemary, and crushed red pepper (optional)
1/2 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
1-2 teaspoon salt
1 scant teaspoon xanthan gum

Add the proofed yeast mixture. Stir to combine.

Add:

2 1/2 cups gluten-free flour*

Mix the dough by hand for 2-3 minutes. Let it rest as you oil a pan and sprinkle cornmeal on top of the pan (to prevent dough from sticking).

Drop the dough onto the pan and using wet or oiled hands, flatten and spread the dough evenly to the thickness you prefer. (This usually covers a 10x13-inch baking pan.)

Allow the dough to rest while you pre-heat your oven to 425 degrees F.

Pre-bake the pizza crust for 10 minutes.

Add sauce and toppings. Bake for an additional 10 minutes or so, until the crust is done and the toppings are heated through and bubbling.

*Lydia's Gluten-Free Flour Mix is:

3 parts white rice flour
3 parts brown rice flour
2 parts potato starch
1 part tapioca flour

She notes: If you use a pre-made gluten-free mix, I would recommend not using one with leavening (baking soda, baking powder).

Thank you, Lydia! This recipe will be (mucho) appreciated by our readers.