Easy Dairy-Free, Soy-Free Alfredo Sauce
I don’t generally make 20-minute meals. I tend to opt for dishes that have me working in the kitchen for an hour plus. But today’s recipe—a dairy-free, soy-free Alfredo sauce—made for one quick lunch yesterday. I put asparagus in the oven to roast, and I put a covered, large pot of salted water on to boil for gluten-free pasta. While I waited on the water to boil, I washed spinach, peeled an orange, sliced an avocado, and made a mustard-citrus dressing for the salad. When the water was boiling hard, I put the pasta in and stirred it around. I flipped the roasting asparagus and then put the ingredients for the pasta sauce in the food processor. When the pasta was cooked, I scooped out the pasta water I wanted for my sauce, I set the food processor running, and I drained and rinsed the pasta. I tossed the pasta with the sauce, pulled the asparagus out of the oven, put tongs in the salad, and voila! Lunch in less than half an hour.
Oh, and this easy sauce was tasty enough that my non-gluten-free, non-allergic friend who was over for lunch got seconds.
read moreRustic Meyer Lemon Cake (Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Egg-Free, Soy-Free)
When we came to Santa Monica from Atlanta for my husband’s interview, I didn’t expect the city to feel Mediterranean. I had been to Northern and Central California but never Southern. I knew Southern California had lots of palm trees. I knew that LA had bad traffic, lots of smog, and South Central. But I had no idea that visting–and then settling in–Santa Monica would transport me back to the month I spent in Greece. Flowers bloom riotously here. It rarely rains. (LA would be the desert if it weren’t for all the irrigation.) In winter, the temperature hovers around 70 degrees during the day but, with little humidity, quickly dips into the 50s at night; I hear summer won’t be too different. The farmers’ markets (three times a week!) in Santa Monica have every imaginable delight from both winter and spring produce. We get local dates. The dwarf blood orange tree my husband gave me for Valentine’s Day is blooming and sending its heady, potent scent through our open windows. It is actually really lovely here. Perhaps I would have been more open-minded about living in California during Dan’s job search if I had realized that LA’s cliches don’t speak too much to its realities. (I mean, yes, the traffic is horrendous, but we just live near my husband’s workplace and walk or cycle the gridded streets to get places. And Santa Monica gets ocean breezes, so the smog isn’t bad here.)
Two days ago it was unseasonably warm, about 82 degrees. I was walking the dog, wearing a tanktop with the sun warming my shoulders, and enjoying the life we’re creating in Santa Monica when I decided one of my next posts should be a Meyer lemon cake. A simple cake, a bit rustic, with a tender crumb but also the crunch of cornmeal around the edges. Something that would incorporate a celebration of Mediterranean influences: olive oil, almonds, yogurt, honey, and, of course, citrus. Mmmm Meyer lemons.
read moreRanch Dressing & Dip (Dairy-Free, Soy-Free, Egg-Free)
I’ve been thinking a good bit about what recipes to create for this blog. Readers have so far requested recipes for coconut milk yogurt, donuts, and the Americanized Chinese classic Orange Sesame Chicken. The temptation is to largely work on things I’ve really missed or things that have confounded or intimidated me for one reason or another. High on my list are some version of dairy-free, soy-free, cane-sugar-free Nutella and a savory pie crust.
Until yesterday, Ranch dressing was on my list of confounding items. I adored Ranch when I was a kid; I considered it the primary way to make salads and gross cafeteria pizza palatable. Even when my appreciation of vegetables heightened, I still liked Ranch dip for raw veggies at parties. Even today, I must admit, I would like the option of occasionally having Ranch on my pizza . . . basic pizza, not fancy pizza.
Ranch is typically made with a base of buttermilk, mayonnaise, and/or sour cream or yogurt. After learning I could no longer eat, well, any of those things, when I had a hankering for Ranch (usually after seeing it on someone’s salad), I had pondered whether avocados might make an acceptable base. But after a disastrous attempt at making an avocado-based Thousand Island Dressing, I didn’t even try it with Ranch. What else might work? I considered coconut milk yogurt (too sweet) and hemp milk (not thick enough or tangy enough). And then I went about my life and tucked thoughts about Ranch dressing into the back of my mind again.
But yesterday, as Ranch tickled my brain again, I thought, “Something that thickens a sauce and can be made tangy. . . .” And then the answer popped into my head: cashews! We often eat raw cashew ‘cheese’ that is tangy and delicious. Surely, I thought, the raw food movement has already got Ranch dressing covered.
read moreGluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Egg-Free Hamburger Buns
Most people take hamburger buns for granted. I sure did for most of my life. But after going gluten-free and allergen-free (dairy, eggs, and soy), I missed them mightily. I missed buns of all sorts, really–dinner rolls, sandwich rolls, sweet rolls. And even after I learned to make really good bread, I never made buns. For a while I used DeLand Bakery buns—until, after hearing many rumors, I finally tracked down a celiac group and others who ran tests to determine that DeLand’s undoubtedly contained gluten. Ick. (Unfortunately, Sami’s is the same. I suspect the companies are run by affiliated people.) Companies that take advantage of those of us who are gluten-free to make an ill-gained fortune off of us makes me feel ill without me even eating any of their contaminated food.
I went back to eating my hamburgers and sandwiches in homemade sliced bread or store-bought pizza crusts or corn tortillas . . . but not in buns. A few months ago, my husband gave me a hamburger bun pan