All in Gluten-Free

Lemon Cornmeal Cake

This cake is topped with a lemon simple syrup when it's hot out of the oven resulting in a moist, sticky cake that is wonderfully lemony.  It's made with almond flour and cornmeal making it gluten free but not obviously so.  It's a cake that happens to be gluten free rather than a cake in which the flour was replaced with gluten free ingredients to make it gluten free.  The cornmeal in the cake gives it a slightly crunchy texture I love.  It's a great dessert, afternoon treat or even a decadent breakfast.  Read more.

Preserved Lemons

When I first began making preserved lemons, I made them to exclusively use in tagines. But quickly I discovered that their subtle tartness enhanced a much wider variety of recipes than I had previously thought. The addition of preserved lemons reinvented my hummus, lemon aioli, fish tacos, salad dressings and more, so now I always keep a jar of it in the refrigerator. 

I have a good friend, Lina (okay, so Lina is actually the good friend of my son, Tyler, but when she visited us last summer I quickly realized how special she was so I jockeyed myself into their friendship), whose parents are both Moroccan.  Because preserved lemon plays such a major role in Moroccan cuisine, Lina and I naturally fell to discussing this delicacy soon after we met for the first time.  As it turns out, Lina's mom calls them pickled lemons instead.  This makes a lot of sense because the lemons are stored in a saltwater solution wherein the rinds become not only edible, but delicious as well.  So while most recipes recommend keeping the rinds, they also oddly recommend discarding the pulp.  This is strange because I really like the pulp.  For a while I was conflicted, until I put the question to Lina.  I asked her, "What does your family do, keep or discard the pulp?"  She didn't even pause to think about it.  "We use the whole lemon!"  I've been using the whole lemon ever since.  Read more.

 

 

Falafel

I first tasted falafel a few years ago at Oleana, a restaurant in the Boston area that serves phenomenal food with a Turkish and Middle Eastern spin.  At the time, I didn't even know how to pronounce falafel.  But soon after tasting it, I knew I wanted to try making it at home.  Traditionally, falafel is made with chickpeas that are soaked, ground, and fried.  There's nothing quite like falafel fresh out of the fryer, but it can become a bit heavy and dry if left sitting for too long.  Read more.

White Bean Hummus

A disclaimer: hummus is derived from the Arabic word for "mashed chickpeas," so "White Bean Hummus" is a bit of a misnomer. But definitions—like my recipes—are always changing, and I think we've revised hummus to mean: "any bean spread with tahini." So even though you'll find no chickpeas in my recipe, it still tastes, smells, and looks like hummus, so I'm going to name it accordingly.  Traditionalists will scoff, but this creamy hummus tastes too amazing on a falafel sandwich for me to care. 

In addition to its lack of chickpeas, this particular hummus' uniqueness is amplified by the inclusion of preserved lemon.  Read more.