Gluten-Free Appetizers + Snacks

Baked Grape Tomatoes with Basil and Cornbread Crumbs
Basil Pesto
Brown Rice Tortilla Chips
Buttermilk Flatbread

Cilantro Pesto de Esteban
Crispy Potato Sticks with Roasted Tomato Salsa
Crunchy White + Sweet Potato Chips

Easy Guacamole with Lime
Green Chile Quesadilla
Greenwiches Lettuce Cups and Wraps
Hummus Tahini with Spiced Oil

Jalapeño Lime Hummus

Joey's Kicked Up Rockin' Guac

Nachos Fabuloso
Parmesan Crisps
Pecan Crackers

Quick + Easy Garlic Shrimp Pizzas
Roasted Eggplant Tapenade
Roasted Red Pepper Hummus
Roasted Tomato Salsa
Roasted Yellow Tomato Salsa
Roasted Vegetable Salsa

Savory Grain Free Crackers
Spinach and Cheddar Quesadilla
Three Ways To Dress a Naked Salad (Gluten-Free Dressings)
Winter Pesto

Cranberry Buffalo Roast Stew

A hearty gluten-free Crock Pot stew to warm your celiac soul.

What could be more comforting as we face the chilly New Year than a slow roasted one-dish supper? Not to mention, easier. Especially after all the hustle and bustle of last week's holiday celebrations. All the sugar. And latkes. And eggnog. And hoopla. I'm exhausted just imagining it. So I'll stop. And share a recipe instead- a tasty little number I tossed together in my trusty Crock Pot over the weekend- a cranberry laced stew that cooked its sweet 'n savory heart out while I worked on creating more print-friendly recipes for you.

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Date Sweet/ Khajur Paak

Merry Christmas and Happy new Year

Ingredients
500gm date khajur packet
200gm fresh mava
50gm sugar
50gm ghee (1\4 cup)
20gm edible gum (Gaund)
1\2 cup water ( or simple milk)
Almonds chopped for decoration
Method
Step 1: Deseed the dates and roughly chop up dates.

Step 2: Take 1\2 cup water (or simple milk) in kadai and heat up to boiling and add chopped dates. Step 3: Keep stirring till all dates becomes soft and turn off the flame.

Step 4: Cool for 2-3 minutes and place into grinder bowl.
Step 5: Blend the date in a mixer till smooth paste (If it is too thick add a tiny amount of water to loosen it but try to make thicker pulp)

Step 5: Grated mava. Step 6: Grind 20 pieces of almond into mixer.

Step 6: Take another thick pan and heat the ghee in pan.

Step 7: Fry edible gum on medium flame.

Step 8: Finely chopped fry edible gum and keep aside.

Step 9: Then remove half of the ghee from pan and add prepare dates mixer.

Step 10: Add sugar and stirring till thick consistency.

Step 11: Stirring well up to all water part is burn and paste of date looks dark brown color.
Step 12: Add fry edible gum and mix it.

Step 13: Add grated mava on a low flame and keep stirring.
Step 14: Stirring up to date mixture sets in thick consistency.

Step 15: Take little part of mixer in hand and try to make small balls if it becomes in shape then turn off the flame. Step 16: After that add almond powder and mix well.

Step 17: Pure the batter of khajur paak or date sweet on the plate.

Step 18: Cool for 20 minutes after that take little ghee in your palm and make medium balls of date sweet or khajur paak.

Step 19: Decorate the balls with chopped almond and place in another plate.

Step 20: Store into container and place in cool.

Another recipe of Date Sweet is HERE

Note:
1. If you use sweet mava then you don’t add sugar because I thought that khajur were sweet enough.
2. If you don’t like to add water then you directly grind the dates into grinder but you need heavy duty grinder because dates are not soaked.
Love is the basis of every relation in human kind, without it the world is barren.

Seasons Greetings!

Bunny tracks and a low flannel sky sifting snow. My view today. We have a buffalo roast with cranberries and wine in the slow cooker. A fire in the kiva. A quiet-as-a-field-mouse day here in northern New Mexico.

Sending out a bundle of wishes for a safe and warm holiday to all- be it Christmas, Hanukkah, Yule, or simply Thursday. Be well, Dear Readers. And thank you for your comment love this past year. I appreciate every kind word, your recipe tweaks and stories shared.

My New Year's gift to you? During the next week- or two- I'll be busy behind the scenes creating unique pages for much improved printable recipes. Look for the new links on posts starting today (just beneath the recipe). I'm beginning with the most popular- and the most recent recipes- and working my way back in time. By the way, Dear Heart, if an errant older post or two slips through my RSS feed during this editing process I apologize in advance. Flooding your feed reader is not my intention.

Till my next post, then- which by the way, might have to be the killer olive oil and sea salt potato chips we made this week- be safe, be healthy, and be good to one another.

Sweet Potato Latkes

Sweet potato latkes and ruby applesauce.

Happy Winter Solstice! Happy Hanukkah! Let's celebrate. The shortest day of the year is finally upon us. The darkest point in the turning of the seasons will tomorrow tilt toward light. The balance in power has shifted. Daylight gains. The darkness recedes, inch by inch, minute by minute. Light is reborn. Pretty powerful stuff. No wonder so many cultures have celebrated this in a myriad of ways (see Nika's list of Mid-Winter celebrations and her beautiful photos).

For Hanukkah- no matter how you spell it- it's also about light. An eight day Festival of Lights, in fact, and food is intricately woven into the tradition. Because Hanukkah celebrates the fortuitous finding of a flask of olive oil (a small amount that would, maybe, last a day, but miraculously burned for eight dark nights) recipes for celebrating are cooked in oil.

And that brings to me to one of my all-time favorite foods on Earth.

Latkes.

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Gluten-Free Layer Bars: Coconut Chocolate Nirvana

Gluten-free coconut chocolate layer bars.

This is a quickie bonus post. Chocolate-coconut layered cookie bar bliss --- just in time for the holidays. A wink and a nudge to the retro cookie  layer bar recipe I posted two years ago. This newer version is non-dairy using condensed coconut milk, so you lactose-free folks don't miss out on all the fun.

Now get ready to party.

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Sweet Potato Coffee Cake- and a love story

Winter in Northern New Mexico- my view.

It's been snowy, windy, cold- you name it. From all the tweets I've been reading over on Twitter lately, I'm not alone. Far from it. This has been one crazy snowy month. So what does a gluten-free goddess do when she gets stuck in the middle of the desert with no buckwheat flour, no sorghum, and no four-wheel drive? (Note to self- if you're going to live in rural Northern New Mexico, Darling, a cute and thrifty little Honda Fit won't cut it.)

Snowed in and hungry she does the only sensible thing.

She scans the pantry and pulls out a Whole Foods gluten-free cake mix and starts stirring things up. She starts imagining dirt bombs. And bakes up a coffee cake worthy of the winter holidays.

The love part of the story?

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Sweet Potato Soup with Ginger

A comforting sweet potato soup for the sun deprived  soul. With ginger.

Winter Solstice is approaching fast. The days now are so short I've been warning Steve to hide all sharp instruments. Your intrepid gluten-free goddess, you see, has that infamous seasonal wrestle with gloom this sun deprived time of year. In a perfect world I'd be spending the month of December in Hawaii like certain lucky individuals, soaking up vitamin D with the surfer girls and feeling all mahalo instead of Get me the bleep outa here before I scream.

So I've been on a sweet potato kick. I can't get enough of these ruby and golden hued tubers- perfect for winter comfort food. So tasty. And versatile. Astute readers may have noticed the trend already.

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Chakri / Spiral wheat flour snack

Chakri- Crispy and Crunchy Spiral Wheat Flour Snacks
Chakri is a wheel shaped crunchy spicy snack made from wheat flour or rice flour. In our Gujarat all people make from wheat flour. You can have lots of fun with this one as it uses a special tool called a sev maker.
Ingredients for making Chakri:
1 big bowl wheat flour
1\2 of bowl yogurt (curd)
6 tbsp sesame seeds
4 tbsp red chilli powder
1 tbsp turmeric powder
5 tbsp oil for making dough
Salt to taste
Oil for frying
Sev maker with star nozzle for making chakri
Method for making chakri:
Step 1: Place the wheat flour in steal vessel and cover with lid. Pure the half cup water in the pressure cooker and put the flour vessel in it and closed the cooker with top. Cook the simple flour in base of water for three whistles.


Step 2: Turn of the flame and cool at room temperature. If wheat flour is warm then it is best for making crispy chakri.


Step 3: Place this wheat flour in big bowl and rubbing smoothly with hand.
Step 4: Add red chilli powder, salt, turmeric powder, and sesame seeds in it.

Step 5: Heat 5 tbsp oil and add the sizzling hot oil to the wheat flour or if flour is warm then add oil as it is. Mix lightly.
Step 6: Add yogurt to make stiff dough. Knead thoroughly with hand not food processor. If you need than add little water for making smooth dough.
Step 7: Take sev maker and place the dough in a sev maker, using the chakri (star) nozzle.

Step 8: Closed the sev maker tightly.
Step 9: Make long strips with the sev maker and after that make spiral on to the paper. Gently press the ends of the chakri so it is not open when we fry it. Make this type of raw chakri at least more than ten. Step 10: Heat the oil for frying. Test the oil by dropping a small piece of dough and wait for 3 or 4 seconds if it does not rise to the top then oil needs to be heated.
Step 11: Gently place the raw charki in heat oil and fry it for two minutes until light brown on the underside. Step 12: Turn in to another side and fry into middle flame for 1-2 minutes. If you are frying in low or medium flame on another sides than it’s turns into golden brown and crispy. So you can take care of it.
Step 13: Remove the cooked chakri from the oil.

Step 14: Drain on paper and fry the remaining raw chakri in the same manner. Step 15: When all the chakri have been cooled then store in an airtight jar.