5 Gluten-Free Potato Salad Recipes

Gluten-Free Vegan Potato Salad - Simplicity

I am thinking of you. As I pack. Folding linens into squares (next to impossible with fitted sheets). Wrestling with rebellious hangers. Cradling white soup plates in sheets of recycled paper. Boxing and taping and labeling our material life once again. Our seven year journey westward now migrating east. Back to the Cape.

Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

Where we first met.

Where we first touched, shaking hands goodbye at the end of a six week painting class (it would take you two and a half years to call me and invite me for coffee).

Where I raked up a post-hurricane marriage and as I sorted through tree limbs and debris saw the biggest rainbow curve high above the destruction.

Where I set up my freedom cottage as a single mother, living in 350 square feet by wits and faith.

Where I learned to trust my instincts. And snip free the soft lies agreed upon.

Where you finally did call.

Where we began our marriage. Our life as parents. Best friends. Lovers. Painters.

Where I most feel at home. By the New England sea.

Returning. With sand in my shoes that I never shook free.

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Gluten-Free Sweet Potato Fries

Easy, tasty gluten-free sweet potato fries baked with spices.

Like my pal Kalyn I'm a big fan of sweet potatoes. And sweet potato fries. Kalyn's recipe has a different spice blend than mine but our recipes are quite similar. Check out hers if you don't happen to care for my particular spices. Or get down-and-dirty personal and make up your own signature concoction.

Cooking is all about making recipes your own. Developing your own tastes. Your likes and dislikes. Cooking is flexible. And highly personal. It's not precise like, say, brain surgery. Unless you're baking something fussy. Baking folks swear by precision. But I've never actually been that kind of cook. I'm intuitive. I fly by the seat of my jeans. I look at a glistening picture of pasta and vegetables and I feel inspired. I open my pantry and get juiced to play the What If? Game.

What if I take this ingredient and add it to that ingredient? I wonder. What would that taste like? Then the fun begins.

How do you cook?

Do you wing it like Chet Baker? Or do you prefer a road map, with precise direction?

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Khanom Khai Nok Gata (Deep-Fried Sweet Potato Balls)

This street dessert call “Khai Nok Gata” Some areas may be called “Khai Tao” dessert waffle Is a very popular snack in the past, since the Sukhothai – Ayudhya period even Rattanakosin to present. Tt is easy, cheap and tasty favorite Eating easier. Look as pale yellow balls made of sweet potato then fry it taste sweet.

Ingredients:

• 150 gms Sweet Potato 
• 200 gms Wheat Flour 
• 125 gms Cassava Starch Flour 
• 400 gms Icing Sugar 
• 1 tbsp Salt 
• 1 cup Milk 
• 3/4 Baking Powder 
• Oil for Deep Frying 

Preparation:

1. Clean and peel the sweet potatoes, steam until they are cooked and leave to cool. You can check they are cooked by sticking a fork in them. 
2. Mash finely, add the sugar and mix it in. 
3. Mix the cassava flour and baking powder and mix into the potatoes. 
4. Add the milk a little at a time and mix it in. You want the mixture to be a thick dough, add more or less milk to adjust the consistency. Leave for 1 hour. 
5. Deep fry small balls of the dough in medium hot oil until cooked. 
6. Serve hot.

  

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Potato Salad Recipe with Sweet Potatoes and Red Onion

Potato salad with no mayo- and sweet potatoes!

A recipe winner from the archives you may have missed. Because I haven't been cooking. I've been packing. We're moving from our Santa Monica apartment to a sweet place in West Hollywood. Like, tomorrow. If it seems as if we live gypsy lives, it's true. We do (if packing up and moving six times in fourteen months counts). We're signing a lease today. Ostensibly for a year. I hope to settle in fast and start whipping up gluten-free recipes in the new kitchen- which is, I'm happy to report, new as in brand new. New everything. Hence, a gluten-free stove. Fridge. Dishwasher. The landlord remodeled, bless her generous heart. I'll post pics as soon as the dust settles. xox Karina PS: And yes, there's a window over the kitchen sink.

This is a colorful and lower carb potato salad recipe, a welcome change from the ordinary white spud con mayo and boiled egg offerings so ubiquitous at backyard get-togethers. Why? Beyond the no Hellman's and huevos part, it features sweet potatoes, Dude. Sweet potatoes.

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Mulligatawny Soup with Jasmine Rice

Warm up with a bowl of this delicious mulligatawny soup.

Soup weather has arrived in Southern California. The sky is flannel gray and thick with rain. The streets below are slick and shiny wet. Monday morning traffic sounds are hushed and distant. It is even a bit chilly- for L.A. standards. I am wrapped in a sweater. And I am craving mulligatawny- one of my favorite spicy soups. As luck or fate or Plan B foresight would have it, I had enough ingredients on hand to make my favorite soup for lunch today. A simpler, easier version of my well worn favorite recipe for Vegetarian Mulligatawny. I skipped the cabbage and cauliflower and canned tomatoes this time. And upped the carrots for a fresh tasting, healthy soup.

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Sweet Potato Shepherd's Pie

Sweet potato topped shepherd's pie. Gluten-free.

A certain individual living by the mesa has some news. Can you guess? We sold the house. We're moving lock, stock and barrel (in reality, more like Macs, books and UGGS) to Los Angeles, packing up the Honda Fit again to head West and start our new life as Los Angelenos.

I am almost too wired to write.

The quasi-plan is to rent a furnished place for a month. In mid October. Once we're out there, we'll begin our search in earnest for a longer lease- a space we can call our own, not too far from the ocean, I hope. A place with a workable kitchen. Windows. Light. Simple criteria.

As I sort through art books to sell (all the impressionist/landscape books I once mooned over- like a school girl- no longer tug at my attention) I am imagining the new again. I am fueled by the scent of possibility and change and consumed with the urge for going. Three and a half years in the desert have inked their big sky imprint upon me.

I feel as if I sport an invisible tattoo.

Time and distance will reveal the wisdom gained here (if any is to be found). Time and distance will temper the losses. No doubt memory itself will soften the sharp hungers of the everyday isolation and doubt.

Some readers have asked me, What lesson did you need to learn? implying that there is a silver lining to every prickly, dark experience and that if we only embrace The Lesson, we'll be free.

Well, I can answer that.

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Karina's Roasted Hatch Chile Stew with Sweet Potato, Corn + Lime

Scrumptious slow cooker stew with roasted chiles, sweet potato and lime

Ho-la! It's that time of year again. The annual roasted Hatch chile madness is upon us here in chile blessed New Mexico. You can smell the intoxicating smoky-sweet scent of roasting green chiles everywhere you go. Even Walmart. Seriously. There's a roaster out front in the baking hot Espanola Walmart parking lot as we speak, firing it up, doing his New Mexican green chile roasting thing, turning his dented blackened barrel over a fire. Wiping his brow. Slugging down his cola. People are lined up waiting for their batch. Inside the store's entrance stacks of crated fresh chiles dominate the floor space like so many Stanley Kubrick obelisks (cue music).

If you live in Nuevo Mexico, you worship at the Sacred Temple of the Holy Chile Pepper.

The devotion to roasted chile runs deep in these parts and yes, it's with an e never with an i; if you call chile chili in these parts you may as well kiss your white bread tuchas good-bye, pendajo, because you'll be laughed out of the state. Shunned. Scorned. These folks get very serious about their autumn roasted chile. Don't mess with 'em.

It's harvest time.

A bowl of warm fresh roasted Hatch chiles.

Gallon size freezer bags are out of stock. I kid you not. There's not a freezer bag to be had for miles. Chile lovers around here freeze enough roasted chiles to last a year (they buy an extra freezer just for chile) though I overheard one woman complaining that her chile stash never lasts more than nine months.

Yeah, nodded her comadre. We always run out in June, she said. And then it's so hard to wait.

If you're up to roasting your own chiles, you can do it on the grill or even over an open flame like Elise does at Simply Recipes; here's her How to Roast Chile Peppers Over a Gas Flame. After roasting, cool and peel; then stem, seed and chop.

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I-Tim Ga Ti (Homemade Coconut Ice Cream)

This is classic rich coconut ice-cream, served in a Thai style. Thai ice-cream isn't really iced cream, it's often made from non dairy products. This recipe contains taro gives the ice-cream a soft smooth texture. You can also use sweet potato if you cannot obtain taro.

Ingredients: 

• 800 ml Coconut Milk 
• 200 gms Sugar 
• 5 gms Salt 
• 100 ml Skimmed Milk 
• 75 gms Taro or Sweet Potato 
• 5 gms Corn Flour 
• Ice-water To Rapidly Cool the Mixture 

Preparation:

• Chop the taro or sweet potato into large cubes and steam until cooked through. 
• Heat the coconut milk in a sauce pan on a very low heat (about 55 degrees celsius, this is nowhere near boiling, it is simply hot to the touch). 
• Mix the corn flour with 100 ml water and add to the coconut milk in the saucepan. 
• Add the sugar, salt, and skimmed milk, to the saucepan and stir until everything is dissolve. 
• Warm it to 65 degrees C and keep stirring it. Do not let it boil. 
• Mash the taro cubes with a fork and add into saucepan and using a hand blender blender the contents of the pan until the mixture is completely smooth and the taro has disappeared into the liquid. 
• Warm the pan a little higher to 80 degrees C for 4 minutes. 
• Again it must not boil. This is to cook the flour through, without permitting it to become a thick sauce. 
• The mixture should be cooled quickly and then put in the fridge, the best way to do with is to empty it into a containing that is sitting in ice water. 
• Once it is cool enough, put it into the freezer until frozen. 
• While it is freezing ice crystals will form, every few hours you should remove it from the freezer and blend it with a hand blender to break up the crystals. 

Note:
The recipe is much easier if you have a hand blender, during the preparation you will need to blend the ice-cream repeatedly as it freezes, this is done to break up the ice crystals that form. It is much easier to do that with a handheld blender or egg beater. Finally, the decoration is made from a gummy coloured mixture of cooked sticky rice flour, this is also very typical Thai.

   

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Vegan Garden Loaf with Maple Apricot Glaze

Delicious vegan garden loaf with quinoa.

Go ahead and snicker. I'll wait. I'm fully aware that veggie loaves are the punch line for many a joke in Burger King sponsored sit-coms and pseudo-reality shows pitting sweaty cranky chefs against each other for the promise of fame and fortune. So do your thing. Snort. Sigh. Bare your teeth. I can handle it.

Vegetarians and vegans endure more than their fair share of indiscreet eye-rolling.

I know this first hand. Because I've been a vegetarian and sometimes vegan for most of my life. Four decades. And after my medically recommended foray back into Omnivore Land (to jump start the healing of my broken hip) now that I am vertical and ambulatory without a cane I am once again whistling past the graveyard into familiar territory, leaving behind the protein I flirted with, listening to my body's need to get back to the garden, back to my first love, my culinary Eden. My natural preference, before The Fall.

I tell you this without judgment.

I mention this without pressure of any kind. Seriously. I'm not proselytizing. Goddess knows, I understand better than most how hard it is to eat in this gluten infused world of ours without whittling down our choices even further. If you love your bacon and eggs, Babycakes, go rustle up some grub.

Gnaw on some haggis.

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Mun Chuem (Sweet Potatoes and Coconut Cream)

This sweet potatoes or Mun-Ted in Thai with coconut cream Thai call "Mun Chuem" This recipe can be made very easy. You can keep in the freeze for a few week.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 kg. Sweet potato
• 3 cups sugar
• 3 cups white wash/lime water
• 3 cups water
• 1 cup coconut milk
• 1 tsp. salt

PREPARATION:

• Clean the sweet potato very well.
• Peel the skin off and cut into pieces. Make the piece big.
• Soak them in lime water for 30 minutes.
• After that, clean with water again.
• Add 3 cups of water into a pot. Boil it on medium heat.
• When it’s quite hot, add sugar and stir until the sugar is dissolved.
• Wait until the syrup is boiling, then add sweet potato. Use low fire.
• Don’t stir the potato so often. Just flip it over when the other side is done.
• Notice the potato pieces. If the color is clear then it’s ready. Remove from the stove.
• In a different pot, boil coconut milk with salt.
• When it’s boiling, then remove from the fire.
• Spoon coconut milk on top of sweet potato when it’s cool off.
  

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Sweet Potato Latkes

Sweet potato latkes and ruby applesauce.

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 the Winter Solstice in a myriad of ways.

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 the miracle of light 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 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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Gluten-Free Turkey & Sweet Potato Enchiladas

Gluten-free turkey and sweet potato enchiladas.

This Friday is just like any other out here in the New Mexico hinterland. There were big-eared rabbits eating breakfast (nibbling spare tufts of grass). A chickadee or two in the junipers. Pink light on the distant mesas. And as far as I know, no scary crush of shoppers at the Espanola Walmart. At least I haven't heard any sirens off in the distance. Truth be told I haven't budged from my casita (and I have no plans to). Nope. It's just another day here, call it what you want. Black Friday is quiet as an empty nest. So I thought I'd share a recipe for leftover turkey and sweet potatoes- a surprisingly tasty combo.

As always, make it as mild or as spicy as your little heart desires.

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Quinoa Stuffed Cabbage Rolls

Quinoa stuffed cabbage. How's that for nontraditional?

It was a dark and stormy night...

Wait. This is a recipe post. Let me start again. Got your cocoa? Are you settled?

Chapter 1.

The tight blue tiled kitchen glowed in the afternoon sun that slatted through the western facing junipers and spilled across the cupboards in a honeyed glaze so dazzling she had to lower her eyes to keep from squinting like a cowboy as she grabbed a frayed dish towel and cracked the oven door. The scent of sweet potatoes, apples and onion laced with garlic, nutmeg and cinnamon filled the room. She tugged her worn wooden spoon from the mustard crock and stirred the tender jewels bathed in apple juice. For the first time in days she felt connected to something tangible.

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Moroccan Coconut & Chick Pea Soup

A delicious gluten-free soup with Moroccan flavors

On a whim I threw together this North African inspired fusion of flavors led by cravings and intuition. We slurped it down and scraped our bowls. Turns out that sweet potatoes, chick peas, roasted green chiles and coconut milk make for one scrumptious soup. I think you'll love it.

Dairy-free never tasted so good.

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Purple Cabbage & Sunbutter Soup

Alex in Ojo Caliente, New Mexico

The visit with Alex and his girlfriend was thick with conversation, food for the eyes, and dreams for the soul. As always, in the wake of my son's absence I am struck dumb by the restless silence of the desert, finding it difficult to steady my post-maternal footing. It's not the letting go thing. Letting go of your children is the easy part. Their beauty is astonishing and too big to keep for yourself. You miss them, yes.

But the space between you is precious, too.

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Pumpkin-Sweet Potato Soup

A gorgeous soup for the soul- gluten and dairy-free...

Sweet potatoes add body and a boost of color and to one of my seasonal favorites- pumpkin soup. But before I get to the recipe, Dear Reader, I just need to kvetch a little. This won't take long.

You see, I am cooking from the left side of my brain- and I don't like it one bit. Well, truth be told, I'm actually doing more consulting in the kitchen than chopping and stirring and getting my hands all nice and sticky.

Which is exactly the point.

I must sit apart from all the action and fun, perched as I now am in my wheelchair, offering verbal guidance (the generous of spirit might even say, wisdom) to my willing-but-never-cooked-much husband while he does all the culinary work. Our tiny kitchen really has no room for me (and my new wheels) to wedge myself close enough to be of any substantial help. This cocina ain't big enough for the two of us. So the gimp has to sit this one out. Off to the side.

Which leads us back to the whole left brain-right brain verbal vs. visual mystique.

You see, I cook without recipes, for the most part. I use what I have on hand, what's in season. I improvise. And my baking recipes I adhere to with, maybe, 80 to 90% fidelity. I'm always seduced by, What if... I'm intuitive. Spontaneous. And messy (just ask my husband). I never toss the same ingredients together twice in exactly the same way. It's called being a right brained visual thinker. I am unable (even if I wanted to) to follow instructions in a linear fashion. I'm genetically resistant to the concept of: this is tried and true so don't mess with it.

So when my lovely, patient, helpful husband asks me, How much balsamic vinegar do I add? I stare blankly (I'm pondering). I visualize (which sparks the neural pathways in the right side of my brain where I see pictures). Then I start to conjure a verbal response (scurrying back to the left brain) and I approximate my intuition, pictures and kinesthetic antics into speech.

I wave my arm and twist my hands in the air like a lunatic.

And it's never quite right. It's an approximation. Subtle shades of taste lost in translation. To be fair, we've had plenty of good meals based on this left brain verbal analysis. Steve has made a killer meatloaf and a damn fine shrimp stir-fry among many, tasty dishes. I am more than well fed (um, I've gained five pounds).

It's just that, well, I miss the whole hands-on thing. The whole stirring, humming, chopping, seasoning, splashing, tasting, guessing, adjusting, making a mess thing. When I cook my whole body gets involved. Much more so than my imperfect brain. So I miss that.

I've tried using the walker to stand on one foot next to the counter (I can do that for three minutes or so before I get wobbly and loopy and gratefully sit back down in the wheelchair). I've placed a cutting board on my lap and sliced green peppers and onions. But instead of feeling helpful, I start to feel like I'm simply in the way, interrupting Dear Husband's flow, blocking the door to the fridge or the cupboard that inevitably holds the thing he is reaching for. I spend my time in the kitchen wheeling backward and forward, forward and backward, trying (in a goddess-like manner, of course) not to be an obstacle.

So that is where I'm at. Six weeks down, two more to go- before we x-ray this old celiac hip again and check our progress. In the meantime, there will still be no funny business. I'll behave. And sit safely in my wheelchair. Tossing my opinions out like so many chocolate sprinkles.

Here's a soup we made.

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