A blog about gluten-free living and food

Potato salads are something I always associate with summer, maybe because they can be refreshing and cooling when they are not made with mayonnaise.

This recipe is something I make quite often during the summer, I love taking it with us when we go hiking, or to the beach, and the best thing about it is that I can make a lot of it – it only gets better after a day or two.

The lemon juice and the basil together give a nice refreshing quality to the salad. Potatoes on their own are creamy in my opinion, so they need something like fresh herbs and the tanginess of the lemon juice to bring the flavours together in a nice contrasting way.

A potato salad like this - cold, cooling and fresh - is my idea of a perfect summer meal when served together with some hot spicy chicken.

Potato Salad Recipe

The vinaigrette here is not a regular one, this one is really very lemony, and I would suggest using less lemon juice if you are not a friend of a very tangy salad sauce.

If you are using new organic potatoes, I would suggest leaving the skin on them.

The recipe is naturally free from gluten, soy, dairy and eggs.

Potato salad

serves 6

-1 kg/ 35 ounces potatoes

- 4-5 spring onions

- 6 tbls fresh lemon juice

-12 tbls good quality olive oil

-3 tbls finely minced fresh basil leaves

-3 tbls capers

- salt and pepper according to taste

Cook the potatoes and then leave them to cool before cutting them.

Mix together the olive oil, lemon juice, minced basil leaves, salt, pepper and capers.

Cut the potatoes and the onions, then mix with the sauce.

Leave to sit for at least one hour before serving.

This is my contribution to this months Go Ahead Honey, It’s Gluten Free hosted by Shirley at Gluten Free Easily.

The theme this month is Make Me a Happy Camper.

Popularity: 58% [?]

I don’t like recipes.

Usually when I cook I do it not only because I am hungry and want something to eat, but also because it serves as a creative outlet for me. I find it to be relaxing and inspiring. Writing down recipes when cooking, or looking at a recipe at the same time, is not as nice, it adds a whole different level of stress to the whole operation in my opinion and just basically ruins it for me.

This is why I have mostly kept this blog about desserts, I don’t mind writing down what I am doing when I bake. It is not as stressful since when I bake I am anyway focused in a different way than when I am cooking.

Of course, there are exceptions to this. There are some recipes I know by heart and I don’t improvise much with them, I thought that I might post some of those during this summer. My desserts have anyway been something along really good fatty cheeses made with goat’s milk and ripe, juicy organic Italian peaches with some whipped cream. Those cheeses and peaches have become something of an obsession lately and they wouldn’t make all that great posts in my opinion - and because I’m not planning on abandoning them anytime soon, I thought that I’ll post regular food for a change.

Besides eating peaches, I swim a lot during these summer months and this is the main reason why I turn to simple, fast and familiar food during summer. It would be an understatement to say that I am hungry as a wolf when I get home from the beach (anyone who has been doing a lot of swimming probably knows what I am talking about); this means that we eat fast pasta dishes, stir fry dishes and Asian noodle soups during summer. Something fast and filling is a must for me and Carbonara is perfect in that way.

The recipe is very simple, but I do like the taste of it, maybe because I layer different fats into it – first the butter and the olive oil, and then the pork fat which dissolves into them. Layering fats into foods is something I like doing because it’s an easy way to get great taste into a dish. I usually use Pecorino Romano here, sometimes it’s Parmesan, but in my opinion Pecorino is much better. I love, love using Pancetta in anything and I do prefer it here.

I think that I wrote about using brown rice pasta as my main gluten-free pasta sometime before; I am not used to the blandness of regular pasta since I always used to prefer whole wheat pasta before going gluten-free. Brown rice pasta was a natural choice for me because of that.

Those of you who miss regular white pasta might want to check out The Gluten-Free Gourmand blog, since Gina there has been doing interesting and thorough reviews about different gluten-free pastas and she does prefer the whiter kind of pasta. You might find some brand you like by following her reviews.

Carbonara Recipe

serves 2, will take approximately 10 minutes to make

-170 grams/ 6 ounces (rice) spaghetti

-100 grams/3,5 ounces pancetta cut into pieces

-3-4 egg yolks, use 3 if you are using bigger eggs

- grated Pecorino Romano cheese according to taste, I don’t use very much of it, it will drown the other flavours if used too much

-2 tbls olive oil

-2 tbls butter

-fresh black pepper according to taste

-salt according to taste

Start by heating the water for the pasta and then proceed by cooking it according to instructions.

Cut up the Pancetta.

Heat a pan on medium heat and add the olive oil and butter, then cook the Pancetta in it.

Separate the egg yolks.

Grate the Pecorino.

Take the pasta when it is ready and rinse with cold water; I can’t tell you how many times I have had mushed up rice pasta because of skipping this.

The saucepan you cooked the pasta in will still be hot after rinsing the pasta, I usually pour the spaghetti back into it and place the saucepan back on medium heat. Mix the Pecorino with the egg yolks. Pour the egg yolks and the cheese into the spaghetti and stir them constantly for half a minute, the heat will cook them fast. Then place the spaghetti onto a plate and place the Pancetta and on top, lastly spoon the remaining fat from the pan on to the pasta. Top it with some fresh black pepper and a tiny bit of salt.

Popularity: 52% [?]