Parsnip pizza crust (paleo)

It’s been ages since I blogged but I have to write about this one because I have come up with The Perfect Paleo Pizza Crust. It tastes pretty much like “regular” pizza. It’s easy and quick to make. It’s pliable but crusty at the edges and holds it shape well. It involves only a few ingredients. In addition to being paleo (provided you don’t put cheese on the finished pizza), it’s low-FODMAP, gluten-free, dairy-free and vegetarian if you don’t use meat toppings. It’s even good cold. And it was born of desperation.

The best gluten-free perogies ever

To me, perogies have always tasted of home. No, I’m not Ukrainian or Polish, but I did grow up in Alberta, Canada, which has a large Ukrainian population. The perogy (AKA pyrogy, pierogy, or as I’m reliably informed by Ukrainians, varenyky) has become thoroughly part of Canadian prairie culture, so much so that Glendon, Alberta, is home to the “world’s largest pyrogy,” which I once had the pleasure of visiting (along with the world’s largest kubasa, another prairie cuisine staple with Ukrainian roots).

In any case, the ubiquity of perogies is such in Alberta that my Japanese mother regularly made them at home when I was growing up. Oh, she didn’t make them from scratch – she brought frozen Cheemo perogies (which I still remember as the best brand; cheddar was the best flavour) and served them with soy sauce. Not traditional, perhaps, but really good.

Korean tacos with quick cucumber pickle

Inspiration for this nominally Korean dish comes not from Seoul but from the streets of Los Angeles, where apparently the popular Kogi BBQ truck has spawned a number of imitators around the U.S.

I’ve never been to Los Angeles and have never had Korean tacos made by anyone other than myself but I liked the sound of the idea and wanted to create my own version, gluten-free and low-FODMAP, of course. They came out delicious, a fusion of different flavours into a perfect marriage. (I don’t think the fact I’m in a mixed marriage myself is influencing me.)

Flourless banana oatmeal pancakes

A friend of mine recently shared a recipe for flourless banana pancakes and I was so excited, I immediately tried it out. The recipe called only for one mashed banana and two eggs, mixed together and fried like a pancake. It did work, rather to my amazement, and my kids loved them, but the resulting “pancakes” were very light, difficult to flip, and not really pancakey enough for me.

I wanted to improve on the recipe without adding, well, flour. Even gluten-free flour makes a mess and I wanted to pancakes that were easy and quick enough to make on a weekday morning, with minimal clean-up. I also wanted to make something satisfying but healthy that my kids would still like. That’s how I came to add oatmeal and flaxseed.

Gluten-free cheddar cornbread muffins

I love cornbread muffins but a lot of them are too crumbly for my taste. I get that cornmeal is crumbly by nature but it gets to be too much when it’s difficult to eat. These gluten-free savoury cornbread muffins are moist and not crumbly at all. With the addition of cheese, corn kernels, chives, and smoked paprika, I got a tasty, easily packable breakfast or lunch food that reheats well. Plus they’re refined-sugar-free!

Slow cooker pulled pork with homemade barbecue sauce

Pulled pork is one of my go-to recipes for something that’s really simple to make but tastes complex. Also, my kids love it. Sometimes I spice it Mexican style, for pork carnitas, but for American week I decided to do it with barbecue sauce for sloppy, delicious pulled pork sandwiches that taste like a sunny day drinking beer and listening to the blues (perhaps at Kitchener Blues Festival).

I know, slow cooker pulled pork isn’t quite the same as pulled pork smoked over a wood fire. But I don’t have a fire pit. Here in our temporary home in England, I very sadly don’t even have a barbecue. However, pulled pork in a slow cooker is not only super easy, it’s really, truly, delicious. With the right sauce it’s honestly hard to tell the difference between this and something cooked by an award-winning barbecue chef who used three kinds of wood chips in just the right proportions.

Gumbo (Gluten-free, low-FODMAP)

I’m posting this a bit late, but this week has been American week at our house. Though Indian tacos and bannock were both Canadian and American, gumbo is totally Louisiana. I visited Louisiana once, years ago, before Hurricane Katrina changed New Orleans forever, and I loved the food. This was also before I had to worry about a gluten-free or low-FODMAP diet, so I chowed down on fried oyster po’ boys, muffalettas, beignets, crawfish étouffés, and of course, gumbo.

However, I left Louisiana feeling unsure about what a “proper” gumbo should be, because every one I had was significantly different. One was thick and stewy, another was thinner and soupy. One was full of seafood, another, if I remember correctly, featured only chicken and sausage. That’s because, I gather, every Louisiana chef has their own version of gumbo. About the only common ingredients seem to be some form of flour-based roux and okra. Unfortunately, both wheat flour and okra (it’s high-FODMAP) are out for me. So how to create an authentic-tasting gumbo without either of those ingredients?

Indian tacos

Indian taco flat on a plate – to eat, bend in half and eat like a Mexican taco.

I always feel weird saying “Indian tacos” since they’re not at all Indian in the subcontinental sense and not really tacos in the Mexican sense. Also, I feel uncomfortable using “Indian” to refer to the First Nations of North America. But nobody says “First Nations tacos.” The Aboriginal friends I had growing up on the prairies in Canada would have laughed at me if I’d tried. Indian tacos are Indian tacos and they’re as authentically First Nations as Irish stew is Irish (despite the fact potatoes are native to South America) and as vindaloo is Indian (even though chilies too are from the New World).

What makes an Indian taco “Indian” is that, instead of a corn tortilla, it uses fried bannock, AKA fry bread. As to the rest, it usually contains meat, cheese, tomatoes, and lettuce. Sour cream is optional. Salsa is optional. If you want to make it even more North American Aboriginal, you can use ground bison. I, however, didn’t have any, so I used ground beef, which is, I would guess, the most common filling in Indian tacos anyway.

Gluten-free bannock (fry bread)

No taste takes me back to childhood summers on the Canadian prairies like bannock. Bannock, for those not in the know, is a bread so simple, it can be made while camping. It doesn’t require much more than flour and water and can look like a big round loaf, like scones, or like pancakes. It can even be wrapped around sticks and toasted in the flames.

Although for me the classic bannock is scone-like and made in a skillet outdoors, another, slightly more decadent treat is fry bread. That’s the name for bannock that’s made big and flat and deep-fried. I used to always get it at the Aboriginal tent at Edmonton’s Heritage Festival, sometimes plain and sometimes in the form of Indian tacos. I hadn’t tried to make bannock since I went gluten-free, but bannock is so easy, it turned out fantastic even when switching flours and shallow-pan frying rather than deep frying. 

Tourtière

Happy Canada Day! Bonne fête du Canada! To celebrate the motherland from way over here in England, we ate leftover tourtière for lunch.

Does that sound somehow disappointing? It wasn’t. Tourtière is, after all, a beautiful and truly Canadian dish, not to mention delicious as leftovers. I made the tourtière on Sunday because it takes a little more time than I figured I’d have today. For our actual Canada Day dinner, we had a simple picnic. Were we shirking our duties as Canucks? No! Most Canadians picnic or barbecue for Canada Day. Tourtière is actually more of a Christmas Eve or New Year’s Eve tradition, with some eating it on Christmas Day. But I couldn’t let a Canadian-themed week go by without making tourtière. It’s that good.