For The Gluten Free

If you’re eating gluten free just because you think it’s healthier, I say forget about it. None of us are getting out of here alive so we might as eat, drink and be merry.

However, we do have a family member with celiac disease, which is a cruel fate for an Italian. Barilla makes a pretty good gluten free pasta, but that doesn’t help when it’s holiday time and nothing will do but homemade ravioli. So I found this gluten free pasta recipe and used it to make some darn good ravioli, and I didn’t even have to say so myself.

One of these days I’ll get around to publishing our family’s ravioli recipe. They’re really not that hard to make. But in the meantime I’ll share my recipe for gluten free pasta.

The dough has a different texture, rather slippery when wet. Without gluten, it lacks elasticity, which makes it really impossible to make ravoilis the way we usually do. You really need to make raviolis one at a time when using gluten free pasta. Just wet the edges of both pieces of pasta and crimp well.

OR you can roll out your dough, spread on the filling, then roll up jelly roll style. Wrap the roll in cheesecloth, tie the ends so it looks like a big firecracker, and drop it boiling water to cook. When done, cut in slices and top with your sauce and cheese. Looks different, but is easier and tastes just the same. In this case it would be called “Rotolo Italiano”. (Italian Roll)

Author: MOM

Cards on the table, I'm NOT a chef. Most of the time, I don't really even like to cook. But, I ALWAYS love to eat!....and I've had a lifetime of great cooks in my family showing me what good food's supposed to taste like. People are always asking me for recipes, asking what I'm cooking, so here you go. What I cook is probably as bizarre as my kids think I am. Sometimes healthy, sometimes artery clogging. Sometimes gourmet, sometimes just a quick fix to fill an empty place. Sometimes secret Italian family recipes, sometimes quick dump and stir out of cans. That's the way I roll. Take what you please, leave the rest. It's not brain surgery.