The Best Apple Pie - Crumble!

This gluten free apple pie is sooo good! I borrowed this recipe from Ottawa's nutritional expert Kathy Smart
"Best Apple Pie With Roasted Almond Crust"    (www.livethesmartway.com). In my version, I added a crumbled buttery topping!

Pie Filling:

• 10 large apples, cored and sliced about 1cm in thickness
• 1-2 tbsp cornstarch
• 1/4 tsp sea salt
• 2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 cup of honey or maple syrup
• approx 1/2 cup of water

Crust:

• 4 tsp canola oil
• 4 tbsp honey or maple syrup
• 1/2 cup rice flour
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 1/2 cups ground almonds

Crumble topping

• 3/4 cup rice flour
• 1 cup ground almonds
• 4 tbsp honey or maple syrup
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 cup cold butter 

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Prepare the Crust:
Combine oil, honey/ maple syrup, rice flour, cinnamon and ground almonds. Pack ingredients evenly along the bottom and edges of a 9 inch pie pan or a similar sized casserole dish. Bake pie crust for 3-5 minutes at 350. You will smell a nice almond smell in the oven. Let cool for 3-10 minutes.
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

Prepare the Crumble:
Combine the rice flour, almonds, honey or maple syrup, cinnamon, and cold crumbled butter. Set aside in the fridge until you need it.

Filling:
Simmer apples in less than 1/2 cup of water for 8 -10 minutes until the apples are tender but not too soft. Drain the water from the apples and transfer the water to a small saucepan. Add the cornstarch and a couple more tbsp of water and heat until the desired thickness is achieved. Add liquid back into the apples along with the honey/ maple syrup, and cinnamon.
Add the filling into the pie crust.  Pack on the crumble topping. Bake for 25-40 minutes.

Serve with vanilla ice cream

Potato Latkes

You will need:

• 4 large white potatoes, peeled and grated
• 1 small yellow onion, finely sliced
• 2 tbsp seasoned flour (or rice flour)
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp salt
• Canola Oil

Place the grated potato onto a cloth and squeeze out as much liquid as you can. Combine the grated potato and the onion. Add the flour and egg. Mix well. Heat a non stick pan to medium. Add about a tbsp of oil and scoop about 3/4 cup of mixture for each patty. Be sure not to over crowd the pan. Make them in batches.  Spread the mixture out evenly. Wait till each side is dark golden brown before flipping. When both sides are golden and crunchy, they're ready.

Serve with either bacon or any kind of sausage, sour cream, and chives.

Veggie Dip

There's so many ways to make a veggie dip. I just made this one up.

You will need:

• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 1/2 cup of mayonnaise
• 1 tbsp finely chopped fresh dill
• 1 tbsp chopped green onion
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• salt and pepper

Tartar sauce

You will need: 

• 1 cup Mayonnaise
• 1 tsp Dijon Mustard 
• 3-4 baby dill pickles diced small.
• juice of 1/2 a lemon
• salt and pepper to taste

Combine ingredients and enjoy alongside some delicious Fish and Chips!

Pollo al Chilindron

This is a really popular Spanish dish. You can play around with the ingredients and make it your own, there are so many variations. I like it because of the richness of flavor and the rustic style of one-pot cooking. 

This is one of those dishes  you can tell by looking at the ingredients, it's gotta be good!

You will need:

• A heavy cast iron pot or any heavy large pot that you can transfer from stove top to oven. And a cover or tin foil.
• 4 chicken legs separated from the bone. You can use other varieties of chicken like breasts, but it won't have the same "falling off the bone" goodness. plus the dark meat is great in this recipe.
• Most Chilindron recipes call for Jamon Serrano, which is an Italian thinly sliced cured ham similar to prosciutto. But you can exchange it for chorizo sausage. About 2 cups (or 2 sausages) cut lengthwise then in quarters then diced.
• a few glugs of olive oil
• 1 red bell pepper, diced
• 1 green bell pepper, diced
• 1 large onion, diced
• 6 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 2 heaping spoon-fulls of sweet-smoked Spanish Paprika. Note: if you find your paprika doesn't have any smell or taste, it's not a great paprika, it should really have a smokiness to it.
• 3 bay leaves
• 1 lemon (juice and zest)
• 1 can of diced tomatoes
• a splash of dry white wine (or I would use whatever white I have)
• 2 tbsp of fresh parsley
• salt & pepper, to taste

Fist you're going to start off by making the sauce. It's easy if you start off by prepping all the ingredients before hand. 
Heat the pot to medium, add some olive oil, put in the onion and bell peppers. stir occasionally and let that sit for about ten minutes. Then add the garlic, stir and wait a couple minutes. Then throw in the rest of the ingredients except for the chicken and the tomatoes and the wine...and save 1/2 of the parsley. Stir this mixture and wait a few more minutes. Then when all the flavors combined deglaze the pot with the white wine and then add the diced tomatoes. Simmer a few minutes, then carefully remove the sauce from the pot and put aside. 
Now keeping the temperature at medium, put the chicken into the pot skinside down until browned then flip them over to seal the meat. Remove the chicken from the pot and put the sauce back in then place the chicken on top of the sauce skin side up. With a lid or tin foil over the pot, place in the pre-heated 350 degree oven for 45 minutes. Then remove the cover and continue cooking for another 15 minutes. Let cool a bit.  Garnish with the remaining parsley.

Serve with rice, salad, baguette, white wine.