Gluten-free biryani and carrot fritters

You know when you have leftovers and it's just a cup of this and a cup of that? Things that you can't exactly serve to anyone but yourself, standing eating at the kitchen counter?

All. The. Time.

This week, my friend's wife sent me a tupperware of chicken biryani and I liked it so so SO MUCH that I ate just a few spoonful at a time until I realized that I didn't have enough left for a meal.

Desperate, I raided the fridge and BOOM! Magic.

I don't know about your fridge but I think mine is a magic box. Whenever I am at the end of the food rope, I just need to stick my head in there and all kinds of fun ideas pop up.

So here we go, enjoy these fritters because I did. I actually had to portion it to not eat the whole batch.

(Biryani) Rice and carrot fritters

- 1.5 cup of biryani or plain cooked rice.
-3 medium carrots, shredded, squeezed well
-3 eggs
-1 Tbsp curry powder (more if you have plain rice)
-3 Tbsp minced mint leaves
-salt and pepper to taste
-coconut oil for the pan

Mint yogurt sauce

-1/2 Cup plain yogurt
-1 Tbsp minced mint leaves
-1 tsp lemon juice

***For sauce, mix all ingredients together.

Mix all fritters ingredients together. Heat a small knob of coconut oil in pan over medium heat. Drop a few tablespoons of mixture and fry a few minutes each side until golden. Serve warm with mint yogurt sauce.

Almond pulp (gluten free) apple and peach cobbler

I saw Christmas decoration in store last week. Seriously? At least wait until I've had my turkey and pumpkin pie guys!!!! I haven't even thought of a Halloween costume yet!!!

We are having Indian summer this week and it's beautiful outside. I love that there are red leaves everywhere but it's hot and sweaty which definitely makes it easier for me to stop denying that fall is here. Soon, everything will be about stews and roasts, pumpkins and sweet potatoes, apples and cobblers.

HMMM.... Cobblers.....I. LOVE. COBBLERS!!!!

As I have been eating sans gluten, cobblers would have been hard not to have anymore. It's like a poem, you know? A beautiful fragrant to start, a bite of the soft sweet apple chunks to lure you into the story and then the buttery crunch. Without that buttery crunch, the poem doesn't finish well. It's still good, don't get me wrong but that crunch... oh that crunch..

Ehem... sorry.. I got a little distracted there... But I'm back! So as I am on a roll with this almond pulp thing, I thought why not use almond pulp instead of flour? I went to ask my close friend Google and I found one that sounds really really good, and I went on from there.

This recipe is really easy and fast I can assure you that. It was inspired from Cinnamon Eats and I substituted a couple of things and made it the lazy way.

Gluten free almond pulp cobbler
-5 apples
-3 peaches (optional. I had peaches left over so I just threw them in there)
-juice of 1 lemon
-2-3 cups of almond pulp (yield from 1 cup of whole almonds when I made the milk)
-1 Tbsp ground cinnamon (use less if you prefer. I like mine cinnamon-y)
-a few shakes of ground cloves
-a few shakes of grated nutmeg
-1/2 cup butter
-1/4 cup honey (I used raw because that's what I had)
-a handful of raw pumpkin seeds

Turn oven to 350F
Slice the apples and peaches and toss them with the lemon juice in a glass baking dish (I used a 9x11 because I couldn't find the 8x8)
Mix almond pulp and spices.
Melt butter and honey and add into dry mixture. Spoon on top of fruit slices and spread.
Sprinkle the pumpkin seeds. Bake for 50 minutes then turn the oven off and leave it in there to keep warm

4-ingredient almond pulp cookies

Hi there! :) How have you been?

Yes, I know I've been away for quite a while... but let's just pretend that my last post was a couple of weeks ago, shall we? After all, I'm sure life has been very exciting for you so you probably didn't miss me too much, right?

What?

Oh... I was hoping that you'd say you did miss me so so much....

Well, in any case, I  am going to try to buy back my time with you with this cookies recipe. I promise they are good. Scout honor.

So this whole time away I made movies, I made cakes and I made almond milk. Delicious plain and chocolate almond milk. There is nothing really special about my almond milk compared to yours, no. Just good old four cups water to one cup raw almonds. This means that I was accumulating almond pulp and I must say, I started to freak out a little bit. It was my guilty conscience telling me I was supposed to make delicious stuff with it really fast and my lazy brain whispering: "You don't have a dehydrator... Do you really want to mess around with this crumbly wet pile?"

Needless to say, the world wide web had many suggestions. My brain was right, drying almond pulp??? Oh hell no! As I realized that most of the recipes required extra ingredients that my wallet shook its head to and the amount of almond pulp used was not as much as the pile was growing, I decided that I'd just randomly mix things into my crumbly wet pile and made cookies.

O.M.G. SO. GOOD. My colleagues love them. I love them. The texture apparently reminded one colleague of camping bars (delicious ones obviously!) They are gluten-free and vegetarian friendly!!!

So without further boring you, I am sharing one of the two recipes I came up with as the other one needs to be tested again.

Almond pulp banana cookies:
(about 20-24 cookies)

-3 cups almond pulp (plain or chocolate)
-1 large banana
-1 egg
-1/2 cup sugar

Turn your oven to 350 F
Mix everything together well. Line your cookie sheets with parchment papers. Scoop 1 tablespoon  of mixture for each cookie, flatten them slightly with the back of a spoon or fork. Bake for 20 minutes or until there are golden specs on top. Cool cookies on racks, keep them in a tightly closed tupperware in the fridge for a few days (Mine never last more than 24 hours... LOL!!!!)

Good luck eating just one!!!! :P