On Our Table: The Best of April
The month of April brought with it a fair amount of decent weather, a fair number of rainy days, and a whole lot of delicious dinners. We covered all of the bases during the month including healthy, health-ish, meatless, and comfort-style dishes. Not to mention there were plenty of bold flavors, a couple original recipes, new favorites from new cookbooks, and many meals I cannot wait to make again.
On Our Table now includes all dinners made during the month and provides a recipe link/source as available. While many of our dinners are from my cookbook collection, a handful are always recipes I find online. And if you have questions about the few originals, let me know in the comments! I’m happy to help make your delicious dinner goals come true.
Recipes and cookbooks are linked in the button below/next to each photo. If you’re curious for even more dinner details, make sure you’re along on Instagram (@glutenfreemollied) where we share new meals almost every night!
chicken stir-fry with peppers and asparagus
An original dish that’s pure comfort food. This one is dairy free and gluten free (of course). The brown sauce recipe is one of our favorites from The Woks of Life.
Note: Be sure to use gluten free soy sauce (Tamari) and GF oyster sauce.
shrimp, tomato, and feta pasta
This combination is a wonderful weeknight meal featuring North Coast Seafoods Naked Shrimp, Jovial Foods gluten free spaghetti (or capellini), plus grape tomatoes, red onion, and crumbled feta. Fresh dill sprinkled on top is a great garnish!
Zucchini, green OLIVES, AND FETA FRITTERS
This is a recipe from the new cookbook Simply Julia by Julia Turshen. The fritters are flavor-packed and too delicious for words. We treated them as a dinner instead of a side dish, which meant there were no leftovers. I served the extra Castelvetrano olives on the side. ;)
Doug’s TEX MEX TURKEY MEATBALLS
This is a recipe from Simply Julia by Julia Turshen. Another stellar meal! Healthy meatballs that tasted decadent with a joyful sauce alongside. We kept the dinner light by serving the meatballs with roasted asparagus. Rice would’ve worked well, too!
grilled chicken salad
Sometimes you need grilled chicken and a simple salad for a light, healthy, and satisfying dinner. Seth grilled chicken and we put it on a bed of mixed greens with avocado and a light, spicy peanut dressing. Easy! No grill? That’s fine! Just cook the chicken stove-top in a cast-iron pan.
STEWED CHICKPEAS WITH PEPPERS AND ZUCCHINI
This recipe is from Simply Julia by Julia Turshen (again). A meatless meal that was superb and didn’t even need the pieces of GF pita we served with it. That yogurt sauce on top really took it over the top. I cannot wait to make this one again.
shrimp burgers with roasted broccoli
One of our favorite, extra-easy dinners is comprised of North Coast Seafoods GF Shrimp Scampi Burgers served with a roasted veggie. It’s the easiest dinner that is also just plain yummy. This time around we topped the burgers with sriracha mayo and toasted Panko for a creamy, crunchy combo. Major yum!
sheet-pan sausage meatballs with tomatoes and broccoli
This is a recipe from New York Times Cooking (available on the app or website). Considering we decided to use ground pork and season it ourselves (instead of buying pre-made sausage), I was thrilled with how delicious this dinner turned out to be. I loved it, ate too much, and am still excited to make it again soon. We made garlic bread to boot which was a real treat. This was a sheet-pan of comfort food and I inhaled every bite. And then some.
spaghetti with cauliflower, almonds, tomatoes, and chickpeas
This is a recipe from New York Times Cooking (available on the app or website). While still delicious, we found that this meatless meal wasn’t quite as flavorful as we had hoped. It was fairly mild and I think it would have benefited from meat or other strong flavors added to it. That being said, we still enjoyed it and added a lot of crumbled feta. Of note, it’s protein-rich with plenty of chickpeas!
buffalo chicken salad with blue cheese
When you’re craving buffalo chicken dip, but you really should have a salad, make this dinner. A bowl of spinach topped with shredded buffalo chicken, diced celery, fresh chives, and crumbled blue cheese. This will always be one of my favorite “salads” because it’s bursting with a favorite flavor, but still has plenty of greens to make it healthy-ish. Make sure to get high-quality blue cheese! Or a different type, if you prefer.
SPICY, GARLICKY CASHEW CHICKEN
This recipe is by Melissa Clark and it’s available on the New York Times Cooking site (or app). My goodness this was so scrumptious! That spicy sauce was unreal and perfect for the whole meal. We kept it healthy by serving with asparagus, but any seasonal veggie would be just fine. OMG this was a great one.
fusilli with meat sauce and basil
One of our other go-to comfort food meals is pasta with meat sauce. Key ingredients include a jar of Rao’s Tomato Basil Marinara, ground beef (or other protein), gluten free pasta (we used Jovial Foods fusilli), extra shallots for the sauce, fresh basil for garnish, and a hunk of Parmesan to grate on top (post-photo). This meal is pure comfort food and goes so well with a cold Friday night at home. A glass of red wine is nice too, but not required.
taiwanese five-spice pork with rice
This recipe is from the cookbook Milk Street Tuesday Nights by Christopher Kimball. A great meal that works best on a Sunday night, the dish did take longer to prepare than anticipated. However, it was worth the wait! Scrumptious, major flavor, and was so good with that egg on top. Plenty of leftovers from this one - and it was even better the next day.
miso-ginger chicken salad
This recipe is from the cookbook Milk Street Tuesday Nights by Christopher Kimball. As someone who has never willingly eaten chicken salad, or chosen it off of a menu, I was overjoyed by how much I loved this meal. The miso-ginger dressing was awesome and the slivered almonds on top added the best crunch. I cannot wait to make this one again for an outdoor BBQ, picnic, or family gathering. It was fantastic!
Panko-breaded chicken tenders with arugula rice
Anyone else notice that many of our comfort food meals involve crispy chicken? Oh well! One of my tried-and-true forever favorite meals (and the easiest) is Panko-breaded chicken tenders (Aleia’s GF Panko) served alongside a veggie of some sort. For this instance, we served the chicken with arugula and onion rice for a heartier meal. I drizzled sriracha over everything to give it some heat. Of course, the spice is optional.
spinach and artichoke dip chicken bake
This recipe is from the book Simply Julia by Julia Turshen. If you’re looking for a healthier version of one of the best dips, then make this meal! I love spinach artichoke dip, but it’s obviously not always the healthiest choice. Thankfully, this dinner takes the classic, lightens it up, and still manages to have all of the decadent flavors you know and love (with less cheese). We served it with slices of GF baguette to keep it “lighter,” but honestly it would’ve been even better with pasta. ;)
coconut curry stuffed peppers
This recipe is by Gaby Dalkin of What’s Gaby Cooking. New weeknight favorite! I loved this healthy meal and we only made two, minor changes: we added ground turkey for plenty of protein (it’s originally a meatless recipe) and used red curry paste instead of curry powder to season it all. Scrumptious! I look forward to making this one again very soon.
peanutty pork noodles with crunchy celery
This recipe is from the new cookbook Cook This Book by Molly Baz. Wowza! This was one awesome meal from this bold, bright, and fun new cookbook. We simply swapped regular pasta for rice noodles to make this gluten free and OMG it was heavenly. I cannot say enough good things about this super-flavorful meal. It was advertised to serve many people; we’re lucky there was some leftover. ;)
Luna’s broccoli beef
This is a recipe from The Pepper Thai Cookbook, a new book by Chrissy Teigen’s mom, Pepper Thai. I love her Thai recipes so I was very excited for this new collection. Our first dish was this classic beef and broccoli, which was yummy, but not quite as bold as I expected. To add an extra oomph, I drizzled sriracha over everything. Much to my surprise, the broccoli was the best ingredient in the bowl!
tomato and egg “shakshuka”
This is a recipe from the new cookbook To Asia, With Love by Hetty McKinnon. A fantastic way to begin the book! This wasn’t a traditional version of shakshuka, but it was delicious nonetheless with lots of ginger, scallions, and perfect eggs on top. I wish we’d served it with rice (as suggested), but we still thoroughly enjoyed every bite (not much leftover).
larb burger
This is a recipe from The Pepper Thai Cookbook, a new book by Chrissy Teigen’s mom, Pepper Thai. OMG best burger we’ve made at home, ever. No joke. This juicy, giant burger was overwhelmingly flavorful with that umami goodness in every bite.
The burgers (they were over 1/4 pound each) were topped with a crunchy, cold, tangy slaw as well as gluten free crispy onions (I can’t believe those exist). The GF buns had a savory mayo (GF soy, mayo, garlic) spread on each side. Overall, it was a burger of my dreams and I cannot wait to have them again. A star of a meal.
panko-crusted shrimp and smashed cucumber salad
One of the best ways to make an easy dinner is to combine something you need to prepare with something that requires no work at all. For example, this dinner comprised of frozen GF Panko-crusted shrimp (from Whole Foods) which we simply heated in the oven and an awesome cucumber salad that is a recipe from the new book To Asia, With Love by Hetty McKinnon.
This “semi-homemade” meal was awesome and felt like having an appetizer platter for dinner which was delightful. The shrimp were hot, crispy, and freaking awesome (for frozen food) and that cucumber salad (tahini dressing) was fresh, cold, and tangy in contrast. I loved this dynamic duo and would have it again in a heartbeat. You don’t need to always make every element (from scratch) of a great meal.
nacho skillet supreme with guacamole and queso
We closed the month of April with one of my ultimate comfort food meals, Nacho Skillet, which we made even more awesome by having it with homemade guacamole and a jar of organic queso. Nacho Skillet is basically everything you’d normally put on tortilla chips (and thus create nachos), but instead cooked together in a skillet, topped with heaps of shredded cheese, then broiled to bubbly perfection. The chips are then served on the side so the Nacho Skillet is essentially a giant vehicle for dipping. Genius, I know.
This has become a go-to dinner on Friday nights when we’re craving bar-style food but aren’t running out to local bars quite yet. Thankfully, we created this superb, savory dinner that really hits the spot. The best part? We can indulge in the comfort of our own home and no one will notice if we eat the whole thing.
PS: We never finish it. The leftovers are too delicious. ;)
enjoy!
Mollie and Seth
@glutenfreemollied