white rice flour Archives - Glutenfreeliac

While I joke about the husband not cooking, he does make one dish (granted, he only makes it about once a decade, but still): Chile Rellenos. They are a favorite of his — he judges the quality of Mexican restaurants based on their rellenos — and somehow, someway, he taught himself to make this dish.

He also once won a chile relleno cook-off, but that’s another story for another day.

Making chile rellenos gluten-free is amazingly easy. Making chile rellenos is also pretty easy (though a bit messy). Eating them? Easiest of all.

The recipe below is for what we now know as traditional chile rellenos. The Notes and Meal Suggestions section has ideas for alternate preparations, including an awesome baked relleno.

Years ago during South by Southwest, my husband and I snuck out for a meal by ourselves. We ended up at the Moonshine Grill in downtown Austin. On the menu was an amazing macaroni and cheese with spicy green peppers. The moment we returned home, I started trying to recreate this recipe.

Over time, I stopped trying to make Moonshine’s mac and cheese, focusing instead on making my own. My ever-faithful bookclub has cheerfully (and hungrily) endured my experiments over the years, and there was only one major failure. Note to all: soymilk is not a good substitute for real milk in this instance.

You live, you learn.

From my perspective, the key to good mac and cheese is a mix of cheeses that bring appropriate meltiness and flavor. As a rule, I rely upon good old-fashioned regular milk when making my cheese sauce, but have, once or twice, tried out evaporated milk. The latter does add an interesting creaminess to the sauce…and that weird evaporated milk smell completely disappears in the sauce.

Needless to say, this recipe makes excellent leftovers. I do find that gluten-free pastas tend to absorb a lot of sauce, so I tend to go heavy on the sauce, lighter on the noodles.