"Gluten-free cooking for dummies; bathing potatoes" by Food Forum

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Gluten-free cookbook

If you’re going gluten-free, or just learning to cook for someone who is, bookstores and the Web are suddenly awash in recipes to help you with the challenge.

One recent addition is Danna Korn and Connie Sarros' "Gluten-free Cooking for Dummies.' The authors offer a chatty, comfortable but thoroughly informative primer on how people with wheat sensitivities can still enjoy a full range of foods.

Among the authors’ 150 recipes are flatbread, waffles, spinach pie, cookies, cakes, lasagna and numerous other dishes you might assume weren’t possible on a gluten-free diet. If in addition to being gluten-free you also happen to be vegan (no animal products), Susan O’Brien has you covered with her cookbook, “The Gluten-Free Vegan.”

A short introduction is followed by 150 recipes, such as vegetable paella, blueberry buckwheat pancakes, and various chilies and risottos.

Soaking potatoes

A wet potato is a healthful potato, according to British researchers. Rinsing or soaking raw french fries in water before frying might reduce levels of acrylamide in the crunchy product, according to a team led by investigators at Leatherhead Food International, a food and beverage research and consulting company. The study appeared online last week in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.

Acrylamide, which is created in small amounts during production of french fries and potato chips, has been linked to cancer in rodents, and some researchers say it might be carcinogenic to humans as well. The Brits found that soaking potatoes for two hours reduced acrylamide levels in fries by 48 percent. Simply washing the potatoes, or soaking them for 30 minutes, reduced acrylamide by 23 percent and 38 percent, respectively.

This outcome isn’t surprising, says Barry Swanson, a food science professor at Washington State University. Rinsing and soaking the spuds reduces levels of sugar — one of the chemicals that reacts, upon frying, to form the acrylamide.

Scientists still debate the health consequences of acrylamide, Swanson adds, but largely agree on another point: Overdosing on the salt and fat in fries isn’t good for you. “Don’t worry about the acrylamide in the french fries,” he says. “Just cut down on the portion.”