Gluten, wheat and baking

I've been wheat intolerant since around 2000 although it took me until 2003 to work it out as I can be a bit slow on the uptake ... I don't go into anaphylactic shock or anything dramatic but I do suffer symptoms similar to food poisoning and I'm hoping that I don't need too much more detail than that!

I went travelling on the 14th Sept 2001 passing through the middle east to South East Asia which was where I suddenly began to feel much better than I had for years.  Then India I had terrible problems but I assumed that was due to picking up a bug but it all magically subsided when I got to Bali and Indonesia. Flared up again when I got to the US of A and continued when I got back to Britain. I came up with all sorts of explanations including being infected with the giardia parasite but it wasn't until I started doing Atkins in 2003 and ate some high gluten low carb rolls where I had an immediate and violent reaction which repeated the next three times (I can take a bit of a while to work things out!) that I ate them that I worked out that I had a problem with gluten... this was when I worked out that when I was in the countries eating a mostly rice based diet I had felt better then when I went back to bread it all went downhill and things all clicked into place.

Since then I've worked out that eating spelt, rye and other non wheat flours does not have the same affect which is lucky as many of the gluten free alternatives were pretty grim although they are getting better. There is a link between gluten and a cause of thyroid issues called Hashimoto's disease but I don't have this so at the moment the impetus to go completely gluten free hasn't quite come about...

However, I do need to cook with things other than wheat flour and my default flour used in cakes, bakes and bread is spelt so any recipes I publish are fine to make with this type of flour. The other thing that interests me is keeping sugar levels in the blood even ie preventing large surges in sugar levels so I'm trying to bake cakes with plenty of fibre. My first foray into fibre filled cakes was in developing a carrot walnut and coffee cake which I think I've just got down pat; unfortunately while I knew that coffee was not ideal (I gave up coffee in 2012 and am working on giving up tea this year) I didn't know that I'm also supposed to avoid walnuts which are part of the 'best not to eat these foods' listing* so it's back to the drawing board on that one. Recipe will follow once I've got the carrot cake up to scratch!

Yesterday I had a first try at a cake using honey instead of sugar as a sweetener. I made a Dorset apple cake (using apples that we scrumped  from an offer through Streetbank) which was ok but needs a bit of work. So again it's a recipe on a promise rather than an actual recipe this time.

Spelt cakes and bread can be a little denser than normal wheat bread as there is a lot less and different type of gluten in the flour and I do get a hankering after 'proper' bread every now and again. I also have to confess to a bit of a pork pie addiction. Providing that I only have a little I can manage some wheat (equivalent to around 1/4 of a slice of bread) and do occasionally slip off the primrose path especially when there's little other option but this can lead to over confidence with disastrous effect so I try and remain spelt/rye or gluten free most of the time. Unfortunately the supermarkets don't seem to have cottoned onto the fact that there are a lot of people who can manage spelt but not wheat so most 'spelt bread' that they make contains wheat as well. Ho hum

So, baking recipes will follow once I have some alternative flavourings on the carrot cake and the Dorset apple cake is more yummy.

*List of stuff I'm not supposed to eat because of my hypothyroidism (from the Thyroid UK website):

• Brussels, swede, turnips, cauli, cabbage and kale
• Almonds, peanuts and walnuts
• Sweetcorn, sorghum and millet
• Soya

Hertford Food Swap Lentil Paté

First post; wow a bit scary to say the least....so where do I start? I thought with a recipe that I made for the last Hertford food swap which gained a lot of queries for the recipe: so here goes!

Ingredients:

First catch your lentils.... about 100 gms/4 oz of them. I use moong dal (the yellow ones) but red or other is fine just make sure that you give them a good wash and pick out any stones/husks etc. 

Around 0.8lt/1.5 pints of good vegetable stock

Oil - I know recipes traditionally say 1 tablespoon but enough for frying...

1 large or 2 medium onions cut into slices (don't worry too much about this as they're going to be blended)

3 cloves of chopped garlic or to taste (I tend to be heavy on the garlic)

1 table spoon garam masala

1 teaspoon coriander (ground)

1 teaspoon cumin (ground)

0.25 to 1 teaspoon chilli dependent on heat of chilli and heat required

2-3 tablespoons of mango chutney

Method

1. Fry up the onions in the oil until they're translucent. Add garlic for the last 20 seconds or so

2. Wack all the spices into the mix and fry for a minute or so on a low heat until fragrant

3. Add stock and lentils

4. Simmer for 20 - 40 mins dependent on the cooking time of your lentils. Keep an eye on it and add a bit more boiling water if it looks dry

5. Tip the lot into a food processor/insert stick blender/ pass through a mouli or whatever floats your boat to mash stuff after adding the mango chutney. With the chutney I normally add 2 table spoons, blend and see how it tastes, adding more if necessary.

6. Serve with tortilla chips/bread or just a spoon.  

Enjoy this one; I've been making variations of this since I was a student without too much cash and it works well for omnivores as well as veggies. As you can probably tell from my lackadaisical attitude towards measuring I generally cook by tasting and throwing stuff in rather than getting too hung up on measuring accurately.