Bruschetta Gluten Free, Kingston

Last weekend I was in London visiting my brother and on Sunday we made a pilgrimage to Bruschetta, Kingston. Bruschetta is the kind of restaurant coeliacs dream of. Everything on the menu is available gluten free, including fresh handmade pasta. Here I am outside the restaurant looking excited:

Any restaurant with the crossed grain symbol on the outside is a definite good start!

 Taking a look at the drinks menu I noticed it said 'gluten free beer'. I asked which beer it was and was given a choice, yes a choice! They had Celia gluten free lager or Estrella Damm Daura. I hadn't tried the Celia lager before so went for this. It was very nice, refreshing and tasty.

 To start with we had a bruschetta classica and a  9 inch foccace Biancaneve. The bruschetta was toasted with tomato, garlic and basil on top. It was very tasty as was the salad it came with.

The bread was not made on the premises but imported from Italy. All their Pizza bases and some of there pastas were made fresh on site. The  9 inch foccace Biancaneve was essentially a garlic pizza bread with mozzarella: 

It was very nice, the pizza was quite thin and crisp around the edges but could've done with a bit longer to make it crispy all the way through.

As a main course I had the fresh gluten free ravioli of the day, which was stuffed with spinach and ricotta and ricotta and served with a cherry tomato sauce. 

The pasta was very nice, probably the best I've ever had since I've been gluten free. You could tell it was freshly made and it had a great taste and texture. 

My brother had a gluten free margarita pizza:

It was very good, the base was cooked better and was properly crispy. The toppings were nice, it was definitely up there with the best I'd had in Glasgow. At this point I was stuffed, I couldn't even finish all my ravioli. I asked for the dessert menu just to see what they had, here it is:

I was very excited to see gluten free tiramisu on the menu, it had been my all time favourite dessert. I'd never seen a gluten free tiramisu on a menu before and only made it once because it's quite time consuming. I asked if it was possible to have tiramisu to go, but it wasn't as they were already set in a glass bowl. Instead I had the caprese cake, a chocolate and hazelnut cake. Here it is later at home:

It was very tasty, moist and chocolatey. I'd recommend Bruschetta to anyone living near, or visiting London. It really was a trip worth making. The also sell gluten free produce in the shop. I bought some tagliatelle, as I've not seen this before and I haven't tried it yet. The coeliacs of Kingston and London are lucky to have this haven right on their doorsteps!

Surviving abroad without being glutened (part 1)

Travelling abroad gluten free

This June I was faced with the daunting task of sticking to my gluten free diet on holiday where I don’t speak the local language. We were heading to Cerbere, a small village on the border of France and Spain, for a week. Before setting off I printed off the gluten free passport gluten free dining cards for Spanish and French, along with a detailed list of green, amber and red French foods. This was downloaded from the French Coeliac society website, called AFDIAG, and I found it by searching ‘Interdit’ (forbidden) in their search bar. I also packed the Spanish and French phrase books.

            We set off from Liverpool to Carcassonne early in the morning. At Liverpool Airport we went to Frankie and Bennys for breakfast. I ordered bacon and eggs on toast, without the toast. When it arrived it came on toast! There was no time to get a new one made before the flight so I set off hungry, and ate my emergency peanut butter sandwich on the flight.

            On our first day we saw the sights of Carcassonne and ate lunch in a restaurant in the main square of the medieval city. This is Carcassonne:

I had a duck only cassoulet- a traditional dish of white beans, sausage and duck. I chose the duck only version because I thought the sausage would not be suitable. When ordering we asked if the waiter spoke English and he sent over one who did. I told him I couldn’t eat gluten and presented my piece of paper. The girl next to us in the restaurant was English and spoke French; she offered to translate things for us. The waiter seemed to understand and took the list off to show the chef. He returned and confirmed he thought it was ok. The cassoulet was delicious and I suffered no symptoms from eating it.

            Next we went to a French supermarket, Giante Casino to buy supplies. In the Bio section, which means organic there was a small gluten free section. I got some gluten free pasta, which was very good, just the same as that from the UK. I also got some gluten free bread- Schaer Rustico, which is from Germany. It was a long-life rustic fibre loaf, which tasted very good.

 We ate in for dinner- a salad with some Parma ham and cheese.

            For breakfast my favourite is avocado on toast, which went very well with the Rustico bread. On the second day we went down the Spanish coast stopping off at some of the seaside towns. We went for lunch at a tapas restaurant called El Racó de Port in the town of Llança.

This is the restaurant: 

The waiter seemed to understand the Spanish version of the gluten free passport. Everything was suitable except for the things that were deep fried, and the Spanish omelette. The meal was very nice; we had sardines, manchego, Spanish ham, patas bravas and more. In the evening we ate in and had pasta.

            On the third day we went into the Pyrenees and visited the Abbaye de St Martin:

We ate lunch in a small village called Cateil/ Castel at a restaurant called Relais St Martin. I had the plat de assaitte de jour (dish of the day). This consisted of a melon and ham salad with roast vegetables, ham, cheese, fries and aioli (garlic mayo) it really was delicious. The women was very impressed with the gluten free passport I showed her and understood it well. In the evening we ate at a restaurant called Amphitryon on the seafront of Collioure. The restaurant was very busy, I showed the waitress the piece of paper and ordered Paella, which she said was ‘just rice’ so would be ok. The paella was a bit tasteless and disappointing. I tried to order dessert but it was all too much for the waitress. Her section was full of customers annoyed by her slow service and forgetfulness. She had obviously just left the restaurant to cry (rubbing eyes, makeup smudged) and I asked if the crème catalane (similar to a crème brulee) was gluten free. She said it wasn’t, I asked her what was and she suggested the profiteroles or apple tart. I knew neither of theses would be so I decided not to have anything. This made me worry my main course hadn’t been gluten free either but I had no obvious side effects from it.

            The next day we explored the neighbouring towns and stopped for lunch in Port Vendres at a place called La Fringale. This is the view from the restaurant:

I had the salad Estivale, which was melon and ham again- very nice. Much to my excitement we found a place in Collioure called Framboise Chocolat that had a sign outside saying ‘biscuits sans gluten’. The first time we tried to go in it was closed but in the end I managed to get some biscuits. I bought some pistachio and some chocolate biscuits. The were very good, particularly the pistachio ones as the chocolate ones were a little burnt. They were hard biscuits, similar to biscotti, which is traditional for the region. We ate in for dinner, creating our own cassoulet, which was very good.

            The next day it was raining so we decided to explore the city of Perpignan. This is Perpignan in the rain:

We had lunch in a restaurant in the central square. Again I ordered a salad, presenting my piece of paper. The salad was supposed to be Roquefort and walnut but the walnuts were removed leaving only lettuce and Roquefort. This was a disappointment and very boring. Perpignan had a very nice market going on the day we visited- Saturday. One of the bread stalls had gluten free bread, made primarily of quinoa. The loaf was quite dense and tough, but tasted nice. In the evening we went to Les Clos de Paulilles restaurant and vineyard between Port Vendres and Banyuls sur Mer. We arrived at 6.40 but they weren’t serving dinner until 7.30 so we had to spend the time trying and buying vast quantities of wine. The menu was set, with a choice of two or three things for each course. Although they didn’t speak much English the staff were very thorough in their discussion. To start we had a tapas plate, most of which I could eat with the exception of a few things on bread. Then I had sea bass with pak choi, which was delicious. For dessert I had cherry soup, which was very nice. Overall, the meal was very good.

            That concludes the first of my two gluten free holiday blog posts. You may be wondering why I’d finish after 5 days when I was only going for a week, you must be forgetting the French air traffic control strike!

Gluten free baking- Quinoa Sandwich loaf and Pain de Campagne

For Christmas I was given the Gluten-Free and Vegan Bread recipe book by Jennifer Katzinger. I was worried that the fact it is American would mean the ingredients would be hard to come by. I managed to buy all the ingredients from healthysupplies.co.uk. Each recipe called for up to 10 different flours, so the order came up to over £40! I actually quite enjoyed using cups compared to weighing things out and found it easy enough to convert from Fahrenheit to Celsius.

Quinoa Sandwich Loaf

I started off by making the Quinoa Sandwich loaf from page 41 because I wanted to make something basic and loaf shaped to start with. The ingredients are shown below- there's a lot of them!

The recipe was relatively straight forward to follow- mix all the dry ingredients together, mix the yeast with the water, add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients, mix and bake! This was the first occasion I came across the wander of chia seeds. These tiny black seeds transform into a thick gelatin when soaked in water for just 15 minutes. This acts as a binding agent in the bread. 

For fear that my mums well used bread tins were contaminated with gluten I lined them with greaseproof paper. The loaf cooked for a whole 2 hours 30 mins, and had no proving time for the dough to rise first. Here is a picture of it just before cooking:

After cooking the loaf was crusty and brown- here it is just after:

Unfortunately the paper had stuck to the loaf and wouldn't really come off. I didn't notice it much when I ate it. This is it cut open:

It had a fairly even crumb. The texture was quite sticky and moist which held the bread together and would allow is to be made into a sandwich. The taste was very good, nutty and malty. The crust was quite brown and crispy. If anything the bread was a little too wet but overall a very good start.

Pain de Campagne

Next I made the Pain de Campagne from page 30. I was keen to try out a loaf that required shaping. Again the recipe was very easy to follow. The only trouble was that arrowroot was in very small packets of only 100 grams, and I required a whole cup. This was therefore very expensive, I have now found arrowroot from essential wholefoods in a 500 gram packet, which is much better value. 

These are them having just been put in the oven, they're quite small, about the size of two fists together.

This is it just after cooking, as you can see it hasn't risen all that much.

Here it is cut open- which wasn't easy!

 Cutting the bread took a lot of tricky sawing- even with a very sharp knife. The crust was very thick and difficult to bite through. In my opinion the taste was very good- even better than the quinoa loaf but some friends preferred the taste of the quinoa. The taste was quite nutty and fibery, the outer cornmeal dusting produced a nice flavour and texture. The texture was moist and a bit too dense- this may be due to the yeast not working properly.

Unfortunately the crust was just too tough in to eat as the bread got older and I have now had to throw the last bit away. 

A mixed response but definitely an interesting start. Coming next, Focaccia, watch this space!