Introduction

Have you seen those t-shirts that say 

"More gluten please"? 

Or, "Shut the f…. up is gluten free so add that to your diet"?

When I first saw them I was shocked. 

I have a gluten intolerance and I know plenty of people who also have coeliac disease, which can actually be life threatening 

and this is all seen as people being a nuisance. 

What the ………

I wonder why it triggers people so much.

Not that that is my real concern. 

My concern is making people feel included so that anyone who rocks up to my house with a gluten intolerance or ceoliac disease will know that they will be well looked after.

In this episode of the vegan cooking and nutrition podcast, I am going to share with you all the easy ways to cook for people with ceoliac disease or gluten intolerance, including how to bake totally delicious gluten-free cakes.

So keep listening, this is definitely worth it – because if you aren’t gluten intolerant you are sure to know someone who is.

What is Coeliac disease and gluten intolerance?

Coeliac disease is an autoimmune disease. When someone with coeliac disease eats gluten it will 

react abnormally with the immune system, causing small intestine damage. 

The projections lining the bowel become inflamed and flattened, resulting in the body not being able to absorb essential nutrients, this ends up causing not only malabsorption but also gastrointestinal problems. In the past, children have died from undiagnosed coeliac disease due to malnutrition.

Gluten intolerance does not cause damage to the lining of the gut, nor is it an autoimmune disease.

Gluten intolerance is an attack on your system from gluten being in your body. The body views the gluten as an invader and fights it with inflammation on the inside and outside of its digestive tract, causing bloating, gas, pain and diarrhoea.

Coeliac disease 

1 in 70 people have coeliac disease in Australia and it is only 20% who are diagnosed – a lot of people have it but don’t know it.

1% of Australians are gluten intolerant and 8.4% worldwide.

Foods that contain gluten are 

Barley 

Rye

Oats

Wheat 

Spelt 

To remember you can make the acronym – BROWS

With wheat comes couscous, farro, freekeh, burghal 

spelt – there is Khorasan and Kamut too. 

So it can feel pretty limiting.

However, there are so many gluten free options 

Rice

Buckwheat

Millet

Quinoa

Amaranth

Corn

Teff

Chickpea flour

Bean flours like moong dhal flour

Banana flour

Maize flour

Coconut flour

Tapioca flour

especially when you start looking at pre packaged foods.

Pre packaged Foods that need to be avoided for gluten intolerance 

Soy sauce (I suggest buying gluten free tamari)

Bottled sauces, mayonnaise, dressings

Mustards and curry pastes

Potato chips and other snacks, even rice crackers

Soy and rice milks

Chocolate

Pre-made cakes

Biscuits

Stock cubes

Some cornflour and baking powders contain gluten

Asafoetida

Pre-made spice mixes

In both the vegan foundation cooking course and vegan chef training, we prepare many gluten-free dishes that are absolutely delicious, demonstrating how easy it is to cater to people with coeliac disease and gluten intolerance.

Tips on how to cook for people with Gluten intolerance and coeliac disease 

1. Make sure there is no gluten contamination in the kitchen. This is as simple as putting any wheat products away in the pantry and wiping down all equipment well.

2. Choose meals that naturally don’t have gluten. 

E.g.

Curry and rice 

Mexican tortilla (made with corn) and beans 

South-east Asian food with homemade sauces rather than bought ones

Risotto 

3. These days you can get some pretty good substitutes like – 

>   great gluten-free pastas – both long and short, like penne – the organic ones seem to be the best.

>   Use rice noodles or buckwheat noodles instead of wheat noodles. 

>   Use quinoa in things like tabbouleh instead of burghal wheat. 

>   You can buy very good gluten-free breads or make my gluten-free bread. 

>   Use besan flour in any savoury dish that calls for wheat flour – like fritters, burgers, etc. Besan flour is chickpea flour and is used a lot in Indian and Italian cooking.

>   Make your own flour mix to make cakes, that is the recipe for this week. I’ll share it in a little bit.

To make a really good flour mix for cakes, you need a combination of 3 flours – this makes a cake really robust.

We make two different flour mixes in the vegan foundation cooking course – one for cakes and another for cookies.

>   If not nut allergic, use almond meal with gluten-free flours to make a cake – so if a cake calls for 2 cups wheat flour, make it with 1 cup of almond meal and 1 cup of gluten-free flour.

>   To make pancakes or crepes, use a combination of buckwheat and rice flour. 1½ cups buckwheat and ½ cup brown rice flour, for example.

>   Note: when using buckwheat flour, it needs more liquid than wheat and the beauty of buckwheat is it has more protein than wheat and, in fact, is a complete protein.

My story with Gluten Intolerance

I will tell you about my story with gluten intolerance.  In 2008 I had a hunch I was gluten intolerant. If I ate oats, I broke out in pimples, if I ate wheat, I got a belly ache. Luckily, it was not a bad one, but it was a dull ache. That year, I was doing a home delivery meal service and was delivering to Parijat, who runs the Australian School of Kinesiology. On our delivery to her one day, I mentioned to her that I might be gluten intolerant.

Parijat got me on the table and she tested me.  Absolutely, I was gluten intolerant. 

Where my will power came from in those days, I am not quite sure, 

but from that day on I decided I was gluten intolerant and I wouldn’t eat any gluten. 

I didn’t eat any gluten – not when travelling, not when visiting, not when eating out.

I didn’t eat gluten for 8 years. Nothing. Zilcho – I liked feeling good in my belly. 

Then I started to eat a little bit of organic gluten here and there if out – so it may have been once a week or fortnight and never 2 days in a row and I didn’t get any side effects.

I have read recent studies that suggest that if you are gluten intolerant and you stay off gluten for a good solid 10 years, your body will be able to tolerate some gluten now and again.  Whether this is true for everyone, I don’t know.  But it definitely wouldn’t be true for someone with Coeliac disease.

It does make it more difficult for people who are not gluten free to understand. As they may have gone out of their way to cater for a friend who is gluten intolerant, and then the next time they see them, they see them eating a regular wheat pizza or some such.

However, being gluten intolerant myself, I completely understand this. I don’t feel judgemental around this and will always cook gluten free for my friends, as I want to spoil them and have known what it feels like not to be able to eat gluten.

Recipe 

Gluten free flour mix recipe for cakes 

2/3 cup quinoa flour 

2 cups sorghum flour 

1 2/3 millet or amaranth flour, (if you are needing more calcium choose amaranth flour)

1 2/3 cup buckwheat flour

Place all these flours in a bowl and mix with a whisk. This is then plain flour.  To make it self-raising, add 4 tsp gluten-free baking powder. 

Fun Cooking Tip (FCT)

I have two FCT’s today.

Store your flour in the fridge or freezer in an airtight container. This will keep a better shelf life for your flour and ensure you get no icky weevils in it.

If you want to mill your own flour and have a Vitamix, (no I am not an affiliate for Vitamix), then you can buy a dry jug, and when you need millet flour, for example, just grind up the whole millet seed.

There you go, wonderful cook.

Hope you have a sensationally delicious week.

Love Veet