Gluten-, yeast-, dairy-, sugar-free vegetarian menu help?

This weekend I'm giving a cooking 101 lesson to a friend who's recently had to adopt a pretty restrictive diet. She's never cooked much (in fact, part of the lesson will be doing an inventory of her kitchen and figuring out what basic equipment she'll need as she starts to cook for herself), and, understandably she's feeling very down about food in general given the parameters of her diet.

My goal for this weekend is to help her cook a well-rounded simple meal that will be tasty and hopefully give her some hope about the types of things she can eat and prepare for herself. I've started to build a menu around one thing she said she'd like to learn how to make: Thai red curry sauce. Here's the skeletal menu I've sketched out so far:

- Some kind of daikon salad
- Thai red curry vegetables with tofu over rice
- Mango sorbet or a nut-based dessert

I have absolutely no experience with gluten-, yeast-, dairy- or sugar-free cooking, so I have a few questions:
- How else can I "beef" up the menu? I feel like what I have so far isn't very substantial. Anybody have ideas for additional sides?
- Most of the recipes I'm seeing for daikon salads use sugar. Anybody know how honey or agave would stand up as a substitute?
- Any ideas for additions to make the sorbet more interesting?
- If I make sorbet, I think I"ll use Bittman's Super-Simple Sorbet recipe, using silken tofu for the cream. Would agave be OK as a sugar substitute? I've used agave in my tea and on toast but never with fruit. I'm concerned about the flavor of agave against the fruit and the sweetness level.

Thanks in advance for any ideas!

Is she off just white sugar, or all sugars? You might want to check what she can sub for sugar - if you're going artificial, I've found that splenda works well in chocolate dishes where you're just cooking to the melting point.

I often add mushrooms when cooking vegetarian - they add a "meaty" flavor, though they are pretty low in calories - you could do some kind of stuffed mushroom dish. Squash, sweet potatoes and potatoes seem to be staples for the vegans I know. Most of these diets don't restrict fats, so you could do tempura (use a cornstarch or rice flour batter) or french fries to feel really decadent.

Can she eat eggs? You could do a simple spinach/avocado omelet.

I don't know - I think that sounds like a pretty substantial meal to me.

I have two vegan cookbooks with some pretty good ideas and substitution ideas in them if you'd like to borrow them. The titles of the dishes are really stupid and obnoxious, but the recipes sound good.

For future desserts, I think there are some recipes out there for nut and dried fruit pie crusts that might work filled with some fruit.

You are a good friend to do this. That combination of restrictions is tough!

I just read this plug today for a cookbook developed by a woman whose child had multiple, severe food allergies. I have no idea if it's vegetarian, but it cuts out most of the required items. Might be worth checking out. The cookbook is titled "So What Do You Eat?" Here's the blurb I saw.

"So, What do You Eat?"is a question Stephanie Hapner's been asked a thousand times. Out of necessity, she's developed these recipes for her family's diet. And now, as WeslEE Originals, she sought out different types of products and combinations to give you an opportunity to have the best-tasting food possible to serve your family. Many of these recipes are everyday dishes that may become family favorites. Some are re-makes of comfort foods. They may be served for dinner parties and special occasions. All of these recipes (over 250) are WITHOUT these ingredients - cow's milk, wheat, corn, peanuts,
refined sugar and derivatives thereof. Over 200 of the recipes are gluten-free. Yum and stuff! http://www.wesleeoriginals.com/

What about some spring rolls? Even deep-fried.

In my opinion, every meal should contain at least 10% sin. This becomes even more important when you are restricted from eating whole categories of foods.

BTW, if your friend has not yet discovered them, the rice pastas out there now are really good-my daughter eats very little wheat and I am happy to substitute when I am with her. I can barely tell the difference if the pasta is sauced and served hot. Lots of the gluten-free baking substitutes are really pretty good. Pizza is the only real problem, due to yeast, but apparently the frozen rice crusts (at Whole Foods) are pretty good. I have a friend who eats them for a change of pace, rather than out of necessity.

happy_stomach, you are a good friend!

Thank you very much for all of these great ideas and kind words. I'm totally unqualified to be helping my friend, but it breaks my heart to see someone so disillusioned with food. I think we're going to have a good time. She's also just asked for help with "how to grocery shop" (again, she's never ever really cooked), so it's going to be a full day of kitchen inventory-ing, shopping and cooking. Just my kind of day--I'm really looking forward to it.

Mhays wrote:Squash, sweet potatoes and potatoes seem to be staples for the vegans I know. Most of these diets don't restrict fats, so you could do tempura (use a cornstarch or rice flour batter) or french fries to feel really decadent.

I always forget about tempura, and somehow I've never made any myself (I'm sure Sparky could give me pointers!), but I'm going to go ahead and add some sweet potato tempura as a starter. I found this recipe for a gluten-free version that uses chickpea flour. We'll see how it goes. I don't think I'll tempura any other vegetables since we'll have a lot of vegetables with the red curry, and I'm still going to keep the daikon and cucumber salad as another starter. I found a recipe for the latter in one of my Ayurvedic cookbooks that uses agave, so we'll see how that goes, too.

Hellodali wrote:For future desserts, I think there are some recipes out there for nut and dried fruit pie crusts that might work filled with some fruit.

Good idea! It reminds me of a a poached pear tart with a nut crust that I made last summer. For that particular tart, the idea turned out to be a lot better than the end product, but perhaps I'll try to do a very simple dessert, maybe a play on Larabars with nut and dried fruit. Looks like I'll be heading to Trader Joe's after work today...

Josephine wrote:BTW, if your friend has not yet discovered them, the rice pastas out there now are really good-my daughter eats very little wheat and I am happy to substitute when I am with her.

When my friend asked for cooking help, I actually proposed two menus--one with the red curry (her favorite food) and the other centered on rice pasta with perhaps an interesting pesto. We're going with the former, but I agree that the rice pastas would be a good option for her. I've actually put together a gift bag for gluten-, yeast-, dairy-, sugar-, meat-free Italian cooking, including a bag of rice pasta, to give her as a kitchen-warming gift. I also bought a bag of the pasta for myself, and I plan to give it a try next week.

I'm hoping to remember to take pictures of our cooking day. I'll be sure to post if I do.

While your plan looks great, I would offer but one suggestion. Learning how to cook is like learning how to exercise your body. You need to start slowly, and build up confidence in your trainee. If you work them too hard the first day, they might not want to come back to the kitchen tomorrow.
Try and teach one or two basic flavor combinations that can be adapted to many different foods on the first day. Leave the Tempura for the advanced class!

mhill95149 wrote:While your plan looks great, I would offer but one suggestion. Learning how to cook is like learning how to exercise your body. You need to start slowly, and build up confidence in your trainee. If you work them too hard the first day, they might not want to come back to the kitchen tomorrow.

Thanks for making this point. It's funny because I worked for years--before I decided to dedicate more of my time to eating--as a personal trainer. Your simile is certainly apt. On a regular basis, I also lead a team of very well-intentioned volunteers who typically have little to no kitchen experience in preparing meals for clients of a local human services agency. (For example, it's not usual for me to have a volunteer who will look at me completely befuddled if I ask him or her to peel an apple.) All of this is to say that I think I've developed some sense of the limits of novice cooks. Everyone is different of course, but I think--maybe--I'm a decent coach.

As for the friend I'm helping this weekend, it won't be so literally a cooking lesson. I definitely hope to have her jump in and help and learn some things, but it's more about us preparing food together and her having the chance to eat something simple and yummy. I think she'll be perfectly content if I just re-orient her with the grocery store and make some recommendations for basic pots and pans she should have.

mhill95149 wrote:Try and teach one or two basic flavor combinations that can be adapted to many different foods on the first day. Leave the Tempura for the advanced class!

I, myself, am a proficient cook at best. Now you have me worried--is tempura advanced? I was under the impression that I just run the sweet potato through the mandoline, quickly dip in batter and fry. Is there something I'm missing? I was thinking the tempura would be the easiest item on the menu (i.e. requiring the least flavor adjustments).

Sparky did it! The major issue of deep-frying can be solved with a candy thermometer: if you don't watch your oil temperature (and remember that adding food makes the temp go down,) you can wind up with either greasy/soggy or burnt food, but a good thermometer takes care of that. There's a fair amount of wiggle room; it's not as delicate as say, cake baking - if you've never tried it, I'd do a test-run first.

But mhill is right in that standing over a bubbling pot of oil could easily be daunting for a first-timer.

Out of pure curiosity, is your friend ditching these foods because of doctor's orders? Philosophical reasons? Did they hear that this was more healthy?

Mhays wrote:Sparky did it! The major issue of deep-frying can be solved with a candy thermometer: if you don't watch your oil temperature (and remember that adding food makes the temp go down,) you can wind up with either greasy/soggy or burnt food, but a good thermometer takes care of that. There's a fair amount of wiggle room; it's not as delicate as say, cake baking - if you've never tried it, I'd do a test-run first.

But mhill is right in that standing over a bubbling pot of oil could easily be daunting for a first-timer.

Oh, boy. My deep-frying experience is limited to Filipino lechon kawali and egg rolls. I've never had anything come out soggy or other texturally undesirable, but I imagine strictly vegetables with a little batter could be more delicate. I don't think I'll have time for a test run, so I'll probably either just go ahead and do it with my friend or take the easy way out and do baked sweet potato fries.

AngrySarah wrote:Out of pure curiosity, is your friend ditching these foods because of doctor's orders? Philosophical reasons? Did they hear that this was more healthy?

We haven't talked in great detail about the diagnosis, and most of what she did explain to me went over my head, but the diet is from doctor's orders. After being ill for a year, my friend learned that she has too much yeast in her system. I won't attempt to explain more than that since I'll probably get it wrong. I do know that despite being miserable about food she is feeling much, much better since adopting the diet just a few weeks ago.

Ooh, ooh, I just remembered something when I saw chickpea flour above. A great substitute for bread is socca (also called farinata, I think) a pancake made with chickpea flour. Very easy to make. Very tasty and satisfyin and you can flavor with different herbs. Here's a thread on it:

http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=13650&hilit=fari%2A

are you making your own red curry paste or using the canned? Check the ingredients if canned - sometimes there is a surprising amount of added sugar.

this site has a lot of good recipe ideas: http://veganyumyum.com/

sarcon wrote:are you making your own red curry paste or using the canned?

Thanks. We're making from scratch.

Hellodali wrote:Ooh, ooh, I just remembered something when I saw chickpea flour above. A great substitute for bread is socca (also called farinata, I think) a pancake made with chickpea flour. Very easy to make. Very tasty and satisfyin and you can flavor with different herbs. Here's a thread on it:

http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=13650&hilit=fari%2A

Oh yeah--I remember that thread, was going to make some farinata for myself and then never got to it. Great idea!

happy_stomach,

I noticed you mentioned considering corn starch for tempura batter. Be sure to look for brands that specifically state that their product is gluten-free. A good friend of ours suffers from Celiac disease, and has experienced flare-ups after eating food that "should" be gluten-free...ends up that a lot of products can easily be cross-contaminated during production (especially something like corn starch, where a few particles of flour would be unnoticeable but cause a lot of pain & discomfort to people with gluten restrictions). She said part of learning how to deal with her diet restriction was getting into the habit of obsessively poring over food packaging to see if it explicitly says "gluten free".

Good luck with the endeavor! Have fun

Khaopaat wrote:happy_stomach,

I noticed you mentioned considering corn starch for tempura batter.

My mistake. I meant to say that I'm using chickpea flour, which I believe is gluten-free.

I have a friend who is also on this "diet", doctor's orders too. Gluten-free, hormone-free, dairy free... She was my roommate for a year. I will ask her how she does it! She is also getting married this year. I can't wait to taste her wedding cake!

I remember her making a lot of tofu dishes...

I hope you have a great time cooking with your friend, and that you can help open her world to all the wonderful foods she CAN eat. I would caution the use of any flours at this point, if she's just getting off the wheat/yeast...I know when I got my diagnosis (and had the same excess candida issue), any flours at all were unhelpful when I was detoxing in the beginning.

Shopping is indeed a new experience - I pretty much shop the outer ring of any grocery - all the stuff in the middle is bad for me, and then hit the bulk aisle for rice/beans/oats. But, once I settled into my new culinary life, and took inventory of the flavors I love, I've found great fun in creating dishes of my own using the flavor profiles I've always loved.

Agave is a great substitute for sugar - it's actually 1.25x as sweet as sugar, so you can lose less...I sub agave/maple/honey for sugar in most of my sweet recipes. For sorbet, I'd go agave, since it has a more mellow flavor. Honey can be too assertive for me sometimes.

One of my favorite things when I was just getting healthy was quinoa - I ate it everyday for breakfast with some cinnamon on it, sometimes a little ghee (only dairy I was allowed at the time). Now, I use it just as much as rice, and love a good mushroom/garlic/thyme/olive oil saute served over quinoa.

Tai Nam Vietnamese grocery on broadway has the most amazing selection of rice noodles - dried and fresh, amongst many other wonderful things, so I go there often. But for italian style pasta, I adore the Il Machiaolo rice pasta from cheftools.com - expensive, but well worth it for these gorgeous, fluttery ribbons of pasta.

I look forward to hearing how your cooking adventure went!

The cooking lesson was today--what a splendid day it was!

I didn't think my expectations for the meal were especially low, but--at least subconsciously--they must have been because I was extremely surprised by how good everything tasted.



In the foreground are our starters: roasted sweet potatoes with red pepper flakes and a daikon-cucumber salad with agave dressing. The main dish was a red curry with tofu, broccoli and pepper. I followed the Spice House's recipe for Thai vegetable curry, which I'd make again except that I'd combine the curry paste and coconut milk together (and let sit for a while) before mixing with the vegetables for a more integrated curry flavor. I used just one full stalk of lemongrass (the recipe called for a "bunch," which seemed like an obscene amount), and I thought it was plenty assertive and marvelous.

The sweet potatoes, too, were very yummy. We were trying to make things easier and just used the french-fry setting of my mandoline to cut up the potatoes. Next time, I'd just hand-cut wedges to have larger potato pieces, but the dish otherwise complimented the curry nicely.

I got the idea for the daikon-cucumber salad from my Ayurvedic cookbook. The dressing was supposed to consist of rice vinegar and a sweetener, but I realized late that my friend isn't allowed vinegars. So, after sprinkling the vegetables with salt, letting sit and pressing out the water, I used only agave, and it was lovely--a surprisingly enjoyable, slightly sweet and refreshing compliment to the spiciness of the potato and curry dishes.

Dessert was a tropical sorbet (bananas, mango, pineapple, silken tofu and agave) and homemade Larabars (or raw, fruit-nut-date bars...made today with dried cherries and almonds). We were both very pleased with the sweets. Going in, I was plenty skeptical about the sorbet, particularly the inclusion of tofu, but on my way home after dinner I stopped at Trader Joe's and bought several more bags of frozen fruit so that I can fill my freezer with vegan sorbet!



The day was extra special because we were joined in the cooking lesson by my friend's new dog, which she just brought home yesterday.



The Anti-Cruelty Society had named her Gumdrop, but my friend was unsure about whether she wanted to keep that name. In the middle of cooking dinner, my friend called out to the dog and mistakenly used the name "Nutmeg." My friend couldn't explain how that name came up, but the dog responded, and it seemed perfect.

Nutmeg and friend at the dinner table:


Thank you again to everyone who made suggestions. We had such a great time today. We plan on having another meat-, gluten-, yeast-, dairy-, sugar-free cooking lesson very soon, and we're talking about even attempting to make some treats for Nutmeg. Very exciting!

How lovely, HS. I imagine that you and friend will continue learning as you go. It took me quite a while to fully understand gluten free. At times I've also been, or had to cook for people who needed, dairy free, sugar free, corn free, soy free, nut free, egg free. It's HARD! But, in a way, it's not. Part of it is perception and what you think of as delicious. Part of it is habit - it you've never cooked, or worse, don't like to cook, this can be miserable.

I was wondering if there are any Internet or local support groups. I belong to several for GF, and I imagine that there are ones for candida that help support the diet. These can be extremely helpful in the beginning when you feel so overwhelmed.

HI,

A ratio for gluten free flour from Taste of Home:

2 cups white rice flour
2/3 cup potato starch flour
1/3 cup tapioca flour

Mix together, then store in an air tight container.

They did caution to do due diligence that each ingredient is indeed free of gluten.

Regards,

this might sound a bit convoluted but I use a nutrition facts for foods and ingredients tracking website to research sodium because I need to eat only a certain amount per day.

For yucks I put the word "gluten" into the search engine and a ton of items came back as gluten free. The interesting thing about what comes back from a search are items found at grocery and restuarants.

It might be worth the time to check out the URL and do the same and see if anything interests you. It looks like about 200 products game back when I did it.

http://www.calorieking.com

Don't pay any attention to all the links just look for the search box and use that.