Food plays a massive part in my life. If I wasn't coeliac, I'm not sure I'd be quite so invested in it all; the buying; the prepping; the photographing(!); and of course the enjoyment of eating it. Here's some highlights from this month - some home made, some experiences, and some new finds. Yum....
I love Asian food and I particularly miss being able to get Chinese food so I thought I'd have a go at making some sort of crispy pork. It was all a bit of an experiment with some pork tenderloins I'd bought from Auchan coupled with a recipe I'd found on Delish. Essentially, my twist was: instead of tossing the pork strips in cornflour, I made up a mix of MonFournil sans gluten all purpose flour and about a tablespoon of homemade Chinese 5 Spice. I precooked the veggies, set them aside. Ramped up the head and thew in the pork until cooked (5mins). Put the veggies back in, poured over a sauce I'd made with garlic, ginger, gf soy sauce, brown sugar and black pepper, and cooked it for another 2mins. Garnished it with spring onions and sesame seeds, and served it with boiled rice and Auchan own brand prawn crackers. It was amazing.
With William back at school now, I jumped into the authentic french shopping experience: Les Halles. I felt mega proud of my efforts. It can be easy to do all your shopping at the supermarket and avoid speaking to people but the food markets really force to you speak and listen properly. And the bonus is all the great local produce! I even went on my bike to add to the authenticity of the experience. Vie la France!
Here's William enjoying the "Farmer's Market Cheese" plus my lunch using much of my haul...
I've had a couple of very unexpected finds this month. First of all, our local Columbus Coffee shop in the main square of Pau has started doing a Sans Gluten brownie. Now, I don't really have a sweet tooth so I wont be ordering one too often, but just having an option in a French cafe really makes me feel like the tide is starting to turn here. Now, just about having allergens marked on regular menus...
My second find was in Casino where there were loads of Sans Gluten ready meals! Weirdly, not in the SansGluten section (its an absolute lottery where you'll find things here and adds so much time onto visiting new supermarkets) but something I just stumbled across. Again, not something I'll actually probably buy but I think that it shows change. I just wish there was more consistency is what places stock. One Casino might have these but no bread, whereas another might have a steady range of bread and cakes but never flour or stock cubes. Aaargh.
The players organised a get together at the start of the September break and the Fijian boys (and their wives) treated us to a Lovo. Similar to a New Zealand Hāngi, its meat and vegetables cooked slowly in the ground over hot stones. I loved these in NZ so having one here in the SW of France was really incredible. They did a brilliant job. And the best thing of all? Its basically just meat and veg so naturally gluten free. Yaaaaaaaas. (My mouth is actually watering, looking back at these photos).
Finally, the weather took at massive turn at the end of the month. It really was like someone flicked a switch! One week it was 35*C and the following, we had the heating on full noise. Anyway, I'm definitely better at making warm, hearty winter meals so I found some boar in the freezer from last winter and knocked together a stew. It was great to get into this kind of cooking again, and perfect for a cold Sunday night.
Lorna :-)
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