Not possible…

I like to think I am quite a good cook – but some things are not possible.  I will not say that you can’t make a vegan, gluten free, meal without a lot of artificial ingredients in it, but I am prepared to say that I cannot personally make a palatable one.

I say this because I tried yesterday.  First of all it was only going to be vegan, which in and of itself removes a lot of options – not so much the lack of meat, but more that removing eggs and dairy makes anything baked a bit of a trial.  Then I was told it needed to be gluten free as well…  Lordie, lordie…

So we had been going to have peppers stuffed with couscous – so I changed the couscous into quinoa.  Then I thought about the flatbreads – I have had zero luck in making anything approximating to edible gluten free bread in the past, so I decided to make some falafels instead.  But then – hold on – falafels have flour in them as well.  And how about dessert?

So in the end I came up with:-

Cauliflower soup thickened with potatoes – this was ok but would have been better with cream in it.

Peppers with quinoa – Tiggers do not much like quinoa (it has an unpleasant slimy texture).  Actually I could have used rice which would have been nicer.

Flatbreads – these were the best thing in the meal but the gluten allergy person couldn’t eat them

Falafels – I bought chickpea flour to make these with.  It was expensive and I did not like it – it made the falafels too strongly flavoured, and because it was gluten free it did not really bind the falafel together, making it dry and crumbly.

Rhubarb crumble – Normal crumble topping has flour in it, and M’s normal recipe has oats as well.  I thought oats were gluten free but apparently not the ones I have.  So the only thing I could find to make the topping with was “almond flour” which as far as I can see is finely ground almonds.  This cost £8.99 for 190g.  In order to make it have any crunch the recipe said to use demerara sugar mixed in with it, together with olive oil instead of butter.  I know this sounds revolting but actually it was not terrible – the sugar in the topping made it too sweet for my taste.

So my take on this is that I spent hours making a complicated meal with expensive ingredients I had to buy specially for it, and which at the end of the day was frankly not that good.  Also the person with the gluten problem didn’t come in the end.

Today I made burgers and fries.  It was much nicer.  The picture btw is not of the awful vegan meal of yesterday (which was not photogenic as it was beige and sludgy looking), but of some vegetarian lasagne I made last week.  It was delicious which goes to show that vegetarian food can be wholesome and tasty.