Another one, and it’s crisps again… This time it’s Asda’s own brand crisps, some of which contain trace amounts of wheat/gluten in the salt and vinegar flavouring. This is not declared on the label. Affected Products Asda Salt & Vinegar Crisps 6 Pack Asda Variety Crisps 6 Pack Asda 50 Box Crisps If you’ve bought any of these, then don’t eat them. I suggest taking them back to the store for a refund. |
Oh no, not Walkers! This is sad news… Walkers has recalled certain batches of Walkers Ready Salted and Salt & Vinegar Crisps. Due to a packaging error, a small number of Walkers Ready Salted Crisps and Walkers Salt & Vinegar Crisps may have been packed with other Walkers seasonings that are unsuitable for those on a lactose, milk, soya, and barley free diet. This affects Walkers Ready Salted Crisps and Walkers Salt & Vinegar Crisps contained within: * Walkers Ready Salted 6 Pack Multipacks Here are the date codes to look for: Variety 18 pack Variety 6 pack Ready Salted 6 pack No other Walkers products are known to be affected. If you’ve bought packs with these date codes, don’t eat them! Take them back to the shop you bought them from. I’m just going to check our store cupboards now… |
Today I want to tell you about the remarkable contribution to this tea party made by Claridge’s: the French pastries. Claridge’s expert staff had created some very sophisticated cakes for this tea party:
Delectable. Amazing. And gluten free. So it can be done… Based on our experience yesterday, Claridge’s offer a wonderful afternoon tea: with champagne or without, it’s going to be an experience to savour. So if you ever want to treat yourself to afternoon tea at a prestigious London hotel (or even treat someone else – but make sure you go as well) this is the one to go for. Naturally, this will have to be as a very special treat – Claridge’s isn’t cheap. But it will be worth it. Just be sure to tell them in advance that you’re gluten free. And, to seal my (unrequited) love affair with Claridge’s: I begged for one of the leftover gluten free pastries to take home for my coeliac daughter, who was, of course, at school in Cheshire, eating a baked potato for her school dinner, as she does every day, not in central London drinking champagne (the things I have to do for her!) The lovely Claridge’s staff provided a dozen. That’s the way to win an admirer for life. |
(For any of you not from the UK: Claridges is an extremely upmarket smart hotel in Mayfair). I’m guessing: not hard at all! I certainly wasn’t going to decline the invitation (see right) from Genius to meet them there for afternoon tea – I was only too pleased to be invited, so I set off from the frozen north yesterday to join them in London. And what a glamorous event it was… This was partly a first birthday party for Genius, so we were greeted with a glass of champagne and set loose to discuss matters gluten free. Time to chat…Naturally, I met Lucinda Bruce-Gardyne, whose brainchild Genius is; like me, and others there, she has children with allergies; but we aren’t all professionally trained chefs impelled to make a difference by devising a ground-breaking new bread. Yay, Lucinda! Coeliac UK were well represented by Anne Maloney (Corporate Partnerships Officer) and Norma McGough (Head of Diet and Health), and with them I discussed CD and teenagers attitudes to food and risk; the cost differential of gluten free products over normal products, and the difficulty this adds if you’re a low-income family on benefits; and the influence of family medical history (other coeliacs in the family, diabetes, psoriasis etc) over environmental impact (breastfeeding, for example, is recommended). If you’re newly diagnosed – or even if you’re not! – Coeliac UK are an excellent resource. I met Liz and John from Coeliac London, who identify and review restaurants in London that cater well for those eating gluten free. They’d both brought iPads, to the envy of the rest of us Brits there, to show us their website and Facebook pages (do search for them on Facebook) – and they’re working on an application for finding suitable restaurants. We discussed the difficulties of quality control over restaurant reviews, and the success they’re having with their Facebook pages. Liz had a quick look at this blog on her iPad and instantly recognised FlorisFoods goodies from yesterday’s post. FlorisFoods catered for her birthday party recently, together with Sweet Cheeks (new to me, but I’m so checking it out based on Liz’ pictures). Gluten free is a small world! I was delighted to sit next to Caz, the Gluten Free Foodie during afternoon tea. If you’re a regular reader, you’ll remember I mentioned her blog a while back; she writes about fine dining gluten free in London – do check her blog out. She told us how she’d urged her local pub to get in some gluten free beers, and how astonished the publican was by the response: people flocked to the pub from miles around, and drank the gluten free beers dry in 3 days. Caz is clearly quite a campaigner, as she’d also tried to persuade Pizza Express that it wouldn’t be too difficult to keep some frozen gluten free pizza bases in stock, with a dedicated pan to cook them in (to avoid contamination) – no luck yet, but I’d be happy to join with her in a campaign… There were many more fascinating people with great stories to tell, from journalists, corporates, agencies and bloggers. But it has to be said that the highlight of the afternoon was the food. Afternoon tea: a very English traditionGenius bread was used to make the daintiest of English sandwiches (yes, including cucumber and excluding crusts), and there were also elegantly presented gluten free scones with Devonshire clotted cream and strawberry preserve, made by Genius. These were excellent. Our table agreed that we all loved a decent scone, and these were fabulous. We urged Lucinda to put them into production, but this isn’t nearly as easy as you’d think, if – like me – you don’t have experience in the large-scale production of food. And there are the issues of delivering the food fresh; scones, of course, being best within hours of baking. So: no promises from Genius on the scones yet, but I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed. Or – here’s a thought – sell the flour mix with a recipe, so we can make our own… Genius, in case you haven’t come across it yet, is a gluten free fresh bread available in all 5 major supermarkets across England, in white and brown. And it is very good indeed. We were lucky enough to taste an early version of Genius rolls, which are very good – and very large! Sadly, the bread isn’t on the prescribables list yet, but if you can find it in your local supermarket, do try it. This, of course, is Coeliac Awareness week here in the UK, and the message this week is Free For Tea? Afternoon tea at Claridges: what a way both to celebrate the first birthday of a new product, and to raise awareness of coeliac disease. Happy Birthday, Genius! |
Do you love Italian food?
Looking at the website, my daughter was immediately taken with the idea of the profiteroles. Our other daughter (non-coeliac) dearly loves profiteroles, and our coeliac daughter looks with envy at her bowls of pastry, cream and chocolate… Unexpectedly, though, these much desired items didn’t prove to be her favourite. Funny how that works, isn’t it? I think the cream was too sweet for her taste. Each to their own; I just know some of you will love these. No: she really enjoyed the savoury items, especially the panzerottini and the quiche.
I really liked the biscottini di Anna, and the morsetti al cacao e cannella. These are very sophisticated little treats. The biscottini are light and crunchy, good for elevenses or with a cup of tea mid-afternoon, and the cocoa-dusted morsetti would be excellent with after-dinner coffee, as they have a bitter cocoa flavour – fab! The tiramisu was a surprising texture for the girl who’d never had it before, but we adults thought it tasted just as you’d expect, with a lovely smell of marsala and coffee: very grown-up. We tried the bigne shells (think shells of choux-style pastry) without sweetened cream, but with a hot chocolate sauce, and thought they worked well. My expert panel of diners thought you wouldn’t know they were gluten free – so we’d use these to make profiteroles, or fill them with something savoury. Both would work. Based on our tasting, we can recommend Floris Foods, whether you’re a sweet or savoury fan. They also offer meals: melanzane ripiene and peperoni ripieni look particularly good to me – you could even order a three course meal! Delivery is, as always, expensive, so you would need to order enough to make the delivery charge smaller in proportion to your order… Floris Foods also cater for parties, weddings and events, and this would be a great business route for them to go down, as many of these products are suitable for freezing. It seems to me that if you were a business that occasionally needed to cater for coeliacs – perhaps conferences – it would be a good idea to have some of these available to call on. My daughter’s favourites were the panzerottini and the quiche, and she was very impressed with the various pastries used in the different dishes. As you know, gluten free pastry isn’t always easy to create! My favourites were the biscottini and the morsetti, though as a home cook the bigne shells and gluten free breadcrumbs are definitely products I’ll note for the future. I’ll be ordering again. Do have a look at their website (www.florisfoods.com), and if you order from them, let us know what you thought.  |
Yesterday I talked about the afternoon tea party organised by 
How hard would you find it to have afternoon tea at 
Floris Foods is a shop full of unusual gluten free and wheat free products, both savoury and sweet. Some are very familiar – restaurant staples here in the UK now, such as lasagne, cheesecake, tiramisu and profiteroles, though these are not usually available gluten free – and some are intriguingly new (to us, at least).
The quiche got a significant thumbs up, especially the nice short pastry, which has a lovely texture (and she particularly liked the smoked bacon version) while the panzerottini disappeared very quickly indeed – she even chose to eat these for breakfast. Look at the picture: you can see these are tiny little packets of pastry, filled with different savoury mixes.
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