Chapter 7

Creating a Gluten-Free-Friendly Kitchen

In This Chapter

Allowing gluten and gluten-free foods to coexist in the kitchen

Making a list of products you want to have on hand

Y our idea of cooking may involve only a can opener and a microwave. Or you may have kitchen gadgets no-one else knows how to use, bring mystery ingredients home from faraway lands and subscribe to magazines with titles that most people can’t pronounce. No matter how you feel about cooking, you spend a lot of time in the kitchen.

When you’re gluten-free, the kitchen needs a little extra attention. Keeping yourself safely gluten-free isn’t hard, but you need to take special precautions, especially if your kitchen also contains gluten.

Sharing the Kitchen with Gluten

When Danna’s kids were little and the family would go on a long drive (parental torture chamber on wheels), her kids would screech, ‘Mummy, Kelsie’s looking out my window!’ to which Kelsie would quickly retort, gasping for air, ‘That’s because Tyler’s breathing my air! He took it all!’ And the drama would continue for hours (whose idea was this?).

Sometimes Danna imagines the same kind of bickering within her own kitchen: ‘Hey, wheat bread! Get outta here. This is gluten-free territory.’ ‘Just because they pay twice as much for you doesn’t mean they like you more.’ ‘Did you just spit a crumb on me? Now I’m contaminated!’ Okay, now you know far too much about Danna’s issues and her fantasy world, and we’ll leave Margaret’s well out of the picture and get to the point.

Some people think that the only way to be 100 per cent safe is to make the entire household gluten-free (see Chapter 17 for the pros and cons of this). Not true. Sure, doing so makes things easier — menu planning and cooking are simpler and, if the whole house is gluten-free, you don’t have to worry about possible mix-ups or contamination (and no feuding between the breads). But choosing to share your kitchen with gluten is fine too.

Here are some tips for sharing a kitchen with gluten:

• Gluten-free comes first. If you’re making two varieties of a meal or snack — toasted cheese sandwiches, for example — make the gluten-free one first. That way, the preparation surface and knives (always plural) stay uncontaminated. If you make the gluten-containing one first, you either have to wash the bread board and griller thoroughly before making the gluten-free sandwich or use different equipment.
• Foil is your friend. Using aluminium foil makes your life easier. Cover baking trays with it, use it to separate different foods, and warm foods on foil rather than putting them straight on to an oven rack. Foil is a great way to ensure your gluten-free foods aren’t being contaminated.
• Freeze it. Your freezer is your best friend. Make a double batch of whatever you’re cooking, freeze half and bingo — you have another meal already prepared. Or freeze the leftovers for a tasty snack later on, rather than leaving them at the back of the fridge until they’re coated in blue fuzz.
• Use brightly coloured labels. Because you’re likely to have some leftovers that are gluten-free and some that aren’t, consider using brightly coloured stickers or labels to stick on the storage containers so you can easily tell which leftovers are gluten-free. This is especially helpful if you have babysitters or other people in the house who may be likely to grab the wrong one.

Avoiding cross-contamination

Sharing a kitchen with gluten can be done easily, so don’t panic! Follow the basic ground rules and you’ll be fine.

Crumbs: Public enemy number one

If you think ants are your biggest problem in the kitchen, think again. The ants just go marching one by one (hurrah) and, although certainly a nuisance, they don’t hurt you even if you eat them. No, enemy number one in the gluten-free-friendly kitchen is the almighty crumb. When cutting bread, crumbs fly off like sparks in a fireworks display and they’re everywhere. But we’re not pointing all the crumb-tossing blame at the gluten-containing kind of bread; in fact, quite the opposite. We won’t name names, but between gluten-containing and gluten-free breads, everyone knows who the real winner is in the crumb-casting competition.

So here’s the deal: When you work really hard to prepare a delicious gluten-free sandwich and then put it on a plate or tray in a pile of gluten-containing crumbs, you are, literally, eating a gluten-containing sandwich. If you think a few crumbs don’t matter, you’re assigned to read Chapters 2 and 3. Six times.

So what about gluten-free crumbs? Do you have to be obsessive about wiping those up? Yes, if you’re sharing your kitchen with gluten. Not just for the sake of good hygiene but because you can’t tell if they’re gluten-free by looking at them, so you never know for sure what sort of crumbs your toast is picking up along the way. (And then you have to consider those annoying little marching ants.) Even a few crumbs from gluten-containing bread or biscuits can contaminate your gluten-free food.

Crumbs also apply to the double dippers using margarine, butter, jams, honey and other spreads — see the section ‘Keeping gluten out of the toppings’ for more on this.

New rules for kitchen tools

You don’t need to stock up on new pots, pans, tools and utensils, but you do need to pay attention to the way you use the ones you have. Generally speaking, gluten cleans off easily. Non-stick surfaces that clean easily and thoroughly are especially safe.

Be careful, though, with colanders when draining pasta. Pasta tends to leave a residue that’s sometimes hard to see and tricky to get off. You don’t want to drain gluten-free pasta in a colander that has remnants of the gluten-containing pasta on it. Same goes for the pasta tongs — it’s easy to miss some of the sticky residue inside the serving tongs. Those little steel-wool scrubbers are great for ensuring that no residue is left.

Be especially vigilant when you have a lot of people in the house and others are helping you to clean up after a big meal or party. You may have been super-careful to keep your gluten-free foods away from the gluten-containing ones, but when it comes to cleaning up and popping the leftovers into containers for the fridge, ever-so-well-meaning friends may scoop the leftover gluten-free potato salad into the regular potato salad and you’ll eat it later without realising what’s happened.

Keeping gluten out of the toppings

Your average family is pretty laid-back about crumbs in the margarine (or other spreads). Most people grab a knife, scoop out some margarine, spread it on the toast, sometimes popping the superfluous stuff back in the container or going back for more. On the way a few crumbs stick to the remnants of the margarine on the knife and then into the marmalade or honey or peanut butter it goes, like a busy little bee intent on pollinating as many flowers as it can.

Your coeliac household, in contrast, can’t be laid-back on this one! This is a red alert area in the kitchen, an issue where you need to work out your own strategy, train your family and house guests, and stay alert to lapses as family members get casual about contamination over time.

You have different ways of going about this, depending on who lives in the house and how reliable they are. (You can explain to some people the need to take extra precautions until you’re hoarse, and even though they may have the best intentions, you still find them reverting to their old ways after a few days.) You may also need to change your methods when visitors are staying in the house. See which approach is best for your household:

• Point out how many crumbs are in the margarine after everyone has buttered their toast and explain to family members the importance of avoiding contamination. Look in the peanut butter and honey jars too, to see how easily different foods get mixed up. If you’re lucky you may live with very fastidious people, but your average Aussie is pretty free and easy with knives and jars.
  

  If a coeliac is in the house, family members just have to be a bit more careful. The margarine or butter is the biggest problem because it coats the bread first and picks up the most crumbs. One option is to have two jars or containers — carefully labelled — of everything. (At least you won’t need it for the MightyMite, unless family members decide it tastes better than Vegemite.) Stocking up on two of everything does take up a lot of fridge space, however, and also depends on how reliable family members are in sticking to the ‘right’ jar, not just grabbing the nearest. Having two margarine or butter containers is, however, a good option. They come in different sizes so the smaller container can be the gluten-free one and the larger one can be for the rest of the family.

• Buy jams and honey (and whatever other spreads you can find) in squeeze bottles so that crumby knives can’t be inserted.
• Some people use teaspoons — or extra knives — to get stuff out of containers. You spoon out as much peanut butter/jam/chutney/margarine as you think you need, put it on your plate and then use your knife to spread it on your bread or toast. If you need more, the spoon isn’t contaminated, so you can dig right back in again.
• Keep a paper towel beside you when making sandwiches or other snacks and wipe the knife between spreading and dipping back in.
• When guests stay or you have many extra people in the house and it’s impossible to ensure everyone is being suitably careful, give them the already-opened containers and jars and use fresh ones for the coeliac members of the family. You can keep these to one side so no-one dips into them accidentally.

Gracious guests can lead to grief

Having too many cooks in the kitchen is bad enough, but when you’re trying to keep your foods safely gluten-free and your visitors are especially ‘helpful’, maintaining a gluten-free zone can be more than a tinge stressful. Sweet Aunt Mabel’s gracious offer to help butter the bread can have you diving to protect your pristine (and well-marked) tub of margarine because you haven’t yet explained to her the need to keep the crumbs well away. And as you rescue the margarine and quickly try to decide whether explaining the situation to her (and hovering over her so she doesn’t make a mistake) would be easier than just buttering the bread yourself, Uncle Bob is stirring the gluten-free and the regular soups with the same wooden spoon!

If your visitors are one-time or occasional guests, give them safe tasks to keep them busy and let them lend a hand — somewhere that won’t put your gluten-free foods in peril. Put them in charge of the drinks or setting the table. But if they’re frequent visitors, you probably need to invest the time to teach them how to avoid contamination. You can make life easier for yourself by preparing gluten-free varieties only, so if Uncle Bob insists on stirring the soup, he only has one pot.

Storing foods separately for convenience

For the most part, you don’t need to have separate storage spaces for the gluten-containing and gluten-free foods unless you do so for convenience purposes. After all, simply reaching up to the gluten-free section of your pantry for a gluten-free flour mixture is easier than sorting through the shelves.

If you have children on a gluten-free diet and others in the family still eat gluten — or if some people in the home have behavioural issues or learning disorders — then having separate storage areas can be a very good idea. For these gluten-free loved ones, it’s easy to look in a pantry and be overwhelmed with all the things they can’t eat, even if the things they can eat actually outnumber the things they can’t.

By separating gluten-containing and gluten-free foods in the pantry, not only do you make quickly choosing from their safe shelves quite easy, but also the number of things they can eat becomes more obvious to them. This can be a big psychological boost in what could otherwise be a daunting experience.

Consider marking gluten-free foods with a ‘GF’ as soon as you get home from the shops so the children will have an easier time helping you put everything away in the right place.

Taking Inventory of the Pantry and Fridge

You want to have some basic ingredients and products specific to the gluten-free diet on hand. Admittedly, some of these items are a little pricier than their gluten-containing counterparts and they’re sometimes harder to find. In Chapter 8, we suggest where to buy them and how to save as much money as you can. But depending on how you cook (or don’t), many of these items may become staples in your gluten-free-friendly kitchen.

Special ingredients to stock

Don’t let this long list scare you. You don’t need all these things; in fact, if you’re not going to do any baking, you probably don’t need any of them. If, however, you’re planning to cook or bake gluten-free, consider having some of these ingredients on hand:

• Arrowroot flour: Arrowroot is bland, keeps well and is easily digested. It often takes the place of cornflour.
• Brown rice flour: This flour still contains the bran, which makes it more nutritious than white rice flour. It has a slightly nutty taste.
• Chickpea (besan or gram) flour: A fine, but heavy flour made from dried chickpeas; this is great for batters and in bread.
• Cornflour from maize: This isn’t the same as cornflour from wheat (wheaten cornflour), which contains gluten. You can blend maize cornflour with other flours for baking, or you can mix it with polenta (ground corn) in cornbreads and other dishes.
• Guar gum: You don’t need both xanthan gum (listed later) and guar gum because they do the same job. Most people find xanthan gum is superior. Be aware that too much guar gum can have a laxative effect.
• Potato flour: This fine white flour, made from potatoes, improves the texture in baking mixes. You can use it as a thickener or with other flours in baking mixtures.
• Sorghum flour: This nutritious flour is making more and more of a mark in the gluten-free cooking world. Its relatively bland flavour makes it a versatile ingredient in gluten-free baking.
• Soy flour: These days, people use soy flour mostly in combination with other flours, if at all. It has a strong, distinctive flavour, which some people love but others definitely don’t.
• Tapioca flour (or tapioca starch): This is also known as cassava flour and is very similar to arrowroot. It’s great because it gives gluten-free foods a little bit of a stretch or chew that’s lacking in many foods that don’t contain gluten.
• White rice flour: Long considered the basic ingredient in a gluten-free diet, white rice flour is being overshadowed by more nutritious flours and flours with better consistencies, like brown rice flour, arrowroot, sorghum and buckwheat. Nevertheless, white rice flour is a staple in the gluten-free pantry. Its bland flavour doesn’t distort the taste of baked goods.
• Xanthan gum: A must if you’re baking gluten-free breads and other baked goods because it helps prevent crumbling. Whatever you do, don’t spill any of this — it turns to sticky goo when wet and is fiendishly hard to wipe away. It’s meant to gently persuade your bread or cake to hold together, not glue your fingers to the kitchen sink! Be warned.
• Yeast: Yeast is an important ingredient for gluten-free breads and other foods that need to rise. Good quality yeast is essential for gluten-free baking. Don’t use the rapid-rise or baker’s yeast unless the recipe suggests it and check ingredients because some contain wheat flour.
• Alternative grains: These are the grains (they’re not really all grains, but people call them that) we talk about — and espouse the virtues of — in Chapter 4. They’re loaded with nutrients, and they’re great to have on hand either as baking flours or as whole grains. Use whole grains to add flavour and texture, cook them as their own dish, or even add them to foods (see Chapter 9 to find out how to cook with these). Here are some alternative grains to try:
  
  • Amaranth
  • Buckwheat
  • Millet
  • Polenta
  • Quinoa (pronounced keen wah)
  • Teff

Don’t rush out and buy too many new flours and grain to start, but try a few, find your favourites and then explore a bit further. You can either start with the ones needed for the recipes you want to try first or buy gluten-free plain flour mix (for cooking) and gluten-free self-raising flour for baking. Ready-mixed flours are great to start with because someone else has spent time working out which combination of flours gives you the best results.

Grains — especially whole grains — have oil in them. Oil can turn rancid quickly, so when you buy whole grains and whole-grain flours, be sure to use shops where the turnover is high and buy only what you plan to use within a few months. Refrigerate the flours and grains if you have the space, but pay close attention to the smell. Old flours and grains smell stale.

Mixes to have on hand

You should keep several types of gluten-free baking mixes on hand so you’re always prepared. Some of these mixes are so good that in many cases, the gluten-free variety might just win a side-by-side taste comparison. Best of all, with very little work on your part, your house smells like you’ve been baking all day! (You can see Chapter 9 for more on baking with mixes.)

Some people complain about the cost of mixes and we admit that they’re a tad pricey. But if life is just too busy to start from scratch when baking, the price is probably worth it.

Here are some of the mixes we suggest you keep handy:

• All-purpose baking mix: Several companies make various types of all-purpose baking mixes, some plain and some self-raising, and most are excellent. Use these mixes for baking or to coat fried or baked foods. (See Chapter 9 for other ideas for coating fish, meat or chicken.)
• Bread mixes: Many different kinds of bread mixes are available today; some to use in a bread machine and some you can mix by hand and bake in the oven.
• Cakes: Gluten-free cake mixes come in many flavours now, and some are moist, light and tasty. With slight modifications that are almost always on the package, you can make your cakes into cupcakes. They need to be eaten in a day or so because they dry out quickly. (A very quick ‘zap’ in the microwave will often rejuvenate a cupcake that’s showing its age.)
• Muffins: You can make many different varieties of gluten-free muffins, including vanilla, blueberry and apple. You can also buy basic muffin mixes that you can make into any type of muffin you want.
• Pancakes: Some of these come in a shake-up plastic bottle — just add water, shake well and cook. Great for kids and pretty well foolproof.
• Pastry: In Chapter 9, we give you suggestions for making your own pastry base from crushed cereal or biscuits. But if you want something closer to the real deal, the mixes available for pastry are what you’re looking for.
• Pizza dough: Mixes to help you whip up a quick pizza base are available. You just top the crust with your favourite toppings and the pizza is as good as or better than anything other people deliver.
• Puddings and desserts: These are quick, easy to prepare and really delicious.

Be flexible with mixes — if you don’t have the ‘right’ mix in the cupboard when you need it, you can often use an alternative. Substitute a cake mix to make a delicious dessert, or make muffins from bread mix, adding a little sugar, dried fruit and spices, or fresh or frozen blueberries or raspberries.

Commercial products to consider

In this section, we recommend commercial foods that you can keep on hand as staples for your pantry. New products are arriving on the shelves at an astonishing rate and most are really good. Check these out:

• Biscuits: A great range of biscuits is now available to choose from. Most of them are excellent, although you still have to deal with the crumble factor.
• Bread: Gluten-free bread is now available in many supermarkets, health food shops and some bakeries. If the bread’s not frozen when you buy it, put it in the freezer when you get home — just make sure you slice it first unless it comes already sliced. Some breads are definitely better than others, but individual tastes vary enormously, so be prepared to experiment with a few varieties to find the ones you like. Always do the ‘toast-test’ when deciding. Toasters seem to work miracles on gluten-free bread, transforming an inedible slice of cardboard into a crunchy, munchy, delicious treat. Keep an eye out for new varieties — they’re getting better all the time.
  

  Most gluten-free bread is best if you toast it first, even if you plan to eat it later (like in a lunch box). The exceptions are freshly baked gluten-free bread and some of the breads baked in bread machines, which have such a great texture that you can slice and then eat fresh (in one hand, too, like everyone else, because they don’t crumble like a lot of gluten-free loaves!).

• Bread rolls: These are harder to find than gluten-free bread but handy to have in the freezer. Eat fresh or freeze and then refresh them in the microwave, or slice and pop them in the toaster or under the grill.
• Cereals: Very few of the big company commercial cereals are gluten-free, but you’ll find a wide range of gluten-free cereals and mueslies in the larger supermarkets and health food shops.
  

  Aside from the obvious no-nos like wheat, the usual culprit in cereal is malt or malt flavouring. Malt can be derived from corn or rice, but it’s usually from barley.

• Dry biscuits and crackers: The most common and the most popular are rice crackers, now available in a wide range of flavours. They’re crunchy and delicious, but have become so popular with the wider market that some manufacturers now use a mix of flours and you can easily get caught out. What looks like a gluten-free rice cracker may contain wheat or wheat-based soy sauce. Don’t forget, though, that if the packet states that it’s gluten-free, this overrides the product ingredient list (refer to Chapter 4). If you’re in serious danger of turning into a rice cracker, you can also buy delicious wafer-style crackers that make a welcome change at lunchtime.
• Frozen meals: If you’re new to the gluten-free diet you may not realise how incredible this is, but those who have been on the diet for a very long time are simply amazed by the fact that they can actually buy frozen dinners — good ones!
• Pasta: Gluten-free pasta these days comes in all shapes, sizes and flavours. Made from white rice, brown rice, corn, potato, buckwheat, millet, quinoa and blends of all the preceding, you can find lasagne, penne, spaghetti, fettuccini, macaroni and almost any other type of pasta you’re looking for. Best of all, long gone are the days when pasta turned to mush and you needed a spoon to eat your spaghetti. Today’s gluten-free pastas have much the same texture as regular pasta.
• Sauces and dressings: Spend a little time in the supermarket, reading labels and discovering gluten-free varieties of the sauces, dressings and mayonnaise that you like. You won’t find any golden rule about these — some are loaded with gluten, some not. Many products state whether they’re gluten-free on the packet or bottle now. Keep a record or save labels for quick reference when you need to replenish your supplies.
  

  Research online can save you tedious hours in the supermarket, straining to read the fine print.

• Pre-made pizza bases: These pizza bases usually come frozen (if not, freeze them when you get home). Just take them out of the freezer, add your favourite sauce, cheese and toppings and bake for 10 to 15 minutes, and you have the coeliac’s number-one-most-missed food: pizza!
• Rice cakes and corn thins: Rice cakes first came on the market in the 1980s, at a time when gluten-free bread was still really hard to find, tasted like white sawdust and fell to bits even before you looked at it. It was impossible to eat a sandwich away from home, unless you were happy to snuffle the sandwich straight from the plastic wrap, like a horse with a nosebag. So rice cakes were heralded as the great saviour of the coeliac. Still popular with gluten eaters, who choose them for a welcome change rather than a staple, these days they’re not always made just from rice, so read the label carefully to be sure you have a packet that is gluten-free. The thin rice cakes are much more manageable than the old thick ones, but not very substantial if relying on them for a meal.

See? With all these special products available, you don’t have to miss out on anything on the gluten-free diet. Except gluten, of course!