Everything You Need To Know About The Gluten-Free Diet
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1. What it is: Gluten is an assembly of proteins found in some cereals, and mainly in wheat, rye, barley and oats. Its main characteristic is its elasticity, which allows the pasta to expand during cooking. More and more people are allergic to gluten, while others are developing intolerance, also known as cpeliac disease. For people with this disease, gluten destroys the walls of the intestine, gradually preventing the body from absorbing nutrients properly. Therefore, a gluten-free diet is the only effective solution to help these people.
However, many people also want to cook without gluten just for taste, or to preserve their health, because processed cereals are not processed so well by the body.
2. Example of a gluten-free day menu: To start the day with a gluten-free breakfast, you can use rice or corn cakes to replace your usual bread. With this you can eat fruit and drink your usual coffee, tea or hot chocolate. Some mueslis are also gluten-free, they are often made with buckwheat flakes, rice petals and dried fruits.
At lunch, you can eat raw vegetables accompanied by a homemade sauce. Quinoa or rice can be a good gluten-free cereal base. You can accompany them with steamed or boiled vegetables. For dessert you can enjoy a soya chocolate dessert and grated coconut. At dinner, you can prepare pumpkin soup with coconut cream and spices, such as curry powder and cumin. For larger appetites, you could accompany your soup with socca, a pancake made from baked chickpea flour.
4. A recipe for the gluten-free diet: Here's an example of an excellent gluten-free dish, a quinoa gratin with zucchini and goat's cheese. To make the recipe for three people, simply sauté three zucchini slices in a pan with a drizzle of olive oil, while cooking 350 g of quinoa in boiling salted water for around ten minutes.
Heat the oven to 180°C. Then put the zucchini in a baking dish, add half a sliced goat cheese log on top, then cover with quinoa. Add the other half of the goat's cheese log on top of this mixture and put in the oven for about 20 minutes.
