I and many others are Intolerant Gourmets, lovers of good food who are celiac, unable to digest gluten (wheat, oats, and barley), which is to be gluten intolerant. I also, like many, cannot tolerate the lactose of milk in any form. These are both genetic autoimmune diseases that are not always active in the person who has them. They are often activated—particularly in infants and small children—by eating the taboo foods. However, it has been discovered in recent years that the genes that cause these intolerances can be activated for no known reason, even quite late in life.
Many of us are intolerant of bad food, ersatz food, and poor cooking. Despite my problems and my character, I have found that I can cook excellent food and, on my way to this happy present, I have learned a great deal about the art, theory, and practice of using unfamiliar ingredients and making things that are delicious.
In childhood, I was conspicuous, being an outsider at birthday parties, unable to eat ice cream and cupcakes due to the inevitable gluten and lactose. I had these troubles, which my children later inherited. The symptoms of these intolerances seemed to go away as I got older—except for an unpleasant tendency to foul the air with gas.
Perhaps my passion for food was brought on by my early deprivation; but my literary ambitions and delight in making good things to please people grew into a way of life and finally a career. Cooking for one is not my pleasure—I don’t normally cook for myself—but I adore making food for friends and gradually became a food writer and at one point even had a flourishing business as a consultant to restaurants, food stores, and food manufacturers. I wrote many books. Some of them were great, thick tomes. I wrote for magazines, newspapers, and almost everyone who asked. I spouted words on radio and television. It was hard work, but fun.
Then, as I got older, the old symptoms returned and I had to change what I cooked and avoid writing about many dishes, as I couldn’t taste all things and I will not give a recipe for anything I cannot stand behind. I thought that I had reached an age at which to stop writing. However, good friends convinced me that what I was learning should be made into yet one more book, that it was a gift worth giving. Besides, I missed the act of writing and having contact with readers, cooks, and eaters. I didn’t miss cooking and eating because they were constants in my life.
Writing this book is not just about me. For some reason that no one seems to understand, the number of the gluten intolerant has increased ten times in recent years. It has always been true that 60 percent of the population cannot fully digest dairy (lactose). Although they are unrelated genetically, lactose intolerance and gluten intolerance often occur in the same person. These intolerances are not allergies, but genetic disorders that make life difficult and unpleasant. They can vary in evidencing their presence or intensity over time; but they do not disappear. I must limit what I make and eat. No one for whom I cook seems to complain and I hope that by sharing what I do, I can make some lives a great deal more pleasant without a great deal of work.
Those of us who are Intolerant Gourmets—either of gluten, lactose, or both—tend to think that we have a disease and perhaps even a curse. In truth, while it is a disease and difficult to live with, it may be a blessing in disguise. Certainly it has been shown that simple, rapidly digested carbohydrates, of which wheat flour is one, disrupt the normal digestion in ways other than the evident. Their rapid absorption into the system does funny things to insulin production and can lead the way to diabetes as well as other unpleasant things. All nutrition is more complicated than this; but it may give some comfort.
Food is not just about flavor. It is also about sensation. I think that the lavish usual usage of butter and cream provides silkiness while carrying flavors. Butter and cream are hard to replace; but as I have tested recipes and written this book, I am constantly endeavoring to find equivalent replacements for the pleasure. The natural gelatin from good stock or added commercial gelatin, egg yolks, coconut milk, and various oils from olive to toasted sesame all help in part. I have also found that certain nuts and legumes puréed help as well. I hope that soon the craving for lactose will leave you and the desire for silky sensation will be satisfied.
This is a book that will satisfy your need for mashed potatoes and other buttery dishes and pastas—but not with substitutes and eccentricities. It is meant to serve as an all-purpose cookbook for us intolerants and our intolerant friends and family. In many cases this has meant rethinking or reformulating classic recipes without the use of flour or butter as a thickener, or the use of butter as a base for cooking and cream to round out a sauce. There are, of course, really new recipes; I can never resist the lure of the kitchen.
I hope that I have written a book that will make it possible for all of us to enjoy these foods without recourse to ersatz ingredients or expensive bought items often using a wide range of chemicals.
One of the few things that I serve that I don’t make is pasta. There are companies that seem to have conquered the art of making pasta without using wheat flour. I have found only one brand of gluten-free bread that has been reasonable; the rest have invariably proved disappointing, and even the good one is best when toasted, since it’s fragile.
I think the hardest thing about going on a gluten-free diet was being deprived of sandwiches. I’ve never been much of a breakfast eater so it was only rarely that I coveted someone’s crisp toast slathered in butter (whoops, lactose). What I missed most were very American things: a street-cart frankfurter, a tuna sandwich on toast with mayo, lettuce, and tomato, or a BLT—let alone a pastrami on rye. I mourned my favorite, the fully summer-ripe tomato, dripping into the kitchen-sink sandwich with mayo out of a jar on commercial, squooshy white bread.
I still haven’t recovered. Yes, I’ve tried the valiant attempts at gluten-free bread—imagine my dismay when one of my favorite restaurants in Venice offered me gluten-free bread and after eating it (actually gorging on it), I became ill. A little reflection and a little research detected the ample presence of butter and milk. I have even come up with my own gluten-free white bread (delicious but too fragile for sandwiches, it makes great toast—see page 17); but this hasn’t been the comfort that many of the gluten-free commercial pastas have. I did discover that I could make a reasonable imitation of a sandwich using corn tortillas heated up for about thirty seconds in the microwave.
A compensation has been the exciting discovery of grains that were unfamiliar to me although ancient in history. I have fallen in love with prerinsed quinoa, teff, and millet.
Additionally, I have turned to many Asian recipes since these cuisines generally do not use dairy products or wheat. I have made no attempt to pretend to be an Asian cook; instead, I have used these genres and their ingredients as inspirations.
I was never a pastry chef or a passionate baker; but restaurants and many friends crave these things. Hence I created a large group of recipes for sweet desserts. While I must admit that I get cranky in restaurants where servers apprised of my restrictions smilingly offer me a lovely sorbet, for this book I developed a group of sorbets that even please me, as well as special gluten- and lactose-free sweets.
The Intolerant Gourmet follows the usual order of cookbooks, except for the closing section that is all about the starches (flours, grains, pulses, beans, and seeds), as these are the most problematical (oil for butter is a cinch). That section has no recipes but contains all of the basic preparations. The recipes turn up in their normal place in the book.
One more note and confession: another book I’ve written, Roasting: A Simple Art, is ideal for people with my kind of restrictions. I cannot simply repeat large sections of that book; but I can recommend it. In this book, there are new recipes for roasting, not new techniques, but new foods that have never contained the taboo foods.
New or old I hope that readers will tolerate me and enjoy the food. They don’t have to be Intolerant Gourmets to do so. This is food to be shared by all.