gluten-free

It wasn’t a good summer for apples in the Fraser Valley, according to my mother. She told me that the day that I was there for my big gluten-y baking spree. She’d gone over to a friend’s place to pick up some apples that were in danger of rotting on the tree and she asked me to use those for my apple cake, to save what we could.

The apples you find on hobby farms like my parents’ place don’t necessarily look like the ones you buy in the store. They can have worm holes and scabby patches, but more than that, the varieties aren’t always identifiable. The apples I used for my first attempt at Marie-Hélène’s Apple Cake looked sort of like Fujis, but tasted like Granny Smiths. Apples can hold a lot of surprises.

New York Magazine published a list of their favourite New York State apples, which barely scratches the surface of what’s available out there. Apples seem capable of infinite genetic variation and it can take cultivators many attempts to come up with a new, viable variety. Michael Pollan does a wonderful job of telling the apple’s story in his book The Botany of Desire. It’s a great read, with as much mystery and detail as an historical novel. Just the thing to inspire you to pick up some interesting varieties of apples.

But we were talking about an apple cake.

Odd-looking apples chopped, ages-old bottle of rum located, ingredients assembled, butter melted, eggs frothed. Putting this cake together happened so quickly! This is a great last-minute dessert recipe, since you’d generally have most or all the ingredients on hand.

I used a slightly larger springform pan than called for and probably the equivalent of five apples, which may account for the extra-lumpy texture of the cake, but did not take away from the flavour. It was moist, delicious and quickly gone.

to make smaller apple cakes today, using gluten-free flour. I’d gotten some apples from my parents’ trees and was eager to finish them. I also thought the moistness of the recipe might help to mitigate some of crumbly dryness that sometimes plagues gluten-free baked goods.

The batter was very different from the wheat flour version, with a paste-like consistency, but everything came together just as quickly. Baked, the cakes have a spongier texture than the original, which is almost a pudding cake. They’re still very moist, though, with crisp edges. I’ll just have to see what my gluten-free taste tester thinks.

You can find many other blogged descriptions of this week’s FFWD recipe here: Marie-Hélène’s Apple Cake

Sadly, Perch is no more, but it had a wonderful run. El Barrio has morphed into X-site Grill & Bistro, but I hear they still know how to take care of their gluten-free customers.

What could be better than living in a city with a diverse and affordable restaurant scene? Going out to eat is more common than home-cooked meals for a lot of city dwellers, and although I love to cook, I have to admit that eating out has always been one of my regular habits. But these days, eating out isn’t as easy for me as it once was, at least when I’m dining with my partner. He has celiac disease, which means that anything containing gluten is harmful to him. It’s much easier to make sure food is gluten-free at home, especially when you cook with whole foods. Restaurants, on the other hand, are gluten minefields for people with celiac disease.

Gluten itself is poorly understood, even by food professionals. It’s amazing how many misconceptions there are about what gluten is, what foods contain it and how to safely prepare gluten-free food. Since it doesn’t kill you on the spot, as an allergy may, celiac disease has often been taken less seriously by restaurateurs. Even when there is truly gluten-free food available, cross-contamination is difficult to avoid in most professional kitchens, since there are limited surfaces for food preparation.

We still go out, but there’s always a risk of gluten or cross-contamination, unless we go to a gluten-free establishment, like Panne Rizo or Quejos, both of which specialize in sandwiches and baked goods. We also have some favourite, trusted restaurants that do a great job of making sure that there are at least a few items on the menu that Kevin can eat. Still, there are foods he’s despaired of ever eating again, especially diner food and almost anything billed as comfort food.

But then he went out to dinner a couple of weeks ago, with another fellow who has celiac disease. They met at The Wallflower for pizza and beer. A gluten-free miracle, if you will. It certainly wasn’t a meal that Kevin was ever expecting to have again. If you’re not familiar with the gluten-free beer world, you’re generally pretty lucky. The ones that are available here are, for the most part, watery tasting. As for pizza, even when the pizza is gluten-free, the oven it’s baked in usually isn’t.

The owners of The Wallflower found a brand of beer that’s a great approximation of a pale ale and they bake their thin crust pizza in a celiac-safe way. They have a gluten-free menu (along with a vegan one), in addition to their regular menu. They even had their kitchen and cooking procedures assessed to ensure that their gluten-free food was truly celiac-safe. If you haven’t guessed, this is extremely unusual and really, really impressive. There’s only one other restaurant I know of in Vancouver that’s gone to such lengths for their gluten-free customers, El Barrio. It’s a favourite of ours, too.

Perch - exterior — There's a wheelchair accessible entrance at the back.

The owners of The Wallflower have extended their food philosophy to their new location, Perch. This is good news for us, because Perch is just down the road from where we live. Perch takes its pizza even more seriously than The Wallflower, baking it in an authentic pizza oven. And yes, there are shelves in that oven which have never known gluten, so their gluten-free pizzas are baked right on the stone. The food at both restaurants is good comfort fare, done very well. We’ll be eating there often.