Manor House Inn, Carterway Heads
The other great advantage of the A68 is that it is not a main road and inhabited by crap, boring service areas. There are good pubs everywhere.
I was driving the road around lunchtime and a sign informed me a pub called the Manor House Inn, was coming up. The sign said good food and real ales and as many coeliacs and other allergy sufferers will tell you, real ale pubs are often sympathetic to special diets.
I entered and looked at the special menu on the wall.
Specials Menu, Manor House Inn
I liked the look of the seared venison. I asked the landlord, Neil Oxley, whether it was gluten-free and he said he’d ask the chef. The reply was that the chef would make it so. The pub also had some proper, Weston’s cider. Not as good as my local Aspall, but very safe for coeliacs.
It was one of the best pub lunches I’d had outside of places I know very well in a long time. A lot of coeliacs like their vegetables and I had a choice of five; potatoes, carrots, swede, cabbage and broccoli. All were excellent, as was the venison.
I asked the landlord’s wife, Emma, if everything was local and she said yes.
This is what good pub food should be about. I shall go back again, the next time I’m in the area.
The pub is also a good excuse to burn up the A68. I might even stay there, as the pub has rooms for the night.
Manor House Inn, Carterway Heads
Rick Stein
Over the New Year, I went to Rick Stein‘s restaurant in Padstow.
It was expensive, but it was certainly worth it.
Their policy on gluten-free is very simple. They mark up the menu with what is gluten free.
Rick Stein's Gluten Free Menu
Note the detail. They have both normal and gluten-free soy sauce. So they are very prepared for trouble-makers like me.
Although we didn’t try any puddings, there was a good selection for coeliacs too.
The Puddings
Next time I’m in Padstow, I’ll go again. After all it costs a lot to get to Cornwall, so why shouldn’t you indulge.
Cadbury
I’m sad that that iconic British company, Cadbury, is being sold to the Americans.
There are two main reasons and both are selfish.
I buy a lot of Green and Black‘s chocolate because I know it’s provenance and can trust that what they say on the packet. I really don’t trust Kraft to keep the standards of this brand and hope that someone buys it from them.
But the main reason is that Cadbury are very correct about which products are gluten-free and it is just a quick check on the web site. In fact over the last few years, more products have gone that way. Can I trust Kraft, from the country of gluten-in-everything to not put the evil maltodextrin in everything to save money?
I doubt it.
So yet again, coeliacs may well have less and less chance to buy something sensible to eat on the move.
Musings on Gluten-Free Pasta
As a coeliac, I can’t have normal pasta, but there are some fairly good gluten-free ones around.
I do get Dr. Schar‘s pasta on free on prescription (I’m 62, so age does have some advantages!), but I’m not that good at cooking it, so it tends to be a bit hard. As I’ve now got the hang of cooking rice, in either the quick Uncle Ben form or the more traditional one, I tend to avoid cooking pasta.
However, I have got a liking for Carluccio’s the gluten-free pasta on their menu that is suitable for coeliacs. Just click the link on the page indicated. I had some of the Giardiniera today in their caffe in St. Pancras Station and it was excellent. I just wish that they would change the gluten-free menu more often and also do some liver too!
But hey, the pasta is always worth waiting for, even if it takes a few minutes more. Does that explain my hard pasta?
The interesting thing though is that Carluccio’s seem to do only one type of gluten-free pasta with different sauces. And that is penne!
Could it be that gluten-free pasta comes better in the thicker varieties?
Recently, I’ve tried cooking some of the Doves Farm gluten-free penne and that was a lot better. Also a friend has cooked me one her special lasagna using Dr. Schar‘s pasta and that was better than excellent.
I’m no cook and I wonder if anybody has any ideas.
Grilled Pepper and Sausage Penne
This is one of what Waitrose call an Everyday Recipe. That’s a bit naff, but the Everyday tag seems to be working for them.
I modified it to make it fully gluten-free and my version used the following ingredients.
- A pack of 6 Musks gluten-free sausages.
- 280g Cooks’ Ingredients grilled pepper in olive oil
- 1 smalll essential Waitrose onion, finely chopped. It might have been one of Sainsbury’s.
- 400g can essential Waitrose plum tomatoes in natural juice
- ½ x 25g pack fresh basil leaves, shredded
- Dove’s Farm gluten-free penne
The method was as follows.
- Cut the sausages into thick slices. Heat 1 tbsp of the oil from the peppers in a large pan and add the onion. Cook over a medium heat for 3 minutes until softened. Add the sausages and brown on all sides.
- Drain the peppers from the oil and add them to the pan. Cook for 2 minutes then add the tomatoes, breaking them up with a spoon. Season and simmer for 15 minutes until the sausages are cooked through and the sauce is thickened. Stir in the shredded basil.
- Meanwhile, cook the pasta according to pack instructions until just tender. Drain and toss with the pepper sauce. Serve with freshly grated Parmigiano Reggiano
It was good.
The Grapes of the Devil
This was the description of brussel sprouts on one television program over Christmas.
I don’t agree, as I like my sprouts.
All Bar One
Before Nowhere Boy last night, I had a drink in All Bar One in Cambridge. I was interested to see that they now have Aspall’s Cyder on draught. It would appear that many bars stock it as it is in the on-line Beer menu.
Even if the bar doesn’t have Aspall, they mention lots of other proper ciders and no mentions of the dreaded chemical ones with added nastiness.
Most All Bar One usually have newspapers to read and some even have the Beano. There is also usually something on the menu that is gluten-free too!
I Cooked my first Christmas Dinner last Night
I’m sixty-two and last night I cooked my first Christmas Dinner.
Because of the snow and travel problems, I had bought a Marks and Spencer Turkey Breast Joint, in case I have to spend Christmas alone. But with last night’s snow, I had two extra mouths to feed, so I decided to cook the turkey.
I was aided by some broccoli and parsnips donated by a farmer and luckily I had potatoes and some ready-prepared Schwatz gravy. Note that that gravy is gluten-free, so it’s fine for coeliacs like me. My guests don’t like sprouts, so they stayed in the fridge.
It was very passable. All my guests enjoyed it.
I even enjoyed the parsnips, which my mother used to cook so badly with the potatoes. I just followed the rules on the BBC web site. This must be the font of all knowledge for novice cooks like me.
Hopefully, the weather will relent by Christmas Day.
Smoking in California Prisons
I hadn’t realised this but California is one of the few places where prisoners are not allowed to smoke. Or at least those who have been admitted after a certain day. A post on the Internet says that it has caused no-end of problems.
It now appears that they have now banned salt and pepper on health grounds.
As California has one of the highest prison populations in the world, these measures don’t seem to be too effective at cutting crime.
Being a Coeliac in Holland
I travel to Holland quite a bit and to Den Haag in particular. In fact, I’ve just come back from a few days in the Dutch capital.
So how do I manage as a coeliac in Holland?
On last Friday, I went for lunch in a cafe in Amsterdam called Puccini. It’s in the Staalstraat fairly close to the Amstel River and the Town Hall and the new Music Theatre. Most of the food was the usual bread offering, but they gave me a delicious salmon salad with no problems. Just remember that gluten-free is gluten-frij or gluten-fry! At least if they know about gluten, you will get food without a problem.
I would say that the level of knowledge in restaurants and cafes in major cities is about the same as in London or Cambridge.
But the biggest help is Albert Heijn. This is the Dutch equivalent of Waitrose or an upmarket Tesco Metro. You don’t have to know your Dutch, as every one of their own label products is labeled with the gluten-free symbol, if that what it is. If you’re still not sure, you can usually check the ingredients, even if they are in Dutch, as food names seem to be similar, even if the spelling is unpronounceable.
The Anonymous Widower 