Shown here is the winner of an innovation
award at the FreeFrom Food Awards: Dell’Ugo’s Fresh Chickpea Fusili. It’s certainly a novel idea – gluten-free pasta
made from chickpeas, water and, er… that’s it! So simple. This means it is much
lower in carbs than wheat-based pasta (25% vs 70% - though the latter is for
the pasta before it is cooked) and it doesn’t contain egg either. Because it is
fresh, cooking time is only 4 minutes.
Interestingly, it doesn’t taste of chickpeas,
but the pasta is slightly denser than usual and my trial version had a slightly
spotted appearance after cooking. It’s pictured here in a fresh tomato sauce
(made from some of the remaining tomatoes in the greenhouse, hence the sauce is
a bit pip-tastic). It made a good meal and I can recommend it if you’re looking
either for a lower-carb gluten-free option or one with higher fibre (fibre
content is 6% vs 3% for wheat-based and 1.5% for corn/rice based).
Also worth investigating is stevia (pronounced
steve-ia) powder. Stevia plants grow in
South America and can now be bought over here as a garden annual. Stevia can be used as a natural sugar substitute; its sweetness
derives from molecules called glycosides (sugar groups attached to a non-sugar
molecule). This means that although the molecule tastes sweet, the body’s
digestive processes doesn’t recognize the ‘sugar’ part and it remains undigested
until the colon. There isn’t really an impact on blood glucose levels, so the
number of calories is low (read more here). There’s
been a flurry of interest in stevia lately, with top brands like Coca Cola and
Heinz introducing products sweetened with this Andean leaf.
Stevia powders can taste bitter – this
version by Sweetly Stevia doesn’t and it is also extracted in a really
easy-to-understand way: the dried stevia leaves are steeped in water, then the
sweet part is extracted and purified. It’s vegan certified and comes in an
easy-to-sprinkle powder. It's possible to make Stevia version of favourites like lemon drizzle cake (See the recipe
here).
Finally, if you’ve not yet come across Eat Natural’s
Toasted Muesli with Buckwheat then it is totally recommended – and my kids love
it too. It’s not as cheap as some mainstream breakfast cereals, but it is
rammed full of nutrients thanks to the mixed seeds, buckwheat and sultanas – so
no longer can people say that there would be more food value in the cardboard
packaging…
