There are important issues that do need to be discussed, and celiac disease is one of them. But what does the term actually mean?
It is a serious genetic disease that affects the whole body. Unfortunately, it can develop at any age, causing many headaches for those who have no idea that their health problems can be caused by eating a slice of white bread.
It can cause damage not only to the digestive system but also to the bones and skin.
In fact, once the problem has been diagnosed, there is one very important thing to know. The disease itself cannot be cured, but with a special diet we can maintain a healthy lifestyle. You have to pay attention and follow a diet throughout your life.
Ágota Csajka-Bende is the 2020 Kitchen Chef I asked the successful star of a TV show to tell you a little about her experiences, because unfortunately she and her family are directly affected by this issue.
Can you please tell the readers of this blog a little bit about how and what you can eat in restaurants while living with this disease? What are your experiences as a guest?
If you are in a restaurant gluten-free foodyou want to eat is basically rice today, grilled chicken and the salad. A lot of restaurants will admit that they have, say, a menu of regular ingredients and advertise gluten-free stuff, whether it's meats with sauce or gravy or potatoes...even pasta in some places, but I don't know how they allow that at the official level, because the cross-allergy is there and present one hundred percent.
It's not their fault, they are working with other things, the flour is flying...it stays there during the dishwashing, it stays on and we each other... It's not like a peanut allergy that can immediately cause symptoms so severe that you die from it if you cross it.
My mother, sister and child are also gluten intolerant. Out of the four of us, I'm the one that if I even get flour on my food or in a dish, I get symptoms practically on my face and skin.
Eating out in a restaurant in this form really sucks. The ones that do work are the ones that only and specifically offer vegan, gluten-free and lactose-free, but I think they are horrendously priced. For example, if you go to a family where even one person is gluten intolerant, they pay many times the price and don't eat well.
I'm a cook, I'm a baker, but I'm not a gourmet... I've been to almost all the restaurants around Budapest - they're not good, they're not tasty.
Obviously, these restaurants are mostly run by non-gluten-sensitive people, the chefs are non-gluten-sensitive and they think it's fine.
Personally I can only heartily recommend Smarni to everyone in Gödöllő.
It's hard to pay three, four or five times as much to eat food that is dry, stifling, suffocating and tastes bad.
It's easier to eat like this now than it was, say, ten years ago, when they didn't even know what the disease was. I would have liked to open a gluten-free bistro that actually did baking and eating that was gluten-free and delicious, because if you've had, say, a gluten-free cake in a bakery, you can see why there would be a need for more of them. I still say for me Smarni restaurant is the top, I recommend it to everyone.
I, for example, the way I cook and the way I bake, I'm a complete gluten-freeen, there is no way to tell. Fortunately, the everyday life is made easier by the fact that it is now very easy to buy the ingredients, they are easily available everywhere, even in large hypermarkets and even own brand products are available. There's a lot of pre-made powders, pancake powders, scones powders and things like that, I don't like them, but a lot of people use them, I mix them myself.
To sum up, I think that Hungarian society is not at the stage where it takes this issue seriously enough. Unfortunately, in many places they are like, 'You must be eating gluten out of fashion now,' and they don't really pay attention, but those who are really intolerant are the ones who are drinking the poison because they are not taken seriously.
My suggestion is that if you want to have a gluten-free lunch, go to a place where there are no other ingredients and then you don't have the risk of them not paying attention, spoiling your order, for example bringing out a Caesar salad with croutons...
János Mizsei, the chef of MÁK Bistro, also shared his thoughts with you, here is the restaurateur's point of view:
With gluten intolerance and gluten-free productsYou can find them more and more, not only in bakeries, shops and restaurants.
I think it's an autoimmune disease that, for me, is not the fault of the guest or the consumer, just like other intolerances like that.
Nowadays there are so many diseases, diets, or just anyone can choose to leave it out of their life. As a restaurant, you have to be aware of that and be able to give the guest another option or incorporate it into the menu and design it so that it's full value and they don't feel like they can't try a 10-course menu because they don't want to eat gluten for various reasons.
I think that there are already many options for gluten substitution that are not strenuous, that can be developed with minor testing, with experience, to see how it behaves differently from a normal flour.
There are products that are specifically better gluten-free, they have a better seed character, for example: buckwheat has a fantastic taste. When I made the unicone (winter ice cream) cone, I was sure it would be gluten-free sooner or later, because it tasted better!
I would also add that not everything, e.g. a pancake or a sourdough bread will not have the same gluten-free version, it will not have the same chicory structure, chicory mesh, shape and taste, which is why the quality of the flours themselves is important! Because you get a different taste and a different texture!
What else you should know:
There is a serious alternative to the many options offered by the pharmaceutical industry: the celiac disease test. It is very simple, quick and involves minimal physical discomfort. A drop of blood taken from a fingertip, as in the case of diabetics, will show the condition.
There are many allergy and other disease-related products on the market that offer solutions. Specific industries have been built up for people with special needs.
Some people join the ranks of consumers consciously, some out of fashion, but some are really looking for solutions to life's problems, physical and health problems, as Agota said earlier. We know that the ingredients are the basis of the art of cooking, and Matusz Wild Zrt. has a wide range of ingredients for customers with special needs. gluten-free raw material.
