Lynch - My Gluten-Free Kitchen

my gluten-free kitchen

Gearid Lynch

Gill Books



CONTENTS

acknowledgements

I would first like to thank Deirdre Nolan and Sarah Liddy at Gill Books for the opportunity to write this cookbook. They both had great faith in me I think it was the wild garlic bread that won them over! Thanks also to Catherine Gough, Teresa Daly and Emma Lynam at Gill Books for all their help.

Thanks to Joanne Murphy for her great eye and attention to detail and to Orla Neligan for her great style and taste. Both are a pleasure to work with.

To Kristin Jensen, many thanks for your patience and professionalism and complete love of fresh herbs!

Thank you to Bridget ODea from Purcell Masterson and all the team. You are a cracker and a great support who is always there for me.

Thank you to The Olde Post Inn team for all your support from the get-go, especially to Garrett Galligan, who was cracking the whip and without whom I could not have put this book together. The truly gifted pastry chef that is Brid Teevan tirelessly retried recipes for me again and again. I am truly blessed to be working with her.

To Catherine Fox, thank you for the dig-out with the typing and sampling. Thanks also to David Molloy in DT One Menswear in Cavan.

Im delighted to live and work in County Cavan. Its a great place to be a restaurateur and chef, so many thanks to all of those involved in the excellent tourism board and county council.

To all the close family, friends and babysitters you know who you are thank you.

Thank you Orn, Lorcan, Emma and Eoin for being my official tasters and never once refusing, especially the cookies!

And lastly, to my wife, Tara, for all the laughs and debate, thank you so very much.



introduction

Welcome to my gluten-free kitchen. It has been a pleasure to write this cookbook and I hope that those who cook my recipes will find the pleasure of cooking all over again, something that was taken from me briefly when I was first diagnosed with coeliac disease in 2013.

Growing up on a small farm in Cavan, the batch loaf was a staple and unfortunately medical conditions that were based on dietary intolerances were unheard of around this time. Many households in the county were brought up with this on the table unluckily for those like me.

As a child I was in and out of hospital with cramps and various others symptoms of coeliac disease. I was always bloated and tired. It wasnt unheard of for me to fall asleep in class, both as a child and as a teenager. For a long time, this condition crippled every aspect of my life.

School was a huge challenge and the symptoms of being a coeliac were interpreted as my lack of interest in education. Participating in activities was difficult, as evening times were particularly hard due to the constant tiredness and lack of energy. Im glad awareness of coeliac disease is at an all-time high and that I have finally got something good from the condition this book!

My love and appreciation of cooking and good produce wasnt accidental, and if Im honest, the having to cook came before the love and appreciation bit. My mother was the main (gluten-filled) breadwinner (excuse the pun!) and consequently I took on a lot of the household duties, including cooking. We rarely bought anything as we had our own small plot of potatoes, cabbage, carrots and rhubarb to pick from outside our back door.

As school was so challenging, the obvious career path for me was something apprentice based. I applied to the Killybegs IT to study Professional Cookery, but I wasnt successful due to the huge demand at that time. Feeling somewhat discouraged, I decided that instead of harbouring pipe dreams about becoming a chef, I would actually lay pipes and so I embarked on a brief stint as an apprentice plumber.

I remember working near Pembroke Road in Dublin and knowing that I needed to follow my dream of being a chef. As fate, luck and the gods would have it, the company that I was working with was equally as unimpressed with my pipe-laying skills as I was, so I was duly let go. That same day I got a call from Killybegs to say that a space had opened up on their Professional Cookery course.

It was there that I started to hone my skills in the kitchen and where I met my wife, Tara. Doors began to open and my first introduction to good food and good produce was from Pat Kerley in Dundalk. From there, I moved on to Thorntons in Dublin along the Portobello canal and spent two years working under Kevin Thornton.

Both Pat Kerley and Kevin Thornton have an immense love of good ingredients and use only the best produce. My time with them had a huge influence on my approach to cooking. Olivier Meisonnave, who worked with Kevin before opening his own restaurant, Dax, gave me an insight into what it takes to run a seamless front of house. I worked in Le Coq Hardi with John Howard in its final year and he instilled the art of food and business in me.

In 2001, I won the Euro-toques Young Chef of the Year award and also spent a couple months in New York. Tara and I came back to Cavan, where I opened my first restaurant, The Oak Room, in 2001 before we moved to The Olde Post Inn in 2002. Our core team is made up of Garret Galligan, who has been with us since the beginning, and Brid Teevan, our pastry chef who joined us in 2007. They both have a real understanding of our philosophy and what is important to us: quality, seasonality and local ingredients where possible. Weve built an excellent rapport with the local producers in our area and most of the ingredients we use in the restaurant come from the surrounding counties.

My wife pushed me towards the diagnosis when the symptoms of the condition became unbearable. After so many years, I had come to accept that feeling lethargic, bloated and suffering from daily stomach cramps and other unpleasant symptoms was normal. But there came a point when I could no longer blame the long working hours for my lack of energy or the feeling of being bloated on overindulging in the kitchen.

The diagnosis was a revelation. Not knowing what was wrong had been as intolerable as my intolerance to gluten. Having lived with constant sickness since childhood, the relief that came a few weeks after eliminating gluten from my diet was immense. But when I was finally diagnosed, I couldnt get my head around it at first. I remember pulling into a supermarket afterwards and there was absolutely nothing I could eat the sandwich before heading into the restaurant for the night was gone. There was only one option, and that was to get myself organised. And so the challenge began.

I devoured reading material on the condition and started to pay more attention to food labels, but the initial adjustment period wasnt easy. But when I started to feel well, it gave me a new lease on life and I knew it was time to start getting the meals I missed and loved back into my life. Ive even started to see the silver lining on the grey cloud, as my diet and that of my family is much healthier and more balanced. Tara and I have four children and we all eat the same meals. Of course, sometimes a batch loaf does make an appearance!

Since being diagnosed with coeliac disease, there has not been one day that I have felt unwell. That said, if you enjoy good food and dining out, as I do, encountering a blas attitude about the condition is commonplace and I have inevitably fallen foul of an accidental gluten overdose that conjures up bad memories.