I have a fussy lady friend coming round for dinner tomorrow and have never cooked dairy/gluten free before. Anyone recommend anything good?

Needs to be tasty and a bit posh, but cookable for 6 people. Vegetarian is a bonus (most of us are 'low meat') but not essential.

Thanks!

[SHOUTING}xherbivore to the forum NOW

What do you want starter main meal pudding what?
Swedish Glace is dairy free ice cream
You will need to check the ingredients of lots of stuff marg especially.

Curry?
Chilli?
Stir Fry?
Give me a ball park meal and I will tell you how to cook it what to substitute it with

Are they vegan or just fussy? is there a difference?

Just main course, def no gluten and no cow dairy (goat and sheep are ok, guess that means fussy..!). Do vegans mostly substitute ingredients in normal dishes, or are there recipes that are extra suited to dairy/gluten free?

Curry sounds good.

I am a vegan BTW like the use of normal food!
Eastern food is more suited as they generally dont consume much milk or milk products anyway.
Yes Soya milk /yoghurt for milk/yoghurt
Some cheese but dont eat them personally.
you can get some meat substitutes but again I dont eat them
Redwood stuff is very good and vegan – localhealth food shop or Holland and Barrat if you really must.
Any veggie curry (avoid butter GHEE and and Nans -yoghurt/gluten) is basically fine.

http://www.vegan-food.net/category/curry/our own

what has gluten in it

http://www.vegsoc.org/info/gluten.html

http://www.redwoodfoods.co.uk/

Gluten free is a pain in the bum, since food manufacturers pack so much food out with wheat- it's a good thickener/packager. Non-nutritional use of wheat is the problem, since you can never really predict where it'll turn up, and there's no real reason for it to be there. Also, it's easy to overlook something even when it's obvious- a friend cooked for me once and used guiness in a meat sauce, frinstance. Even at the weekend my brother got me cookie dough ice cream- he knows ben and jerry's icecream is gluten free, but the cookie dough isn't! You have to think about the ingredients of the ingredients in some cases.

Pasta is doable- the gluten free pastas from Tesco are pretty decent- but it's a bit of a skill to actually cook the stuff and have it come out well, it doesn't handle like normal pasta at all. The trick is usually to cook the pasta then pour into a collander and rinse it with huge amounts of boiling water to remove the horrible goo that otherwise coats it. It also sticks together very easily. So do a practice run!

Curry's a very good option, since wheat isn't a natural part of most curry dishes anyway, or part of the tradition- though again be careful if you use any preprepared sauces as a lot do contain wheat.

Stir fry… Lots of soy sauce contains wheat, but gluten free soy sauce is available and does handle pretty much like the normal stuff.

A meat dish would be easiest- maybe fish given the low-meat requirement? Can you get away with peasant-chic? Fish with a suitable sauce and potatoes or rice, if you can do a really good job of it, sidesteps the whole issue… Or roast salmon or something.

If you want to serve bread with the dish, most pre-packaged gluten free bread is absolute mince but the Genius brown loaf that Tesco sell is pretty good, almost as good as my home-bake (and don't even think about baking your own unless you've done this before with real bread, it's a total pain).

Oh… If it's an allergy situation rather than just being picky, then most likely she'll be completely used to having hassle with the diet- don't be afraid to ask her for advice, I'm sure she'd rather have that than a dodgy meal or an accidental poisoning.

oooh, just seen this… sorry i can't be much more help; the gluten free thing is not a vegan thing (as you may know) and since i'm not a coeliac then it's not an issue for me so i don't really know many good recipes/ideas off the top of my head. but as junkyard says, and in my experience, you can't really go far wrong with curry!
best bet for gluten free bread is to try to find spelt flour, although the loaves made with this tend to be quite dense and heavy (not a problem for me; i think it's how bread should be anyway rather than that spongy light crap!)…

and as a slight hijack- johnny, i had redwood foods' brand new 1/4 lb burgers the other night. pretty disappointing; they have a really dry crumbly texture and don't come close to the burgers that fry's make (also available in H&B!).

Oh, if you do want to make your own gluten free bread, for some mental reason, get the Glutafin select white mix- it makes bread that actually looks like, acts and almost tastes like bread. Best out there by a country mile.

2nd the spelt flour it is traditional bread and most wheat intolerance types can eat it …pretty sticky dough though and Dense bread but yummy

XHerbivore I just eat their sage and onion slices not a fan of pretend meat dont do Holland and Barratt(2local health food shops) the woman in the one in our town is the largest woman I have ever seen in my life always makes me chuckle to see her eworking in a health food shop.

is there wheat in guinness?

I don't think so, but there is Barley and this contains gluten, so no good for a Coeliac.