I absolutely love this time of the year! The festive spirit, the lights and decorations and wonderful family time. So like every other year I went home for Christmas to spend it with my family. However this year was different as it was my first low FODMAP Christmas. It can be very frustrating finding something suitable to eat especially when you’re not in charge of the cooking. Luckily I have a very supportive family. Despite the occasional joke they’re all very attentive and try their best to suit my dietary needs and not make me ill. We sat down together and designed a menu that would suit everyone with little tweeks here and there to make it FODMAP friendly. Not everything went well on Christmas day as I had a mini breakdown over bechamel sauce when the I opened the lactose free milk and found it was all curdled! However my mum and sister quickly whipped something up to replace this. Crisis averted! Here’s what I had for Christmas lunch… Mine was a Mediterranean Christmas.
We started with some olives and bruschetta. I was in charge of these so I made two version of bruschetta; the original one packed with onion and garlic and a low FODMAP version. It was low FOMDAP apart from the bread. However I can tolerate some wheat hence decided to treat myself on Christmas day. The low FODMAP bruschetta topping was tomatoes, green part of spring onions, fresh basil and parsley, garlic infused olive oil and some grated Grana Padano cheese. I also drizzled the olives with garlic infused olive oil and sprinkled with chopped fresh parsley.
This was followed by meat cannelloni which were made by my sister. Also low FODMAP apart from the pastry. I just couldn’t find GF Cannelloni. However these can also be made using GF lasagna sheets. So I might ask my sister to do a guest post 🙂 The meat filling is packed with flavour. Truly a special dish to have any day of the year.
The main course was rib-eye steak with roast potatoes and roast vegetables. Steak cooked by mum and sides made by dad. It truly was a team effort.
Afterwards we shared a cheese platter. All FODMAP friendly cheeses. The cheeses were Brie, Grana Padano, Feta, Mexican and Gozitan Goat Cheese.
and finally for dessert we had a GF chocolate lava cake.
I’ve had no symptoms which means the meal was a success! I’m going to share the GF chocolate lava cake recipe with you! If any of you do not tolerate fats or chocolate well you might want to avoid this though as it quite rich.
GF Chocolate Lava Cake (makes 6)
Ingredients:
- 165g butter (Butter is low in lactose however if you still have an issue with it you may use margerine)
- 165g 70% dark chocolate (look for one without milk if you have issues with lactose)
- 3 eggs
- 3 egg yolks
- 85g caster sugar
- 2 tablespoons GF flour. I used Doves plain GF flour
Method:
- Melt the chocolate with the butter over a bain marie.
- Set aside to cool.
- Meanwhile whisk the eggs, yolks and sugar till light and fluffy and triple in size.
- Add the chocolate mixture slowly and mix it in well using a spatula. Do this carefully as to prevent losing the air incorporated.
- Finally sift the GF flour and add this in slowly.
- Grease the moulds and pour the mixture in. Do not fill to the top to leave some room for the cakes to rise. I left about a fingers width.
- Refrigerate for a couple of hours or up to 24 hours. I made mine the day before and baked them on Christmas day.
- Preheat oven to 200C fan. Bake for 10 minutes.
- I served mine sprinkled with some icing sugar. You may also serve with some whipped cream or lactose free ice-cream.