food with Elena Chekalova

When my grandmother, a great lover of food, was diagnosed with severe diabetes, and she was forbidden to eat not only sugar, but also all foods containing simple carbohydrates, including ordinary white bread, her life turned into real flour. Back then, in Soviet stores you could find a very modest selection of completely tasteless products for diabetics. Now the list has expanded somewhat, but the products have not progressed far in terms of taste. It’s even worse for those who are allergic to gluten, a mixture of two proteins—gliadin and glutenin—that is found in wheat and rye, and in small quantities even in oats and barley. What to do? Suffer and feel like a cripple?

It just so happens that for any person who does not fit into the “norm”, living in our country is, to put it mildly, uncomfortable. It is no coincidence that the main and only Soviet party was called the Bolshevik. It was always possible to become a Menshevik not only because you think differently. At school, for example, it was a real shock for me to find out how many disabled people there are in the capital, because I didn’t see them on the streets of the city, where even today it is impossible to move around in a wheelchair. And how many disabled orphans, growing up, go straight from an orphanage to a nursing home! Even small deviations from the norm can cripple life. I still can’t forget one classmate - a very smart and lively boy Lesha, who kept getting up during lessons and writing with a huge number of mistakes: he was transferred to the so-called auxiliary school. Normally, no one wanted to mess with him. Many years later, when about the same thing happened to my daughter at a district school, I realized that Lesha had dyslexia with absent-minded attention - a feature with which children in the rest of the world graduate from even the most prestigious universities. Thank God, by that time ours already had private schools, one of which my Masha successfully graduated from. One of the most recent strong impressions was the documentary “Anton Is Here” about four years of an autistic boy’s torment. His story is shocking not because it evokes pity for people with so-called disabilities, but because it diagnoses a society that does not accept “otherness.”

We do not have restaurants where, among other things (no need to create separate establishments!), people with severe metabolic disorders, diabetics, and allergy sufferers can come. Why, with all their problems, are they also doomed to these deprivations? After all, remember from the classics: it is necessary that everyone has somewhere to go. Last year, I proposed to investors who approached me for a menu for their restaurant, a project for an establishment where people with various disabilities could eat. Investors have disappeared. They didn't believe in the commercial success of such a concept? Quite possible. But in Paris, a restaurant where there is a large selection of dishes for diabetics is simply packed with American tourists who have the opportunity to go to the gastronomic Mecca without fear of going hungry. Alain Ducasse, as I recently wrote, is already creating a whole chain of restaurants for those who need food with a minimum of calories. I believe that the problem with us is not only a lack of faith in the commercial success of such establishments.

Do you think food for people with dietary restrictions is obviously worse than usual? When I bake bread, which contains no flour, no fat, no eggs, but a lot of fiber and complex carbohydrates, it disappears instantly, although no one in the family is on a diet. Not to mention that friends always ask for it, especially during Lent. It contains no flour in the usual sense: there is no wheat, rye or even oatmeal. I bake loaves from ground flax seeds and nuts. Why doesn't this bread fall apart if it contains no gluten at all? After all, when wheat or rye combine with water, they become sticky, trap air and form a three-dimensional network - the structure of bread. Gluten can be replaced with a magic powder - xanthan. This is a thickener and stabilizer that creates a voluminous network similar to gluten. Together with flaxseed, which has emulsifying properties, xanthan “holds” gluten-free bread - and not only that. Just add xanthan to any juice with a drop of cream and you will get a thick cream or the most delicate emulsion. Vinaigrette sauce with a pinch of xanthan stops stratifying and requires much less olive oil: it is replaced with water without loss of taste and becomes several times less caloric. In the USA, xanthan can be bought in regular stores, but here, of course, you can’t - you can only order it online. I anticipate the question and answer it right away: no, it’s not a chemical and it’s not harmful. Xanthan gum is a polysaccharide produced by fermenting carbohydrate-containing foods (such as corn) with the bacterium Xanthomonas campestris. My recipe also contains one additional emulsifier - pectin, which is abundant in apple butter. Unfortunately, unlike in the USA, it is also not sold in stores. But it’s easy to do. You just need to boil the apples until puree, puree them in a blender, pour them into a cast iron pot and place them without a lid in the oven, heated to 130°C, for three hours. You can add zest, rosemary and cinnamon to apple butter to make a delicious spread for your morning sandwich.

And here is a simple recipe for wonderful bread that everyone can use. Set the oven to 190°C and mix all the dry ingredients: flax, almonds and cashews ground into flour, as well as salt, soda, baking powder, xanthan and cinnamon. After this, you need to add apple butter and water - stir until smooth and add dried fruits and nuts. Mix everything, pour into a cake pan like a brick and put in the oven for 1 hour 10 minutes. In fact, this is not even one bread, but dozens of its varieties, because it is a kind of construction set with easily replaceable parts. Instead of some nuts there may be others: either almonds, or cashews, or flour from sunflower seeds, quinoa, chickpeas, buckwheat. Instead of an apple - a banana. Instead of chopped walnuts, use sesame seeds. You can do without dried fruits. Instead of water, feel free to add milk - soy or regular. If you add 4 whites or a couple of eggs (reducing the amount of water), the bread will slice even better. After all, eggs are also a good emulsifier.

Do you know what exactly made me offer this particular recipe today? Post by one of my friends. Here are some excerpts from this text: “There are regular buses around Monaco. They are much more convenient than a taxi, which you can’t reach by phone. On one of the trips, two disabled people got on at different stops. The bus stopped, lowered the suspension, extended the platform, and a person in a wheelchair got on. the bus removed the platform, raised the suspension, and took off. It took 5 minutes for each person. And the entire segment of the route I needed took 8 minutes. We were unlucky either from birth or throughout our lives; we, who are relatively healthy, owe him nothing.” By the way, this young lady is convinced that those who do not fit into the “norm” must somehow take care of their own survival and not spoil the mood of the impenetrably healthy majority.

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