Join the webchat with Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall and quiz him about dairy-free and wheat-free cookery, Friday 12 September, 1-2pm

[RachelMumsnet]

Award-winning cookery writer, broadcaster and founder of River Cottage, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is dropping into Mumsnet Towers on Friday to tell us about his new book, River Cottage Light and Easy. Hugh last joined us in 2011 when he shared some delicious recipes from his book River Cottage Veg Everyday.

This time he's back with more recipes, all of which are dairy and wheat-free and he'll be on-hand to answer your culinary questions and offer advice and suggestions for rustling up brilliant, healthy dishes to feed and nourish your family and friends.

River Cottage Light and Easy features 170 dairy/wheat free recipes which include: savoury buckwheat galettes, wheat-free spinachy wraps, easiest ever storecupboard fishcakes, lamb and cashew curry, beetroot burgers, rhubarb, apple and ginger pie, peach and orange sorbet, chocolate and avocado mousse and life-loving brownies. Hugh says: 'Reducing your dependence on wheat and dairy turns out to be a delicious voyage of discovery. New grains, new oils, new tastes, new combinations: it all adds up to a new zest for life.'

Join Hugh on Friday at 1pm and if you're unable to make that time post a question in advance on this thread.

@LineRunner

Hello, Hugh.

What's like being a household name and getting your recipes 'out there'? And are there any downsides to having 'celebrity'?

It's great to be able to share my recipes and ideas with the rest of the world! And the best thing of all is to hear back from people who have used them and liked them. I hate the idea of my books sitting on a shelf staying clean - but if I walk into a kitchen and find a battered old copy with pages stuck together and bits falling out then I take that as the ultimate compliment! It's usually nothing but a pleasure if someone comes up to talk to me about the shows or the books. Sometimes in very busy public places it can be a little overwhelming. I don't go to festivals as much as I would like!

Hello

How wonderful that you that caters for people like my son and I. My son is allergic to dairy eggs and nuts, and I am intolerant of wheat.

Puddings are our biggest problem and other family members often request that we bring one with us at social events. We make crumbles (using oats and non dairy spread) and a fab date slice, but I would love to widen our range and very interested to hear about other interesting desserts particularly without eggs.

My son would love to find a sticky toffee pudding, for example, that he could eat.
Thanks Hugh.

@financerachel

Hi Hugh

We have a group of friends coming for lunch - half are veggie, half avid meat eaters. I'd like to cook one dish I can adapt to suit both groups - any ideas? It needs to feed 8.

Thanks

If I have vegetarian friends coming, I will always make a completely vegetarian meal. And frankly, I often do this when I've only got carnivores coming too. I think we need to rebalance our cooking so that veg is the first thing we turn to in putting a meal together. The River Cottage veg book was all about getting people to make that happen and making veg the main part of our daily cooking. Meat and fish are fabulous ingredients, but they tend to push the veg into second place. In my experience, putting a few tasty veg dishes together for a party usually has everyone ooh-ing and aah-ing about how clever you are in the kitchen to be able to make such lovely food without depending on meat. Even the most die-hard carnivores welcome the change!

fallenempires I experiment with gluten free baking and never use the proprietary brands. I 've had great success using almond butter and ground almonds for the best brownies ever!

freshorangeforDd great question, we have lots of problems with puddings. my son has never eaten a pudding in a restaurant!

we really could do with something more than crumbles!

@cm22v077

Hi Hugh, do you have plans to open anymore restaurants? A dairy and wheat-free one would be amazing!

Yes! We are opening a new restaurant in Winchester next week. At the moment, it won't be a dairy and wheat free one, but in our menu planning we are doing more and more of this kind of thing, and vegetables will be much to the fore. All my chefs have copies of the new book and are enjoying finding recipes that can give many more wheat and dairy free options on their menus.

@babybarrister

Thank you for this on behalf of the many people who are severely allergic to cows milk protein

It's a pleasure to me to put out a book that feels so inclusive. For me it's not an avoidance book, it's a book of discovering new grains and flours and alternative oils. It's made me a better cook and I hope it'll do the same for you.

@momb

I'm a Brown Owl struggling with easy meals that the girls can cook themselves (or with minimal support) on pack holiday: we have wheat allergy, dairy allergy, nut allergy, and a variety of individual intolerances to cater for. Do you have a 'go to' allergen free recipe you wheel out for large groups, and can you share it please?

Hello Brown Owl! I think I've got quite a few recipes in the new book that can help you, particularly in the veg chapter! I've mentioned a couple of them already, but big tray roasts like the ones between pages 293 -306 will serve you well! You can add in and take away things like the chorizo and the anchovies, depending on whether you're catering for vegetarians.

@Needapositivechange

Hi Hugh, I know you you love your vegs, do you also eat them in form of juices ?

My wife is a keen juicer, and now has a powerful blender which I've also been using to make nut milks and the like. For me, there's a fine line between juices and raw soups which I like to explore. In other words, I season up combinations of fruit and veg with herbs and spices to add extra depths of flavour, and there's a run of raw soups at the beginning of the soup chapter where I've had a lot of fun with this. The gooseberry guspacho on page 102 is one of my favourites, but you'll have to wait until next summer for the gooseberries. The raw carrot and bramley soup on page 97 is also a delight and the coming months will be the perfect time to make it.

Thank you. We've been on simple roast dinners and baked potatoes for a couple of years now so I'll look forward to the new ideas in your book!

@BananaHammock23

I'm really interested in going dairy-free - what can I do to make it as easy as possible, so I don't miss the things I love like cheese and chocolate?

Obviously, it's tempting to answer your question with three simple words –buy my book. But more seriously, I think it's important that you embrace the idea of discovery rather than denial. Giving up dairy means exploring other healthy fats like coconut oil and rapeseed oil, and trying a whole new raft of recipes. I suspect you'll find it refreshes and revitalises your cooking across the board, as these are, quite simply, really great ingredients.

Hi Hugh, which recipe would you recommend from the book for a busy mum cooking with kids together?

@cardamomginger

I'm cautiously optimistic that this might work for me. We're also nut-free and egg-free in our house, and in my experience the dairy-free, gluten-free options tend to feature nuts/eggs. Still yet to find a cake recipe that works for us (Doves Farm gluten free is no good - we have issues with maize flour, ditto buckwheat). Hopeful that coconut flour might come up trumps. It's a struggle to not be too healthy, despite the allergies and intolerances!!

I LOVE the Veg book, BTW! Great recipes that I come back to time and time again.

Thank you so much. I'm very proud of the veg book and the amazing reaction it's had. I think we all know in our heart of hearts that we need to get more veg into our cooking, we just need to realise how very delicious it can be.

Are there any particular vegetables that ever make you inwardly giggle while preparing them? I myself can never handle a courgette without grinning! :)

@TweeAintMee

I love squid (for breakfast, lunch, supper or whenever) and one of my favourite ways of cooking it is stuff them with a chorizo and tentacle risotto and then casserole them in a provencale sauce. Yummy, but I would love some new ideas. Have you any suggestions?

I love squid too – it really is one of my favourite seafoods and it is a pretty sustainable choice too, which is reassuring. I think you can't beat squid on a BBQ, with a bit of garlic and chilli. The smoky charcoal flavours just go brilliantly with the sweet meat of the squid. It also makes a fantastic curry and there's a Thai squid curry on page 291 of the book.

By the way, your stuffed squid sounds totally delicious – have you posted the recipe anywhere?!

Is there anything you haven't cooked that you'd like too, and is there anything that you wouldn't cook?

@BlondeDaisy

Hello.

I love watching River Cottage

There's a big blackberry bush in my garden - any suggestions on what to do with them?

Thanks.

Hi Daisy – it's great to have blackberries so close to hand. This season they seem to be very plump and juicy and mostly delicious enough to eat raw, but my guys in the kitchen at River Cottage did something so simple and delicious last week –they just crushed the juice from half a kilo of blackberries, and warmed up another half kilo in the juice with a little trickle of honey, without even boiling. So it was simply a warm compote of warm berries in juice. So easy and delicious. You could simple some of the pre-made crumble I was just talking about on them to make a great pud.

We eat a veg dinner once a week but I get alot of resistance from my 7 year old son. He is OK if it is pasta. Won't eat veg curry.

Any ideas on recipe to get children to eat more veg?

@PeoniesforMissAnnersley

Will there be a show about this new book? Would love to watch!

There's no full scale River Cottage show to go with the new book. I've taken a bit of time off this year, so I haven't had time to do that as well. But I have put together 10 recipes for our River Cottage foodtube channel, and they're coming out every Monday and Wednesday. I think there's two or three up there already and they'll keep on coming.

Thanks Hugh. Now I'll have to buy your book to read page 291! I haven't posted my recipe anywhere, but will happily send my stuffed squid recipe to you via your publisher. I had to experiment/make it up based on something I was fed in Portugal by friends there many years ago.

Thanks for not evading the rook question, I half expected you to try :)

I'm very interested in your book.

Hello Hugh,

Have you got any pointers for making spelt bread, please?

@PrincessPea23

Why do you think it's so important that we do reduce our dependence on wheat and diary?

That's a big question! And there are various ways to answer it, but I think the essence is simply to say that we shouldn't be 'dependent' too much on any single ingredients in our diets. Wheat and dairy are the products of huge scale industrial agriculture, so of course the food industry is finding endless ways of selling them back to us, in snacks, cakes and biscuits and these are, quite frankly, not among the healthiest food.

If we are cooking from scratch, we have the choice about what grains and fats we use and my feeling is that diversity is key. Why go time after time to the same ingredients, when we can embrace so many different ingredients. Diversity in diet is often a very good marker for healthy eating, and it's a good marker for sustainable agriculture too. Whether it's fish or meat, diary or wheat, hitting the same old ingredients again and again, puts a load on our bodies and a load on our planet. That's something we can make a difference to if we choose to cook, shop and eat in a diverse and different way.

@MayaSilver

I enjoyed your Fish Fight show.

I have noticed there are now messages at the end of television shows like MasterChef advising to check the sustainable fishing list. Should this kind of thing be included in all food media that mention fish?

Do you think enough is being done to maintain global fishing practices? Do more farmers and fishers need to work on their organic policies?

Thanks so much for supporting the fish fight. It's great to that more information is given on cookery shows about fish sustainability - it's long overdue. I think this information should indeed be on all food media and all food packaging. Whilst we've seen some progress in fishery's management in some parts of the world, the global picture is still a grim one. So our campaign continues and I will always be happy to get noisy on the subject!

Thanks Hugh. I will definitely have a Google for the cashew cream for the ice cream. Base