Saturday, February 28, 2009

Extravagant GAPS dinners


For Valentine's Day we wanted to have a dinner that was delicious and fancy and didn't remind us that we are on a special diet. This is what we came up with:

Crab legs
Artichokes with garlic mayonnaise
halibut steaks in a lemon sauce
Peas with mint
Green Salad with Vinaigrette dressing

Artichokes are a favorite food in our family, and are something that works on the diet fairly early. My favorite way to eat crab is alongside a green salad with a tangy vinaigrette dressing. The peas were cooked according to a recipe called "Peas in the French Style" from the book The Complete Vegetarian Cuisine by Rose Elliot. Basically, the peas are cooked in butter along with shredded lettuce, with a sprig of mint on top while cooking to impart a minty flavor (the mint is removed after cooking and discarded). This was an interesting variation on peas.

Around the second or third week of the diet, fillet Mignon was on sale at the grocery store and became the central player in our first extravagant meal, which also featured french onion soup and asparagus in ghee. Our family has been following various restricted diets for over 3 years now, and we have learned that this is much easier and more pleasant to do when we periodically splurge on something special. We never eat out anymore, so this takes the place of a restaurant meal. We call them "morale boosters".

Other ideas (some we've tried and some we haven't yet):

-Scallops and chanterelles cooked in butter and dry white wine
-Langostino tails (heck, why not lobster?) with a garlic butter sauce
-Bouillabaisse (may require a little modification, but probably not much)
-Mussels in a saffron broth
-Crab Cakes (again, some modification required)
-Shrimp cooked with coconut milk, lime, and cilantro

Hmm, I guess those are all seafood. If you'd prefer something else...

-Duck A L'orange
-Coq Au Vin
-Cornish Game Hens (or squab, or quail) with prosciutto and rosemary
(the next three recipes come from The Complete Vegetarian Cuisine by Rose Elliot)
-Pine Nut Roulade with Asparagus Hollandaise Filling
-Roasted Cashew Nut Roulade with Wild Mushroom Filling
-Hazelnut Roulade with Leek Filling

Even if you don't try any of these dishes, I hope this list inspires you to think of the many wonderful foods that are allowed on the GAPS diet. If you have ideas to add please do so as a comment!

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