Genius healthier breads and recipes

I was recently invited by Genius to a cooking evening with Lucinda Bruce-Gardyne.

The kitchen in full swing

The purpose of the evening was to introduce their new healthier breads and an array of recipes that will soon be available on their blog.

When I arrived at L’Atelier des Chefs in the City, I was greeted by a small and lovely group of people, including Lucinda and her team and a few other bloggers.

Lucinda herself led the session, talking to us about the new range of healthier breads they have just launched. We had a chance to taste the breads at the event and to use them for our cooking session.

I eat the triple seeded loaf regularly, and I've been buying the new one since the event without noticing any difference in flavour, so I'd like to say: Thank You Genius for making my everyday multiseeded healthier!

As I still had one of the old packs around, I've compared the nutritional value of the old and new multiseeded breads by slice (36gr), here it is:

Calories: 104 in both old and new
Fat: 3.4g in the new bread (from 4.5g in the old recipe)
of which saturates: 0.3g (from 0.4g)
Carbohydrate: 15g (from 14g)
of which sugars: 1.1g (from 0.9g)
Fibre: 3.6g (from 3.8g)
Protein: 1.5g (from 2.1g)
Salt: 0.22g (from 0.37g)

As you can see from the data above, the main changes are in the amount of fat and salt.
Genius has addressed a growing concern of mine and I think many gluten-free consumers about the contents of salt, sugar and fat in many free from products.

If I think of my own gluten free journey since diagnosis, it has been full of ups and downs.
Downs when you have to wave goodbye to those foods you can no longer have, to ups when you find substitutes that fill that space, to more lows once you realise how unhealthy some of them can be, and now I can see a new high coming if other producers follow this trend.

After the presentation, we moved on to the cooking itself and I have to complement L’Atelier des Chefs for such a great venue. The space is great and it's set up for a small group, so you feel a bit  like being in the masterchef kitchen, but without Gregg and John judging!

We made some Falafel, Hummus and Tzatziki, which we later served with Genius Pitta Bread, and ended the session cooking Bread and Butter Pudding with Chocolate and Chilli, yum!

Falafel and hummus

I found the recipes very easy to follow and it was great to cook together in a small group and have fun checking out everyone’s progress.

I would love to say my dishes were good looking as well as tasty. Fortunately thanks to a total meltdown of my phone, no further photographic evidence is available ;)

I learned a lot of cooking tips from this event, and in my experience, even though there are many books and recipes out there, nothing beats having a professional chef leading a live cooking session.

For example, I have made hummus before, but I didn't realise how important the type of tahini paste used affects the final taste. Only by talking to Lucinda I learned that light tahini gives the hummus a smoother taste, as the darker varieties are made with toasted seeds and give it a much stronger flavour.

I also learned that, when making falafel, it is the final coating with polenta that gives them that nice structure and finish.
My own mix ended up a bit too moist, as I think I wasn't very precise when measuring the ingredients, and yet, they look reasonable ...

So all in all, it was a brilliant evening, I am glad I had the chance to attend, sample many of the new Genius products and learn a lot of new cooking tricks from Lucinda and her team.

To find out more about Genius:
http://www.geniusglutenfree.com/

To find out more about couses at Atelier des Chefs:
https://www.atelierdeschefs.co.uk/