ABOUT
Hi and welcome to Free From Chef. This blog is about everything I love and worked for so far in my life: healthy eating without having to give up great tasting food, my passion for cooking, my experience as a Chef and my knowledge as a Chinese Medicine Practitioner. This has been a long life journey, so I hope the recipes and information you will find in this blog will inspire you and help you through your health and life journey.
MY STORY
I worked in the Catering Business for 10 years working in Restaurants as Head Chef first and then as Executive Chef for a London based brewery, managing their gastro pubs in London. Previous to that I travelled for 2 years around the world opening restaurants and training chefs for a restaurant chain in the 90s linked with Hollywood actors. Among other duties, I was designing menus and recipes so that the dishes were standardised across all the restaurants. I got to the point where I wanted to work for myself and that meant opening my own cafe or restaurant, but the cost of opening one at the time was around £1.2 million pounds. I did not want to take that gamble and therefore left the Catering business to pursue a new career.
I went back to University to study Chinese Medicine for seven years. I know it sounds crazy, how did I go from Chef to Chinese Medicine? Well the Catering business is highly stressful and at the time I was having Acupuncture to help with the stress. I got so fascinated by the whole philosophy and the remarkable effects on me that I decided I wanted to know more. In addition to that, it was a good way to start my own business with very little upfront investment, only my hands and knowledge as the asset and I have been running my own business since 2005 as a self-employed practitioner in 3 different locations around London. The whole philosophy of Chinese Medicine is based on 4 branches: Acupuncture, Chinese Herbs, Tuina Massage and Yang Sheng (nourishing life). These different branches teach each individual to balance their body, organs and acupuncture channels for optimum health. That is achieved through a healthy and balanced diet, exercise, meditation and treatments.
This has been a life changing point for me, because for the first time in my life I learned about the energy and properties of many foods and how to combine them, I learned about Acupuncture Channels, Yin and Yang, Tai Chi, Qigong and meditation. I felt empowered with my life and health, I was on the driving seat to look after myself and since then I made a conscious effort to live a healthy and balanced life not only for myself but as an example for my patients.
Cooking has always been a big passion of mine and I remember sitting in the corner of my mum’s or grandma’s kitchen in Italy, with all my sisters, watching and learning how they cooked. The smells and tastes have stayed with me till this day and I always knew how powerful and beautiful home cooking is. So in 2014 I decided to go back to my culinary roots and fulfill my dream of becoming a Patisserie Chef. There is something quite magical about patisserie: 4 ingredients of flour, butter, egg and sugar that combined in different ways can create many beautiful and different dishes. In the middle of my Patisserie Course and my apprenticeship in one of the best Patisserie in London, I discovered that I was gluten intolerant and shortly after I was told by my Nutritionist that I had to cut down sugar to heal my leaky guts, which were causing all my health problems at the time. How ironic!! I now had to cut 2 of the 4 fundamental ingredients for Patisserie. But instead of giving it all up I decided that I would adapt to the new circumstances. As a matter of fact, it was the perfect thing that happened to me, because it forced me to look at the healthy approach to Patisserie (sugar free, dairy free and gluten free) that was more in line with my health beliefs.
In all honesty, Patisserie is in stark contrast with all the dietary advice I give to my patients, so I needed to find a way to combine my knowledge of healthy food with my Patisserie passion. At the same time, being on the patient side of the fence, I also realised how difficult it is to give up sugar and gluten completely. Through Professional Development courses and research about topics for my patients, I learned how harmful sugar is for the body and how often people have gluten, sugar and dairy intolerances as they seem to be quite big inflammatories for the guts. So I decided to leave my apprenticeship and look for a Gluten Free Bakery to learn this completely different way of making cakes and bread. I spent one year working two evenings per week in a Gluten Free Bakery, while still running my 3 clinics, to learn and perfect the gluten free bakery skills.
MY FOOD PHILOSOPHY
All the recipes in this blog are based on what I can and want to eat: I follow mainly a low carb diet because my body does very well with it and I still eat sometimes sugar free, gluten free cakes that I make myself. I try to eat organic, happy raised animal products.
I have been gluten free since 2012 and sugar free since 2013 and I now know what my body can tolerate. For example, when I started I was strictly gluten free, but now I can eat a croissant at my favourite patisserie once a month and I can get away with it. If for health reasons, you have decided to go gluten free, sugar free and/or dairy free, I would suggest that you consult a nutritionist and also to start a very strict gluten free/ sugar free and/or dairy free diet, because the body needs time to get rid of inflammation and heal the gut lining.
All the recipes in this blog are gluten free, refined sugar free and mostly nut free, but some of them will still have dairy and some types of nuts like almonds and coconut that I am able to eat occasionally. The recipes also gives you their nutritional information.
This blog was created for two reasons: firstly bacause it is difficult to find gluten free, sugar free and dairy free recipes of everyday cakes that I would like to eat in the shops; secondly because I often advice my clients to go gluten free, sugar free and/or dairy free depending on what they suffer from and it is easier for me to direct them to the blog instead of keep on emailing recipes. So I thought I will “kill two birds with one stone” and help all the people out there that, like me and my clients, cannot eat certain foods like sugar, gluten, dairy or nuts, but still like a good meal and a nice cake. All the recipes in here are tried and tested in an everyday kitchen, so if I can make them you can make them. Enjoy this blog and if it helps you, subscribe to the mailing list to get the new recipes and leave your comments to let me know how the recipes worked for you.