COme Dine with me help

Guill

My Family and I are doing come dine with me for the second year running.

Last year the menu selection was fairly easy but since then my father has been diagnosed with Diabetes and is on a diabetic diet. This is making it very hard for us to select a menu. We have picked our mains which is Fish and Chips, it sounds basic but thrice cooked chips with three types of fish and pea purée.

I am finding it difficult to select a starter and more so a dessert, I want the whole thing to be suitable for a diabetic as I want everyone to have the same.

So has anyone any good tasty suggestions?

homemadecider

Scallops and chorizo/ black pudding for starter. Or lovely big fat prawns pan fried in butter and garlic.

Homemade profiteroles with fresh cream and berries for after. There's no sugar in the choux pastry. You could add some very dark chocolate if that was allowed.

The Hill Billy

The folks in Nutrition & Diet may be able to advise you on dishes suitable for a diabetic.

PM me or any of the mods if you wish this thread moved over there.

tHB

Zaph

I'm diabetic and while it can be difficult to find desserts, it's not impossible. For the most part you have to compromise a little and accept that there will be carbs in some form or other in pretty much all desserts. At the same time it's also important not to make life a complete misery by eliminating the odd treat.

Profiteroles have been suggested, and they're a good bet. Obviously there are carbs in flour, but the amount of pastry you eat in profiteroles is quite small compared to other desserts containing pastry. If you're using chocolate use 70%, it's got less sugar but isn't so bitter that it's inedible.

You could go for a cheesecake, using granulated sweetener such as Splenda instead of sugar in the topping. There are a good few decent quality sugar free biscuits available for the base (Gullon fibre biscuits could work well, you'll generally find them near the gluten free section in the supermarket). Other alternatives would be Nairns oatcakes (the ginger ones are low GI and the chocolate ones are medium GI).

Another option is flourless chocolate cake, which obviously has none of the carbs a normal cake would have from the flour, although the recipe I use has a small amount of sugar in it. If you make it with 70% chocolate it's quite rich so you wouldn't eat much anyway, and a little whipped cream on the side cuts the richness a bit.

Hope that helps a bit.

Guill

Baked apples sound ok to anyone? We are thinking scoop out the apple core, add some raisins and fruits, drop of brandy and bake till golden, bit of cream on the side too...

homemadecider

Are raisins not really high in sugar?

Neyite

A simple but gorgeous starter is asparagus wrapped in parma ham, with just a brush of extra virgin olive oil on the plate.

Guill

homemadecider wrote: »

Are raisins not really high in sugar?

Dunno....


Edit: you're right, will have to keep looking!

Toto Wolfcastle

The drying process concentrates the sugar in the fruit but in the grand scheme of things, given that there's sugar in apple and whatever other fruit you use, a few raisins probably aren't going to be an issue. It really depends on how strict a diabetic diet the person is on. No dessert is going to be completely sugar/carb free.

My husband is diabetic and he makes apple strudel when he wants dessert. Apples stewed a bit so that the pieces retain their shape and some of their texture mixed with cinnamon and some sweetener and wrapped in filo pastry.

pwurple

My mother in law is diabetic, we usually do a cheesecake or a dark chocolate mousse. I've done a pavlova with sugar-replacement as well. I didn't like it, but she loved it.

Starters should be straightforward enough. An italian platter of meats, olives and cheeses. Most soups would be fine. Any seafood would be fine.