Who’s Alma Rota?

Today we get to know Alma Rota a bit better. Alma Rota is the author of the book “Vivre sans gluten pour les nuls” (adaptation of “Gluten free for dummies”). Most of the gluten free recipes in the book are Alma’s own, others are coming from well-known chefs and bloggers. The book is out on Sept 3^rd . You can also buy it on line on Amazon and Fnac.

Chiara: Why gluten free?

Alma: I was diagnosed with celiac disease four years ago. At the time, my doctor told me that pizza and pasta were over for me. I have Italian origins and in my family we used to eat both pizza and pasta quite often and enjoy them very much. I basically refused to give up on the food that I loved. To achieve this, I completely changed my way of eating: I didn’t simply substitute gluten foods with similar gluten free ones (sometimes stuffed with too much fat and sugar) but I started to learn how to nourish myself and cook differently. Today my diet is gluten free with a moderate paleo approach. I don’t eat cow milk as I found it difficult to digest and only few cereals are included in my meals. I try to vary what I eat as much as I can, one day I will have quinoa, another day millet and so on. As soon as I started to eat gluten free, my health has completely improved and I feel much better now.

Chiara: What is “Vivre sans gluten pour les nuls”?

Alma: When people start cooking gluten free, they often feel “nuls” as we say in French. You don’t know anything about it, you need to start all over, learn to cook gluten free from scratch and sometimes you feel frustrated and incapable of preparing a good gluten free meal. With this book and the recipes I created, I wanted to show that cooking gluten free can be simple. While I was writing it, I thought of dynamic people who work all day and have little time left for cooking. I also wanted to show that you don’t need to go bankrupt to eat gluten free foods. There are ingredients that can be easily found at the supermarket around the corner and that are not that much expensive.

Chiara: What is the gluten free food that you loved the most?

Alma: The chocolate éclair at Helmut Newcake pastry shop in Paris. When this pastry shop opened a few years ago, it was the first one to propose cakes and tarts that were 100% gluten free. I was so happy to discover it and the éclair was so good that I felt like crying of joy.

Chiara: Gluten free is …

Alma: Become conscious of the food that I eat. It means also freedom to me, as I understood that we are in control of our own life and that we can choose the food we eat, cook it the way we want for our highest good and pleasure. If there were one cause to support today, for me it would be have kids learn about nutrition at school. We need to teach younger generations the importance of food and how to nourish ourselves properly. I am convinced that if we achieve to do that, there would be fewer diseases that are often linked to bad nutritional habits.