Gluten, Wheat, & Dairy Free Cookbook Review

Kayleigh here. Continuing our foray into gluten free cookbooks, we were recently given the chance to borrow gluten, wheat, & dairy free, a cookbook compiled under the group name Love Food. As the name suggests, this cookbook covers everything from breakfast to dessert with an enormous variety of cuisines and flavor profiles to choose from. Being the adventurous foodies we are, nearly every recipe in this book sounded tempting just from the ingredient list, but the food photography really hit it home, displaying a mouthwatering close-up of each and every dish in the book. If you are not hungry when you start flipping through the pages, this will quickly change.

As opposed to many of the cookbooks we have reviewed here in the past, this one is unashamed to ask for ingredients like all-purpose gluten free flour and dairy-free cream cheese in its allergen-free pages. If you are like us and don’t really keep a bread or AP flour substitute on hand, just use a blend you have had success with in the past. But if you have found a tried and true store-bought mix, or are making one of the many flourless entrees in the book, then no substitutions are necessary!

Going for the most unusual entry of the cookbook, we made the Golden Pilaf. Hearty buckwheat makes for the bulk of it, but it is the orange juice-soaked onions, nutty pine nuts, and plumply sweet raisins that drive the flavor. We made a double batch of it on the weekend, and found it lost none of the delightful taste and texture as microwaved leftovers even a week later. Try serving it with a fried egg on top, and mix the liquid yolk into the dish- it adds an amazing richness!

Another dish we made with delicious success was the Shrimp Noodles- a wonderful coconut/peanut butter curry with bright bell peppers, crisp bok choy, and sweet shrimp standing in colorful contrast to the rich golden sauce. I love how this dish calls for rice noodles instead of plain white rice, since it just seems to compliment the noodle-like strips of vegetables much better.

Jason here. This cook book has a lot of cool recipes in it. As silly as it seems, I like cook books that are heavy on pictures. My own method of finding meals revolves less around thinking up a food type or item, and finding a recipe similar to it in a cook book, and more of flip through the pictures until something strikes my fancy. Like Kayleigh mentioned, every recipe in the book has a full page picture of the finished product. 

This leads me into my next compliment to this book. It is simply well presented. I’ve looked through other cookbooks which try to cram in as many recipes as possible, and read more like a newspaper. Gluten, Wheat, & Dairy Free however has a super crisp presentation. Every recipe is presented on the left page in a large easy to read font. This makes it great for quick glances when you’re in the middle of cooking. As I mentioned above, the right page is entirely taken up with a single close up picture of the finished product. It’s just very aesthetically pleasing to read cook book.

It’s a mixed bag for me that it is also a dairy free cook book. On one hand it is super handy to have around when we have a lactose and tolerant friend over. While it is not explicitly a vegan cookbook, the dairy free part lends itself to have a quite a few vegan recipes as well. On the other hand, I am not lactose intolerant, so milk substitutions often seem unnecessary. Either way, the recipes are delicious so I would say it a great edition to anyone’s cookbook collection.

The Golden Pilaf was particularly good. I don’t often find earthy, nutty recipes. The sweet raisins and pine nuts really worked together to just give it this unique earthy, yet fruity taste. The downside to this recipe is that we found out pine nuts are pretty expensive in our area. My favorite benefit to this meal, was how easy it is to whip a large batch, and then package it up for leftovers.

If you’re looking for a colorful cookbook, with a unique combination of dairy and gluten free I would say look no further. This book would make a great edition to any collection, but might not make the best starter recipe book, as it is not as packed full as other books. I sort of saw this as a benefit, but it’s worth mentioning.