Allergy-Free Cookbook [Paperback]

Alice Sherwood (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 3, 2009

Discovering one of her sons had a life-threatening allergy to nuts and eggs catapulted Alice Sherwood into the bewildering world of "food allergies." How can you make a birthday cake without flour? What happens to family meals when packaged foods, which may contain traces of nuts, along with pasta, bread, and peanut butter become forbidden? Suddenly it became crucial to find alternatives, but most "cooking without" recipes lacked taste or contained unfamiliar ingredients that were hard to find. So Alice, armed with a lifelong love of food, got to work in the kitchen and devised her own recipes.

The Allergy-Free Cookbook is unique. There are no dismal, "special diet" versions of recipes, which don't work. Instead there are dishes from around the world that center on ingredients other than eggs, dairy, gluten, and nuts. Throughout, Alice gives several variations for each recipe. So a nut-free cake that uses butter, for example, may be adapted for the dairy-free crowd by using soy spread.

The Allergy-Free Cookbook has more than 100 recipes for meals, snacks, and lunchboxes as well as for suppers and birthday parties. All the crowd-pleasing favorites are here. By experimenting with polenta and potato flour, for example, Alice has invented a gluten-free crunchy shortcrust pastry that's superb in apple tarts, while rice, potato, and tapioca flours combine to form a dough that works a treat for French bread. With the Allergy-Free Cookbook, everyone's invited to dinner!

Editorial Reviews

Review

Delicious but simple mix-and-match recipes Mail on Sunday --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Alice Sherwood is a writer and multimedia producer whose son has serious allergies to nuts and eggs. She lives in London and spends vacations on the family farm in Wales where she is inspired by the delicious local produce to spend hours in the kitchen.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: DK ADULT (August 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0756654408
• ISBN-13: 978-0756654405
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 7 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #253,796 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Allergy free = unusable recipes, July 24, 2008

By 

lynn del sol "lynn_del_sol" (Tucson, AZ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Allergy-Free Cookbook (Hardcover)

My son has been on an elimination diet (no wheat, soy, dairy, eggs, corn, nuts, peanuts, fish) for nearly a year, so I was naturally attracted to a cookbook promising to avoid nearly all of those ingredients in its recipes.

Like many such cookbooks, the "claim" on the cover is false. Most recipes eliminate only one or at most two of the allergens listed on the cover, and nearly all are built around plain everyday ingredients like milk, wheat, and eggs.

Each recipe contains a sidebar with suggestings for eliminating other ingredients. A baking recipe calling for milk and eggs, for example, has a sidebar saying to avoid eggs by using commercial egg replacer, to replace milk with a non-dairy substitute, etc.

Well...yes. I can do that, but in the end I'm left with the same not so great plate of cake or cookies that I would have gotten making these substitutions in a regular recipe.

Despite the fact I've turned to this cookbook again and again (I've had it quite a long time), I have not found any recipe that comes out well when *all* of the allergens listed on the cover are eliminated.

It's probably fine if you have to avoid just one or two ingredients. But then, most allergic people know how to make those substitutions, already.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best in it's Category, January 20, 2008

By 

Mystic Maiden "Laurieann" (United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Allergy-Free Cookbook (Hardcover)

This is the best book I came across on this subject. I have a child on the spectrum and he is on the Gluten,Casein and Dairy Free Diet.Recipes for this type of diet can be extremely hard to master and the end result is tasteless. Not anymore, Alice Sherwood has given us a book with recipes that work and the end result looks and taste delicious like any other type of foods.The blueberry muffins is one example. The recipes are easy to follow.The book is filled with beautiful pictures and has tons of information from shopping to traveling and dining out.A must have for anyone who has food allergy.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not what it appears, June 20, 2008

By 

vanilla - See all my reviews

This review is from: Allergy-Free Cookbook (Hardcover)

I echo the review about many of the recipes not really being GF, DF etc. as the book says and the optional way to make each recipe isn't simple for most of the recipes. The way it's set up is confusing and many of the ingredients are expensive and unusual. This is not a book for someone who wants to find allergy-free, easier food to make, especially if they're looking to save time. It's more like a gourmet allergy-free cookbook for people that want to spend their whole day in the kitchen and have plenty of money to spend and time to read directions. And although she calls them "family" recipes, a lot of the recipes are not very kid-friendly.