Customer Reviews

Healthy Gluten-Free Cooking: 150 Recipes for Food Lovers

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I LOVE this book. I haven't found a recipe I didn't like and it's very nice to be able to make some old favorites from my childhood gluten free. The victoria sponge was especially good, probably because I miss being able to buy these in every supermarket :)

I sympathise with the reviewers who couldn't make recipes work. IMPORTANT: THIS BOOK IS WRITTEN BY IRISH AUTHORS USING BRITISH/IRISH MEASURES.

As an expat Brit living in America for the last 12 years, the difference in sizes between American and UK/Irish measures has made MANY a nice recipe utterly bin-able. An English tablespoon is larger than an American tablespoon, for example, so the sweet pastry recipie will not hold together with only 2 American tablespoons of water, but it will if they're British. I actually keep a set of my old UK measures around, but for those without that luxury, here's some info - and it's worth Googling any questions, especially for baking where getting the chemistry right is a delicate balance.

1 pint US = 16.6 fl oz, BUT 1 pint UK is 20floz
To convert US pints to British pints - multiply by 0.83
1 cup is 1/2 a pint in both countries (so same conversion)
To convert US fluid ounces to British fluid ounces - multiply by 1.04 (such a small difference I don't bother unless it's a really large batch)
1 US tablespoon = 15ml, a UK tablespoon is 18ml (stores now sell 15ml tablespoons, but my old 18ml tablespoon works for recipes better. So again multiply the UK tablespoons by 0.83 to get to American)
1 UK teaspoon = 5ml
i.e 3 UK teaspoons to 1 UK tablespoon
British cookbooks usually measure dry ingredients by oz, and 1oz is 28 grams.
American to Brit oz is near enough the same as makes no difference.

Hope that helps.

This cookbook is worth it's weight in gold if you like to cook with healthy, fresh, real food and want to make it gluten-free. The recipes are creative, gourmet but not too complicated or fattening, and really delicious. I would recommend this simply for the desserts, especially the sweet pie pastry which is truly excellent. Beautiful photos, too. Many of the gluten-free cookbooks out there include recipes that are bland, or try to recreate uninspired dishes from the 1960s, or try to recreate processed foods that are wretched with gluten let alone without it. This is the first gluten-free cookbook I've seen that reflects the food trends of today: healthy, fresh, local, organic. This gets used over and over again at our house.

Finally, a Gluten-Free Cookbook that is beautiful as well as helpful. These aren't recipes that look good considering that they're gluten-free, these are recipes that just look good. Highly recommended.

What a beautiful book to receive as a gift! BUT.......who
proofed the final print? Just tried my first recipe for
TEMPURA BATTER p.62 - Followed it closely but found that
3 cups of ice water is way too much water for 4 Tablespoons of
rice flour and 1 egg white. Maybe I should throw the book out
with this bad batch of batter.

Absolutely worthless. I've tried several recipes in this book and they are so confusing. The ingredients will be measured in cups, but the directions will say pints. So which is it? Cups or Pints? The dry ingredients are measured in cups and in parenthesis it will be ounces, but the ounces aren't the equivalent of the cups. I really wish they would have made up their minds before putting this book together.