THE BEST GLUTEN-FREE, WHEAT-FREE AND DAIRY-FREE RECIPES - by Grace Cheetham

Grace Cheetham, a life long allergy sufferer, has commissioned and edited cookery books for many years - and now she puts her combined experience of cookery writing and cooking for allergies to good use in an excellent, comprehensive free-from cook book.
A wide range of interesting, but easy to follow, recipes covering everything from breakfast smoothies to green curry, gnocchi and raspberry soufflés are made even more tempting by some luscious photographs from William Lingwood. The book also includes a short introduction with some very useful basic breads, sauces, stocks and seasonings.
An excellent Christmas present for anyone just starting out on free-from cookery - or for anyone needing a few ideas to spice up their jaded free-from cookery palette!
Anyone seeking further inspiration should check Grace’s website at www.allergyfreecook.com.

The Best Gluten-free, wheat-free and dairy-free recipes by Grace Cheetham is published by Duncan Baird Publishers @ £14.99

LOW TO NO ADDITIVES by Olivia Dyer & Bridy Fulvio

This is an Australian cookbook by two mums: Olivia, whose son, Noah, had been tentatively diagnosed as autistic until she cut all additives from his diet, and Bridy whose son, Lachlan, had a number of behavioural problems caused by food intolerances.
To quote their website:
'Over 120 Low To No Additive Family Favourite Recipes, including Sticky Date Pudding, Mild Chicken Curry and Chocolate Mousse. More than just a cookbook! A resource for keeping your loved ones safe from potentially harmful additives in our food. Included in this edition, is an easy to use shopping list, an alphabetical and numeric guide to food additives, with an effects list.'

Buy direct from: www.lowtonoadditives.com

HOW TO COOK FOR FOOD ALLERGIES by Lucinda Bruce-Gardyne

Lucinda Bruce-Gardyne has three boys who, between them, cannot eat dairy, eggs, gluten or potatoes. Fortunately for them, she is a chef - and she has now combined her professional and personal experience to produce a comprehensive guide to cooking for for those with multiple allergies.

Chapters 1-3 give general advice about living with allergies, including a useful section on what nutrients you may be missing if avoiding certain food groups. Chapters 4-8 look at substitutes and give comprehensive suggestions for alternatives for every food you can think of!
The rest of the book is given over to an interesting collection of recipes from the basics (white sauce) to the exotic (Lebanese chicken kebabs). Lots of helpful cooking hints for allergy sufferers plus alternatives for almost any restriction are flagged up and suggested in the ingredients lists.

How to Cook for Food Allergies (ISBN 978-1-9057-4404-6) is published by Rodale at £16.99
Buy here

SHARING SWEET SECRETS GLUTEN AND WHEAT FREE
by Pamela Moriarty

Pamela Moriarty, as a coeliac of 20 years standing, a caterer and a restaurateur, is in an ideal position to devise gluten-free desserts - and has done so with great panache!
Sharing Sweet Secrets includes small treats (such as amaretti biscuits or muffins), cakes, tarts, crepes, crumbles, custards, fruit and meringue desserts, mousses and jellies, puddings and tarts - such as the delicious pear and almond tart illustrated below.
The recipes are simple to follow, some with ‘do-ahead’ elements so that the final assembly can be quick and easy, while the photographs by Jacqui Way are, as you can see, totally mouth watering. How wonderful to have another free-from book with really luscious and exotic photographs!
Although the book is Australian most ingredients will be easy to find. In fact Pamela Moriarty uses quite a lot of self-raising gluten-free flour so the new Doves Farm flour - see previous page - will come in very useful. And do not be alarmed by the measurements - mainly in cup sizes. There is a conversion chart at the back of the book.

Sharing Sweet Secrets Gluten and Wheat Free by Pamela Moriarty is published by Murdoch Books at £12.99

ALLERGY-FREE COOKBOOK
by Alice Sherwood

Alice Sherwood loves to eat good food so when her son, Archie, was diagnosed as egg and nut allergic, she took it as a challenge to produce food for him that everyone would want to eat - not that he had to eat!
And she has certainly succeeded. Delicious recipes include the fun but exotic, the homely and the classics plus breads, luscious desserts and children’s party treats. For each she gives gluten, egg, dairy and nut free options so you can adapt the recipe to suit your diet as well as watch out for warnings about confusing ingredients. Do not, for example, swop wine vinegar for grain based or malt vinegar as the latter will be no good for those on gluten-free diets.
The other lovely thing about the book is that it has lots of great pictures of really mouth-watering dishes. No longer does ‘free-from’ mean free-from taste or good looks. Alice’s recipes can hold their own with the best.

The Allergy-free Cookbook costs £14.99 and is published by Dorling Kindersley.

Buy here

BREAD MATTERS - the state of modern bread and a definitive guide to baking your own by Andrew Whitley

Andrew Whitley's passion for bread had its genesis in a student trip to Russia in the late 60s with five friends. Due to a misunderstanding about the exchange rate, the six had to live on rations for three - which did not stretch much beyond dark Russian sourdough rye bread. After the initial revulsion, Andrew, at least, was converted - not just to Russian rye, but to bread as the staff of life. After a spell as a producer in the BBC Russian Service, he hied to a Cumbrian smallholding where he could grow his own food and bake his own bread.

In 1976 he started the Village Bakery, baking wholemeal bread with locally stone- ground flour at a time when industrially made white breads were still regarded as perfectly nutritionally adequate by both the medical and the scientific authorities.

As the Village Bakery began to gain recognition as a ‘craft’ bakery in the late 1980s an awareness of food allergy/intolerance was also emerging. In his search for interesting breads and techniques, Andrew experimented with unusual flours, many either wheat or gluten-free. Soon he was receiving enquiries from wheat and gluten allergics seeking an alternative to brick hard, grey prescription loaves.

Not one to turn down a baking challenge, Andrew embarked on an in-depth investigation of baking without gluten, wheat or baker’s yeast. By the late 90s the Village Bakery was almost as well known for its gluten, wheat and yeast-free breads as for its original craft-baked loaves. Indeed, when he finally decided to sell the bakery in 2002 it was to a local company, Bells of Lazonby, who not only wanted to continue with the Village Bakery ‘special diet’ range, but to build a dedicated gluten-free facility to launch a second GF/WF range, OK Foods.

Bread Matters, has, as Andrew says in his introduction, been fermenting for the 30 years that he has been making bread - and pondering on why it is that people have often chosen, or been forced to eat, bread that is not very good for them.

Why and how this can be he investigates at some length for us elsewhere - click here to read more.

However the bulk of the book is about baking itself. The tools that you need, the flours, the raising agents, mixing, kneading, proving and baking. Detailed instructions are followed by detailed recipes for everything from his beloved Russian rye to ciabattas and croissants.

His descriptions of how to set about it will enthuse even the most heavy handed - and even if you cannot bring yourself to actually get baking, just reading about it is rivetting.

Although much of the book is devoted to mainstream breads, there is a lengthy chapter at the end on gluten-free baking - a whole art in itself. Andrew’s rules and the pizza base recipe opposite give an excellent flavour of his lateral approach and his excellent techniques.

Published by Fourth Estate- ISBN 0 00 720374 8
Recommended retail price: £20

Buy this Book !

COOKING WITHOUT MADE EASY by Barbara Cousins

Barbara Cousins is well known to those with multiple intolerances because of her excellent earlier books, Cooking Without and Vegetarian Cooking Without, both featuring dairy, gluten, sugar and yeast-free recipes.
As she says in the introduction, this third book summarises her own life experience and what she has learnt in 18 years as a nutritional therapist. This includes the crucial importance of detoxification to nutritional therapy - and the need to be kind to oneself by cooking dishes that are uncomplicated as well as healthy!
However, uncomplicated does not mean un-tasty and, as usual, her recipes are delicious: Tomato, Lentil & Mint Soup; Potato, Chickpea & Tortilla Salad with Satay Sauce; Seedy Asparagus, Pea & Pinenut Risotto; Banana & Cinnamon Blinis; Coconut & Cardomom Rice with Mango Sauce and many more.

Published by Thorsons @ £10.99 - ISBN-13: 978-0007198764

Buy this Book !

TONY'S LACTOSE FREE COOKBOOK by Prof. Anthony Campbell and Dr. Stephanie Matthews

This book explains what lactose intolerance is and how to enjoy life without lactose. It exposes the scandal of 'hidden' lactose in foods and drinks, not adequately labeled. There are over 100 mouth watering recipes including nibbles, entrees, fish, meat and vegetable dishes, and desserts. The book ends with the science of lactose intolerance and how it explains the illness that afflicted Charles Darwin for 40 years. There is a list of useful web sites and a comprehensive index.

Published by Welston Press Ltd - ISBN-13: 978-0954086619
Recommended Retail Price: £14.99

Buy this Book !

THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO GLUTEN-FREE AND DAIRY-FREE COOKING by Glenis Lucas

This guide is a personal collection of recipes by an enthusiastic cook, who, finding that both the gluten and dairy products in conventional food and recipes caused her health problems decided to experiment with excluding them both.
The result is an eclectic and interesting collection of recipes which range from Sprouted Seed Salads with Avocado and Mango to Chicken Broth with Leeks, Lemon Grass and Tarragon or Nettle, Leek and Potato Soup.
Desserts and baked goodies include Coconut Marzipan Macaroons, Date Crumblies and Summer Fruits Compote with Vanilla Brandy.
The recipes use wholefoods and a good selection of alternative flours and grains. They are easy to follow and give useful suggestions about preparation time, nutritional values etc. There is also a short introduction covering allergy versus intolerance, foods and drinks to avoid and ‘safe’ alternatives, and guides to healthy eating and gluten-free baking.There is also a resource section at the back of the book.

Published by Duncan Baird Publishers - ISBN-13: 978-1842931448
Recommended Retail Price: £9.99

Buy this Book !

COOKING WITHOUT & VEGETARIAN COOKING WITHOUT by Barbara Cousins

An excellent cook book by nutritional therapist Barbara Cousins who manages to exclude gluten, sugar, dairy products, yeast, salt and saturated fat from around 200 recipes and recipe ideas. 40 pages of introduction outline her views on toxicity overload and how to combat it by changing your diet and lifestyle. There is also a useful section on cooking ingredients and methods with relevance to potentially allergenic foods.

Vegetarian Cooking Without merely extends the above into vegetarian recipes.

Published by Thorsons - ISBN 0722540221 and ISBN 0-7225-3897-9
Recommended Retail Price: £6.99 and £9.99

Buy COOKING WITHOUT !
Buy VEGETARIAN COOKING !

THE EVERYDAY WHEAT-FREE & GLUTEN-FREE COOKBOOK by Michelle Berriedale-Johnson

Two hundred delicious gluten & wheat free recipes for everything from Polenta with Gorgonzola to wheat & gluten free sponge cake. Plus an extensive introduction & resource list - by the editor of Foods Matter, Michelle Berriedale-Johnson

Published by Grub Street - ISBN 1-898697 - 90 – 6
Recommended Retail Price: £10.99

Buy this Book !

Also see -
GLUTEN & DAIRY FREE COOKBOOK - Compiled by Marilyn le Breton for Allergy Induced Autism – in Autism Section
A USER GUIDE TO THE GF/CF DIET by Luke Jackson – In Autism Section