Review: The 100 Best Gluten-Free Recipes for Your Vegan Kitchen

Despite the limited audience the title might imply, The 100 Best Gluten-Free Recipes for Your Vegan Kitchen is far more than just another cookbook. Combining two powerful buzzwords—gluten-free and vegan—this softcover book is positively filled with a balance of both cooked and raw recipes that make use of whole foods and alternative ingredients to give a rounded approach in the kitchen.

Author, chef and TV host Kelly Keough has dedicated herself to educating people about sugar-free, gluten-free alternatives and superfoods and to showing families how easy it is to be healthy. Her philosophy is to love food and love what you eat, which is possible to achieve when you have a balanced, healthy lifestyle that incorporates great vegan, gluten-free and sugar-friendly recipes, shopping for the best local, whole foods, and setting aside time to cook—and that’s what this cookbook is all about.

One thing that sticks out most about this book is its variety. It covers all the standards like breakfast, entrees, soups, veggies, desserts and drinks. Yet some of the recipes make use of French techniques to transform classic favourites into healthful dishes like cashew alfredo sauce, gourmet garden burgers and sweet truth pizza, while others follow raw food methods of soaking, sprouting and dehydrating and often call for superfoods like goji berries, coconut aminos and sea vegetables, like Kelly’s kelp noodle salad, racy ricotta and raw vegan tiramisu cookies.

After spending a few weeks playing with some of the simpler recipes in Kelly’s book, I realized I must be on a goji berry kick. Let me tempt you with a few of the recipes this book has to offer:

The goji berry and pumpkinseed granola, a nutrient-dense cereal made with quinoa and buckwheat groats, and the chicken of the sea mock tuna fish, made with the other white meat (almonds), are just two of the many raw snack options in this book.

What’s not to love about a savoury peanut sauce massaged into fresh kale? The raw kale with peanut sauce and goji berries is a quick and easy way to prepare your favourite dark leafy greens.

The goji berry truffles, made with tahini, carob and cacao, are a simple treat you can whip together in mere minutes. The chunky peanut butter cookies were my first taste experience with erythritol, a zero-calorie, zero-glycemic sweetener, which seemed to be the contributing factor to the unusual, soft texture that resulted. (If you’ve used erythritol before, I’d like to hear your thoughts.)

The next chapter I will be diving into involves juicing greens and fruit to make detoxifying, alcohol-free cocktails like pina nada colada, fruity tooty sangria and green apple martini. Please send me a note if you’d like to join me for a cocktail party.

To learn more about Kelly and to try some of her healthy recipes, visit her blog.