The main thing I love about this amazing book is the focus it places on fresh ingredients. Part of the joy of cooking is seeing it evolve from the ingredient to the meal and working with your ingredients rather than pouring them out of a can. This method of cooking is immensely more satisfying even if you just throw everything in the crock pot to come home to a great smelling house later.
The book has each recipe marked as lacto-ovo, vegan or something similar to help you find a recipe that's right for the foods you can tolerate. This would be great for a family with just one gluten and casein free member so you can adjust the ingredients to your needs. That's the way we end up working things out! Hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

Many of these recipes contain dairy and eggs, so be warned. But still - the ones that don't contain dairy and eggs look very good. If you are a gluten-free vegetarian, this would be ideal. Unfortunately for this book review, I am a Gluten-Free Vegan.

The reason I gave 3 stars is there are no pictures. Only the picture on the front cover. The recipes are listed as vegan under the title of the recipe.

This was purchased as a gift for a friend with a wheat allergy. She loves it and has already made and enjoyed several recipes.

This book opens with a clear, concise explanation in layman's terms of gluten intolerance and celiac disease and anticipates your next question by providing reference lists of foods that contain gluten followed by possible substitutes. Particularly handy for shoppers is the "labeling terms" list; a useful tool that identifies other terms in an ingredient list that translate to gluten content. As for the recipes themselves, you'll find a decent variety including Tex-Mex, Asian, Mediterranean and even a few East Indian dishes, in appetizers, entrees and desserts. The recipes are clearly written, simple to follow and the results are tasty. I particularly appreciate the bread section. In a home where sandwiches were popular and baguettes were expected to accompany salads and soups, a good tasting bread that does not come crumbling from a frozen food section is important. Keep an eye out too, for the "Cook's Tip" notations - they provide useful info that applies beyond a specific recipe. One final note - while this is a great book for the gluten-challenged vegetarian, if you also have egg, nut or lactose allergies, there are other books that use less of those ingredients and so require less adaptation to the recipes.

This is an amazing cookbook...I have never eaten this well and enjoyed it so much...I now cook and extras are frozen so I can share them with others. The dishes are so enjoyable they are my mainstay now. I own a verity of cookbooks and this is clearly the best. Sorry I am so efusive but you can't miss this one.

This book is so wonderful, I gave away mine and had to buy another one. It has great ideas. It is for everyone who needs a gluten free diet and other who just want something different!!

It is hard to cook for a child that has a gluten/dairy and meat free diet but this book gave me some ideas. Although some of the recipes call for dairy, I substitute dairy free items. I would recommend this book to anyone on this special diet.

I have only recently discovered Donna Klein's books, and was very excited when I found that after writing Vegan Italiano and Mediterranean Vegan cookbooks that she wrote a book called "The Gluten-Free Vegetarian Kitchen." After browsing my new copy of this book, I was pleased, but found that my expectations or hopes for what this book could be had not entirely been met. First, the good stuff. Donna Klein's recipes are simple, but seem flavorful. They call for seasonal, fresh, delicious ingredients that are readily available to almost anyone and will not break the bank. Donna Klein cooks the way many of us who are gluten free and vegetarian live, which is refreshing, and I would say of all the gluten free cookbooks in print today, she has the best collection of savory recipes that actually sound both tasty and delicious. Most gluten free cookbooks have a wide and sophisticated range of gluten free baked goods and then considerably more basic meal type recipes. I've long been impressed with Bette Hagman's innovative use of various gluten free flours to create the absolute best gluten free bread textures and flavors, but am not so impressed with her savory dishes, which are often basic and not very appetizing. In contrast, Donna Klein really does have an excellent collection of (naturally) gluten free main dishes, but her selection of bread and pizza recipes, as well as sweets, is surprisingly limited. I was also disappointed by her rather elementary usage of gluten free flours- many recipes simply rely on rice flour, while others incorporate potato starch or tapioca starch- but gluten free cookbook authors like Bette Hagman and Carol Fenster have moved on from these somewhat nutritionally deficient flours to experiment with sorghum, bean flours, montina flours, and all kinds of nutritious flours. I would expect a nutritious gluten free vegetarian cookbook to be up on all the latest and healthiest flours. Many of Donna's recipes contain the caveat: best slightly warm, or must be served immediately, because they are made from the rice flours which dry out more quickly than the newer flour blends. While some may appreciate the simple ingredients, there are far better flour alternatives out there which are only barely touched on in this book. (The exception is one chickpea flour bread.) This cookbook clearly reflects Donna Klein's rich expertise in Mediterranean food, with some forays into other international cuisines familiar to most Americans today. It does not comprehensively cover gluten free Asian foods of China, Japan, or India. As one reader mentioned, she was surprised at the heavy reliance on dairy products for an audience which is often, at least in the early stages of diagnosis, lactose intolerant. I do think that vegan techniques could be applied to gluten free cooking much more frequently than they are applied here. I also found it a little surprising that in the entire cookbook of over 225 recipes, there are only three recipes for tofu. This is great for the gluten free vegetarian who is soy intolerant- but many of us gluten free vegetarians can tolerate soy, so this was a minor disappointment to me. I'm pleased to have this cookbook in my collection and I do think I will use it. It is probably the closest to my personal cooking style offered on the market today, and an excellent resource for the new gluten free vegetarian. I would definitely recommend this cookbook for the soy intolerant, dairy tolerant vegetarian Gluten free reader who would like a large collection of simple gluten free, vegetarian recipes.

*I would note that a few of the ingredients listed as "may containing gluten" such as low fat dairy products, dry roasted (unseasoned) nuts, modified food starch and maltodextrin are not, in my experience, that likely to contain gluten. In particular recent US law requires that wheat be labeled, so if your modified food starch or maltodextrin contains wheat, it absolutely must be noted on the label. Also, unlike most gluten free cookbooks, Danna Klein doesn't give us any personal anecdotes or explanation for her publication of a gluten free cookbook. It would be nice to get a feel for the author's personal experience with and perspective on the gluten free lifestyle.