No pain, no grain

Eating gluten-free needn’t be a hardship – or make you unpopular with your friends. A new cookbook celebrates recipes that make it easy, and delicious. By Amy Bryant. Photographs by Kim Lightbody

Delicious recipes that happen to be gluten-free

LIVING GLUTEN-FREE – especially if it’s a recent change to your diet – can lead to a host of panicked questions. Will I ever eat bread again? What about pasta? Not to mention cakes, biscuits and beer... But whether it’s imperative for health, or necessitated by a last-minute announcement from a friend coming for dinner, finding satisfying gluten-free options needn’t mean restricting the menu to pulses and potatoes.

A new book by the food writer Anna Barnett celebrates recipes that in many cases are naturally made without ingredients that contain gluten (such as barley, bran, wheat and rye), alongside those that star gluten-free flours. ‘None of them should make you feel like you’re missing out,’ she says. Her all-inclusive approach means that everyone is catered for. ‘It’s important when cooking for a crowd that everyone can enjoy good food, and even better if it’s incidentally – and deliciously – gluten-free.’

How To Be Gluten-free and Keep Your Friends, by Anna Barnett, is published on 24 January by Quadrille Publishing (£12.99). To order your copy for £9.99, visit books.telegraph.co.uk or call 0844-871 1514