Cookbook reviews

People who have coeliac disease or have a gluten-free diet for other reasons may enjoy Indulge: 100 sweet and savoury recipes (HarperCollins) by Australian baker Rowie Dillon.

Through her Sydney bakery she has been providing wheat- and yeast-free baked goods for a decade. This book includes numerous baking recipes and some general recipes - roast chook with lemon, thyme and Szechuan salt and pepper, and a baby beet and orange salad took my fancy.

A book that will appeal to those on gluten-free diets who feel hard done by when it comes to baked indulgences.

• Quinoa (pronounced keen-wah) is becoming known as a modern superfood as it is a complete protein containing all nine amino acids, nutrients, calcium antioxidants and other goodies, but it is actually an ancient staple of the Incas and other Andean peoples. It grows in poor soil at high altitudes, is distantly related to spinach and contains no gluten. It comes as grains, flakes and flour and is found in health-food shops and good supermarkets. With a slightly nutty taste, it can be used instead of rice, couscous and other grains.

Australian Rena Patten's new book, Cooking with Quinoa: The supergrain (New Holland), offers numerous recipes, from soups, salads and vegetarian dishes through meat, poultry and seafood to desserts and cakes, using quinoa in its various forms. Useful for those on a gluten-free diet but also fascinating for those who want to explore this superfood and use it in their everyday cooking.

The only drawback to this book is its inadequate index - cookbook publishers should know a good index is essential to a useful cookbook.

• Vege burgers will never be the same again! Instead of a sad stand-in for a beef or lamb burger, Lukas Volger offers vege burgers in an unprecedented variety of types, flavours and styles in Veggie Burgers Every Which Way (Wakefield Press).

They include: Armenian lentil burgers; smoked tofu burgers; corn burgers with sundried tomatoes and goats cheese; ginger soy tempeh burgers; Tuscan white bean burgers; mushroom burgers with barley; cashew leek burgers with bulgur and lentils and many more. And you don't have to serve them in buns - many will make delicious patties as part of a starter or main course.

"The trick is to get the balance right. Too many breadcrumbs, for example, will wash out the flavour; too few and you run the risk of the burger squeezing out the other end of the bun," the New York author writes.