🌾 Gluten-free vegetarian recipes

Eating gluten-free becomes far easier once you step away from European wheat. Whole cuisines are built on other grains and on pulse flours, and never needed a substitute product to do it. Rice dominates in southern India, Japan, Thailand and the Caribbean. Corn carries Mexican tortillas, Colombian arepas and the polentas of central Europe. In Ethiopia, teff — a tiny grain grown on the highlands — becomes injera, the wide, sour fermented flatbread that serves as plate and cutlery at once.

Pulses supply the rest. Chickpea flour turns up in Niçoise socca as readily as in Indian fritters, and lentils never needed wheat at all: a dal tadka served with rice is a complete meal that happens to be gluten-free. Buckwheat, despite its name, contains no gluten either, and is used from Brittany to eastern Europe.

A word of caution all the same: commercial soy sauce, seitan, bulgur, couscous and barley all contain gluten. The recipes gathered here have been checked ingredient by ingredient, and those relying on a shop-bought sauce say plainly that it must be a certified gluten-free one, such as tamari labelled wheat free in place of soy sauce.

Every entry lists its country, its total time and its difficulty, so a coeliac cook can plan a whole week of meals without once reaching for a specialist substitute.