Cornucopia at Home - The Cookbook

As you know, I am always searching Dublin for new places to eat out and where to find quick bites on the run to ward off hunger while keeping to your food allergy diets. As you can imagine, sometimes the food you get out is just so good that you want to have it at home too! Luckily for the food allergy population the trend of ‘restaurant cookbooks’ found its way to Dublin's ever popular vegetarian restaurant 'Cornucopia'. The book has been out since 2008 (reprinted in 2009) and finally found its way to my kitchen this Christmas (only two years late I might add!). There are so many great things about ‘Cornucopia at Home'. To start off it has a bounty of tried and tested vegetarian recipes for:

- Vegan
- Gluten free
- Wheat free
- Yeast free
- Dairy free
- Egg free
- Sugar free
- Nut free
- and Low Fat diets

Not to mention a guide to each diet and their symptoms. In addition to all of this, the book was written, photographed, designed and illustrated entirely by restaurant staff!

It has wonderful background stories for the different recipes throughout the life of the restaurant, great tips and best method practices to help you perfect the recipes and a wonderful and heartfelt ode to life through the story of Cornucopia. Each recipe has a dedicated space to scribble and make the book genuinely part of your own home and personal recipe chest and great lists of pantry supplies and allergy substitutes. But the best feature of all is the greatest page divider ever with diet symbols & liquid, weight & temperature conversions! Oh yeah, there’s some pretty good recipes too ;)

I know that the recipes are good, I indulge in them regularly at the mothership (can soup get better than the soup from Cornucopia?!). I also have a few friends with the book who have made them (and served them to my mouth-watering delight) and last weekend the wonderful 'F' and I collected all of the required ingredients from the Organic market in the Dublin Co-op and proceeded to dance and sing our way through the Leek, Spinach and Lentil Nut Roast and for dessert made the Blueberry and Almond squares (photographed above - although mine are made with spelt & rice flour)… During the collection process I was cringing at the growing price tot but was very happy to note that I now have dinner for a week!! I love when things average out on the tasty side. But not to worry – it cost a bit above average because we chose a 'nut' roast with no less than 6 leeks and a blueberry, date and almond based dessert, none of which are the cheapest to ingredients on the market! … But don't let that put you off because there are a load of recipes with a nice range of ingredients (and prices) and always remember, you’re not just cooking for one day so it’s actually more of an investment in your week!

...and if you need even more persuasion try out the restaurant itself if you haven't done so already. For review - see August 4th 2010 log 'Cornucopia Whole-Food & Vegetarian Restaurant'