Cookbook Review: My Best Friend is Gluten Free by Jannell Lo
My Best Friend Is Gluten-Free: 100+ Asian-inspired Recipes for Bringing People Together
by Jannell Lo
Toronto: Appetite by Random House, 2025
My latest cookbook review for The British Columbia Review is out and it was a pleasure to cook from. This article was originally published at The BC Review on April 17, 2026.
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Though I’m not gluten-free, I know a lot of folks that are, including some that I cook for semi-regularly. It’s handy to have a go-to cookbook on the shelf that I can browse through when I’m looking for a GF recipe. Not only that, but it feels great to have a cookbook collection that is inclusive of different dietary needs. North Vancouverite Janelle Lo, food creator and writer, has given us My Best Friend is Gluten-Free: 100+ Asian-Inspired Recipes for Bringing People Together, her Asian-inspired GF cookbook debut, an evolution of her website My BF is GF. In this case, her best friend is her husband Reid, who has celiac disease.
The book is a natural melding of her Chinese-Canadian culinary heritage and her husband’s history of eating gluten-free after an early-childhood diagnosis of celiac.
I craved a space where my dual identity wasn’t just accepted but celebrated–a space where I could be unabashedly Jannell, revealing the layers that make up who I am. This desire drove me to find a deeper connection to my identity through cooking my own food, blending the influences of my upbringing with the skills I honed in professional kitchens.
Reid’s exploration of Asian foods hit a barrier with his gluten allergy, as many Asian condiments commonly contain gluten. It was this need to experiment with out-of-the-box cooking to create gluten-free Asian recipes that allowed Lo a kind of freedom to cook the way she wanted to. Rather than be trapped in traditional expectations, “…this liberation has manifested as experimenting with gluten-free ingredients and surprising flavor combinations.”
Lo’s introduction is friendly and welcoming. She’s clear that her recipes are very much a “fusion” experiment, blending her own Chinese culinary heritage, the multiculturalism of her native Toronto, and her travels. They are inspired by her experiences, and at the top of each recipe she shares her inspiration for the recipe and even includes a QR code so that we can listen to the song that reminds her of the dish.
There are a few other lovely features in the book. Her “Gluten-Free Asian Pantry” was very useful, and I appreciated that she shared her go-to brands, because it makes my life as a cookbook user so much easier. The first recipe section is called “Building Blocks,” perfect for choosing a sauce or dressing at a glance, and because this is a cookbook for omnivores, Lo has helpfully included a “Dietary Lists” index, grouping recipes by dairy-free, plant-based, vegetarian, and pescatarian.
To test out the cookbook, I chose three recipes.
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Japanese Style Curry
I’ve been making Japanese curry rice occasionally, and it’s a favourite supper dish at our house. I use vegetarian curry roux cubes, which are delicious but admittedly a bit artificial and they are definitely not gluten free! Lo’s interpretation of the dish serves in two ways: to make a gluten free version, and to use more natural ingredients. I chose Lo’s plant-based option, substituting chickpeas for chicken. Chop some carrot, onion, and potato, make an easy roux with GF flour, and simmer away. This finished dish was a success: texture was spot on, velvety and luscious. The curry flavour was less intense and had less of the iconic Japanese curry roux-cube iconic taste (IYKYK) but stood in its own right as a delicious variant. I had a middling curry powder on hand, and when I make this again, I’m going to experiment with different curry blends. One could easily add tofu for some of the legumes. A keeper!
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Roasted Cauliflower with Spicy Miso Tahini & Garlicky Panko
Cauliflower is a wonderful vegetable. I had a head of it sitting in my fridge, so I looked up “cauliflower” in the index and found this roasted recipe. My small cauliflower provided only three nice sliced “steaks,” so look for the biggest head you can find if you’re aiming to serve this as a centerpiece to company. I didn’t mind, as I artfully decorated the plate with the smaller bits, and it all tasted amazing. Roast the oiled and salted veg, and meanwhile you whip up the easiest of miso-tahini sauces and brown some GF panko (I did seek out and buy GF, as I wanted this dish to reflect the book as much as possible). So tasty! The cauliflower was tender, the sauce tangy with just a bit of heat and the panko crumbs added a salty bite.
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Miso Tahini Cookies
Lo notes that these cookies are inspired by peanut butter cookies, a huge part of the appeal for me. I love peanut butter cookies but my husband does not, so I never make them. But tahini? That, he can get behind. Once I’d bought xanthan gum, the only unusual ingredient, these were a snap to make, but the dough was very sticky. Lo’s instructions are to freeze the dough for 20 minutes and space the cookies out generously, but even so, they spread a lot. My second batch was in the freezer longer, and they came out with a better shape. I’d suggest 30 to 40 minutes in the freezer. These are fantastic cookies, chewy and a bit crisp at the edges. Everyone I served them to guessed at the sesame taste from tahini, though no one picked up the miso. I think the miso came out in the perfect saltiness and slight umami of the cookie, and these satisfied my peanut butter cookie craving. I loved these, and as Lo says, they’re “totally addictive.”
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Jannell Lo’s ode to Asian fusion gluten-free eats was easy to cook from and the recipes were delicious. Once I sourced a few key ingredients, the recipes that I tried came together beautifully, and I did not miss the gluten one bit. My Best Friend is Gluten-Free succeeds in melding Lo’s Chinese culinary heritage, North American influences, and gluten-free cooking and baking. It will be a worthy addition to my cookbook shelf.
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