Dunja Gulin

www.dunjagulin.com

My love for food and cooking has always been there. Over time, it has pushed everything else I've done into the background.
Food and everything related to food had to become what I do every day, something I think about constantly. I am lucky to do what I love most in the world - working with food. Writing about food, sourcing food, growing food, buying, preparing and serving food, and feeding the people around me with the highest quality ingredients, prepared with love and care. By feeding others, I feed my soul. That is my approach to food.

My first culinary education took place in Istria, in the old-fashioned kitchens of my grandparents, mom and dad, aunts, neighbors, and family friends. Seasonal forays into mushrooms, pomegranates, wild radicchio, chestnuts, fennel, asparagus, shellfish - all of this was a wonderful and invaluable cooking school for me.

Living in London and being more exposed to a Western industrial diet was the reason I turned to healthy and natural foods.

Student life in Zagreb was an opportunity for me to delve even deeper into the field of healthy and natural nutrition.

In 2004, I graduated from the School of Natural Cuisine at the Makronova institution and began to intensively engage in designing and leading cooking seminars and workshops, and my experiences as a head chef for larger groups on various programs in Croatia and abroad also began.

I collaborate with foreign chefs and cookbooks, assist in large kitchens, and lead cooking workshops at the One World Summer Festival in England. I travel and learn about new trends in nutrition and improve my knowledge of all branches of healthy eating: Mediterranean, vegetarian, vegan, macrobiotic, and raw food, and in my daily work I combine different styles of food preparation.

In 2009 , my first cookbook in Croatian, Breakfast, was published.

In 2010, I attended two major conferences in America about the latest findings in healthy eating:
46.Nobel Conference 'Making Food Good'
@ Gustavus Adolphus College and
Healthy Foods Summit 'Food For Thought ' @University of Minnesota

In 2011, I launched the long-planned and desired Rentaj Chef project, which allows everyone to eat quality meals in the comfort of their own home, to offer freshly prepared healthy & delicious , sweet & savory dishes to family and friends, or to learn simple or more complicated techniques for preparing healthy, wholesome and delicious dishes in their own kitchen with my instructions and guidance.

In 2012, my first cookbook in English , Raw Food Kitchen, was published.

In 2013, my second cookbook in English , The Vegan Baker, saw the light of day, in which I revealed recipes and tricks for successfully baking healthy desserts.

In 2014, my third cookbook in English , The Vegan Pantry, was published, which was a great success and was nominated for the Guild of Food Writers 2015 Award in the Miriam Polunin Award for Healthy Eating category.

In 2014, The Vegan Baker was translated into two more European languages:

Vegan baking
Vegan pastry shop

In 2015, my fourth cookbook, Fermented Foods for Vitality & Health, will be published, in which you will find a large database of basic recipes for fermented beverages, dishes made from fermented vegetables, grains, and legumes, and instructions on how to incorporate fermented foods into your daily diet and improve your health.

In 2015, translations of The Vegan Pantry cookbook were published in as many as six languages: German, Italian, French, Portuguese, Swedish and Polish!