The Healthy Kitchen: Recipes for a Better Body, Life, and Spirit by Andrew Weil

Description

Two of America’s most popular authorities on healthy eating and cooking join forces in this inspiring, easy-to-use cookbook. This is not a diet book. It is a lively guide to healthy cooking, day-by-day, packed with essential information and, above all, filled with enticing food.

Andrew Weil, M.D.—author of the best-selling Eating Well for Optimum Health—brings to this perfect collaboration a comprehensive philosophy of nutrition grounded in science. Rosie Daley—acclaimed for her best-seller, In the Kitchen with Rosie—brings to it her innovative and highly flavorful spa cuisine.

The recipes are eclectic, drawing from the healthy and delicious cooking of the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Asia, among other cuisines. For starters, you might try Grilled Satay or a Miso Pâté; for soup, often a meal in itself, a hearty Mixed-Bean Minestrone Stew or a Roasted Winter Squash and Apple Soup with Cilantro Walnut Pesto; a special entrée could be the Savory Roasted Cornish Hens with Roasted Garlic or Baked Spicy Tofu with Bean Thread Noodles, Corn, and Mango; for a simple supper, Turkey Burgers or Portobello Burgers; and for the occasional indulgence, a dessert of Almond Fruit Tart or Peach and Blueberry Cobbler.

Andy and Rosie do not always agree. When Rosie calls for chicken, Andy offers a tofu alternative; she likes the flavor of coconut milk, whereas he prefers ground nut milk; when she makes a pastry with butter, he suggests using Spectrum Spread. There are no hard-and-fast rules.

Lifelong health begins in the kitchen, so this is a lifestyle book as well as a cookbook. In it you will learn from Dr. Weil:

• how to make use of nutritional information in everyday cooking
• what is organic . . . and how to buy organic foods
• the importance of reading labels and what to look for
• sensible advice about eggs, milk, cheese, salt, spicy foods, wine, coffee
• the facts about sugar and artificial sweeteners

. . . and from Rosie:

• how to get kids involved—from skinning almonds to layering lasagna
• ways to have fun in the kitchen—creating scallion firecrackers and radish rosettes
• low-fat and nondairy alternatives for those with special concerns
• smart menu planning—letting the seasons be your guide

. . . and lots more.

This revolutionary book will change forever the way you cook for yourself and your family.

With 58 photographs in full color.

Editorial Review

In Eating Well for Optimum Health, one of Amazon's bestselling health books of 2000, alternative-medicine maverick Andrew Weil revealed his version of the ideal diet (and backed it up with scientific proof): a variety of unprocessed, or “whole” foods; just-picked, organic vegetables; whole grains; “good” fats, such as the omega-3 fatty acids found in fish and nuts; fresh herbs and spices instead of heavy sauces; and a minimum of meat and dairy products. Eating this responsibly is certainly an admirable pursuit, but home cooking of this caliber can be intimidating, requiring much more energy than it would to pull up to the drive-through and order a burger and fries. In The Healthy Kitchen, Weil successfully teams up with Rosie Daley, formerly chef at the ritzy Cal-a-Vie Spa, to show how to cook with confidence within these dietary guidelines, creating dishes that are not only good for you, but are also fun to prepare, beautiful to look at, and delectable.

For those of you predicting a tofu-fest, have no fear: Weil stresses he's “unwilling to eat food that is boring, artless, and devoid of pleasure even if it's somebody else's idea of healthful.” Indeed, the gorgeous color photography in The Healthy Kitchen will get you drooling over healthy entrées like Warm Chicken and Asparagus Salad and desserts like Lemon Yogurt Sorbet. You can be proud to serve these recipes to your family and friends–many of the appetizers and entrées are perfect party foods, sized to feed a dozen. Some recipes are notably more complicated than others–Cold Vegetable Pasta Primavera involves grilling five different veggies; baked Vegetable Wontons are time-consuming if you're not familiar with the folding process. However, Daley and Weil advise working your way up to these more complex dishes.

Sprinkled throughout the book are witty and wise health tips from Weil and cooking shortcuts from Daley. The two admit they don't agree on all cooking matters; Weil would substitute cashew milk for coconut milk and adds his two cents on making the Thai Shrimp and Papaya Salad spicier, for example. The Healthy Kitchen seems to be influenced a bit by Martha Stewart's Healthy Quick Cook, with Weil's text shaded in that unmistakably Martha sage-green, and Daley's in what Stewart might call bisque. Both books emphasize seasonal fresh foods and boast sumptuous photography and tempting menu suggestions. However, Weil and Daley outdo her with calorie and nutritional breakdowns for each dish, shopping guides for easy meal planning, and tips on encouraging children to help out in the kitchen (and develop lifelong healthy eating habits in the process). –Erica Jorgensen