The Healthy Hedonist: More Than 200 Delectable Flexitarian Recipes for Relaxed Daily Feasts Review

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(More customer reviews)I am a huge fan of Kornfeld's first cookbook, "The Voluptuous Vegan" so I was very excited to learn that she had a new book out. The second book is written more in the way I actually use the first book--with flexibility. I love the term "flexitarian" -- it really makes sense with the way most people I know eat. For example, using the "Voluptuous Vegan" book I might add ground turkey to the tofu lasagna or serve one of the vegetable dishes as a side for roast chicken. In "The Healthy Hedonist" Kornfeld provides fish and chicken recipes in addition to vegetarian fare and encourages the users to suit their own needs. I like the hedonist approach, I'm sick of special diets, mainly I just want to eat well and feel healthy. Kornfeld offers sensible suggestions such as purchasing organic produce when possible and exercising moderation rather than giving up foods you love.
I knew this book was a winner when I read the very first recipe (Sweet Potato-Red Pepper Spread). This is so easy to make and provides an exciting change from the pre-packaged Trader Joe's spreads I usually serve at dinner parties. Plus the leftovers made a great sandwich the next day. Many of the recipes in this new book are surprisingly simple which suits my chaotic lifestyle just fine. In addition to interesting recipes, Kornfeld provides a lot of information about cooking techniques, unusual foods, and flexible cooking styles. I didn't know that I could substitute coconut milk for cow's milk when baking, I tried it the other day with a tea cake and it came out great.
"The Healthy Hedonist" has just what I love in a cookbook: an interesting variety of recipes that are clearly explained and tasty, but that also inspire me to experiment and try my own combinations. This is the book I'll grab first when I'm not really sure what I want to cook but I know I want it to be fabulous!

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How would you like to prepare and savor a delicious meal that's also nourishing and healthful? In The Healthy Hedonist, chef, teacher, and cookbook author Myra Kornfeld offers home cooks more than two hundred mouthwatering flexitarian recipes designed to satisfy all kinds of appetites -- without leaving you feeling stuffed and guilty afterward! So, what is a flexitarian? A flexitarian is anyone interested in eating healthy, primarily vegetarian cuisine without cutting meat and fish entirely from his or her diet. The Healthy Hedonist is the ideal cookbook for people with a variety of eating habits: the recipes are readily adapted to suit vegetarians, omnivores, and everyone in between. The emphasis here is on real food: fresh, natural, and, of course, delicious ingredients are used to create unique and healthful meals. Aside from soups, appetizers, salads, chicken and fish dishes, vegetarian entrees, grains, and vegetables, there are tempting recipes for pizza, alternative burgers, and naturally sweetened desserts. You can indulge yourself and feel virtuous at the same time with delectable fare such as: Portobello Mushroom Tapenade Wilted Spinach Salad with Orange-Curry Dressing Crispy Thai Wontons Potato Salad with Caramelized Onions Roast Chicken with Maple Glaze Coconut Green Beans with Mustard Seeds Lacquered Carrots with Coriander Gazpacho Salad with Tomato Vinaigrette Red Snapper Provencale Marrakesh Minestrone with Cilantro Puree Tamarind Chickpeas Asparagus, Leek, and Barley Risotto Barbeque Spice -- Rubbed Tofu Seared Sesame-Crusted Tuna Zucchini Latkes Salmon Medallions with Lime-Mustard Teriyaki Citrus Compote Supreme Roasted Peaches with Caramel Sauce Chocolate Lovers' Brownies Pomegranate-Pear Cornmeal Tart Throughout the book are plenty of helpful suggestions for substituting ingredients to suit your taste or dietary preference and for cooking for large groups or smaller gatherings, along with preparation tips and menu ideas. In addition, easy-to-follow illustrations guide you toward creating superb meals sure to appeal to every palate. For any and all food lovers, The Healthy Hedonist is the healthy, scrumptious way to enjoy sensational feasts every day.

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The Good Carb Cookbook: Secrets of Eating Low on the Glycemic Index Review

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(More customer reviews)I cannot say enough good things about this book. I wish I could give a copy to everyone I know. Not only are the recipes the most delicious healthy foods we've ever made, but Sandra Woodruff explains the nutritional and health reasons for eating good carbs in simple, easy-to-understand language. She emphasizes moderation. Her recipes are followed by nutritional information, including whether they are extremely low GI, low GI, or moderate GI.
The first third of the book is all information you need to know about why traditional fat-free eating isn't making people thinner or healthier, but fatter and unhealthier. For the past 20 years, the food industry has been touting fat-free this and fat-free that..."eat pretzels, gummi bears, eat fat-free, and you'll be fat-free". It's nonsense.
Woodruff explains how and why to eat low on the Glycemic Index. She gives you tons of ideas for low GI breakfasts, lunches, and dinners. She includes low GI options for eating out at nearly every possible type of restaurant- Italian, Indian, Thai- you name it. She also gives a few examples of real people, their situations, and how they changed their health by eating low GI. Not only does this book give you sound nutritional advice (the author is a Registered Dietician), but she also includes over 200 phenomenally delicious recipes.
Eat wholesome real foods, watch what kinds of fats you cook with, exercise, and you will lose weight. Most importantly, though- YOUR BODY WILL LOVE YOU. And your doctor will be thrilled! My husband, who was already exercising regularly, has lost 20 lbs in 6 weeks just by changing to eating low on the Glycemic Index- "Good Carbs". I have also lost 20 pounds in 6 weeks by changing my diet and including exercise. Changing our diet has giving us so much more energy. We feel fantastic.
Do yourself a favor and pick up this book! I researched all the low-carb, no-carb, low-sugar, Zone, Busters, etc... books ... and decided after reading all the information and reviews, to purchase this one. I am so glad I did! You will be too. You owe yourself an energetic, long life. BUY THIS BOOK.

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A Painter's Kitchen-Revised Edition: Recipes from the Kitchen of Georgia O'Keeffe (Red Crane Cookbook Series) Review

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(More customer reviews)As a fan of Ms. O'Keeffe's since the seventies and even more so once the late Ansel Adams befriended our young son in the eighties, I wanted this cook book because I loved the simplicity of her art work and wanted to see if this carried over into her food choices. Am not disappointed.
Yes, many of the recipes are simple and direct like corn on the bob or kale. But the recipes for Fried Flowers (locust blossoms), Curried Chicken, Biscochitos, and Zabaglione are wonderful. Even wonder if she ever had squash blooms tempura style.
The book is a fun read as well, since the Introduction allows us to learn why she liked certain foods, disliked eating out, what she grew in her large vegetable gardens and how her kitchens were laid out and what they had in them.

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Georgia O'Keeffe, well known for her striking paintings of the Southwest, carried her creativity into the kitchen, where she took great pride in her healthy culinary style. The meals served in her household focused on homegrown and natural foods. They were always tasty, nutritious, modest, and beautifully prepared.A Painter's Kitchen is Margaret Wood's recollection of seventy recipes from Georgia O'Keeffe's kitchen. As Miss O'Keeffe's companion for five years, Wood's responsibilities included, among other things, preparing many of the meals. O'Keeffe directed Miss Wood in the preparation of simple, delicious food using many fresh ingredients and insisted that Wood pay scrupulous attention to every step of food production and preparation. Besides containing recipes from Miss O'Keeffe's kitchen, the book describes in charming detail Miss O'Keeffe's outlook on food, philosophy, life, art, and the world, while maintaining respect for the artist's well-known desire for privacy.Margaret Wood left Miss O'Keeffe's employ in 1982. She was a production weaver for Kozikowski Tapestry Weavers and since 1988 has been a speech/language pathologist. "Lavishly sprinkled with black-and-white photographs of the artist as well as full-color food photos, "A Painter's Kitchen" is a feast for the eyes as well as the mind and stomach."-Mail Order Gourmet"More than just a cookbook, this text describes O'Keeffe's outlook on life and art in 128 pages."-Southwest Art"Here is a way of cooking and eating serene in accumulated wisdom (Miss O'Keeffe was in her nineties at the time the author knew her) and rich in undiminished sensual delight."-Cook BookSample Recipe:During the 1960s and 1970s, many prominent magazines featured interviews with Georgia O'Keeffe, along with photographs of both her houses. During supper one evening she recalled the occasion when a female staff member from one of the magazines had come to the Abiquiu house and was straightening everything up so meticulously that it no longer looked like the painter's house. At one point, when the woman was making every curtain pleat perfect, Miss O'Keeffe could not resist saying to her,

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The Medieval Kitchen: Recipes from France and Italy Review

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(More customer reviews)`The Medieval Kitchen', written originally in French by Odile Redon, Francoise Sabban, and Silvano Serventi, is the best of the three books I have reviewed so far on the cuisines of Europe before the arrival of New World produce. This volume surpasses both `The Medieval Cookbook' by Maggie Black and `Pleyn Delit' by Constance B. Hieatt, Brenda Hosington, and Sharon Butler in technical scholarship and in it's interest to the non-professional foodie, historian, or general reader.
The book is organized by chapters which are very similar to a contemporary cookbook, covering Soups and Pastas; Porees and Vegetables; Meats cooked in Sauces; Roasted Meats; Fish; Pies and Tarts; Sauces; Eggs; Fritters and Breads; and Sweetmeats. The selection of recipes is much more interesting than in `The Medieval Cookbook' and the `arrangement' is as good or better than `Pleyn Delit', with much more background given for each individual recipe than either of the other two books. See my review of `Pleyn Delit' for a complete list of interesting things to do with these books.
The most impressive contribution of `The Medieval Kitchen' is its generalizations about medieval cooking in 50 pages of introductory essays on aspects of these 600-year old French and Italian cuisines. The highlight of this overview is the observation that 14th and 15th century European cooking was in love with spices in general and the `cookie spices', cinnamon and cloves, in particular. One may think that this is due to the influence of contact with the Moslem world, especially as the use of these spices is still strong in Sicily and Spain, but the authors state that this influence is overstated. Interest in spices was home bred. My other reviewed works show the very common use of saffron in recipes, but does not explain the broad use of a very expensive ingredient. `The Medieval Kitchen' clearly explains that while little attention was paid to odors directly, the color of food was given an important place in the preparation of medieval recipes. One can almost predict the great interest Europeans would have in the bright red of tomatoes and chiles from the New World.
Unlike today, where so many provisions are prepared and prepackaged by national or international companies, it is surprising to see that the medieval city had lots of shops run by foodstuff specialists, the only trace in today's France may be the boulanger for bread, patisserie for pastries, and the chocolatier for chocolate candies. The spice merchant, in particular, was a very important food specialist. A pale shadow in Europe of this merchant's work is the quatre epices and herbes de Provence. In the last 10 years, there seems to be a great growth in prepared seasoning mixes. I wonder if Paul Prudhomme and Emeril Lagasse and McCormick's and Durkee are simply reviving a 600-year-old practice by bottling and marketing spice mixes.
While the authors do not elaborate on this point, as it deals with a period after their chosen subject, they state that the emphasis on spices was replaced (except for pepper) by an emphasis on the use of local herbs such as lavender, mint, thyme and marjoram and by use of a broader range of cooking fats and oils in the seventeenth century.
As the Medieval period is quite rightly pictured as a period when progress in science some fine arts may have slipped from highs achieved in the ancient Roman and Greek worlds, this does not mean medieval domestic arts and crafts were not unsophisticated. In fact, one may be impressed by exactly how sophisticated their cooking techniques were, especially in the absence of convection ovens and electric ranges. Their emphasis on constantly processing and straining to achieve an especially smooth preparation reminds me of a description of Thomas Keller's kitchen at the French Laundry. On top of routinely elaborate techniques performed by a great range of specialists rivaling Escoffier's famous brigade system, there are also the very special preparations headlined by the entirely historical feat of baking `four and 20 blackbirds' into a pie. Not only was this actually done, the book tells us that it was common for banquets of the nobility, and it tells us how it was done.
As readable and as informative this book is for the casual foodie, it is a very serious work of scholarship which gets everything right, even those things which my two previous subjects did poorly. The method for citing sources is much better and, even though the book as a whole is translated from the French, all the original recipes in their original Latin, Medieval French or Italian, or Old English are supplied, along with modern English translations of these texts, followed by modern culinary interpretations of the recipes. Even on so small a matter as the selection of color prints, this volume picks much more interesting plates than `The Medieval Cookbook'.
The translator, the authors, or the publisher (University of Chicago Press) also did an excellent job of making the work available to an American audience. All measurements are in both metric and English units and many solids amounts are given by both weight and volume. Culinary unit conversions are typically very gross, as, for example, it is much easier to measure 1 liter for 4 cups rather than 946 milliliters, which is a much more accurate conversion. Even the sources are up to date American companies such as Dean & Delucca, Penzey's Spices, D'Artagnan, and King Arthur Flour.
While this book is superior in every way to the other two works cited, they are not superseded by this work, as they concentrate on English dishes while `The Medieval Kitchen' concentrates on France and Italy. In fact, it is useful to compare recipes in the three books to see how much they had in common.
Highly recommended as a source for a medieval theme entertainment, historical interest, and an understanding of realities of medieval life.


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The Medieval Kitchen is a delightful work in which historians Odile Redon, Françoise Sabban, and Silvano Serventi rescue from dark obscurity the glorious cuisine of the Middle Ages. Medieval gastronomy turns out to have been superb—a wonderful mélange of flavor, aroma, and color. Expertly reconstructed from fourteenth- and fifteenth-century sources and carefully adapted to suit the modern kitchen, these recipes present a veritable feast. The Medieval Kitchen vividly depicts the context and tradition of authentic medieval cookery."This book is a delight. It is not often that one has the privilege of working from a text this detailed and easy to use. It is living history, able to be practiced by novice and master alike, practical history which can be carried out in our own homes by those of us living in modern times."—Wanda Oram Miles, The Medieval Review"The Medieval Kitchen, like other classic cookbooks, makes compulsive reading as well as providing a practical collection of recipes."—Heather O'Donoghue, Times Literary Supplement

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Pure & Simple: An Incircle Cookbook Review

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(More customer reviews)Although I have almost 2,000 cookbooks, this remains one of my all-time favorites, to which I turn again and again. I received a copy from a friend whose recipe was included in it -- and have since give copies to my own favorite people. Everything I have tried has been outstanding. The recipes were contributed by members of Neiman-Marcus's InCircle group of customers from all over the country, and almost all of the contributors included brief descriptions of the dishes, how they acquired the recipes, etc. They were then tested before publication. And all proceeds go to charity. I can't think of anything else I'd want in a cookbook -- delicious recipes, well-tested, described by the contributors, and all proceeds go to charity. And it ia a beautiful, professionally-printed book, to boot. VERY highly recommended.

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Express Cooking: Make Healthy Meals Fast in Today's Quiet, Safe Pressure Cookers Review

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(More customer reviews)I love pressure cooking and I have six cookers: an electric, 2 stovetops, a pressure fryer, a microwave cooker and a 21-quart pressure canner. You can't beat the cooking time and the results are both delicious and nutritious.
Express Cooking addresses the cooking questions of people buying the new electric models (although only 4 and 6 quart models are considered)as well as those of us who still like our stovetop cookers. The authors discuss the different models and types, operating instructions and safety considerations. They do attempt to allay the fears of those who have heard those 'horror stories' about exploding pressure cookers. Modern models have several safety features that preclude those types of disasters. I would note however, that there is a popular recipe being circulated for cooking chicken a la KFC by bringing oil up to 400 degrees in the pressure cooker, placing chicken pieces in the oil and bringing the cooker up to pressure and cooking for several minutes. THIS SHOULD NEVER BE ATTEMPTED IN A PRESSURE COOKER!!! Specially designed pressure fryers can do this safely, but trying this in a home unit is very dangerous.
That warning aside, Express Cooking will help you to produce some delightful meals. I never considered cooking turkey in a pressure cooker until I read the recipe for Roast Turkey with Gravy. Now you can have a 5-6lb. turkey breast cooked in less than an hour with a gravy that will please everyone. Being a lover of poultry, I also count the recipes for Chicken Cacciatore and Chicken Paprikash as 'keepers'. Other sections include making delicious stock(s), meat, seafood, veggies(with a complete time guide for specific vegetables), Grains, Beans, Sauces and of course, desserts. There is a recipe here for Eggnog Cheesecake and that alone is worth the price of the book.
Also included is a listing of the major manufacturers and how to contact them. It can be very frustrating to purchase a pressure cooker and not be able to find a replacement gasket when the time arises.
Pressure cooking has undergone a renewed interest because it is quick and easy. It is also nutritious and safe! This book is a well-written reference and the food is great too!!

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From the award-winning authors of Guilt-Free Frying and the 99% Fat-Free series comes the most comprehensive, up-to-date cookbook of its kind. Express Cooking features complete directions for using the new state-of-the-art electric pressure cookers, plus detailed cooking charts and 125 recipes for a wide range of dishes.

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Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking: Traditional and Modern Recipes to Savor and Share Review

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(More customer reviews)This is my third book by Paula Wolfert. I intend to get all of them. Her books are not just full of recipes, but also contain relevant background information and insights into other cultures. I'm especially interested in learning more about cooking in clay. So this is the perfect book for me. In addition to the material in the book, you'll find more information about Paula's methods on eGullet's forums. I came across a thread on tagines and another on how to cure claypots. Paula contributed to both threads. Her knowledge, enthusiasm, and curiosity are amazing. It also speaks well of her how she encourages others on the forums. Clearly, a very neat lady.
Now the warning: you may end up with a house full of a new class of toys. So far I've accumulated a Chinese sandpot (which I cracked making a Wolfert recipe and successfully repaired using Paula's instructions), four different tagines, an Emile Henry Flame Top dutch oven, two Roemertopf's, a Japanese donabe, a Spanish Cazuela, and a Baeckeoffe oval tureen from Alsace. Regrettably, I'm not done yet. I still want to get some Black Chamba Clay Cookware and perhaps a daubière... unless my wife puts me out of my misery first.
Update (1-21-2010):
I've made numerous recipes from the book by now: Moroccan Fish Tagine with Tomatoes, Olives, and Preserved Lemons (for which I bought an inexpensive Rifi Tagra), Fried Spatchcocked Chicken (made in an Italian mattone), Moroccan Chicken Tagine with Sweet Onions and Raisins, Baked Moroccan Chicken with Charred Tomatoes, Moroccan Lamb Tagine with Winter Squash and Toasted Pine Nuts, etc. , etc. They were fun to make and tasted wonderful. Some recipes are easy to make and some require patience and dedication. There's a thread on eGullet that deals with cooking from this book. Its title is Cooking with Paula Wolfert's "Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking" You'll find some pictures, experiences, and hints on this thread, should you need help. Paula contributes here as well.
Update (2-17-2010):
I'm still happy with this book and I'm cooking at least one new recipe from it per week. My two recent favorites were "Chicken with Red Wine Vinegar, Tomato, and Shallots" and "White Beans with Tomatoes and Sage." The latter required making the beans before, according to another recipe: "Tuscan White Beans with Sage and Garlic." The beans were just terrific with the tomatoes and sage. It was an instant favorite for us while it was also one of the easiest recipes to make. I used my Chamba bean pot for this dish. (It's winter now in Colorado and it feels nice to put one's cold hands on the warm lid of the Chamba while inhaling the wonderful aromas escaping from the pot.) I'm completely sold on cooking in clay, thanks to Ms. Wolfert. Her book serves as an instruction manual on how to utilize the various clay pots available by providing the recipes that are best made in these pots. Months after I bought the book, I still have clay pots coming in on a regular basis--not that I *must* have them, but because I'm hooked. (Paula says in her book that 75% of the recipes can be made in just six different pots.) I'm also a fan of Ms. Wolfert's style of presenting information, which is not at all dry. As of today, I own all of her books.

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