Light Basics Cookbook: The Only Cookbook You'll Ever Need If You Want To Cook Healthy [Spiral-bound]

Martha R. Shulman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 16, 1998

Light Basics is an all-in-one cookbook for today's healthy cooking. Filled with step-by-step cooking instructions and more than 250 delicious recipes (each with a complete nutritional analysis), it provides the fundamentals of eating well and eating healthy. Martha Rose Shulman explains how to incorporate fresh foods and more healthful ingredients into your everyday cooking, while cutting down on fat and calories. If you're trying to eat healthy, Light Basics provides a one-stop kitchen companion for beginner and experienced cook alike!

The Cooking Light Basics

Convert your favorite recipes into healthier dishes by cutting the fat

Learn healthy poaching, pan-grilling, and roasting techniques

Make a delicious low-fat vinaigrette or sauce

Enhance the flavor of your food using fresh herbs and spices

The Kitchen Basics

Learn the correct way to hold a knife

Master the art of chopping, slicing, and dicing

Understand how to store fresh fruits and vegetables properly

Learn to follow the guidelines for food and kitchen safety

The Fruit and Vegetable Basics

The secret to keeping tomatoes tasting their sweetest

How to reduce the zing of chile peppers

The easiest way to dice a fresh mango

The Entertaining Basics

Sample seasonal menus

Advance preparation tips to make party-throwing a cinch

Detailed shopping lists and countdown schedules for preparation

Flavorful Meals with Only 1 Tablespoon of Oil

Asparagus and Smoked Trout Frittata

Sweet Potato and Butternut Squash Soup with Ginger

Herb and Scallion Quiche

Spinach Quesadillas

Grilled Fish Steaks with Asian Flavors

Hot-and-Sour Shrimp and Rice Soup

Desserts to Devour with Only 1 Gram of Fat

Rhubarb and Strawberry Compote

Almond Biscotti

Chocolate Meringue Cookies

Pears Poached in Ginger-Honey Syrup

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Shulman (Mediterranean Light; Provencal Light) expands her light-and-healthy motif with this fundamental cookbook. Much of the organization here is terrific, like the inclusion of a chapter of Warm-Up Exercises: five easy recipes for dishes like Pasta with Simple Tomato Sauce and Tossed Green Salad with Classic Vinaigrette are recorded in such detail that there are paragraphs dedicated to pressing garlic and peeling tomatoes. Introductory sections on everything from shopping to equipment are also first-rate. Some chapters are more muddled, however, including one on Grains, Beans, Vegetables and Tofu, in which Tomato and Bean Gratin, Spicy Stir-Fried Tofu and Asparagus with Rice, and Corn on the Cob are lumped together. The recipes themselves are uniformly well written and express modern American tastes with lots of poultry (Pan-Cooked Chicken Breasts with Ginger and Soy, Turkey Chili) and fish (Grilled Marinated Swordfish, Fish Fillets with Tomato Caper and Mint Sauce), as well as sections dedicated to pizza and Mexican dishes.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The prolific author of more than a dozen cookbooks, Shulman is perhaps best known for her "Light" series (e.g., Provencal Light, LJ 3/15/94). She has a talent for creating "healthier" recipes that taste good while staying as true as possible to the spirit of the various cuisines she explores. No doubt this is in part because, as she says, she is "not an ascetic cook," and she doesn't hesitate to use a little butter, for example, when necessary for flavor. With dozens of delicious recipes, her thoughtful and imaginative new book will not be limited in appeal to those looking for low-fat food. The first chapter, "How To Cook," is an extensive guide to everything from shopping to how to chop an onion. "Warm-Up Exercises" includes ten recipes designed to cover a broad range of techniques. The 200 or so recipes that follow are arranged by category; each lists necessary equipment as well as advance preparation, and the readable headnotes, along with charts, lists, and boxes scattered throughout the text, offer shortcuts, variations, and even more information on ingredients and techniques. Highly recommended.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Spiral-bound: 320 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks (December 16, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688155499
• ISBN-13: 978-0688155490
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 8.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,008,085 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

For over 30 years I have been writing cookbooks devoted to eating well. A pioneer in vegetarian cooking, I began my career in 1973 at the age of 23. This was long before well-educated people from upper middle class backgrounds fantasized about becoming the next Food Network star or owning a successful restaurant. I was then a student at The University of Texas at Austin. I changed my major every semester, but my passion for cooking and for giving dinner parties was unwavering. I also had an interest in health, and combined the two in my approach to food, drawing upon many of the world's cuisines to create vegetarian dishes that were much better than the standard brown rice fare of the early 1970s. Culturally I was very much a product of my era, but as far as my cooking was concerned, I have always been way ahead of my time.
Once I'd had my epiphany about my calling, I developed a series of vegetarian cooking classes that I taught through the University of Texas Extension, and I opened a private "supper club" in my home. Every Thursday for two years I prepared a sit-down 3-course dinner for 30 people. My cozy "home restaurant" allowed me all the fun and few of the headaches of running a public restaurant, and at the same time gave me a place to experiment and develop a repertoire of dishes to showcase. I also learned to cook for a crowd. Soon I had a vegetarian catering service; I catered everything from breakfasts in bed and dinners for two to wedding receptions and conferences for two hundred.
I had also been, all along, a writer in search of a subject. I knew that I would write a cookbook, and when The Vegetarian Feast came out in 1979, my career had evolved from cook/caterer to food writer and cookbook author. The Vegetarian Feast won a 1979 Tastemaker Award (a precursor of the prestigious James Beard Awards) for Best Book, Health and Special Diets category, and remains in print.
I was never doctrinaire about vegetarian cooking; I just felt that I'd had my quota of meat by the time I reached the age of 21. I admired all good cooks, especially Julia Child, with whom I corresponded. In my first letter to her, a fan letter dated September 2, 1976 in which I described my cooking classes and my supper club, my catering service and the book I was trying to get published, I told her I was "trying to shed a new light on vegetarianism, to present it as an unmysterious, classical, and memorable cuisine. The art of cooking with an emphasis on nutrition as well as flavor is my interest, and because I am a vegetarian my cuisine is a meatless one."
Two years after the publication of The Vegetarian Feast I moved to Paris, where I continued to write cookbooks and articles, revived my Supper Club, and became a much better cook. During the twelve years I lived in France I traveled extensively in the Mediterranean to research its many cuisines. My book Mediterranean Light was published in 1989, just as the benefits of the Mediterranean diet were coming to light in the United States. The region continues to be my richest source of culinary inspiration.
To date, I have 27 cookbooks to my name. My work has been of a piece; not all of my books are vegetarian, but they all have a healthy focus. Several of my books have been nominated for cookbook awards and three have won them. In addition to the 1979 Tastemaker Award for The Vegetarian Feast, I've received the following nominations and prizes for my work:
*2001: International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP), The Best Vegetarian Recipes, Nominee, Single Subject category
*1995 James Beard Awards, Great Breads, Nominee, Bread and Pastry category
*1994 Bertolli Olive Oil Award, Provençal Light, First Prize, Health and Special Diets category, Julia Child Awards
*1991 International Association of Culinary Professionals, Entertaining Light, First Prize, Health and Diet category
*1991 James Beard Awards, Entertaining Light, Nominee, Entertaining category
*1989 Tastemaker, Mediterranean Light, Nominee, Health and Special Diets category
*1988 Tastemaker, Supper Club chez Martha Rose, Nominee, Entertaining category

My cooking continues to evolve, as I hone and simplify my recipes to make them accessible to a wide range of cooks. I feel that I have played a role in improving the eating habits of many Americans, particularly since I began writing a daily recipe feature called Recipes for Health for the health section of The New York Times on the Web, in 2008. Its purpose is to empower people to cook healthy meals every day by giving them straightforward, delicious recipes. Each week's column is themed around a fresh ingredient from the market, a pantry item or a type of dish, with a new recipe posted every day. The reader response has been enthusiastic; my recipes regularly appear in the "10 Most Emailed" list on the health page. It has been extremely satisfying to know that I am reaching so many people and having an impact on their cooking.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Delicious, simple recipes, August 18, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Light Basics Cookbook: The Only Cookbook You'll Ever Need If You Want To Cook Healthy (Spiral-bound)

I have owned this book for just under ten days, and I just completed my fifth dinner from its pages. Not one has been less than excellent, and all have been amazingly easy to prepare. I have a shelf full of cookbooks, but for everyday dinners, this is one I'll turn to most.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A true success story in the kitchen, November 24, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Light Basics Cookbook: The Only Cookbook You'll Ever Need If You Want To Cook Healthy (Spiral-bound)

As cliche as it may sound, this cookbook has truly changed my life. Growing up, I never learned to cook for various familial reasons. The only thing I knew how to make until I picked up this book was canned soup. Whenever I went to someone's house for dinner, etc. I felt a fool because I didn't know how to do the first thing. It was humiliating.

I literally stumbled on this book two years ago in a bookstore and picked it up. This book has taught me how to cook. It was like having a stand in mom over your shoulder telling you exactly how to do everything. The book is set up so that there are 10 start-up recipes in the beginning. These recipes are designed to require the use of many basic skills. She walks you through everything in great detail every step of the way. Once you do the 10 recipes you can really get through most of the other recipes in the book. (The detailed instruction still continues somewhat through the rest of the book.)

BESIDES the learning process she takes you through, the recipes are wonderful all on their own. They are healthy, low-fat and tasty. She touches on various styles of cooking such as American, Italian, Mexican and Japanese. Just about everything I have made has turned out wonderfully. At first, it was admittedly difficult getting through the first five recipes (especially ratatouille) because remember...I did not know the first thing. But, that ratatouille recipe pretty much taught me to cook and I am so thankful for it now!

Today, cooking is one of my all time favorite hobbies. I still use her cookbook ALL the time, especially for dinners for my family on a nightly basis. My husband raves about everything I make!

I would STRONGLY suggest buying this book if you want to learn how to cook and really don't know where to start.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Light Basics Cookbook, July 19, 2000

By 

Daniel M Jaffe (St. Louis, MO United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Light Basics Cookbook: The Only Cookbook You'll Ever Need If You Want To Cook Healthy (Spiral-bound)

Brilliant! Brilliant! Brilliant! Martha Rose Shulman is a true genious. This cookbook is absolutely amazing. I have made almost every recipe in the book, and each one has been outstanding. They are easy to make, and her style and approach is easy and fun to follow. This is the way to eat, maintain a normal weight, and enjoy every bit of it, no pun intended. Thank you Martha!