Living Raw Food: Get the Glow with More Recipes from Pure Food and Wine [Hardcover]

Sarma Melngailis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 30, 2009

Picking up where the bestselling Raw Food/Real World left off, Sarma Melngailis invites us inside her glamorous restaurant, Pure Food and Wine, with dozens more recipes for fresh and vibrant juices, shakes, soups, simple dishes, main courses, desserts, and cocktails.

• Whip up an antioxidant-rich Goji Tropic Shake or a sweet, cleansing Cilantro-Pineapple Shake for delicious nutrition on the go
• Cool down with a Cucumber-Mint Gazpacho Soup and an Heirloom Tomato, Fennel, and Avocado Pressed Salad with Caper Dressing, Pistachio, and Mint
• Find out what makes the Chanterelle and Kalamata Olive Ravioli the restaurant's most beloved entrÉe
• Celebrate with a raw Thanksgiving dinner, complete with "dark meat" portobello, "white meat" large oyster mushrooms, stuffing, mashed celeriac, cranberries, and brussels sprouts
• Satisfy your sweet tooth with a Classic Sundae and Caramel Bars

No juicer? No dehydrator? No problem! Sarma shows that raw food preparation doesn't have to be daunting, and she helps you work your way from the fastest, simplest, freshest recipes to immensely satisfying main dishes that you'll have a hard time believing are raw. A definitive list of ingredients, tools, techniques, and sources make raw food a snap, while information-packed sidebars introduce the world's most powerful super­foods, from kombucha tea to chia seeds. And Sarma is refreshingly honest and real as she describes her personal breakthroughs—and struggles—living on raw foods.

Whether you're snacking on the run, having a quiet dinner at home, or throwing a festive cocktail party, eating raw food makes you feel alive. Filled with sensuous, sexy, and energizing food, this book is sure to enrich your life, whether you're a carnivorous epicure or a raw-foods junkie.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This follow-up to Raw Food/Real World offers 100 new recipes inspired by the New York City restaurant Pure Food and Wine, where Melngailis is a partner and executive chef. The restaurant is swanky and the book is irreverent (there's even a photo of the author smoking)—it's hardly a paean to an obsessively ascetic raw lifestyle. But the recipes are legit: at once sophisticated and rigorously raw, they range from quick and easy milks, juices and items from Pure Food and Wine's family meal (that's the staff meal, in non–restaurant speak) to intriguing dishes off the restaurant menu. Baby fennel and truffle-cream tarts; beet ravioli with pine nuts and goat cheese; pumpkin gnocchi with walnut cream sauce, spiced pumpkin seeds and crispy sage; and vanilla panna cotta with tarragon-peach sauce all have gourmet appeal well beyond those already committed to the raw food movement. And nonpreachy primers on ingredients and techniques used in raw preparations make the book accessible and usable for a wider audience than might typically go for a raw foods cookbook—if cookbook is even the right term for a volume of vegan recipes in which nothing is heated over 118 degrees Fahrenheit. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Review

Praise for New York City’s Premier Raw Restaurant, Pure Food and Wine“Whether you’re into raw food or not, Sarma’s restaurant is really great, and her One Lucky Duck Juice and Takeaway around the corner is my afternoon go-to spot when I’m in NYC. I always feel at home there!” (Owen Wilson )

“My favorites are the Black Trumpet Mushroom Napoleon and the Classic Sundae!” (Gisele Bündchen )

“‘Raw’ and ‘vegetarian’ are not adjectives usually associated with haute cuisine, but at Pure Food and Wine, as if by magic, such ingredients are turned into exquisite and exotically delicious offerings.” (Forbes )

“At once sophisticated and rigorously raw, [Melngailis’ recipes] range from quick and easy milks, juices and items from Pure Food and Wine’s “family meal”…to intriguing dishes off the restaurant menu… And nonpreachy primers on ingredients and techniques used in raw preparations make the book accessible…for a wider audience…” (Publishers Weekly )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks (June 30, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061458473
• ISBN-13: 978-0061458477
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (35 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #48,409 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #7 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Drinks & Beverages > Wine > Food & Wine
  • #97 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Natural Foods

More About the Author

Sarma Melngailis is the co-founder of Pure Food and Wine restaurant in New York City (purefoodandwine.com), and the Founder and CEO of One Lucky Duck Holdings, LLC (oneluckyduck.com). She is the co-author of Raw Food/Real World (July 2005) and author of Living Raw Food (June 2009).

Born and raised outside Boston, Sarma is the daughter of a professional chef and a physicist. She attended University of Pennsylvania where she earned a B.S. in Economics from the Wharton School as well as a B.A. from the College of Arts and Sciences (1994). In 1994, Sarma moved to New York City to pursue a career in finance. Until 1996 she worked at Bear, Stearns Inc. where she focused on mergers and acquisitions. She then moved to Bain Capital Inc. in Boston evaluating businesses for private equity investment. Missing New York City, she returned there in 1998 and joined a high-yield investment fund at CIBC. It was back in New York that Sarma then decided to follow a new direction and pursue her passion for food. Sarma enrolled in and graduated from the French Culinary Institute (1999). She then worked on restaurant and cookbook projects prior to 2003 when she discovered raw and vegan foods.

Sarma (and a collaborator)opened Pure Food and Wine in New York City in 2004 and in 2005 she founded and launched the online store oneluckyduck.com. One Lucky Duck is a brand of packaged raw/vegan snacks made at Pure Food and Wine. The website also carries skin care, apparel, books, household and pet products. Oneluckyduck.com is also home to her widely read and entertaining blog, as well as other information and resources about raw, vegan, and organic living.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

254 of 263 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Nice but not for me, September 12, 2009

By 

Evelyn Getchell "Evie" (Gulf Coast of Florida) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Living Raw Food: Get the Glow with More Recipes from Pure Food and Wine (Hardcover)

I purchased this raw food recipe book based on the glowing reviews here. I had to return it. That's not to say that this beautiful book, authored by an equally beautiful and accomplished chef, is not a fine book. It is. It is just not for me. Why and why the 3 stars only? Here are my reasons:

First of all, although the recipes look amazing ~ creative, delicious, original ~ they are more for entertaining and entertaining 6 to 8, not at all practical for me, a single raw vegan who even if I did more entertaining or could convince my non-vegetarian family to try raw food, would only need servings of 4 or less. The large amount of ingredients, many exotic or not so easy to come by, was daunting to me. I already spend a fortune on my regular organic and raw foods. I just can't imagine keeping my fridge and pantry stocked with a lot of the required items for these recipes.

Secondly, and maybe the most annoying to me, is the extraordinary amount of photos of Selma, her staff, the restaurant, their store products. This really drives me nuts with so many of the popular raw food books out there now! And in this one there's even a picture of a restaurant staff person smoking a cigarette! That floored me! How inappropriate is that? Or is the message that smoking will give you "the glow" too?

Lastly, even though while I perused I did glean some helpful and interesting tidbits here and there, I thought much too much space was wasted on Selma's "philosophy" or on the most basic info about raw foods and its preparation. If one is advanced enough in raw food prep to prepare recipes at the level of this book, is it really necessary to dedicate so much space to such very basics? I'm not saying that this sort of infomation is not helpful or useful but it just seems to me that it is as superfluous as all the photos of Selma and crew. I would rather have more photos of the food, which by the way are wonderful.

Yes, the food photograghy is gorgeous and the book itself is beautiful, quality publishing. For those of you who really love this book, please don't get upset with my review. I acknowledge all your reasons for loving it. I just think maybe others like me will appreciate my counterpoint.

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Even Better Than Raw Food/Real World, July 17, 2009

By 

Megan E. Hartley - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Living Raw Food: Get the Glow with More Recipes from Pure Food and Wine (Hardcover)

I loved Sarma's first book so much that it was the only raw food book I used on a regular basis. I was really looking forward to her new book because I knew it would be equally amazing. However, I did not expect to be blown away by it because Raw Food/Real World had raised my expectations so high. I was wrong! This book is even better than the first for a few reasons. The main reason is because it is organized differently. Instead of the traditional juices and shakes/appetizers/salads/main dishes/desserts system of organization, Sarma takes it a step further by separating the dishes that are quicker to prepare and require less equipment from the ones that require a lot more planning, preparation, and equipment that is not standard in everyone's kitchen. This makes food planning way simpler and less overwhelming, especially for someone who is newer to the raw food diet like myself. Also, like the first book, you get a photograph of every recipe instead of just a few of them like the other traditional cookbooks. There are also plenty of short articles about health, so you are not just getting more recipes. You are getting educated as well. As a smoothie/juice lover and a dessert junkie, this book along with her first has made me so much healthier. I could never give up desserts, and now I don't have to. If I want to eat half a chocolate cake in one sitting (as I have been known to do) I can do it and not worry about gaining ten pounds and clogging my arteries. I would suggest this book to anyone who would like to be even just a little bit healthier. Not just someone who is strictly a raw foodist.

28 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sexy Raw Food, July 6, 2009

By 

SJS (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Living Raw Food: Get the Glow with More Recipes from Pure Food and Wine (Hardcover)

While this book is sort of a Sarma fashion portfolio, the food is amazing. I got my copy last week and made several recipes, all of which are very, very good. FYI this is a more "gourmet" book for those that like to be creative in the kitchen, but if you've got a love of food and want to eat the freshest way possible, this book is for you.

And the cocktail section is to die for. *hiccup*