Customer Reviews

RAWvolution: Gourmet Living Cuisine

5 star:		(53)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I have been eating raw food for only about 1.5 months. I came across this book after the first month, and even though I already had quite a number of raw "cook"books to work with, this one has emerged as my clear favorite, at least for this transitional period. Many of the other books seem geared only toward people who have fully adapted to a raw lifestyle -- even if they explain the principles for the newcomer, the food is often not exciting to the "raw palate in training" -- it's usually palatable, but just not exciting. This book has convinced me that I can stay with the raw diet for the long haul, because the food is really delicious. And the procedures are simple and generally quite quick to execute. For my first foray into the book, I made the mock tuna salad which I served on the famous onion bread. Both recipes worked perfectly and tasted absolutely wonderful. They will be staples for sure. This book, along with Green for Life by Victoria Boutenko, are the 2 that will light my way into the raw vegan diet -- which has already produced remarkable benefits for me in terms of weight loss, energy, and positive mood. I'm grateful to Matt Amsden for sharing his creative and delicious cuisine.

First off....this book is a beautiful book. I will also say that it is inspiring. Seeing the gorgeous photographs of the recipes makes you realize raw foods are more than lettuce salads. For the pics, and inspiration, I would recommend the book.

Here's the "but". Many of the the recipes were not to my taste.....either tooooooo salty, toooooo oily, tooooooo much, as in overkill, on some of the spices. Don't get me wrong, I do love flavorful food...and when you're preparing raw foods alot of the volume/amounts of liquids, oils, spices depends on the main ingredients as to how much you will need to add. Just be aware of this if you follow the recipes in this book exactly as written....taste test as you can in the process.

[...].

If this is NOT your ONLY raw, living food (un)cook book, get it. BUT, don't let this be your only or your first. Not all of the recipes in this book "suck"; however, I would recommend any of the following books for the recipes before your purchase Rawvolution:

Raw Food Made Easy for 1 or 2 People, Jennifer Cornbleet
The Raw Gourmet, Nomi Shannon
Ani's Raw Kitchen, Ani Phyo
Living on Live Foods, Alissa Cohen

From my perspective, any of those will give you a better start to raw, living foods. Also, you'll get an understanding of what ingredients are good for crunchy or creamy, and options for sweetening, thickening and thinning so you can begin to create your very own fantastic recipes.

Juliano Brotman's RAW book is also very pretty and inspiring.....but there are definitely errors in several of the recipes.

Hope this helps. Don't hesitate to experiment....and do enjoy the renewed health and vitality that you are sure to experience by, at the very least, adding more "raw food" to your diet.

Bon Apetit

This cookbook was a huge disappointment. First of all, the directions were severely lacking - for example, recipes may call for nuts, but do not indicate whether they should be soaked or unsoaked, which can really change the ultimate outcome of the recipe, as well as greatly alter the volume of the ingredient that is needed. Second of all, I found all recipes to be completely uninspired and lacking in culinary creativity. Sure, any dessert will taste good if you slather it in agave nectar, but that is about as tasty as this one gets. Mr. Amsden is not a chef. Proof of this shows through in his recipes for all entrees and sides, as he relys mostly on nama shoyu soy sauce and garlic to try to make his foods palatable. As a result, foods are salty and pungent, yet lacking real flavor. At the end of the book is Mr. Amsden's real reason for publishing this book - to promote his cafe and food delivery service. Again, save your money - I thought maybe I had screwed up the recipes and decided to check out how they are supposed to be prepared. I hadn't screwed up. They are just really bad. It seems like the true purpose of this book was just to make a quick buck for the author, since the recipes reflect a lack of understanding in raw food preparation. Save your money and instead spend it on "Raw Food Made Easy" by Jennifer Cornbleet - a much better choice for the raw food cook.

I am so disappointed in this book. I had high hopes based on the other reviews, however I was really dismayed to find that the book was basically just an advertisement for the author's other businesses- the cafe and at home food delivery, as well as the over-abundance of photos of the author. SAVE YOUR MONEY. The recipes are very very salty due to his overuse of soy, and, quite frankly. not that imaginitive. There are much better cookbooks available for those interested in raw food diets. Save your money!

I've just gotten into eating raw foods after doing the Master Cleanse and I'm so happy that I started with this book. The recipes are very easy and everything is delicious! I think the is the BEST raw food cookbook to start with before getting into more elaborate dishes and techniques.

Yes, some of the recipes require a dehydrator but to start out you could use an oven on a low temperature with the door open. And of course if you're going to be making raw foods you'll need a dehydrator eventually.

Happy eating!

The following accounts were my experiences as I tried to create my meals using "RAWvolution Gourmet Living Cuisine" Cookbook.

I first made Mock Tuna Salad recipe . . .exactly following instructions. I took a day off from work and shopped for all the ingredients that totaled a substantial amount. Then I spent the afternoon peeling, dicing, juicing, soaking seeds, etc. in preparation for the salad mixture. When I placed all ingredients together, it resulted in an enormous volume. . . .probably enough to feed several people in a restaurant.

I then realized that for a SINGLE meal (for myself) . . .I should have cut down all amounts in recipe by at least 1/10th. But it was too late. I tasted the salad mixture and it was so pungent with mustard that I realized that I should have cut the mustard out almost entirely. Since I had already spent almost half of my weekly food budget on this one meal . . . .I ended up eating this mixture for the next 7 days. I did not enjoy it with the overpowering mustard. Finally I had to discard almost half of the remaining mixture in garbage because it was too old to be edible. I wished that I had just eaten all the wholesome fresh foods that I originally bought without putting it through all the above processing procedures, as it would not have been wasted and I would have enjoyed it.

Next I bought an expensive Excalibur dehydrator that the author stipulates is the best hydrator to use for his recipes. I bought Excalibur hydrator to make his RAWvolution "famous onion bread." This time I cut all ingredients by 1/3rd --so I would not be subject to a possible upsetting surprise if results proved to be disappointing. I mixed all ingredients as directed; placed them in hydrator for 24 hours at 100 degrees; then turned it over and placed them back in hydrator for 12 more hours. Results: a pile of dried up onion slices and crumbs that all fell apart. Unappetizing.

I'm not sure which recipe that I will try next.

First off I would like to say that I dont live in California so I havent been able to go to RAWvolution and try the food there, I cant compare my home 'cooking' to his.I have 5 other raw cookbooks and was awaiting this release to add to my collection.

This book is definately not for someone new to a raw food diet, as it doesnt contain much informatoin about they why's and how's of what you are eating. It does however include a small chapter on what ingredients you should keep in your pantry.

With less than 200 pages from cover to cover it is on the small side for a cookbook. The recipe chapters include breakfast, soups, sides and starters, sauces and dips, entrees and desserts. The breakfast section is quite small with about 10 recipes. Although I usually have a green drink or juice I do like breakfast recipes to eat throughout the day, they're nice to have. Most of the recipes are pretty nut/seed patty heavy (using one nut loaf for 4 different entrees and a seasoned walnut meat for 3 others) but Matt does use more sunflower seeds than nuts which for me is refreshing. He also uses his onion bread recipe in anything that requires a crust such as pizza or sandwiches and for tostadas, no other bread, cracker or tortilla recipe is included.

The book is also light on dessert recipes. Whole fruit pies in a 5inch pan make up most of them. You will either need to purchase a 5 inch pie pan or make 1 1/2 the recipe to fit a standard 9 inch.

Some recipes that stand out are the mock tuna and mock chicken salad (my new favorite!), cheese pierogis, the big Matt with cheese (his raw version of a big mac), cheese sticks, cucumber dill salad, hummus, mashed potatoes and a fantastic chili.

Dehydration, soaking, the use of a high speed blender (VitaMix or Ktec) and juicing are used so these machines will be needed to complete the recipes.

What isnt included a lot is sprouting. Which is refreshing after so many authors being "sprout" happy which adds days to your preperation. There is only one recipe which requires soaking.

The pictures of the food are appetizing and clear which make trying the recipes tempting. The photographs of Matt and his staff are a little California 'hippy' which is fine but I didnt buy the book to look at the author. The recipes are clear and easy to understand, they indicate at the top of the page how many servings each recipe yields and icons are used to denote what type of machines are used.

This is a good book that makes a great ADDITION to your collection, I would not start with this book though. My favorite raw food book to date is still "Raw food, real world" by Matthew Kenney and Sarma Mengalis, which does have some lengthy recipes but the flavors are amazing.

UPDATE: So Ive had this book an extra week since I wrote the original review. I have had issues with 3 of his recipes so far. The "Famous Onion Bread" which serves as every bread, cracker or crust is completely wrong. I ended up having to blend all ingredients in a Vitamix, add water so it would blend and then it took 4 days to dehydrate. I will NOT make that again. The cheese sauce which is also what is used in the cheese sticks is either missing an ingredient or it is enhanced for the photos in the book. In the picture of the "Big Matt with Cheese" it is yellow, while in reality it is brown. It has no nutritional yeast in it and has no flavor of any cheese, although it is a nice spread it wont help with any cheese cravings you might be having. Also the nut loaf which is used in several recipes is way under seasoned and makes an enormous ammount, much more than what he states it does.

If I could change my vote I would give it 3 stars. Some recipes DO work and they are delicous. But it seems that this book was perhaps put together in a rush to capitalize on the raw movement. There are many typo's that I have come accross and now half of the recipes I make I have to adjust them to make them work. Im finidng I am more dissapointed than delighted in this book.

If anyone else buys this and gets that onion bread to work the way that it is written than please let me know what special thing you did, because for me it was a huge pile of onions with a small ammount of sauce. It stayed in my dehydrator for 2 days turning into caramelized onions, not bread.

I guesse I would say buy at your own risk and know you will have to manipulate the recipes. Such a shame that this happened.

If you search rawfood cookbooks here on Amazon, there's just under 20 by my count, of which I have almost all of them. Matt's RAWvolution is by far one of the easiest books with respect to preparation and the range of recipes is not overwhelming, making this a GREAT book for newbies and vets alike. I find I pick 4-5 things out of any cookbook and enjoy them the most. With this one, I'm happy to report, I'm enjoying just about 70-80% of the recipes. Raw food meals take a TON of preparation, so much so the difficultly (or pain in the rear) factor, often moves me to just eat a salad. NO LONGER... these are simple and much easier than some of the others. Don't get me wrong, ALL raw cookbooks are great, Matt's rises to the top for simplicity, which will move this more towards the mainstream and the fact that anybody can prepare his meals and truly enjoy the real flavor of real food. My fav is the onion bread and corn salad!!!

this book is beautiful: hard cover binding, nice designs, beautiful photos, and has a variety of recipes. i just wish it was more informative about the storage and "shelf life" of raw foods (it merely states at the back of the book that dehydrated foods "don't spoil" but that can't be true indefinitely...??), and also i wish making this food didn't require 3 expensive small appliances (a vitamix, an excalibur dehydrator and a juicer w/ a homogenizing attachment, whatever that is....) i don't know if this was the best book for a newbie to raw food whose goal it is to just eat 1/3 of my food raw.

This book is really just a clever reincarnation of Juliano's RAW (Juliano was Matt's mentor, after all). It even follows the same format with glossy appealing photos of the food, and WAY too many photos of long haired, scruffy Matt. I buy cookbooks for the recipes, not glamor(?) shots of the chef. This seems to be a trend lately, as more and more chefs become celebrities with personality photos plastered on every other page of their book.

RAWvolution is slightly more refined than Juliano's offering - thankfully, several raw un-cookbooks have raised the bar since then - but it's a LONG stretch to call these recipes gourmet! This food is not nearly at the sophisticated level of Raw Food, Real World (Kenney & Melngailis), Raw (Trotter & Klein), or even Living Cuisine (Underkoffler). However, that probably makes it better for most folks.

In the interest of being catchy, hip and glossy, there's not a lot of background or scientific information here on going raw (pick up Conscious Eating for that). The recipes are simple and straightforward, very easy for someone starting out with the living foods approach. Because the recipe names impersonate cooked foods ("cheeseburger"), the food may seem less foreign to a raw foods newbie... just don't expect it to taste anything like the cooked version! We have tremendous emotional attachments to food, and, though going raw is a cleansing & reeducation of the palate (not to mention body, mind and spirit), it still needs to taste/look/smell/feel appealing!

As with other raw books, there isn't much here for breakfast, which poses a real challenge for a lot of folks. I, for one, simply can't make it on a Power Smoothie or fruit, though some raw foodists can. However, his berry bars can be modified into a decent, dehydrated granola, which will carry most folks through until lunch.

Certainly, for more evolved, complex and gourmet raw cuisine, you'll need to go elsewhere. Also, for the ins and outs of a living foods lifestyle, you'll probably want additional material. However, for some basic recipes, this is a good place to start.