Spices of Life: Simple and Delicious Recipes for Great Health [Hardcover]

Nina Simonds (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 1, 2005

In this groundbreaking cookbook, Nina Simonds offers us more than 175 luscious recipes, along with practical tips for a sensible lifestyle, that demonstrate that health-giving foods not only provide pleasure but can make a huge difference in our lives.

With her emphasis on the tonic properties of a wide variety of foods, herbs, and spices, this book also brings us up to date on the latest scientific research. In every recipe–gathered from cultures around the world in which good eating is a way of life–Simonds gives us dishes that are both irresistible and have a positive effect on one’s well-being. For example:

-Cardamom, a key digestive, subtly seasons her Steamed Asparagus with Cardamom Butter.

-Cinnamon, which strengthens the heart and alleviates nervous tension, adds spice to her Fragrant Cinnamon Pork with Sweet Potatoes.

-Basil has long been used as a healing salve and in teas. So who wouldn’t feel rejuvenated by a delicious bowlful of Sun-Dried Tomato Soup with Fresh Basil?

-Peanuts, which fortify the immune system and lower cholesterol, provide a tasty, crunchy accent in Sichuan Kung Pao Chicken.

-Mint, which has many healing properties, from taming muscle spasms to dissolving gallstones, can be relished in Minty Snap Peas accompanying Pan-Roasted Salmon or in a Pineapple Salsa served with Jerk Pork Cutlets.

-And peaches give us vitamin C, beta carotene, and fiber. So enjoy them in a wonderful Gingery Peach-a-Berry Cobbler.

To help us understand what part these health-restoring foods can play in our lives, Simonds peppers Spices of Life with lively interviews with a variety of experts, including Dr. Jim Duke, who offers anti-aging advice from his Herbal Farmacy; Dr. Andrew Weil, who discusses his latest nutritional findings; and Dr. U. K. Krishna, who explains basic Ayurvedic practices for healthy living. And more.

With its delicious, easy-to-prepare recipes and concise health information, this delightful book opens up a whole new world of tastes for us to enjoy every day and to share with family and friends.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Award-winning author, Nina Simonds (A Spoonful of Ginger) has had an ear cocked to the healing properties of food since beginning her studies of Chinese cuisine in Taiwan. Give a culture a few thousand years to grow and flower and it will have a thing or two to say about what's good to eat, and what's good for you to eat, no question about it. Other cultures may not have it all quite as tabulated and codified as the Chinese (or Hindu culture with the laws of Ayurveda), but have settled over the eons on a way of life and cooking that works to the benefit, not the detriment, of the body. Mediterranean culture comes to mind. Measure all that against fast food and a culture (our own) that willfully strips time away from the daily need to eat--and not just eat alone, but as a family or group with time for each other--and you have the roots of a health crisis. So it's perfectly natural for an insightful food writer like Nina Simonds to produce a wonderful cookbook with the idea of health and healthy living at it's core. Spices of Life is the result.

The 160 recipes are divided into sections that include Something to Graze On, Appetizers that Make a Meal, Homey Soups, Hearty Stews and Braises, Main-dish Salads, Pleasures from the Garden, Versatile Stir-fries and Sautes, East-West Barbecue, Irresistible Vegetarian, Satisfying Staples: Noodles, Rice and Other Grains, Light and Sumptuous Sweets, and Foods that Fight Common Ailments. Simonds's deep experience with Asian cooking comes through in Technicolor Spicy Sichuan-style Green Beans. But so too does her own heritage, as in Great-Aunt Sophie's Chicken Soup.

The sidebars to each recipe give health information about various ingredients. For Spiced Almonds Simonds explains that the high fat content of almonds is monounsaturated, of a type to help reduce cholesterol, and that the high Vitamin E content can prevent heart disease. As for cinnamon and star anise, Asian physicians prescribe them as digestive aids. A brief profile of a health all star is included with each chapter, the focus on their expertise, and in some cases, their favorite recipes. In Appetizers, Dr. Andrew Weil discusses Vitamin and mineral supplements. In Homey Soups, Walter Willet takes on the food pyramid.

The real strength of Spices of Life, however, is found in the recipes and in Simonds's own experience as a very busy working mother--both in the kinds of food she puts on the table, and how she gets it there. She shares strategies for cooking as well as taking on the challenges of daily life. Her taste for life is equally well-matched by the flavor of the foods she highlights. Hot and Sour Slaw with Barbecued Pork anyone? Now, that's health food! --Schuyler Ingle

From Publishers Weekly

For many home chefs, reading through most cookbooks is a bit like perusing some high-end fashion magazine: an exercise in aspiration—you'll never get around to making that Boeuf en Croute, but it's nice to imagine a world in which you would. Then there are cookbooks like this one, which is more like an issue of Self than Vogue: full of straightforward but practical recipes, and peppered with loads of health information. Structurally, the book is rich with material, although somewhat confusing: in addition to chapters organized by theme ("Pleasures from the Garden," "Hearty Stews and Braises"), there's interstitial material from alternative health experts like Andrew Weil, with recipes relating to their medical philosophies. The chapters are creative and useful. Why don't more chefs devote a chapter, as Simonds (A Spoonful of Ginger) has, to "Appetizers That Can Serve as a Meal"? Mixing Indonesian, French and Italian recipes within one chapter, Simonds displays her wide-ranging professional and personal experience, sharing meals kids will love, like Teriyaki Beef. For those who relish cookbooks for the elegance they promise, Simonds's side notes may seem less than sexy (learning that dill is supposed to cure bad breath somehow makes the dish the note accompanies less appetizing), but for those open to alternative medicine, and curious about international cuisine, this book is uniquely useful, and Simonds's recipes are easy and inviting.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; 1St Edition edition (February 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375411607
• ISBN-13: 978-0375411601
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 1.2 x 9.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #30,268 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #10 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Cooking by Ingredient > Herbs, Spices & Condiments
  • #37 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > Asian

More About the Author

Nina Simonds is one of the country's leading authorities on Asian cooking and is an award-winning journalist. She is the author of 11 books on Chinese cuisine and culture, including the best-selling Asian Noodles and A Spoonful of Ginger, which won both the IACP and the James Beard Foundation Book Award for health. Simonds' last book Spices of Life: Simple and Delicious Recipes for Great Health was selected by Cooking Light Magazine as their #1 choice for the best "Healthy" cookbook published in the last 25 years. She has won three James Beard awards. Her website with innovative video blogs (www.spicesoflife.com) was launched in February of 2007 and is featured regularly on The Daily Beast. She is a contributor to GourmetLive.com, Epicurious.com, and the "Off Duty" section of The Wall Street Journal

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

65 of 73 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Literary Buffet of Holistic Doctrines and Healthy Recipes, February 6, 2005

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B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Spices of Life: Simple and Delicious Recipes for Great Health (Hardcover)

`Spices of Life' by notable cookbook author, Nina Simonds is a `high end' cooking for health recipe sampler similar to those done by Kathleen Daelemans and Andrew Weil / Rosie Daley, with the added attraction of a strong dose of Asian holistic medical lore.

This is a very liberating book in that a quick run through the recipes gives one the sense that if we make and eat these recipes, there is nothing of which we are depriving ourselves. And, unlike a similar collection of `healthy' recipes from the Mediterranean, most of these recipes have exotic tastes of ginger, fish sauces, tamarind, Kaffir lime, lemongrass added to the strong but familiar tastes of garlic and chilis. All this is backed by the strong assurance arising from the Alfred A. Knopf cookbook publishing team, headed by the renowned culinary editor, Judith Jones, the midwife of great cookbooks from Julia Child, Marcella Hazan, and Lydia Bastianich.

All this means is that the book is very attractive to look at and enjoyable to read. It also means that the selection of recipes is a lot broader than you may find in the average healthy eating cookbook. They all shout exceptions to the playful quote from New Yorker food writer, Calvin Trillin who says `Health Food makes me sick.'. I confess that I often find myself agreeing with Herr Trillin on this point, as I do with most of his observations.

The chapters in this book are:

`Something to graze on' with recipes for snacks plus lots of advice on the belief that eating little but often is a very good idea. Recipes include soybeans, vegetables and dips, pickled carrots and glazed onions.
`Appetizers that make a meal' gives grilled shrimp, turkey sate, vegetarian dumplings, spinach pie, pot stickers, vegetarian samosas, spinach salad, a mushroom frittata, salmon sushi and pork in lettuce wraps.
`Homey Soups' gives a very accurate Chinese chicken broth, miso soup, Cantonese corn chowder, onion and garlic soup, tomato soup, Vietnamese Hot and Sour Scallop Soup, and Indian Seafood Chowder.
`Hearty Stews and Braises' has a nice mix of both Mediterranean and Asian chicken, seafood, lamb, turkey, and beef braises. French technique is foremost here, as braising is such a distinctively European technique.
`Main Dish Salads' gives us traditional recipes such as Salade Nicoise and slaws, plus a lot of combined grilled meat and vegetable combinations.
`Pleasures from the Garden' has lots of vegetable dishes using roasting, pickling, steaming, stir-frying, grilling, and raw food combinations.
`Versatile stir-fries and sautes' includes classics such as Kung Pao Chicken, Pork Lo Mein, and Pad Thai plus stir-frys of greens, beans, mushrooms, beet and peppers, shrimp, salmon, and scallops and asparagus
`East-West Barbecue' is not all about true barbecue recipes, but about smoked and grilled dishes, plus marinades, rubs, and dishes you would eat with classic barbecue such as salsas and wraps.
`Irresistible vegetarian' gives recipes that are commonly seen as vegetarian substitutes for mean and other animal protein. It features beans, tempeh, tofu, miso, and noodles.
`Satisfying stapes: noodles, rice, and other grains' gives, recipes for rice, noodles and other grains plus barbecued pork, Vietnamese Rainbow salad, couscous, and Kung Pao scallops over noodles.
`Light and sumptuous sweets' strikes me as the rewards for eating healthy dishes for most of the day. The molasses spice cookies, for example have every bit as much sugar as a recipe from Maida Heatter. It's only bow to good health is a substitution of corn oil for butter for most of the fat, although butter is still present, albeit in a reduced role.

Most recipes include some marginalia on the healthful benefits of a main ingredient such as yogurt, ginger, cucumbers, green beans, and the like. You get the idea. These little tips fit the `buffet' treatment of healthy eating advice. You can read and take counsel from these tips, or ignore them and just cook the recipes. Each chapter also ends with a little essay by one or more advocates of various doctrines of healthy eating. Some have a scientific basis and some represent traditional doctrines that are a based more on folklore than on science.

Unfortunately, scientific method does not work well with holistic medicine. Science, even with the extremely powerful computers and multivariate statistical models available today, simply cannot easily formulate or address `big questions' such as all the elements that contribute to healthy living. What science can do is demonstrate the value of vitamins, exercise, and omega-3 fatty acids and the hazards of smoking, obesity, and eating too much refined sugar. A perfect example of the effects of science's tunnel vision is the shifts in the reputation of eggs and butter in one's diet.

Equally unfortunately, the folklore-based bodies of holistic wisdom may endorse foods and activities that are as much influenced by myth as by observation of talented primitive natural scientists. The doctrines of macrobiotics, I believe, have been shown to overlook some important health issues. Fortunately for the value of this book, the author samples lots of different opinions, with the scientific point of view being represented by holistic advocates such as Raymond Weil and the folklore camp being represented by, for example, Indian holistic doctrines of Ayurveda, which seem to be based almost entirely on common sense.

One great virtue of the book is that it is like a walk through a health conference gallery of vendors hawking their particular brand of advice. If one catches your attention, you can check them out in more detail by finding their works in the bibliography.

The main drawback of this approach is that the organization of recipes is not as clean as you may like in a good `ready reference' cookbook. Salads and grilled dishes appear in many different chapters and several pairs of dishes in two different chapters seem to overlap one another a bit too much.

I still recommend this book, as this is as painless a way I have seen for learning new ideas and inspirations for good living.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nina Simonds cookbooks are simply the best, August 8, 2005

By 

J. Young "eat@home" (New England) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Spices of Life: Simple and Delicious Recipes for Great Health (Hardcover)

This book was not my first introduction to Nina Simonds' recipes. I have a very dog-eared copy of Asian Noodles from which I make about ½ dozen recipes on a regular basis and another ½ dozen or so less frequently. Spices of Life provides an expansion of the recipe file for the Nina Simonds pantry. Her recipes are clearly written, easy to follow, and always a success. A very good description of her ingredients list is given in "Basic Staples (with some substitutions)," this is something I wished for with the Asian Noodles book. Now I always have the staples on hand and often I need only pick up a few fresh ingredients at the store, or pull them out of the fridge, to put together a wonderful meal. Everyone in my family including my 4-year-old has a favorite recipe from a Nina Simonds cookbook.

I welcome this book on healthy cooking which doesn't simply forbid some foods and scold us for lazy eating so much as it encourages living and eating healthy through easy-to-prepare, family-friendly, delicious recipes. Thank you, Ms. Simonds, for another wonderful cookbook!

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Healthy But Also Delicious, June 27, 2005

By 

John Matlock "Gunny" (Winnemucca, NV) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Spices of Life: Simple and Delicious Recipes for Great Health (Hardcover)

The first recipe that fell open when I picked up this book was for Basic White Rice. This has long been a staple of my diet. Some people start thinking about a meal and wonder how they are going to fix the potato, others start with noodles. I start with rice.

Then the second sentence under Basic White Rice says that she prefers the fluffy long grain varieties such a basmati and jasmine. I buy jasmine in 25 pound bags. Then after the basic rice comes Fried Rice, two kinds of Pilaf, Herbal Rice and some more.

The difference in this book is that the follows the guidelines of the Department of Health and Human Services in the formation of a healthy diet. Instead of the basic guidelines, the book uses the guidelines as a start for the development of delicious as well as healthy dishes.

The author spent years in the orient learning their culture which strangely enough tends to followed the HHS recomendations fairly closely.