Super Natural Cooking: Five Delicious Ways to Incorporate Whole and Natural Foods into Your Cooking [Paperback]

Heidi Swanson (Author)

Book Description

Release date: March 1, 2007

Everyone knows that whole foods are much healthier than refined ingredients, but few know how to cook with them in uncomplicated, delicious ways. Using a palette of natural ingredients now widely available in supermarkets, Super Natural Cooking offers globally inspired, nutritionally packed cuisine that is both gratifying and flavorful. With her weeknight-friendly dishes, real-foodie Heidi Swanson teaches home cooks how to become confident in a whole-foods kitchen by experimenting with alternative flours, fats, grains, sweeteners, and more.

Including innovative twists on familiar dishes from polenta to chocolate chip cookies, Super Natural Cooking is the new wholesome way to eat, using real-world ingredients to get out-of-this-world results.An inspiringly stylish introduction to nutritional superfoods, with an emphasis on whole grains, natural sweeteners, healthy oils, and colorful phytonutrient-packed ingredients.Features 80 recipes, a comprehensive pantry chapter, and 100 stunning full-color photos.

Shows how to build a whole-foods pantry with nutrition-rich ingredients like almond oil, pomegranate molasses, and mesquite flour--each explained in detail.Winner of the 2005 Webby Award for best personal website, Heidi Swanson's recipe blog (www.101cookbooks.com) attracts close to 500,000 page views a month, making it one of the most widely read recipe journals online.

 


 

Editorial Reviews

Review

“In Super Natural Cooking, Swanson not only goes a long way toward helping ‘whole' foods shed their stale, hippie stigma but also makes a strong case for putting natural foods at the center of an emerging, modern, global cuisine. Her seductive recipes, like lime-bathed peanut salad and an updated (almost guilt-free) take on the classic Girl Scout Thin Mint cookie, reach out to cooks who want to eat smart but still do it in style.”
–Salon.com

“Super Natural Cooking isn't just any other cookbook; it's meant to inspire and educate, utilizing natural and native ingredients and worldly flavors . . . A great addition to your culinary library as you expand your definition of healthy cooking.”
–Healing Lifestyles & Spas

“A good, solid guide to natural foods, ingredients, and how to use them without the stigma of this food being only boring, bland steamed vegetables and tofu. You'll like her style and simple recipes along with some beautiful photos. Simplicity and ease are great assets of this book.”
–South Florida Sun-Sentinel

“Looking for new ways to eat more naturally and healthfully? Super Natural Cooking is full of good ways to expand your use of whole and natural ingredients.”
–Cincinnati Enquirer

“Super Natural Cooking provides not just recipes and advice, but a new perspective on food and how to eat what you should.”
–Baltimore Sun

“At last a cookbook is coming that makes natural food appear glamorous and desirable.”
–UPI (United Press International) Eat to Live column

“[T]he book's layout is urbane, the photos lush, the recipes modern and sophisticated. The teff-and-tofu crowd, it seems, has gone high-gloss.”
–Houston Chronicle

From the Publisher

* An inspiringly stylish introduction to nutritional superfoods, with an emphasis on whole grains, natural sweeteners, healthy oils, and colorful phytonutrient-packed ingredients. * Features 80 recipes, a comprehensive pantry chapter, and 100 stunning full-color photos. * Shows how to build a whole-foods pantry with nutrition-rich ingredients like almond oil, pomegranate molasses, and mesquite flour--each explained in detail.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Ten Speed Press; First Edition edition (March 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1587612755
• ISBN-13: 978-1587612756
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 0.8 x 10 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (121 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,871 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #7 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Special Diet > Whole Foods
  • #53 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Natural Foods

More About the Author

San Francisco-based photographer and cookbook author Heidi Swanson is the creator of the culinary blog 101 Cookbooks. She is the author of Super Natural Cooking, a James Beard Award-nominated cookbook focused on natural foods. She has been a contributor to Saveur.com and has also been featured in a wide range of national and international publications including Food & Wine, Fast Company, Glamour, Vegetarian Times, and the Washington Post.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

171 of 172 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The best possible introduction to ultra-natural foods! May 1, 2007

By H. Grove TOP 500 REVIEWER

Format:Paperback

There are plenty of new products coming out to meet the demand of folks now eager to try the natural food movement, but it's hard to know how to use them well. Amaranth flour, buckwheat flour, brown rice syrup? Simply trying to substitute them into your favorite recipes rarely works--you need to know how to use them to their own best advantage, and that takes time, effort, and plenty of practice to work out.

Luckily, Heidi Swanson decided to start that process for us.

"Super Natural Cooking" is packed with information on how to best store, handle, and use all of the wonderful ingredients you'll find. You'll find out which all-natural sweeteners have a surprisingly low glycemic index, making them appropriate for diabetics and those worried about their blood sugar or carbohydrate intake. You'll learn how much of those exotic flours you can substitute, which recipe-types they work best in, and how to make sure their different characteristics don't cause your recipes to fail.

The recipes from this book more than prove Ms. Swanson's skill in the creative kitchen. One of the surest signs I've found of a brilliant cook over the years is the ability to take a few, often mild ingredients and turn them into something that is more than the sum of its parts--a wholly new and complex flavor. This she does easily with such recipes as a luscious fig spread that includes a bit of honey, lemon juice and black pepper. Then there's a curry noodle pot that yields new tastes in every delicious bite. I feared the seed-topped amaranth biscuits would be unduly heavy after feeling the texture of the dough, but they came out tender and wonderful, with an elusively delicious flavor I can only attribute to the amaranth flour.... Each recipe came out perfectly without any alteration on our part; the directions were simple, clear, and without error.

The book even makes a beautiful gift, as it's filled with Ms. Swanson's own food photography--and believe me, these photographs will make you hungry! Read more ›

69 of 70 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Super and natural May 27, 2008

By Cathe Fein Olson VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

"Super Natural Cooking" is an exciting and tasty introduction the world of whole foods. The book has an unusual arrangement. Rather than lumping appetizers, entrees, soups, salads, and desserts into sections - the book is rather arranged like a course on natural foods cooking. The book begins with instructions for building a natural foods pantry - what foods to include and what to avoid, including flours, oils, sweeteners, spices and seasonings.

Then she moves on to whole grains, beginning first with information about the different types of grains (helpful because many may be unfamiliar), she then moves on to recipes. There are baked goods like Seed-Crusted Amaranth Biscuits and Espresso Banana Muffins; soups like Toasted Wheat Germ Soup and Creamy Wild Rice Soup. The Spring Minestrone with Brown Rice made with fresh asparagus and snap peas has been a regular for us on Fridays when I get my box of produce from the local CSA. We also loved the Risotto-Style Barley made with crème fraiche and lemon zest.

Next, Swanson encourages us to "Cook by Color." This section is all about fruits and vegetables - brimming with essential phytonutrients (don't worry if you're not sure what they are, it's explained in the book.) Recipes include Baked Purple Hedgehog Potatoes (your kids will love these), Red Indian Carrot Soup, Curried Tofu Scramble, and Crema de Guacamole with Crunch Topopos.

If those foods weren't healthy enough, the next section teaches you to "Know Your Superfoods:" alliums, cruciferous vegetables, beans and legumes, nuts and seeds, sea vegetables, sprouts, tea, and yogurt. Dishes include Beluga Lentil Crostini, Sprouted Garbanzo Burgers, and Golden Crusted Brussels Sprouts. My family absolutely loved the Creamy Cauliflower Soup....

Of course even natural foods eaters love their desserts and there a plenty of good ones here as Swanson presents a section on natural sweeteners. There are recipes for Thin Mint Cookies, Spiced Caramel Corn and Ginger-Amaranth Shortbread. The Dairyless Chocolate Mousse is so rich and decadent, no one will believe it was made with tofu. The biggest hit of the desserts for us - I've already made it several times - was the Raspberry Curd Swirl Cake. My gosh, it was good. I couldn't find Raspberry Curd at Trader Joe's so I used Lemon Curd and it was wonderful. Really, really great.

Whether you are already into natural foods like I am (but there were ingredients here I've never tried like wild rice flour, teff and farro) or completely lost in a natural foods store but want to know more, this book will work for you. The recipes are very "normal" and nonthreatening - like chocolate chip cookies with a bit of mesquite flour millet-fried "rice." In other words, comfortable favorites with a little twist. Swanson does an excellent job of explaining the ingredients (and offering substitutions if you are unable to find some of the more uncommon ones). This books is vegetarian - many recipes use dairy products but there are some great vegan recipes as well.

Review as seen on www.vegfamily.com by Cathe Olson Read more ›

82 of 92 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars beautiful food ideas, don't agree on all nutrition aspects photography is excellent though January 21, 2010

By Mpls real food lover

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

Well, my title sums it up basically. First off, to give fair warning, I am not at all a vegetarian, though I do eat a "whole foods" diet, but one inspired by say, Alice Waters, or Sally Fallon, or Julia Child. I appreciate that the author does not promote low-fat vegetarian fare, as I don't believe the saturated fat hype, but was dissapointed by how sugar laden many of Heidi's recipes were. The photography is beautiful, stunning pictures make each page worth a peek even if you're not inclined to try the recipes. I wish that the recipes, in general, had less starches, sugar, and gluten-grains.

48 of 54 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Not quite traditional foods, but tasty August 25, 2010

By jobert

Format:Paperback

I've followed Heidi's blog via email updates for about a year now. I have made a few recipes from there, and I picked this book up at the library.

As other reviewers have noted, she has gorgeous photography, and her instructions are clear and helpful. She is artful in her use of the English language, I must say. She is my go-to source for tasty and creative vegetarian dishes. I should mention that I am not a vegetarian, although probably a third to half of the meals I eat each week are. (I did experiments with going veg that didn't work out for me, because I seem to really need animal protein to be healthy.) I do genuinely think veg food is tasty, but I don't think it is a healthy diet for everyone.

So why three stars?

PROS:
-She stresses using organic, quality, whole ingredients. That is essential, in my mind, for healthful cooking.
-She doesn't stray from saturated fats. Thank goodness! I was so glad to see that Heidi isn't part of the anti-saturated fat campaign. If you are skeptical, and believe that saturated fats are terrible for you, google the "diet heart hypothesis" and "women's health initiative" and you will see that in the past few years, research studies are showing that a diet low in saturated fat actually doesn't reduce your risk of heart disease or cancer. Even more interesting is that the whole idea was built on shaky use of data to begin with. Google "Ancel Keys".
-Did I mention Heidi is an amazing photographer?? I want to eat the pictures.

CONS:
-Heidi does a lot of innovative work, and these recipes are testament to that. However, some of her methods aren't based on traditional cooking techniques. For example, there is phytic acid in whole grain flour (wheat, rye, etc).... Phytic acid blocks nutrient absorption and causes other digestive issues over time. I am not going to go into a lot of detail, but it is important for flour to either be soaked before it is used (like the teff flour she mentions from Ethiopia--they always ferment it for a few days to make injera bread in Ethiopia), or the grains should be sprouted and then thoroughly dried before they're ground into flour. I didn't see evidence of her mentioning that in the book. (If I'm wrong, I would appreciate someone pointing that out.)
-This may draw the ire of some vegetarians, but I have read a lot about soy foods being harmful to one's health. As a woman in my child-bearing years, I have chosen to remove soy foods from my diet, even though I had a happy love affair with tofu for a long time. Soy foods can mess with your hormones, ladies. I think traditionally speaking, soy was fermented or specially prepared to be consumed in smaller quantities (miso, soy sauce). And we generally eat a lot of soy here, either knowingly as vegetarians or often unknowingly in processed foods. So recipes in this book that are soy heavy, I just skip. That is a bummer. (And again, I recommend googling the subject for more info.) After I went totally organic in dairy and meat, and cut the soy out of my diet, my menstrual cycle is like clockwork now. Sorry if that is TMI, but it's true. This is after 14 years of it being unpredictable.

So I give three stars to this book. What I do is take what I've learned about traditional food preparation methods (i.e. soaking flour/sprouting grain, etc) and incorporate those practices into these recipes to have something tasty and healthful--in a way that has stood the test of time. It's a win-win: healthy preparation + awesome Heidi taste!

For more info on traditional food preparation, I recommend Nina Planck or Michael Pollen books for the theory, or Nourishing Traditions for the practicality. Read more ›