Photographer, cookbook author, and graphic designer HEIDI SWANSON is the creator of the award-winning culinary websites 101 Cookbooks and Mighty Foods. Her work has been featured on NPR and in national and international pubWashington Post, Vegetarian Times, Time, and Life. She lives in San Francisco. [Edit review] [Delete review]

Contents


Acknowledgments - vii

Introduction - 1

1 Build a Natural Foods Pantry - 5

2 Explore a Wide Range of Grains - 25

3 Cook by Color - 73

4 Know Your Superfoods - 113

5 Use Natural Sweeteners - 159

Basic Recipes and Techniques - 197

Sources - 207

Index - 209 [Edit review] [Delete review]

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... [More...] [Edit review] [Delete 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... [More...] [Edit review] [Delete review]

CHAPTER ONE

BUILD A NATURAL FOODS PANTRY

This chapter aims to set you up with something other than the standard powder-white pantry. It’s a whole new (and at the same time old) way of thinking about cooking from scratch.

When cookbooks repeatedly call for the familiar cast of cheap, refined, basic ingredients, people forget how to use anything else. The ingredients they seldom use fall out of favor, and they lose confidence in experimenting with new ones. Many of the ingredients that have fallen out of favor with the home cook are whole grains and whole-grain flours, natural sweeteners, and minimally processed fats.

The ingredients outlined here are going to be your building blocks–your go-to pantry of culinary fats, flavors, and flours. This doesn’t mean you have to take what you are currently using and throw it out, it just means that the next time you head to the store you will be armed with the information (and hopefully... [More...] [Edit review] [Delete review]