Recipe: Radish-Watercress Salad with Soy Sesame Dressing

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Was awarded the 1989 IACP-Seagram Award in the category "Healthy and Light" as 2nd runner-up.

Featuring whole grains, beans, fresh vegetables, nuts, seeds; mostly vegetarian, a short chapter on fish, some butter optional. Includes the information on balancing meals according to the ancient Chinese Theory of the Five Phases (or Elements), used in Traditional Chinese Medicine and acupuncture to promote a balanced state of health and energy.

Annemarie Colbin learned early of the important relationship between food and health: having grown up in a vegetarian household, she spent many years integrating Eastern eating philosophies with Western habits, studying the works of everyone from J.I. Rodale and George Ohsawa to Julia Child and James Beard. With The Natural Gourmet, Colbin takes her ideas about healthful eating a step further with meals that nourish body and soul, and that are elegant enough to serve to company.

The recipes included in The Natural Gourmet are the result of a collaborative effort by Colbin and ten students from her Natural Gourmet Cookery School in Manhattan. Each recipe is classified according to the Chinese Theory of the Five Phases, making it easy to combine the various courses to create a balanced, harmonious meal. Among the delicious dishes you'll find are:

• Curried Apple-Squash Bisque
• Mushrooms Stuffed with Garlic and Rosemary
• San Franciscan Pizza
• Lissa's Homemade Black Pepper Pasta with Scallion-Butter Sauce
• Stuffed Cabbage Rolls
• Jalapeno Corn Bread
• Japanese Red Bean Soup
• Lentil Croquettes
• Potato-Cabbage Casserole with Dill
• Black Bean Salad with Corn and Red Pepper
• Pasta Salad with Zucchini and Chick-peas
• Poached Salmon Fillets with Mock Hollandaise
• Almond Flan with Raspberry Sauce
• Ginger Lace Cookies
• Orange Loaf with Walnuts
• and many more

All the recipes are in keeping with Colbin's belief that food should be whole, fresh, local, and seasonal -- and, of course, delicious. Much more than simply a cookbook, The Natural Gourmet presents a combination of food preparation and philosophy that come together in a plan for healthful and graceful living.

Reviews:

"The Natural Gourmet contains enough recipes that bring out the intrinsic pleasantness of food to make a good cook sit up and think."
--Eating Well

"[Colbin's] kitchen skills and culinary range have kept pace with the secular competition.... [The Natural Gourmet] goes macrobiotics one better."
--The New York Post

"[Colbin's] recipes represent a fairly sophisticated repertoire of uncomplicated dishes for the 'natural gourmet'...Sugar-free, mostly meatless and dairy-free dishes with a global range."
--Kirkus Reviews

"Colbin's imaginative vegetarian recipes borrow ingredients and methods from cuisines as diverse as Japanese (shoyu consomme with enoki mushrooms), Italian (asparagus risotto) and American (apple-cranberry pie). Encouraging a balanced diet based on whole foods--mainly beans, grains and greens--Colbin uses seasoning to broaden our horizons. The founder and director of the Natural Gourmet Cooking School in New York, she eschews most dairy products, white sugar and meat, but approves of fish and light, whole-grain desserts (some of the latter include eggs and butter). And, influenced by macrobiotic nutrition, Colbin ( The Book of Whole Meals; Food and Healing) suggests a new method for achieving needed nourishment. "I am inclined to philosophy," she writes, "and an eating style based on firm philosophical principles makes more sense to me than one based on constantly changing scientific data." In her Chinese-derived "Five-Phase Theory of Eating," less practical than Colbin's more traditional prescriptions, foods are categorized into one of five "phases" (wood, fire, earth, metal, water), with meals composed of foods from each."
--Publishers Weekly

"Colbin, author of several popular cookbooks, created these recipes with students at her Manhattan cooking school. She has developed a Western macrobiotic cuisine, emphasizing whole foods and natural ingredients. Her expertise is evident, but many of her dishes will most likely appeal to strongly committed vegetarians; and her Five Phase Theory of menu balancing seems questionable. Still, any vegetarian collection should add this."
--Library Journal

Paperback: 336 pages
Publisher: Ballantine Books - February 1991
ISBN-10: 0345370287
ISBN-13: 978-0345370280