I love to cook and it’s difficult to find something beyond chicken and salad when you’re trying to lose weight. Over the years I’ve assembled a cookbook library that covers many topics (interested in how the Georgians ate green beans? I can help you out!), many of them as off-topic from weight-loss as my cookie cookbook collection. But I still return to what I call “abstinent” favorites, simply because they are so tasty.
An intimate and darkly comic memoir of a woman who does a 180 with her body.
When she was in her early forties, Frances Kuffel lost half her body weight. In Passing for Thin, Frances describes with unflinching honesty and a wickedly dark sense of humor her first fumbling introductions to her newly slender body, shining a light on the shared human experience of feeling uncomfortable in one’s own skin. She gradually moves from observer to player—enjoying for the first time flirting, exercising, and shopping–as she explores the terrain on the “Planet of Thin.” As Frances gradually comes to know—and love—the stranger in the mirror, she learns that her body does not define her, but enables her to become the woman she’s always wanted to be.
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This big compendium of recipes is comprised of ethnic, vegetarian meals the Moosewood staff makes on their day off. If you’re craving Chinese or Russian, this is your motherlode. You may have to tinker with the recipes that have too many carbohydrates (use rice instead of noodles) or skip them altogether, but you’ll find gems you keep going back to. (Mine has bookmarks for Cheese and Nut Dessert Balls from India and Moroccan Stew.)
If you discount Northern Europe and North America, it’s amazing that most of the world has such clean food. I love Indian food and Madhur Jaffrey knows how to make it accessible and easy for the rest of us. You’ll find dishes here that are not part of your local Indian spot: Dry Moong Dal, Goan-style Hot and Spicy Pork, Cold Yogurt Soup with Mint.
This was published in 1988, before anyone had heard of quinoa, and yet there it is: seven pages of the “new” grain. These are homey recipes using barley, bran, and oat bran buckwheat, cornmeal, grits and hominy, millet, oats, different kinds of rice, semolina, amaranth, triticale, and, yes, about fifty pages of healthier wheat.
Spear goes through the vegetable (and vegetables-that-are-really fruits) table alphabetically, explaining ways to steam, roast, boil, cut, blanche, and dress the plain vegetable, as well as recipes that use the vegetable in fancier ways. I’ve got to get an artichoke and finally learn the finesse.
These are one-pot meals that have extremely clean ingredients. Many of the recipes will call for couscous, which is a high-gluten marriage of wheat and semolina wheat, so you may want to put that rice cooker to work. Other than that, this is tasty, spicy, soul-warming food not always available in a big town like Missoula, Montana.
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We think you will like Dakshin: Vegetarian Cuisine from South India, Heirloom Kitchen: Heritage Recipes and Family Stories from the Tables of Immigrant Women, and Feast: Food of the Islamic World if you like this list.
From Didi's list on The best Southeast Asian cookbooks from a Chef who uses them daily.
This is a glossy cookbook published first in India and then in 1994 by an Australian division of Harper Collins. I’ve made many, many recipes in this book and it’s opened my eyes to the meat-free, texturally complex cuisine of South India. The careful but dynamic mix of ingredients such as mustard seeds, curry leaves, dried coconut, dal, and cumin seeds used in tempering dishes brings the food to life. I recommend this book to the curious and adventuresome home cook who enjoys shopping at Indian markets. The recipes are solid and for the most part easy once you become familiar with its cuisine and techniques.
From Lauren's list on The best lifestyle books for cooking, entertaining and tablescaping.
What a beautiful tribute this cookbook is to immigrant women from around the world. This book is a collection of family recipes from around the world—Anna’s realization that she didn’t know how to make her mother’s meatballs led to the curiosity of how many other family recipes would be lost or forgotten if not written down. The result is a collection of delicious international recipes with beautiful stories behind them that inspire you to want to get in the kitchen and also write down your favorite beloved family recipes.
From Mary's list on The best books about food catering to the plate, the eye, and the mind.
Feast is indeed a feast, served to the eye and the mind as well as to the palate. This Lebanese food writer has traveled from Senegal to Indonesia and to all the Islamic countries in between to gather recipes that are almost painfully tempting, lushly illustrated, and amply annotated. Reading it, one discovers how we in the West impoverish our idea of Islamic food when we equate it only with that of the Middle East.