Spices of Life: A Cookbook of Simple and Delicious Recipes for Great Health

by Nina Simonds

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0375411607
• Release Date: February 2005
• Publisher: Knopf
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 2.94 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.6" x 1.1" x 7.0"

Customer Reviews

Delicious!

You will try one recipe after another and be impressed with the results. There are lots of veggies but you you will eat in delight at the flavors and textures and not because they are good for you. The recipes are easy enough for any night and special enough for company.

Great Taste and Easy to follow

So far I have made several things from this book and cant get enough! I cook for my friends and am always trying to come up with new recipes to try when I came across this book and had to buy it one the spot. The recipes are easy to prepare, the ingredients are not hard to find either. I am going to get her other cookbooks, if they are anything like this one I will be so happy. There is a section in this book that has come amazing marinades and surprize you do not need to marinate them overnight. Highly recommend this cookbook escpecially if you are into the Asian Fusion genre.

Nina Simonds cookbooks are simply the best

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!

Healthy But Also Delicious

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.

Literary Buffet of Holistic Doctrines and Healthy Recipes

`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 a