Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #193282 in Books
• Published on: 1991-02-13
• Released on: 1991-02-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
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. Author tour.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
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.-- JS
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
"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."

The Kirkus Reviews -- Review

Customer Reviews

Very useful
This is a great follow-up to The Book of Whole Meals, because the food gets more creative. The first part of the book explains how to balance meals using the Chinese 5-Element system, which really helps in overcoming cravings for junk foods. They also label the recipes so you can figure out how to fit them into the system. I have to admit I've mainly used the book for this purpose. For the recipes, I adjusted them to suit my own taste, and found them satisfying.

This Book has the Best Tasting Wheat-Free Pumpkin Pie Recipe
This is a great cookbook. The pumkin pie crust is wheat free and it tastes great. It's always a hit at the holidays, and the pumkin pie part of the recipe is dairy free, this recipe is so nutritious that you can eat it anytime. The entire book has some great solutions. And if you are in NYC you should try to take a class at Ann Marie's Cooking School.

A Natural Kitchen Classic!
This is a superb book! I first discovered Anne Marie Colbin's "Natural Gourmet" back in 1990 while cooking for a friend who had chronic fatigue syndrome. I cooked at least 80% of the recipes for her, and in the process learned a lot about how simple good and healthy food can be to prepare. I learned about the Chinese Five Phases, which have influenced my cooking and eating styles for almost 20 years now. I lost my original copy of this book during a move, so now I'm buying a new one, along with two other of her newer books. The salad recipes are really remarkable, with creative, tasty, and surprisingly simple ingredients. A great book, pure and simple!