CIA's Techniques of Healthy Cooking

By JULIETTE ROSSANT Are chefs responsible for offering healthy foods at their restaurants? If they are not responsible or responsive, then they risk loosing customers. On the other hand, customers are responsible for figuring out what is a healthy diet and what kinds of foods, cooking techniques, and even farming techniques will satisfy them. Stuck in the middle? The Culinary Institute of America's Techniques of Healthy Cooking (Wiley, 2008) is a good guide for culinary students, restaurateurs and chefs, and home cooks – eaters of all sorts. Techniques of Healthy Cooking has a textbook tone, with multiple writers weighing in, and plenty for the classroom. It is clearly geared to culinary students and restaurant owners, chefs, and managers. It's not as fun or absorbing to read as a single-author cook book, but it does have a wealth of information ranging from early chapters on nutrition and dietary guidelines to purchasing, handling, storing, and choosing healthy ingredients. The third chapter, The Techniques of Healthy Cooking (p. 85) goes over methods such as sautéing and steaming and then techniques best suited for different ingredients like vegetables or meat. These are fairly general and a bit tedious to read, but then at the end of the chapter is more useful information on toasting and infusing spices (p. 125) and creating spice blends and flavoring vinegar (p. 126-7). The recipe section is easy to follow for a home cook with some experience. Soup stick to consume-based light soups with a few thicker soups like Tortilla Soup (p. 175) and Traditional Black Bean (p. 176) plus cold pureed soups. The recipes are simply written and straightforward – they will turn out decent dishes if you follow them, but without head notes or menu suggestions, they are a bit characterless. The salads are more adventurous, like Hearty Greens and Wild-Ripened Cheddar with Hazelnut Verjus-Mustard Dressing (p. 212) that incorporates lots of dark, leafy greens perfect for a healthy diet. The fat is kept to a minimum and each recipe lists portioning information along with nutritional information. It's easy to follow and read. The Main Dishes for Lunch and Dinner (p. 243) get even more adventurous and interesting from Cassoulet with Smoked Tomatoes (p. 282) to Rabbit and Oyster Etouffee (p. 306). These dishes are inspirational – eat more grains, vegetables and less fat. For the home cook, Techniques of Healthy Cooking is not cluttered with dieter's tips and notes on how to replace the fats in your current diet. It will simply introduce you to new recipes, or solid versions of recipes in your repertoire, that are part of a healthy diet. Previous articles: [Cookbook Reviews - complete] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, blogging, food blogging --> back to Super Chef