The Art of Simple Food :: Food and Nutrition

The Art of Simple Food
by author HÃ©lÃ¨ne Meurer

by Alice Waters

Famed restaurauteur and food activist Alice Waters teaches fundamental techniques while instilling in readers a healthy planet food philosophy and culinary creativity. Although the “buy local, buy organic” approach is a recent phenomenon, this author has long been considered a pioneer in the slow food movement. This is where modern meets traditional.

The book is substantial and beautifully embellished with unassuming pencil sketches. It is a pleasing compendium of rudimentary techniques and more than 250 basic recipes, with variations included for most.

In the old-school primer style of teaching chefs such as Craig Claiborne, Julia Child, Jacques Pepin, and James Beard, The Art of Simple Food does much more than list recipes. This is a book best appreciated by reading it first at leisure, then taking it into the kitchen. Waters’ passion exudes from between the lines for an overall effect that teaches much more than just technique.

Novice cooks will come to understand the culinary foundations that ultimately allow for creative licence–fun and freedom in the kitchen. Sections are devoted to instructions for salads, sauces, roasting, frying, and more. Seasoned cooks will enjoy adding new tips to their repertoire, and will find renewed appreciation not just for the resulting meal, but also for the soulful pleasure of creating good food with quality, well-sourced ingredients.

It’s not flashy and it’s not fast, but The Art of Simple Food is an important cookbook for today. It returns to, and reminds us of, what separates good cooks from the rest: reverence for quality ingredients and a caring approach to their preparation. Read this book, learn these principles, and your cooking will bring more joy.

HÃ©lÃ¨ne Meurer is a writer and reviewer in Victoria, BC, who sometimes gets lost in the books she reviews and cannot be found for weeks at a time.

Source: alive #312, October 2008

Eastern European Favorites
With such a rich history, it's not surprising that Eastern Europe's food is famous for being quite hearty and hardy. By combining tradition with a healthier approach, I've come up with several lighter samples of popular recipes. These flavorful concoctions are sure to leave the palate--and the belly--fully satisfied..

Herb Flavors To Savor
Fragrant herbs are always a joy, whether in the garden or in the kitchen. Some, like thyme and oregano, are trusted cooking classics, their flavors well-known to many a cuisine lover.

Winter Warmth
The cold of winter is here and our thoughts turn to cozying at the home hearth with loved one.

Bon Appetite
January means a fresh start--a new year, a healthier lifestyle. We're committed to our New Year's resolutions and whole foods are at the top of the list.

Hey Mom, Take a Break
Meals should always be prepared with love and eaten with joy, especially on Mother's Day. This year, reward your mom for all her hard work. Take the time to serve her the healthiest and tastiest food possible. It will make her feel like a queen. (And don't forget to clean up afterwards!)

Sit Down to Sabzi
Ancient cultures travelled down the likes of the Euphrates and Nile rivers carrying herbs and spreading knowledge of their healing qualities.

Beach Party!
August is the perfect month for outdoor eating. Invite friends and family to a picnic-at the beach, in the park, on top of a mountain or even in your own garden.

Holiday Tradition with Nutrition
To prepare you for the holiday season, this year we're featuring an international selection of festive recipes that are both wholesome and tantalizing to your taste buds.

Stuff It!
Elegantly scooped and stuffed, the following delectable combinations give a new look to the most simple traditional food.

Fun and Fabulous Fare with Fibre
Increasing your intake of high-fibre foods helps prevent disease and is another important step toward better health. Fibre keeps the bowels healthy and fills your stomach so you tend to eat less.

Viva les Veggies
Ever since the Hunza tribe were studied in their Himalayan Shangri-La in the early 20th century, we, in the west, have been looking to other cultures for an anti-aging miracle. Recent research into the Okinawan peoples of Japan shows that eating whole grains, seaweed, and local fresh produce are other keys to long life..

Prostate Power
Hundreds of scientific studies are proving soybeans have anticancer and antiviral properties because of the protease inhibitors they contain, which can act as antioxidants.

Recipes For the Back-To-School Rush
September is a time of transition from the long lazy days of summer to the sometimes hectic, back-to-school schedule. Getting children to ballet and soccer practice and coordinating all the drop-offs and pickups mean that family life can get busy quickly. This month's recipes ease the transition by highlighting seasonal fresh market produce in easy late summer meals that are pulled together in 20 minutes or less.

A Light Meal to Welcome Crisper Days
October is such a great time for preparing locally grown food. I love combining crisp, colourful produce with the earthy flavours and feel of fall's root vegetables. The last of the local farmers' markets are happening now, and they're the perfect place to load up on herbs, specialty cheeses, and produce.

These Festive Dishes will Dazzle Your Holiday Guests
During the holiday season it's traditional to indulge in too much buttery shortbread cookies and fatty ham and turkey. So this month I have put together a combination of recipes that load our bodies with fibre, vitamins, nutrients, and healthy fats to reverse the trend and boost health.

Cancer-Free Dining
Everyone wants health and potential protection from cancer, but few of us know how to successfully implement healthful chang.

Sauerkraut
Unpasteurized sauerkraut is tasty, packed full of goodness and easy to make. Throughout history, the main ingredient, cabbage, has been called "the physician of the poor" because of its healing powers.

Full of Beans
Blood sugar levels are easy to manage with a diet that focuses on whole foods and beans, which consistently appear on the low end of the glycemic index (a measure of how a given food will raise blood sugar when compared to pure glucose). Beans are an excellent source of protein, but they also contain protective fibre; for example, one cup (250 mL) of chickpeas provides 11 grams of fibre.

Easy Traditional Elegance
This December I've put together some traditional favourites that are easy to prepare so you have more time to visit with friends and family. These recipes are also done the low-fat way, to give them a new, healthier twist.

The Gramercy Guide to Better Cooking
Every year we vow to eat better, immerse ourselves more completely in the joys of cooking, and become more at home on the range. This New Year's resolution can be the first step toward entering into a whole new relationship with your kitchen.

Go West
Executive chef David Hawksworth creates sensations on a nightly basis while crafting seasonal simplicity in high style at one of Vancouver's top-ranked restaurants, West. His appealing dishes garner international essence with their local flavours and global appeal.

Vintropolis
If it grows together, it goes together. Such is the mantra that keeps Chef Tony Marzo's cooking focused. Holding court within Vintropolis, one of Vancouver's most celebrated newcomers, his reputation is growing and things are going together better than he ever imagined.

Open to Inspiration
When Aurora Bistro first lit up the neighbourhood on Vancouver's Main Street, it gained as much attention for its regionally rooted philosophy as for the freshness of its plates and wine list. Aurora's chief kitchen creative is a firm fan of sensibly delicious cooking. Moreover, chef Jeff Van Geest makes no claims to doing anything other than treating food with the respect it deserves.

Eat, Shrink and Be Merry
With this new release from popular authors and sisters Janet and Greta Podleski, we're assured that "healthy eating is a piece of cake! After a five-year hiatus, they're back with refreshed energy to help the nutritionally challenged among us create healthier, tastier meals.

The Life of Riley
With its vaulted ceiling, centrepiece community table, and primarily piscine menu, Coast Restaurant (coastrestaurant.ca) lives by its motto: Catch, Cook, Eat. Embracing seasonality on a global level, the fresh fish sheet follows an international code of ethics and appeal.

Spa Lite Cuisine
This month we've gone to the professionals to create a meal that not only nourishes but helps improve our mood on even the most stressful day. What better place for de-stressing advice than the Vida Wellness Spa, tucked tastefully within The Sutton Place Hotel in downtown Vancouver?

Cru
Crisp, mellow, luscious, juicy, smooth, and big: much like the descriptors of its uniquely colour-coded wine list, Cru defies easy definition. Not only one of the best-heeled wine bars on the West Coast, Cru is also revered for the regional authenticity of its cuisine.

Quattro
An hour gazing out on the water that separates their North Vancouver restaurant from the architectural horizon of Vancouver's core is enough to convince anyone with a romantic ear that Quattro is a family business rich with "abbondanza, the Italian poetry of life.

Feenie's Fine Line
For all the accolades and awards that have been bestowed upon Chef Rob Feenie, he remains a man of simple passions doing what he truly loves. While every facet of his Vancouver operations reflects his AAA 5-diamond status, he stays grounded and inspired by what every season has to offer.

Pantry Raid
It's the end of an award-winning year for alive magazine. To celebrate, we're taking a look back at one of alive's newest features: the Fresh Sheet. Featuring the finest in contemporary, healthy cuisine, this new food column from writer Jason McRobbie showcases some of Canada's greatest restaurants and the chefs who put those restaurants on the Canadian culinary map.

Make This Holiday Feast a Rare One
Small rooms with big hearts and exquisite food are a staple of the Vancouver dining scene. Even so, Rare One lives up to its unique moniker with an energy, presentation, and ingredient list that has captured the imagination of locals and visitors alike.

Leafy Winter Vegetables
Green leafy vegetables like curly leaf kale and colourful chard are so powerful, we can get huge nutritional benefits from eating them daily. Not only are they affordable, low in calories, fat-free, and delicious, they can be made into a variety of dishes.

A Healthy Habit...to Start the Year
Healthier eating is a good habit to develop. Now is the time to rethink the condiment rack, read food labels a little more closely, and explore the delicious alternatives to be found in your local specialty stores, ethnic food markets, and local community.

Build Better Food Habits
You can form a new habit in less than a month. So try a 30-day resolution and set yourself on a lifelong road to health. Changing just one thing, every month of the year for 30 years, would lead to a vitally vibrant life indeed.

An Exhibition of Culinary Consciousness
Ensconced within the pristine halls of Toronto's Gardiner Museum, Chef Jamie Kennedy's most recent room is a study in organic elegance. Surrounded by walls of glass overlooking the ongoing renovation of the Royal Ontario Museum, the aptly named Jamie Kennedy Restaurant at the Gardiner Museum is well-positioned in Toronto's historical heartland.

Sweet Surrender
For Anna Olson, life is sweet. Her Food Network program "Sugar has finished its fifth season; the second cookbook, Another Cup of Sugar (Whitecap, 2006), was released last fall; and her Port Dalhousie Olson Foods and Bakery is drawing droves of customers from the Niagara Peninsula.

Cruciferous Confessions
I have a confession to make. Despite being a self-proclaimed adventurer in new foods, I have only just discovered kohlrabi. It could be because this round, purple vegetable looks so odd. But as a member of the cruciferous family of vegetables, kohlrabi is worth trying.

Treadwell
The restaurant's name says it all: Treadwell Farm to Table Cuisine. Perched at the mouth of Niagara's original canal system, the location is both idyllic and deliciously fitting.

Capitalizing on Seasonal Sustainability
Few dining rooms take the celebration of local terroir to heart as tastefully as does C, Vancouver's wildly lauded contemporary seafood restaurant. Suitably ensconced across from the False Creek Marina at Granville Island, C has always had a clear view when it comes to matters of freshness.

Fire Up Your Summer Menu
As the weather gets warmer, instead of slaving over a hot stove, try these healthy and delicious recipes that will have you and your friends relishing the tastes of summer-in less than 30 minutes, fridge to plate.

Reflections Gastronomie Takes Flight
Once the busiest fishing port in the world, Steveston (located just south of Vancouver) offers more than just fish-and-chip shops. The wharf is bustling with tea rooms, book shops, and boutiques - along with Reflections Gastronomie, a recently opened, regionally rooted bistro with healthy aspirations of success.

Local Eating
The 100-Mile Diet by Alissa Smith and J.B. MacKinnon (Random House Canada, 2007) and its approach to eating locally grown food seems blissfully easy with the abundant fruit and vegetable crops of summer. But what do you do in the fall and winter?

The Fresh Sheet 07
alive had a lot to live up to following The Fresh Sheet's successful inaugural year. This year we ventured farther from our West Coast base, as food writer Jason McRobbie visited fresh new faces and places as well as veteran chefs and established restaurants across Canada's culinary map.

Slice: Health Inspired Food
Slice is more than a book of healthy recipes. While it is not a full compendium on nutrition, either, this cookbook is filled with important insight that easily relates to individual dishes.

Vij's Setting a Green Table Standart
For over a decade now, Vikram Vij has been an ambassador of good taste. Together with his wife and partner, Meeru, he has been guided by the simplest and purest of principles: to offer a taste of their homeland using the freshest local ingredients possible.

Ultimate Foods for Ultimate Health
Authors Liz Pearson and Mairlyn Smith form a winning combination-two vibrant women clearly committed to inspiring change in readers and helping them build confidence about their healthy food choices.

Emerald Lake Lodge
A jewel of the Rockies ever since opening its doors more than 100 years ago, BC's Emerald Lake Lodge continues to draw visitors from the world over in search of adventure-both on and off the plate.

Fibre-Full Recipes
Fibre has always been one of my favourite subjects to commiserate about. Chocolate, fruits and veggies, and nuts are always getting the buzz in the media, and I've always felt that poor lowly fibre doesn't get the accolades it deserves.

Little Green Giant
Mom was right: eating your vegetables is good for your health.

Celebrating Spring with Araxi
Even in the depths of winter, Araxi Restaurant's executive chef, James Walt manages to root out a cornucopia of seasonal sustenance from the local growers surrounding histler, BC.

Gluten-Free Quick and Easy: From Prep to Plate Without the Fuss
by Carol Fenster, PhD Avery, 2007; 352 pages; paperback $23.50 ISBN 978-1-58333-278-8

Fuel
Food can be many things: a source of nourishment, comfort, and connection. At Fuel, tucked into the bustle of Vancouver's 4th Avenue, the aspiration is to make it all of the above.

Harbingers of Spring
One of the first signs that spring is on the way is the annual rhubarb sighting. Canadian pioneers considered rhubarb a tonic. Nutritionally, rhubarb lives up to its historical background. It's a good source of vitamin C and potassium, a vitamin and mineral (respectively) the pioneers would need by the time spring rolled around.

One With the Season
Cooking with fresh seasonal ingredients makes one happier where it counts most: in the kitchen. At One restaurant, in the heart of Toronto's five-star Hazelton Hotel, Mark McEwan knows the value of happy cooks and has worked hard to develop a strong culinary culture since the restaurant opened in August 2007.

Lemon Grass
Sitting in my favourite Thai restaurant, I am surrounded by exotic smells that engulf my senses. I dig into Thai Hot and Sour soup (Tom Yum Gai) with great anticipation. Ahh...the wonderful taste of lemon grass.

Eigensinn Farm
Standing tall and living close to the land, Michael Stadtlander is a veritable giant in his field. As a chef, farmer, author, and multimedia artist, he is also one of Canada's leading culinary icons, pioneering a return to authenticity at Eigensinn Farm, just outside of Collingwood, Ontario.

Berry Healthy
For outstanding performance in taste and nutrition the Oscar goes to-blueberries! These sweet, blue treats are rightfully occupying preferred status on the nutritional red carpet. For getting health-enhancing antioxidant protection in your bowl, you can't do better than eating blueberries.

Comfort Cuisine
Can the aroma of a Sunday dinner roasting in a wood oven last a lifetime? In the case of Executive Chef Hans Sauter, who first fell in love with cooking at his grandmother's table in a small Swiss town, the answer is deliciously affirmative.

Easy on the Tummy
So don't. Skip the weigh-in for today and have an easy tummy day. Drink water to flush out all the extra salt you may have consumed, have a light breakfast of fruit and probiotic yogourt, a simple lunch of salad and a lean protein, and a dinner of whole grains.

Rustic Regionalism
With its pristine setting, five diamonds, and four stars, the Banffshire Club at the Fairmont Banff Springs has earned a reputation for epicurean excellence and no small measure of rustic elegance. Deepening the room's regional roots has been a mission for some time.

Edible Christmas Gifts
Blame it on my hormones, but the older I get, the more it seems to me that Christmas has become a commercialized gift-giving extravaganza.