Shulman - The Very Best of Recipes for Health : 250 Recipes and More from the Popular Feature on NYTimes.com

THE VERY BEST OF
R ECIPES FOR H EALTH

To my dearest and only sis, Melodie,
with devotion and love.

Contents

A few years ago Mike Mason, the online health editor at the New York Times, called me to find out if Id be interested in helping him with a recipe database. At the time he didnt know exactly what form this would take, but he thought that the nutrition section should include some sort of healthy recipe offerings. I jumped at the opportunity to provide a steady stream of simple, delicious recipes to a wide audience, and a few months later we launched my series, Recipes for Health.

During the months following Mikes first phone call, as I began to shape the feature, I asked myself that question over and over again. Ive devoted my career to healthy eating, but in a very unscientific sort of way. My approach is intuitive rather than scientific; Im a cook, not a nutritionist, and even when I was a strict vegetarian, I was never doctrinaire. Ive always wanted my food to be accessible to a wide range of cooks and eaters, and Ive worked hard to create healthy food that tastes good and isnt difficult to make. My passion for good food and conviviality, and my instinct for a balanced, healthy lifestyle have always gone hand in hand. Ive never sacrificed one in favor of the other; I havent needed to. As you cook your way through the recipes in this book, youll see that eating well neednt be an austere experience.

Here are the broad strokes of the philosophy behind Recipes for Health:

Eating a variety of foods made with raw ingredients (that is, not processed)

Eating low on the food chain (not exclusively so, but most of the time)

Not eating too much

Stopping to eat meals and eating mindfully

If you cook, youre halfway there, because I firmly believe that the easiest and most pleasurable way to eat well, and certainly the most economical way, is to cook the food you eat. Produce, seasonal and locally grown without pesticides if possible, and a well-stocked pantry (Ill tell you what that consists of a little later) are the linchpins of a good diet. Helping you decide what to do with these healthful ingredients is where I come in.

Over the last two or three decades we, as a nation, have lost our connection to food that is real, as opposed to manufactured and processed, and by extension lost a connection to our kitchens, even as theyve become bigger and fancier. A generation has grown up watching a lot of cooking on television, but rarely seeing a parent cook at home. The point was brought home to me recently when I overheard the following conversation after my sons baseball game:

Wheres daddy?

Hes getting dinner.

What are we having?

Panda Express.

If the overwhelmingly favorable response to Recipes for Health is any indication, more and more people want to stop getting dinner and begin making it. Those who continue to think that theyre saving precious time by getting it are mistaken. I have done the math, and it takes me a lot more time to drive in traffic, park the car, order food, wait for my order, check out and drive that food home than it would take to go home and make an omelet or a simple pasta dish and a salad. The omelet or the pasta and the salad are not only healthier than any meal I could buy (not to mention cheaper), they also taste infinitely better.

I hope that the recipes in this book will inspire you to think about food in a new way. I draw most of my inspiration from Mediterranean, Mexican, and Asian cuisines, inherently healthy cuisines with big flavors, in which meat to a large extent is peripheral to vegetables, beans, and grainsthe foods we should be eating more of. You may be tired of plain old steamed broccoli, but a spicy Asian stir-fry (page ) may rekindle your taste for that familiar vegetable. Perhaps youve seen barley or wheatberries in your whole foods store or had them served alongside a piece of meat or fish, but never thought to build a salad around them. Finding new ways to serve and enjoy these healthful ingredients is at the heart of Recipes for Health, and it gives me enormous pleasure.

The farmers market movement in the United States has grown exponentially over the past decade, so it is now viable for most of my readers to find locally grown produce at least during part of the year. More and more of these fruits and vegetables are certified organic and even those that are not are grown with a minimum of chemicals in carefully tended soil. In addition to produce, you can find free-range eggs and humanely raised chickens in many farmers markets, as well as grass-fed beef (and buffalo) and other types of meats that have been produced using sustainable, humane methods. Some markets have local fisherman selling their catch as well.

Many of the farmers who sell at farmers markets also participate in CSA groups, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture. If you join a CSA, you subscribe to a farmbasically becoming a shareholder in that farmand in exchange you get a box of produce every week. The produce will vary with the season, and sometimes you will get a lot of one thing, depending on whats abundant at the farm. CSA members have been especially appreciative of my columns when Ive devoted five recipes in a week to a vegetable theyve received in their box. You can find out more about Community Supported Agriculture at www.localharvest.org.

If you dont have access to locally grown produce, dont let that put you off produce altogether. Eating fruits and vegetables that come from far away is better than eating none at all (though I draw the line at the US border; if I can only find avocados and blueberries grown halfway around the world, I find something else to eat). Now supermarkets devote entire sections of their produce departments to organically grown fruits and vegetables, and its truly impressive to see how the range of available organic produce has grown over the years.

Another aspect of eating healthfully concerns not just what we eat, but how much. The portions in this book are sensible, because home cooks dont feel obliged to serve up the ridiculous amounts of food that restaurants and take-out chains have decided their clients expect. And because real food, cooked by you, does not contain the quantities of added sugar, salt, and fat that the food industry incorporates into their products to make you want to keep eating (and buying), you will know when youve had enough to eat. You will feel satisfied.

Lastly, take the time to sit down to your meals. I firmly believe that stopping to enjoy food at a table, whether alone or in the company of others, has got to be good for your health. If you dont stop to eat, its difficult to be mindful about what youre eating; the pleasure will elude you. And pleasure is what eating should be about. Cooking is just the first step.

I t really pays to stock your shelves with the staples that constitute the backbone of a healthy diet. If you have a well-stocked pantry you can make dinner, even when you havent given much thought to what youre going to cook. With Arborio rice, garlic, an onion, extra virgin olive oil, and a can of chicken broth in the pantry and some Parmesan in the refrigerator, the red pepper thats been hanging about becomes inspiration for a risotto (page ) and serve the stir-fry with the couscous or basmati rice in your cupboard.