Heidi Swanson - Super Natural Cooking: Five Delicious Ways to Incorporate Whole and Natural Foods into Your Cooking

Copyright 2007 by Heidi Swanson
Photography 2007 by Heidi Swanson

Photographs on front cover (top) and 2007 by Wayne Bremser.

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Swanson, Heidi, 1973

Super natural cooking : five delicious ways to incorporate whole and natural foods
into your cooking / by Heidi Swanson.

p. cm.

1. Cookery (Natural foods) I. Title.

TX741.S887 2007

641.563dc22 2006030536

ISBN9781587612756

Ebook ISBN9781587613746

v4.1

prh

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I dont think its much of a stretch to say it takes a village to create a cookbook. For this one, it was certainly the case. First I want to thank Wayne. Not everyone would put up with the endless pile of dishes that goes along with the creation of a book like this. He was always game for a quick trip to the store if I was short an ingredient or two (even if it was cold and raining out) and was never thrifty with his opinions or support. You mean everything to me, and I hope everyday that we will continue to enjoy a long life of wonderful adventures (and delicious meals) together.

To Aaron, Lorena, and my dream team at Ten Speed Press for championing this book from the start, I couldnt have hoped for a better collaboration. Special thanks to Lily Binns and Meghan Keeffe for your insight, direction, editing skills, and most importantly, for being fantastic sounding boards. Toni Tajima, what can I say? It was my lucky day when she took on the design of this book. I cant think of anyone Id rather trust with taking my photography and text from the pixel realm to the printed page. To Jasmine Star, Carolyn Miller, and Ken DellaPenta, a big thanks as well. And to the small army of friends and family who tested (and retested) countless recipes and helped out in so many other ways. Your palates and point of views helped shape every recipe you see here: Lulu LaMer, Brian Sharp, Gary and Janelle Swanson, Heather and Mark Ruder, Shay Curley, Lanha Hong-Porretta, Gwen McGill, Whitney Moss, Quyen Nguyen, Shauna James, Yong Cho, Jen Luan, Veronica Benda, Sejal Hingrajia, Steve Sando, Bruce Cole, Katherine and Janet McCartney, Mary Lou Bremser, Heather Flett, Ross ODwyer, Brette Luck, Amanda Berne, Molly Stevens, Reina Perez, and Milla Koukkunen.

INTRODUCTION

There is a natural foods co-op as big as a football field located in the heart of San Francisco just a short distance from my house. Clear plastic bins stretch down row after row, holding a seemingly impossible array of salts, dried seaweeds, bulk flours, heritage beans, colorful grains, and a kaleidoscope of spices. The containers start at my toes and reach skyward toward the rafters.

The beans sit at eye level and tempt me with their beautiful patterned skins. One aisle away, the palette of flours ranges in color from pristine white to sandy brown and in texture from powder-fine to rough and raggy tiny flakes. Fresh tortillas steam up their plastic bags to my right, and a huge bin of preserved lemons brightens up one of the refrigerator displays.

On one hand, being in a store like this can be exciting, but if you arent prepared, it can be downright intimidating. Faced with a dozen different types of dried seaweed, the flood of questions hits hard: Do some variations taste more sealike than others? What about the different textures? Which seaweeds are particularly salty, or fishy, or fragrant, and do you always rehydrate them, or do you sometimes use them dry? If so, when? And so it goes as you begin to explore and cook with the bounty of underutilized whole ingredients.

Like me, many of you probably grew up on standard American fareflour was all-purpose, and sugar more often than not was white granulated. Not to start this book off on a sour note, but there is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to the ingredients found in the average American pantry. A common snapshot would include commercially raised fruits and vegetables of dubious origin, industrially produced cooking oils, highly refined sugars, and nutritionally barren flour. Before these products made their way into your house or apartment, many were showered with agricultural chemicals, treated with chemical solvents, and stripped of most of their vitamins, minerals, fiber, and flavor.

The good news is the growing availability of whole foods from farmers markets, CSAs, independent natural foods stores, food co-ops, and stores like the rapidly expanding Whole Foods Markets. It is getting easier each day to find sources for whole foods, and part of the fun and excitement is in the discovery. This discovery and exploration of ingredients is a big part of what I write about on my websites, the recipe journal 101cookbooks.com and the whole-foods-focused MightyFoods.com .

I am excited about sharing with you much of what I know about cooking with whole, natural, minimally processed ingredients, along with some of my favorite recipes. You can start swapping out heavily processed ingredients with more healthful (and better-tasting) ones, many of which are outlined in the first chapter of this book, Build a Natural Foods Pantry. If I suspect an ingredient might be tricky to locate, Ill offer up alternate suggestions for more readily available ingredients you might substitute.

I encourage you to think about how your cooking could change if you entirely eliminated ingredients like all-purpose white flour, white sugar, and other highly processed ingredients. I hope this book will convince you that a whole world of exciting flavors and nutritionally rich ingredients will be there to greet you. Once you have the swing of it, shopping for and cooking with these ingredients isnt any harder and doesnt have to take more time than what you are already used to. There are quick and easy recipes alongside more intensive undertakings (if you really want to go for it), as well as fresh twists on everyday favorites, like polenta made from the tiny teff grain, barley-based risotto, or trans-fat-free thin mint cookies.