Adato - Smart chefs stay slim: lessons in eating and living from Americas best chefs

Smart
Chefs
Stay
Slim

Smart

Chefs

Stay

Slim

LESSONS in EATING
and LIVING
from AMERICAS
BEST CHEFS

Allison Adato

Foreword by Art Smith

N EW A MERICAN L IBRARY

Published by New American Library, a division of

Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street,

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Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices:

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First published by New American Library,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

First Printing, April 2012

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Copyright Allison Adato, 2012

Foreword copyright Art Smith, 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA:

Adato, Allison.

Smart chefs stay slim: lessons in eating and living from Americas best chefs/Allison Adato; foreword by Art Smith.

p. cm.

Includes index.

ISBN: 978-1-101-58008-0

1. Diet. 2. Cooking. 3. Celebrity chefsHealth and hygieneUnited States. I. Title.

RA784.A318 2012

613.2dc23 2011045548

Set in Bembo Std

Designed by Pauline Neuwirth

Printed in the United States of America

PUBLISHERS NOTE

The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

While the author has made every effort to provide accurate telephone numbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

For Julian and David,
my salt and pepper

F OREWORD

I N MY YEARS as a chef, Ive made dirty rice for the Dalai Lama, Hummingbird cake for Lady Gaga, chicken with pomegranate sauce for the first George Bush, and a Valentines Day dinner for Barack and Michelle Obama. I prepared countless meals for Oprah Winfrey as her personal chef and served my fried chicken to ballrooms full of Hollywood luminariesand let me tell you, Im not being proud when I say that they loved me for it. Everybody loves a chef, because everybody loves food.

But the most important meal I ever cooked wasnt for any of these big names. It was for just me.

It was a bowl of oatmeal with berries, and some egg whites scrambled with zucchini. The first time I ate that breakfast I weighed 325 pounds and had recently been given a diagnosis of diabetes, the disease that would take my father from me too soon. I knew I had to make changes, but even though Id expertly prepared thousands of meals for other peoplemany tailored to their diet specificationsI had never given much thought to how to feed myself in a healthful way. If the boss said, Art, I need steamed vegetables; I need a grilled piece of fish, thats what I gave them. But I never actually connected the good choices I was helping them make, with how I could improve my own poor habits. I knew other chefs who struggled with their weight, and some chefs who stayed fitI just didnt know how the second group managed it, since all the chefs I knew seemed just as passionate about great food as I was, and still am.

Someone, in my case a health coach, needed to say, Art, eat oatmeal. Eat berries. Eat egg whites and vegetables. So I did. Now, more than one hundred pounds lighter, I still have that same breakfast virtually every day. Ive run marathons and in 2010 married my love, Jesus Salgueiro, wearing a suit that was smaller than the one I wore for my high school graduation.

The moral of the story is that while the motivation had to come from within, I still needed some inspiration from outside. Thats what I hope this book will do: inspire you. When I heard that Allison planned to tackle the very question I once puzzled over, I decided right away I wanted to be part of this project, and share what I now know to be true: that you can be fit and enjoy wonderful food.

Maybe you want to lose a lot of weight and get healthy, and my story will speak to you. Maybe youre already on a path of eating well, but want to know how to do it with more flavor and flair. You might just be curious how some really fine chefs who are surrounded by food all day manage to make any peace with it at all. It isnt easy, and the way I went about it might not be for everybody. But what about the way Eric Ripert keeps fit by walking? Or how Michelle Bernstein finds ways to eat her vegetables while working long hours at Michys? Or how Jacques Torres keeps off the weight he lost, and still eats a little bit of chocolate each day? When it comes to eating, I think Allison hit it right when she noticed people would rather take advice from folks who wear chef whites than white lab coats.

At this moment chefs in America, particularly those fortunate enough to be embraced by the public as celebrities, have enormous influence. Ive tried to use mine responsibly, cofounding a charity, Common Threads, to teach kids from low-income families how to cook wholesome meals, with the goal of preventing childhood obesity.

But theres also a much louder message coming from the food media, celebrating butter and bacon and excess. This book represents an opportunity to say, Hey, we dont all eat like that!

Theres a lot of collected wisdom here from my colleagues, who are among the best chefs cooking today. As I told Allison over a long-ago lunch at Art and Soul, in the end, its about finding your happythe thing that works best for you. It might be preparing a beautiful, healthful meal that you share with loved ones. It could be making smarter choices when you go to your favorite restaurant. Or it might be starting your day with a bowl of oatmeal and berries that you make just for yourself.