Frenkiel - Green Kitchen at Home: Quick and Healthy Vegetarian Food for Everyday

To Elsa, Isac and baby Gabriel

Contents

We have a confession to make. And a promise.

First, the confession. Whenever we write We love this recipe, it doesnt automatically mean that it is something that we continue to cook at home. As food and recipe development is our job, we are constantly trying new methods, flavours and ingredient combinations. So, even if a recipe is delicious and a real favourite on the very week we are publishing it (online, in a magazine or in a book), it isnt always cut out for our familys needs and habits (or our childrens preferences).

And now the promise. This book is filled with the recipes that we actually make most often in our kitchen. Our true favourites. We have been cooking many of these repeatedly during the last few years and know them by heart.

Since we are a family of four (five, when this book is printed), there are lots of quick, simple and child-friendly vegetarian dishes that we turn to during stressful weekdays. And also slightly more elaborate dishes that we often make at the weekend when we have friends or family coming over. Most of our daily breakfasts are included and also the simple desserts that can be tossed together while the kids are watching a cartoon. Recipes that are fun to make, taste great and strike the right balance between interesting and uncomplicated. But more than just recipes, we wanted this book to be a demonstration of how we build our meals at home, the shortcuts we take and the tricks we have learnt in the kitchen. Cooking real food every day can be challenging for any working person or family, so we are sharing our best ways to eat well even when the fridge is half-empty and our kids are banging the table, chanting that they are hungry.

Our food

Food for us is basically all about feeling good. The process of cooking, the pleasure of eating and the energy we get from it. They all serve the same joyful purpose. Few things are as important and meaningful as the ceremony around food, and many of our best memories are connected with it from the smell of cinnamon in the Marrakech Medina to hilarious moments with the kids around our kitchen table. I cant for the life of me remember the plot of the last movie we watched but I will forever remember the way our daughter always closed her eyes, tilted her head back and said mmmmmm after each bite of food when she was a toddler.

Our recipes are deeply focused around vegetables, but also feature wholegrains, good fats, natural sweeteners, nuts, seeds, legumes and fruit. We have developed our unique way of cooking through years of living together. I have been a vegetarian for more than 20 years and have learnt to handle myself decently in a kitchen through experience. Luise has always been a naturally talented cook, but has also studied nutritional therapy to gain a further understanding about the importance of food for overall health. We dont always get along in the kitchen, but it feels like we complement each other. I would probably indulge too much and too often without her and she might get a little too focused on nutritional values without me. And as the kids have become part of our kitchen, they have slowly but steadily wiped away all snobbish methods or ingredients that we might previously have been drawn to.

When we talk about our food as healthy, we dont mean it in a restricting, you cant eat this or that type of way. For us, health is solely about wellbeing and that includes the bubbling excitement that comes from indulging in the occasional butter- and sugar-heavy Swedish cardamom bun from the sourdough bakery across the street.

I think its safe to say that most people will feel great as a result of cooking the recipes in this book, but health is very individual. My body reacts differently to food from Luises. We crave different types of food, preparation methods and ingredients depending on if we are spending a winter in northern Sweden or a summer in Italy, if we are doing a lot of physical activity or sitting still in an office, or, as now, if Luise is pregnant or not. There isnt one way of eating that is good for everyone. We need to listen to our bodies and try to find a way of eating that makes us feel good. And also find a level of cooking that feels doable.

We dont put labels on what we eat, so even if most flours in our store cupboard happen to be gluten-free and many recipes are suitable for vegans, we do eat eggs and would choose a sourdough wholegrain bread with only 3 ingredients over a gluten-free toast with 15 refined ingredients.

As far as we can, we focus on seasonal ingredients. Its a simple way to get a natural variation in our diet throughout the year. Vegetables in season also taste better, are cheaper and more sustainable and thus better for our environment.

At home

It feels like Luise and I have talked a thousand times (in books, magazine interviews and online) about how our journey started in Rome, almost 10 years ago. How our different approaches to food (I was the unhealthy vegetarian and she was the healthy carnivore) led us to a new way of cooking and eating together. But what we rarely talk about is that we are constantly evolving, as individuals and as a family. And the way we cook and eat is reflected by those changes.

When we wrote our first cookbook, our daughter Elsa was just a toddler and our only child, which meant that one of us could always find time to cook. She also ate basically anything we put in front of her. As I am writing this, we are only weeks away from having our third child. Elsa has just started school and our two-year-old son, Isac, is a tornado of energy who climbs chairs, ovens and tables and thinks our phones are the perfect indoor ice skates. He is obsessed with fruit and roasted vegetables but not as obsessed with leafy vegetables or anything with the wrong consistency.

Because our lives at home have become more stressful, time is now an important factor in our cooking. You will see how that is reflected in this book both by the prep and time estimates, but also by the fact that many of the recipes are really quick. Versatility is another factor that we have considered. With more people in our family there are also more opinions. A lot of our dinners are spent listening to our daughter explaining how she loves this [pointing at oven-roasted broccoli] and hates that [holds up a mushroom between two fingers like it was poison], loves this [places three raw carrots in her mouth at the same time] and hates that [scoops the lettuce off her plate and onto her little brothers]. The difficult part is that she can be quite random about it, devouring avocado-on-toast one day and then the next day saying, I have ALWAYS hated avocado, you know that! So, even if we dont let the kids dictate the dinner entirely, we have become quite experienced in creating meals that are versatile and adaptable so they can always find things that they like. Therefore we are sharing ideas on how to vary ingredients to preference or season in almost every recipe in this book. Even if we refer to our children, this book is not solely for families. We believe most people today are looking for quick, healthy and smart vegetarian recipes that everyone can enjoy kids and adults alike.