Amber Rose - The Wholefood Pantry

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Kitchen staples and basics recipes are the nuts and bolts of every cooks kitchen. They are what I like to call the toolbox recipes. They are the flavoursome, nourishing base components and they are also the things that can finish a dish to make it sing. In my kitchen they are essential go-to recipes that can be adapted throughout the year to create seasonal, delicious meals and satisfying bakes.

This is a reference book of all my favourite and most useful toolbox recipes. All the recipes are free from refined sugar, super healthy, delicious and above all, easy to prepare.

The Wholefood Pantry is filled with all the recipes you will need to create healthy and beautiful syrups, chutneys, refined sugar-free jams, enzyme and probiotic-filled lacto pickles (ferments), cultured creams, healing broths, spice mixes, dips, nourishing desserts, nut milks, nut butters, sauces, essential marinades, irresistible raw chocolates and so much more.

Armed with my simple, easy and delicious toolbox recipes you will be in control of what goes into your food and how it is prepared. You will then naturally have the confidence to add seasonal ingredients to adapt and embellish your cooking and baking as the seasons change to ensure maximum nutrition and flavour.

I grew up in New Zealand in a little wooden homemade house in the middle of a rambling orchard filled with wild flowers, heritage fruit trees and a garden full of heritage vegetables. I spent my days as a young girl cooking and eating from the garden and was endlessly appreciative of the sun-ripened fruits and deliciously colourful and intensely flavoured vegetables that made up my snacks and meals on a daily basis. I spent a lot of my childhood helping my mum in the garden and in the kitchen, harvesting fruits for jams, picking herbs for pesto, stirring bubbling pots of tomato sauce, picking rose petals for intoxicatingly fragrant wild rose petal jam and scooping, peeling and chopping all manner of colourful heritage produce that we made into preserves at various times of the year, to last through the seasons. When you have a garden and not a row of supermarket aisles in front of you, you have to learn to cook and bake with what the seasons dictate and to turn simple ingredients into beautiful, colour-filled feasts. Cooking and eating seasonally means there are certain times of the year when vegetables or fruits are in abundance. Its during these times that mountains of basil get made into pesto and popped in the freezer for use later in the year, or when the fruit thats dripping off the trees is made into pickles, chutneys, sauces and other preserves.

Of course you dont need a garden to make all these wonderful toolbox delights. Although many of the recipes in this book are inspired by my childhoods seasonal, garden-to-table cooking experience, more often than not they can be whipped up in a flash with a minimum of ingredients and fuss. I have loved carrying on that approach to cooking even when, for many years, I lived in London and didnt have a garden of my own.

The savoury section contains the dips, pts and other easy recipes that I go back to again and again. In the sweet section, the basic baking recipes are my old favourites that I love to adapt as the seasons change. They are so easy to whip up that its almost a sin, but for me its the simple things that always bring so much pleasure: baking my own loaf of bread, making my own jam and whipping up nutritious desserts. I hope you find some pleasure and inspiration in these pages to help you fill your shelves and old jam jars full to the brim with delicious homemade toolbox delights.

Much Love,

Amber Rose xx

The words nutrient dense seem to have acquired a bit of buzz about them lately. Its a catchphrase we hear more and more, but with good reason: eating nutrient-dense produce is important for our health and the health of generations to come.

Unfortunately, most of the food we buy from supermarkets has been bred for shelf life and not nutrition. Often it is grown in mineral-deficient soils, or even worse, hydroponically (in polytunnels in water). On top of that, it has been treated with an array of chemicals and pesticides, then picked before it is ripe so that it lasts longer on the shelf. This means the food has lower levels of disease-fighting nutrients in it, making it even less nutritious.

It can be hard to find nutrient-dense fruit and veg, and also to maximise the nutrition of the produce you are eating, but here are a good few tips to help you on the way

* Cut out processed food and refined food. These contain empty calories and do not nourish us.

* Buy local and in-season produce whenever you can. This will ensure fruit and veg is naturally ripe and hasnt been in cold storage for too long. Naturally tree-ripened fruit is more nutritious.

* Choose fruits and veg grown from heritage seeds and trees. It is well known that they are far more nutritious than their more modern options, which are usually bred for shelf life and looks.

* Choose dark coloured fruit and veg, both of which contain increased amounts of antioxidants and minerals. Dark berries and dark green leaves are much more nutritious than their lighter coloured counter parts.

* Buy organic food when ever you can. If money is an issue, at least try to get organic when buying produce that has thin, edible skin that isnt usuallu peeled things like berries, peaches, tomatoes etc. Non-organic versions will be covered in chemicals. Produce with thicker skins, like carrots and pineapples, is usually peeled before eating anyway, which will remove most of the chemicals. These chemicals will contribute to a damaged gut, a less effective immune system and hormone issues, amongst other things. When plants have been grown in chemicals, there is no way that the soil can be healthy, if the soil is not healthy then the plants will not be healthy, and so they will not make for nutritious food.

* Eat high levels of traditional, healthy fats and oils. We require a minimum of 1200 IU daily of naturally sourced Vitamin A, without which our bodies cannot absorb key minerals and vitamins. Eat your fruit and veg along side healthy fats: add good-quality cold pressed oils to your salad dressings, and add cream, yogurt or coconut cream to your fruit or desserts. Many of the vitamins and minerals in fruit and veg are fat soluble, so if you eat them with healthy fat then you maximise your nutrient uptake.