Heidi Swanson - Super natural every day: well-loved recipes from my natural foods kitchen

Published in 2011 by Hardie Grant Books.

Hardie Grant Books (Australia)
Ground Floor, Building 1
658 Church Street
Richmond, Victoria 3121
www.hardiegrant.com.au

Hardie Grant Books (UK)
Second Floor, North Suite
Dudley House, Southampton Street
London WC2E 7HF
www.hardiegrant.co.uk

First published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Swanson, Heidi. Super natural every day / Heidi Swanson.
Includes index. EISBN 978 174273 682 2
Cooking (Natural foods). Vegetarian cooking. 641.563

Text and photographs copyright 2011 by Heidi Swanson
Photographs on copyright 2011 by Wayne Bremser
Design by Toni Tajma
Colour reproduction by Splitting Image Colour Studio
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.

CONTENTS

I LIVE IN A MODEST SIX-ROOM APARTMENT with three-and-a-half-metre-high ceilings on the second floor of a Victorian apartment in the middle of San Francisco. And by middle I mean that if you threw a dart at the centre of a map of this city, youd likely hit my house. My street dead-ends into an east-sloping neighbourhood park, and when you stand at the front window you can watch a parade of pugs and pinschers, big kids on dirt bikes and small kids on scooters, dealers, joggers, and the occasional flute player go by. There are times when two girls set up a music stand in the shade and practice trombone.

San Francisco is a vibrant city that punctuates the top of a fistshaped peninsula, contained on one side by the Pacific Ocean and flanked by its namesake bay on the other two. It is where the North American continent jets out of the sea in dramatic fashion before rumbling east. Ive lived within a short drive of this coastline nearly all my life, and at the right moment, on the right day, in the right spot, there is no more inspiring place to explore.

Within reasonable walking distance of my front door, youll find plenty to eat and drinkpaneer-stuffed kati rolls, freshly baked walnut sourdough, Neapolitan-inspired thin-crust pizzas, and egg sandwiches served on English muffins fresh from the oven. There is a tea shop pouring silver needle, gyokuro, and monkey-picked oolong teas nearby. And as far as coffee goes, I often walk to one of the two coffee shops roasting beans on their premises. There is a boisterous bar worth braving just up the block with dozens of Belgian ales, India pale ales, stouts, and hefeweizens on tap. And when Im in the mood for something more low key, the beer shop in the other direction has a similarly impressive selection in bottles I can take home.

There must be two dozen places to buy groceries. Some are chains; many are independently owned and small in scale. On any given afternoon I might stumble upon a box of purple rice grown by a workers co-op in Thailand on a shelf just a metre or so from a jeweltoned jar of locally produced bergamot marmalade. Or, farm-fresh eggs a few hours old across the aisle from hand-harvested Mendocino nori. And the farmers markets? Theres one nearly every day of the week, and choosing which to go to depends on how far I feel like walking.

But as exciting as urban living is, I often feel the pull of quieter realms. Drive an hour from where I am right now, and you might find yourself in the midst of a redwood grove, or standing on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, or making snowballs at the summit of one of the neighbouring peaks. There have been mornings in late spring when Ive found myself travelling through wildflower-lined highways in west Marin County, poppies spilling from the ditches to flood the black asphalt. Farther inland, in the summertime, youll find endless stretches of golden hills punctuated by the craggy silhouettes of old oak trees. In these moments, there are few places Id rather call home.

I live here with my boyfriend, Wayne, and its against this backdrop that I cook each day. The markets, shops, and restaurants define the palette of ingredients I reach for; they influence the flavours I crave.

The hills and vistas, blooming flowers, and candy-coloured houses shape my overall aesthetic sensibility and inspire me to highlight the natural essence of each of the ingredients I choose to use.

Super Natural Every Day

This book is a glimpse into my everyday cooking, with the hope that some of what inspires me will inspire you as well.

I resisted the urge to include over-the-top, special-occasion productions. I left out recipes requiring all day Saturday and on into Sunday to prepare, and skipped the ones with six different components. Instead, I kept a simple notebook over the past couple years of my favourite everyday preparationsones I revisit often.

The recipes are rooted in whole and natural foods, typically feature a handful of seasonal ingredients, offer some inkling of nutritional balance, and (broadly speaking) come together with minimal effort.

For those of you with Super Natural Cooking, consider this a companion volume. Many of the building blocks I outlined in that book are put into practice here. Simply puthere are real foods and good ingredients made into dishes that are nourishing and worth eating.

Natural Foods

If you peek inside my kitchen cupboards youll probably notice I prefer my rice brown, red, purple, or black; and that I keep a spectrum of golden honeys close at hand. Youll see soba noodles are allocated a good amount of real estate in the cabinets to the right of the stove, and heirloom beans have taken more than half-a-metre of shelf space on the left. You might (rightly) suspect my favourite section at the health food store are the bins containing grains, dried beans, and flour.

I tend to cook with whole, natural foodswholegrains, wholegrain flours, minimally processed sweeteners, and fresh produceingredients that are as seasonal and nutritionally intact as possible.

Id be misleading you if I said I dont look forward to moments when I happen upon something new and special: a raw, vanilla-scented Fair Trade Certified cane sugar from the Philippines, or giant, golden salt grains from the Menai Strait in Wales. Those sorts of ingredients aside, a good portion of the food I buy is grown or produced locally. I find local ingredients taste better and often have a glow and vitality you dont see in ingredients that have travelled long distances, particularly when you are talking about produce or perishables. And while I run the risk of sounding a bit preachy, supporting good ingredients grown or produced by people who care about our health and the health of our environment is something about which I feel strongly.

Some of you might be confused by the term natural foods. It is used in many different contexts, and it means different things to different people. By natural foods, I mean ingredients that are straight from the plant or animal. Or that are made with as little processing and as few added flavourings, stabilisers, and preservatives as possible, keeping nutrients and original flavours intact. For example, wheat berries ground into flour, grated coconut pressed into coconut milk, cream paddled into butter, or chopped tomatoes simmered into tomato sauce (