David Frenkiel - Green Kitchen Travels Healthy Vegetarian Food Inspired by Our Adventures

Praise for The Green Kitchen (UK edition)
and Vegetarian Every Day (US edition)
by David Frenkiel & Luise Vindahl

This is a classy production but the recipes are good too, showing not only their Nordic roots but also a healthy Mediterranean topspin.
Telegraph

Ive always loved David and Luises blog, Green Kitchen Stories, and their cookbook offers more inspiring Scandinavian imagery, tips and recipes. Great ideas for feeding healthy kids too!
Vogue (online)

If ever a recipe book was to convince dedicated carnivores of the appeals of meat-free eating, this would be it.
Great British Food

Whether youre a longtime vegetarian, a newbie, or a veg-curious omnivore, this book is sure to introduce you to new and fresh ways of cooking.
thekitchn.com

A new cookbook Vegetarian Everday by David Frenkiel and Luise Vindahl, will have everyone in your family clamouring to eat their veggies.
Republican Herald

To Elsa.

During these first 4 years of your life, you have followed us to 15 different countries and 5 continents. In a couple of wild months back in 2010, we slept in new cities and different beds almost every day and bounced back and forth across the time zones. It wouldnt have been strange if you had cried and complained through this, but instead you have been laughing, sleeping and eating your way around the world and faced every new destination with wide-open eyes.

If you had been any different, these pages would never have been written.

We love you.

Hey Ali Baba, come and try this yoghurt! A Moroccan teenager is waving enthusiastically at me. He must have seen how curiously I am looking at the large gathering of young and old people, all standing with bowls filled to the brim with something gloppy and pink. An old man with a big straw hat is scooping up the runny strawberry yoghurt from plastic containers balanced on his wobbly cart, next to a bowl with hot water to quickly wash up the bowls for new customers. I glance at the plastic containers, the gloppy yoghurt, the half-cleaned bowls and then at Luise. You know you want to, she encourages me. I know. I do. Its just that if I were a nasty bacteria I would probably thrive in that yoghurt. The teenager sees my hesitation. Come now Ali Baba, you must try this. It is THE BEST! I smile, ask my stomach for forgiveness and step forward to grab a bowl. Fill it up!

Whether we are trying sweet, gloppy yoghurts in the Moroccan Medina, falling asleep to the never-ending noise from the New York City streets or waking up to the sound of crashing waves in a small bungalow in Sri Lanka, our little family has always felt most at home when we are not. There are so many unexplored places to see, interesting people to meet, stories to hear and new food to be tried.

I suppose the fact that I am Swedish, Luise is Danish and we met in Italy was a good indication how impossible it would be for us to stay in one country. Luckily we both shared the same love of travelling. After our daughter Elsa was born, it only took a few months before we flew back to Italy to spend a summer month. When she was seven months old, we took a break from our jobs in Stockholm and went on a journey together around the world. We slept on a friends couch in Brooklyn, USA; rented a car and drove down the amazing Highway 1 from San Francisco to San Diego; tried to find someone who could guide us to a vegetarian restaurant in Beijing (not the easiest task) and were mesmerised by the street vendors in Vietnam and the lemongrass-filled curries in Thailand. By the time we came back to Sweden, we had emptied every penny from our savings but filled our passports with stamps, our hearts with inspiration and our stomachs with delicious food. And somehow, on a small island outside Vietnam, Elsa had also learned how to walk.

Not all our travels are as high-flying. Sometimes its just a drive to friends outside Stockholm; a train ride to Denmark; a boat trip around Greece, or a bike ride in Barcelona. We are mostly drawn towards warmer countries, probably to make up for the dark and cold autumns and winters here in Scandinavia.

Regardless of destination, the food has always been the most exciting adventure for us. Visiting green markets, trying regional vegetarian specialities and figuring out how to get invited into the locals kitchens are top of our to do list when arriving at new places. It might seem a little nerdy, but we love learning how ingredients such as lentils can be cooked for dinner in the US and for dessert in Asia. How similar (and yet so different) an Italian focaccia is to an Indian naan. And how adding a little cinnamon, cumin and raisins to a French ratatouille suddenly gives it a Moroccan twist.

Food truly is a language on its own and has opened doors and connected us with many fantastic people whom we never would have met otherwise: the old couple (he had been a vegetarian for 75 years!) we ended up having dinner with at our favourite caf in Barcelona, the avocado-orchard family in California who invited us for lunch and showed us how to pick ripe avocados fresh from the trees (while managing not to step on the rattlesnakes!), and the pretty lady boy chef in Thailand with painted nails who taught us how to make green curries, coconut soups and pomelo salads. Even though cultures, ingredients, methods and flavours may be very different around the world, the people who are genuinely interested in food seem to have a special connection and are always the friendliest in town. Food is not only our favourite part of a trip; it is also what we bring with us back home. When memories fade away and our skin turns pale again, we keep our adventures alive in our Stockholm kitchen. Herbs, flavours and scents bring back more vivid images than any photo ever could.

All of our inspiration, experiences and random food encounters are gathered in this cookery book. David

In our first book, The Green Kitchen (UK edition)/Vegetarian Everyday (US edition), we explained in detail the thoughts behind our way of eating, so we wont bore you with too much of that here. But in order to explain why the recipes in this book are different from many other travel-inspired cookery books, we wanted to give you a quick recap.

Our approach to food and cooking can best be explained as healthy, natural and green. It is food that is centred around vegetables, good fats, natural sweeteners, whole grains, legumes, seeds, nuts and fruit. Our cooking methods focus on maximizing natural flavours instead of destroying the nutrients.