This is a beautiful, hard-bound cookbook with super healthy recipes and foods that I haven’t seen elsewhere. There are recipes for families or just one or two people. It features lots of ideas beyond strict limits of contemporary diets, including paleo and vegan approaches. The organization of the book is interesting, dividing up recipes by the five elements, although the results are the same as any good cookbook, with a full range of dishes covered — from soups, to salads, to main dishes, to desserts, to drinks.
The chapters also take an innovative approach with titles of: Filling the Pot (soups and stews), Weaving Roots (vegetable dishes), Of Feathers Scales and Fur (eggs, fish, poultry, and red meats), Larder (a favorite chapter of mine, offering pickles, flavored vinegars oils and salts, spice blends, syrups, sugar substitutes, and condiments), Weaving Maple into Silk (desserts), and Imagination and Alchemy (drinks).
I love the recipes include a seasonal table with substitutions to help bring my garden to the table. The lavish photos and stylish layout, printed on deluxe cream-colored paper, give the book a sumptuous feel as inviting as the dishes themselves. The book has helped me add flavor and fun to my cooking, and would be an excellent gift for stylish, healthy eaters looking for new, fun, and exciting recipes to spice up our dining — and our lives!
