Healthy reading
This month, three new release cookbooks offer three different approaches to help keep you resolutions on track
What the Fat? Recipes
Featuring more than 130 low-carb and keto-friendly recipes, this cookbook is a practical follow-up to the lifestyle books co-authored by Kiwi trio AUT Professor of Public Health Grant Schofield, dietition Dr Caryn Zinn and chef Craig Rodger. Advocates of wholefood, low-carbohydrate, healthy-fat (LCHF) eating, the book offers recipes for go-to family meals, from Kung Pao Chook to Guilt-free Chocolate Mousse and is divided into mealtime sections as well as snacks, sweets and drinks. There’s also nutritional information, along with dairy-free and vegetarian options. The team’s other publications, What the Fat?: Fat’s In, Sugar’s
Out and What the Fast! collectively sold more than 90,000 copies worldwide.
What the Fat? Recipes (Blackwell and Ruth), $49.95. Out now.
10-a-Day The Easy Way
If you struggle to get your five plus a day, the now recommended goal of 10 portions of fruit and veg could leave you feeling rather defeated. Science writer James Wong’s new book puts it all into perspective. The British-based botanist, who wrote best-selling book Grow Your Own Drugs, has this great advice: If you can’t get 10, just get more! Wong, who also co-presented the TV series The Secrets of Your Food with Dr Michael Mosley, offers simple scientific explanations about the life-saving merits of a plant-based diet along with 80 tasty, very achievable recipes, each accompanied by how many serves of fruit and veg they contain. He explains portion sizes, talks cooking methods, debunks food myths — from the effort needed to cook vegetables, to fresh is best (frozen foods generate half the food waste of fresh and are nutritionally comparable). This is not a no-or-low-carb bible – James is a fan of wholegrains for their nutritious, heart-disease reducing properties — but so you don’t go into calorific overload he finds ways to help bulk them out with extra fruit and veg. 10-a-day The Easy Way (Hachette New Zealand), hardback, $39.99, published March 12.
Skinny Pasta
Julia Azzarello’s lighter pasta dishes do not rely on spiralised noodles (although butternut squash nests are added to one starter). Rather it is the sauces in the 80 recipes that have been modified, bringing each recipe in under (or just reaching) 500 calories. Julia offers a basic fresh pasta recipe at the start of the book, with two others — tagliatelle and gnocchi — for those following a gluten-free diet. Vegan, a chapter on vegetarian mains and dairy-free recipes are included in a collection that moves from traditional fare, linguine con le vongole (clams with pasta and white wine), to newer, buckwheat noodles with apple, smoked mackerel and red onion. There are also soups, salads and lunch dishes and staple recipes – think Bolognese sauce, oven-dried tomatoes, pesto.
Skinny Pasta, Julia Azzarello (Hachette New Zealand), $34.99, published March 12.