Can Gisele Bündchen change the way you cook?
‘Nourish,’ the supermodel’s new cookbook and lifestyle guide, is more accessible than you might think
For several days, I have been eating like Gisele Bündchen, and I am still not a supermodel. But I can’t bring myself to be mad about it. I’ve been cooking from Bündchen’s new cookbook, “Nourish: Simple Recipes to Empower Your Body & Feed Your Soul,” which came out last week. I was prepared to have to take some deep breaths along the way: Oh yay. Cooking advice from someone with the kind of money, time, and assistance that make curating one’s best possible life actually possible.
But Bündchen and her recipes collectively won me over. The model and wellness advocate, formerly married to some guy named Tom Brady, comes across in these pages as warm, honest, and generous. She is open about the depression and anxiety she experienced earlier in life, and the relief she has found through diet and lifestyle changes. She acknowledges how much she has learned from personal chefs and nutrition and exercise gurus, and thanks Elinor Hutton, her collaborator on “Nourish.” And, most important, the recipes are good, carefully tested and yielding consistently delicious results. (Hutton, who has worked on more than 25 books and ran the test kitchen for Purple Carrot, the meal kit company behind Brady’s TB12 Performance Meals — presumably has a lot to do with this.) The cookbook might just accomplish what it sets out to — winning people over to a diet focused on vegetables, fruits, nuts, and lean proteins, while largely eschewing gluten, sugar, alcohol, and caffeine, by making it taste good and feel doable.
I have not eschewed gluten, sugar, alcohol, or caffeine. I also have not woken up before dawn, scraped my tongue with a copper tongue scraper (“which is meant to be beneficial for bone health”), dry-brushed my skin, meditated, or taken supplements.
If you are allergic to wellness culture, this book is not for you. If you are allergic to nuts, this book is definitely not for you. If you are maybe skeptical but also amenable, content to cherry-pick what works for you and not feel ragey about what doesn’t, it might be time to start reworking your household budget to accommodate all of the cashews and avocado oil you’re about to buy.
Plenty of the recipes in “Nourish” are simple, some of them so simple it seems ridiculous to include them at all — like buttered popcorn, or chard sauteed with garlic. I start with something middle-of-the-road, sheet-pan butternut squash and chickpeas, the kind of thing I cook all the time. Bündchen’s version goes lighter on the cumin and salt than I would, but I like it all the same. I crack open my first-ever bottle of avocado oil to make it. By the end of this adventure, I’ll already need another. The pan of squash and chickpeas gets sprinkled with lime juice and chopped cilantro at the end: nice. And the recipe suggests serving it with cilantro-mint dressing, a gorgeous bright-green potion of coconut milk, chile, garlic, ginger, lime, and herbs. The dressings and sauces are the best part of the book, transforming
even the plainest blanched vegetable into something fun and interesting.
Extra-crunchy summer rolls prove the point. Bündchen says this is one of her favorite recipes in the book. (She doesn’t mention anything about the Vietnamese dish that presumably inspired it, interesting in an era when we argue about culinary provenance, cultural appropriation, and whether Alison Roman’s chickpea stew that “broke the Internet” is really a curry.) It’s a smorgasbord of textures — crunchy carrots and cucumbers, leafy cabbage, creamy avocado, crisp apple, and chewy rice paper all at once. It’s quick and fun to put together. But what really makes it taste good is the ginger-cashew sauce alongside. (The almond butter-sesame sauce is nice, too, but that ginger-cashew is worth the price of admission.) I send some rolls home with a friend, who texts me later: “Honestly that sauce is so good I’m furious with her.” Gisele, how dare you.
I have never been a cashew person, but I might be changing my mind. I make avocado-lime and avocado-chocolate mousse, both of which include soaked cashews, as well as coconut milk, coconut oil, and maple syrup. They are rich and delicious and satisfying, but they’re also filling as heck. I can only eat a few spoonfuls.
I’m glad they’re in the fridge to snack on while I engage in the more finicky and time-consuming side of “Nourish.” I’ve never bothered to make my own almond milk, and it’s time to see what I’ve been missing. But first I must soak the almonds overnight. Bündchen is big on soaking nuts, which she says makes them easier to digest. Bündchen is big on talking about digestion, and if that’s not something you care to think about, maybe again this book is not for you.
After the almonds soak, it is time to peel them. It makes the nutrients more accessible, Bündchen believes, and the nuts are also tastier and smoother in texture. “Plus, I find that any repetitive kitchen task is an opportunity to clear my mind and have a moment of quiet reflection — you can think of it as a moving meditation!,” she writes. I do honestly try to think of it as a moving meditation, and I see the wisdom in these words, and when it comes to mindfulness I am a fan. However, I confess in this case I mostly experience the task as a use of time I cannot afford. I compost the almond skins as instructed.
After much blending and sieving and wringing out of liquids, I have almond milk. I think the dollar to liquid ratio is roughly equivalent to that of store-bought nut milk, if I value my time at zero dollars and zero cents. One sip of the creamy, date-sweetened elixir brings it all into perspective: This is simply worth more. I won’t be making my own almond milk on the regular, but I will sometimes, when I can.
The leftover pulp goes into a smoothie with coconut water and bananas I froze the night before. There is some nutritional theory I could take or leave around what fruits should be combined to maximize digestion. But the smoothie is frosty and fluffy, and I love it around the cold headache I get from consuming it too quickly. If you don’t have a Vitamix, this book might also not be for you. Mine is getting a workout.
I appreciate Bündchen’s fish baked in parchment, a technique I love and would like to see resurfaced more often. Her whole roasted cauliflower is particularly notable for the miso-mustard dressing it gets bathed and basted in; I could guzzle the stuff, and I save the leftovers for basting chicken later. (Something the rest of my family will enjoy! As the kitchen counter fills with jars of sauces and bags of cashews and container upon container of roasted vegetables, I spy my husband out on the deck, grilling hot dogs.)
In coming weeks, I’ll turn to “Nourish” for grain-free granola (a recipe developed with cookbook author Lukas Volger); a simple salad of hearts of palm, avocado, and cucumber; lentil and mushroom ragout; and baru nut bars. I’m certain I’ll never make the pizza from its pages, which incorporates powdered psyllium husk into the gluten-free crust — but now I’m reading that the psyllium creates a gel that makes the results airier, and I’m intrigued, and this is kind of how the cookbook works. First you think “I’m never doing that,” and then you get sucked in. Next thing you know, you’re spending all of your free time peeling almonds. Mindfully.
If you find yourself wondering why, look at Gisele’s glowing skin. If you still find yourself wondering why, taste the food.
First you think ‘I’m never doing that,’ and then you get sucked in. Next thing you know, you’re spending all of your free time peeling almonds. Mindfully.