hi dorothy

waaaay back, you wrote privately to me:
>------------------------------
>Date:          Tue, 26 Aug 1997 09:03:41 -0400
>From:          Dorothy Lee
>Subject:       Re: NEWS: Food: Mediterranean diet is good for you
>------------------------------
>Janet, if you're interested, there is an excellent
>cookbook out on this diet.  It's called
>The Mediterranean Diet Cookbook, a
>delicous alternative for lifelong health by
>Nancy Harmon Jenkins, published by
>Bantam, l994.  Lots of great recipes and
>I have no trouble finding the ingredients in
>Central New York.  Mangia.    Dorothy Lee
>------------------------------

sorry to take so long to reply, dorothy
i appreciate your recommendation
i thought the list might benefit from it as well

coincidentally
i have just found a review of a new cookbook
by a favourite author of mine

her passion is centred on mediterranean food to a large extent
but with a vegetarian approach

i used her first two cookbooks frequently;
i don't think i've met a recipe of hers that i didn't love!

i would guess that these recipes
might have the same low-protein benefits
that kathrynne holden admired in the original news post


your wannabe italiana cyber-sis

janet

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vegetarian cooking moves to front burner
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

BOSTON (September 4, 1997 11:09 a.m. EDT) -- Anna Thomas's first cookbook,
"The Vegetarian Epicure," put her through college.

It was an original - one of the first to celebrate vegetarian cuisine with
wonderfully inventive recipes. The sequel was likewise a hit, reflecting
Thomas's travels around Europe and her own progressive "improvisations."

While plenty of cookbooks of the time included delicious vegetable recipes
(usually as side dishes), Thomas helped popularize the vegetable as an end
in itself, and she changed the way many of us looked at zucchini and
spinach forever.

Times have changed, and Thomas's cooking style has changed, too. Her latest
tome on the kitchen arts, "The New Vegetarian Epicure" (Alfred A. Knopf,
449 pp., $19.00) which came out last year, reflects her concerns.

Thomas has been raising two rambunctious boys, writing movie scripts, and
producing films for the last 20 years, and now more than ever her writing
reflects her very real delight in meal preparation.

Producing, she says wryly, puts you always between a rock an a hard place,
so cooking cames as a relief.

"Having had kids and raising them has taken me in another direction,"
Thomas said in an interview. "You're a different person when you have kids.
It really is a whole new world view - and way of cooking, and body of
knowledge and experience.

"Kids like simple food, and you have to cook more often. At the same time I
got more sophisticated - both sides were developing at once. I'm a whole
different cook now than I was before. But the pleasure in cooking is what
it's always been.

"This book just has a much greater range. There is still plenty of what I
like to call recreational cooking for people who cook on weekends for fun,
and who like to make elaborate complicated things for entertaining or
whatever. But there is also a lot more basic, every day, fresh food."

And "fresh" is key. One simple and delicious recipe, Cream of Sweet Corn
Soup, which is made from onions, butter, a hint of garlic, and milk (no
cream) really does require the freshest possible ears of corn - right out
of the field is best, but in any case, so fresh the kernels burst when you
poke them with a fork. If the corn is even a day past its prime, the soup
loses its raison d'etre.

Many of her simplest recipes depend on the freshness of the ingredients.
The way Thomas prefers to cook is to go in the kitchen, figure out what
she's in the mood for, and cook it - without recipes.

"Once you have a basic sense of ease and comfort with food then you respond
to everything - the season, your circumstances, what ingredients are around
and are best," she says.

Sometimes it's good to have a plan, she says, to follow a procedure that is
tried and true, but she encourages readers to improvise on a basic theme,
too, and never to apologize for departing from a recipe.

That's how she came up with her Wild Chocolate and Chili Torte. Her
favorite Mexican mole, Mole Poblano, is made with lots of spices, chile and
chocolate - its emphasis on chile makes it powerful stuff. The result is a
spicy chocolate desert with a surprising kick. When she served it to
guests, she says, no one could guess what gave it that extra punch.

Thomas emphasizes cooking in the family and with friends. She likes to
relate family stories - learning to bake special Polish breads at her
mother's elbow, making a scrumptious Bing cherry pie with her sons,
gathering wild mushrooms with her husband, film director Gregory Nava.

Once she volunteered to cook an elegant formal dinner for 120 people as a
charity fund-raiser. One of the dishes she decided to prepare was "Cornmeal
Griddlecakes with Sweet Chipotle Sauce," which includes creme fraiche, pine
nuts, and hearty helpings of a young cactus paddle called nopalitos.

Widely available in Mexico and southern California (and other arid climes),
the tender young leaves of the nopal cactus make an exceptional delicacy
when picked at the right time in early spring. (Thomas warns against buying
nopalitos in a jar.) Again she emphasizes fresh.

For the spring fund-raiser, Thomas organized friends and family, donned
appropriate protective clothing, and went hunting for the nopalitos in
every neighbor's yard and every open area near her Ojai, Calif. home.

"We were all over the valley, walking up people's driveways, asking them if
they'd mind if we took their cactus. They are very popular in Mexico, but
not that many people in our area eat them, so they didn't mind. You can get
nopalitos at farmers' markets, but they are much better if you pick them
yourself - you can take only the very best, bright green paddles."

Thomas's spirit of adventure is limitless, and she is always in pursuit of
the best tasting vegetable or fruit. She experiments freely with new
varieties of vegetables and fruits wherever they spring up.

Her improvisations with squash are sometimes simple and yet just delicious.
One of her favorites is a large sweet round squash called Kabocha, which
shows up in several recipes - soups, a roasted vegetable medley, even in a
pasta sauce.

The charm of this book lies in the graceful, witty introductions to each
section. Organized in menus for holidays, special occasions, small parties,
and family evenings, it's meant to reflect Thomas's lively perspective.

"Food is not a chore, it's a gift," she offers. "You're participating in
something that is part of nature, and nature is always alive and changing."

Copyright 1997 Nando.net
Copyright 1997 The Christian Science Monitor
<http://www.nando.net/newsroom/ntn/health/090497/health7_18540_noframes.html>
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

[log in to unmask]