Peaceful Kitchen – by Catherine Perez

The author, a keen cook and Registered Dietician with a Master’s in same, covers the basics of the science of nutrition as relevant to her recipes, but first and foremost this is not a science textbook—it’s a cookbook, and its pages contain more love for the art than citations for the (perfectly respectable) science.

Mexican and Dominican cuisine are the main influences in this book, but there are dishes from around the world too.

The recipes themselves are… Comparable in difficulty to the things we often feature in our recipes section here at 10almonds. They’re probably not winning any restaurants Michelin stars, but they’re not exactly student survival recipes either. They’re made from mostly non-obscure whole foods, nutritionally-dense ingredients at that, with minimal processed foods involved.

That said, she does take a “add, don’t subtract” approach to nutrition, i.e. focussing more on adding in diversity of plants than on “don’t eat this; don’t eat that” mandates.

If there’s any criticism to be levelled at the book, it’s that in most cases we’d multiply the spices severalfold, but that’s not a big problem as readers can always judge that individually; she’s given the basic information of which spices in which proportions, which is the key knowledge.

Bottom line: if you’re looking to expand your plant-based cooking repertoire, this one is a fine choice.

Click here to check out Peaceful Kitchen, and try some new things!