Five vibrant plant-based recipes from Heidi Swanson s Super Natural Simple cookbook
Heidi Swanson
Photo: Heidi Swanson/Hardie Grant
Los Angeles-based food writer Heidi Swanson says she s watched dietary trends come and go, including low-carb, paleo, keto and turmeric-everything. But when you cut through the claims and look at long-living communities around the world, nutrient-rich, whole-food, plant-based meals is probably where you want to settle . Her latest cookbook,
Super Natural Simple, is a collection of vibrant, approachable whole-food vegetarian recipes pared down for quick, crowd-pleasing weeknight cooking.
Som tum noodles
Sweet, sour, salty and spicy – this colourful noodle dish uses techniques and flavours of the Thai dish som tum (or som tam, or green papaya salad) as a jumping-off point. Turmeric noodles are combined with a rainbow of vegetables, then tossed with a puckery sour ( som ), pounded ( tum ) salty-sweet dressing.
May 8, 2021
Joe Yonan
THE WASHINGTON POST – Sometimes, it seems impossible to find the time to cook the very things that your body and spirit need. You are rushing from task to task, juggling work and family and maybe school, and the stress starts to compound until you find yourself worried about being worried, tired of being tired, and in the mood to do anything other than the work required to get a healthful meal on the table.
Heidi Swanson knows the feeling. Her latest book Super Natural Simple comes “from a busy time in my life,” she wrote. She and her husband Wayne Bremser moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles while she was working on the book, and they bounced from one Airbnb kitchen to another while looking for a home. Then the pandemic happened, and last fall her mother died and her father fell ill shortly thereafter.
The research began with casual backyard observations: when Shibata, a student in Saitama Prefecture, Japan, noticed that rhinoceros beetles were flocking to an ash tree in his family’s garden in the summer of 2019, he began documenting the behavior of the beetles for a self-directed summer science project. He realized that the beetles on the ash tree were actively feeding and mating all day, but the beetles on oak trees – the beetle species’ usual host – were only active during the night.
That was when Shibata decided to contact Dr. Kojima Wataru, a senior lecturer at Yamaguchi University who has written several books for young people about rhinoceros beetle ecology. Shibata mentioned that he was recording the number of beetles on the ash tree multiple times of day, which caught the scientist’s attention.
Pinkest Party Dip (Photographs copyright Heidi Swanson)
New York Times bestselling author Heidi Swanson has recently released a new cookbook that celebrates whole-food vegetarian recipes with “Super Natural Simple.”
Swanson, the author of “Super Natural Cooking,” “Super Natural Every Day” and “Near & Far,” is also a two-time James Beard Award winner.
In this new cookbook, she offers 120 streamlined recipes that offer a whole-food approach as well as minimal ingredients and time-saving tips.
The recipes are divided into 10 chapters: Make-Ahead Mornings, Snacks & Other Quick Bites, The Best Salads, Nourishing Soups & Stews, Weeknight Noodles, Single Skillets, Sheet-Pan Meals, Easy Grills, One-Bowl Bakes and Easy-Drinking Refreshers, and are accompanied by gorgeous, full-color photos. Breafkast dishes included Deviled Egg Toast, French Onion Breakfast Strata and Jasmine-Chia Breakfast Pudding. Snacks include Puffed Rice Party Mix and Burrata Ball Four Ways. Salads of
Toasted almond broth and asparagus turn ravioli into a light springtime dish
20 Apr 2021 - 15:36
Ravioli and Asparagus in Toasted Almond Broth. Photo by Laura Chase de Formigny for The Washington Post.
By Joe Yonan | The Washington Post
Sometimes, it seems impossible to find the time to cook the very things that your body and spirit need. You are rushing from task to task, juggling work and family and maybe school, and the stress starts to compound until you find yourself worried about being worried, tired of being tired, and in the mood to do anything other than the work required to get a healthful meal on the table.