Conscious Cuisine: A New Style of Cooking from the Kitchens of Chef Cary Neff

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Good for the body doesn't mean bad for the soul. From the top-rated spa, Conscious Cuisine is bold new methods fused with vibrant fresh tastes to create extraordinary food."Chef Cary Neff's passion for purity utterly oozes from the pages. His recipes are extremely healthy—better still, they explode with bold flavor. I would recommend this innovative work to anyone who wants to eat well." —Charlie Trotter, Chef and Owner of Charlie Trotter's Restaurant **Check on this label**AUTHORCOMMENTS:From Chef Cary Neff "Cooking is one of the most memorable, creative, romantic and caring gestures you can make for another or for yourself. Whether it's a simple bowl of cereal for breakfast or a several-course feast to celebrate a special occasion, great food created with love and care nourishes the heart. The goal of Conscious Cuisine is to encourage you to become more conscious and mindful of the food you eat and prepare. It is a simple act of noticing and embracing the unique flavors, textures, aromas, presentation and healthy benefits that food provides. Conscious Cuisine provides you with recipes and techniques that will help you discover new healthful foods, cooking methods and nutritional awareness. Cooking terminology is explained to help you better understand how professional chefs adapt new recipes with ease. You too will learn to cook with confidence, creating sinfully delicious foods without the use of excessive fats and calories. I have also included a full nutritional analysis of each recipe to illustrate the benefits of Conscious Cuisine. I'm certain you will enjoy the descriptive and colorful photos that come alive within the pages, demonstrating to you that Conscious Cuisine is as visually appealing as it is delicious. I also have included information on: how to shop seasonally for food; how to outfit your kitchen with healthful foods; how to procure hard-to-find natural ingredients; choosing the foods that are the least processed; learning some of the countless ways of preparing vegetables and whole grains; complementing meals with animal proteins rather than having them as the main ingredient. It is my hope that Conscious Cuisine will unleash for you new approaches to cooking and eating every day and that it will open your senses to new possibilities."

Author Biography: Trained in classic French kitchens, Chef Cary Neff is a master at creating intense and vivid flavors, exploring gutsy Thai, Mediterranean and southwestern cuisine. Throughout his career, he earned national accolades for multimillion-dollar establishments in Arizona, such as the Scottsdale Princess Resort, the Citadel, the historic Wrigley Mansion Club, the Wigwam Resort, LaCosta and Miraval Resort and Spa, where he was executive chef for eight years. He has established Conscious Cuisine as one of the nation's leading spa cuisines. Conscious Cuisine has been featured in major magazines including Bon Appetit, Gourmet, Food and Wine, New York Times Magazine and Metropolitan Home, as well as on The Oprah Winfrey Show and Today . Chef Neff is currently an active member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals, Chef's Collaborative and the American Culinary Federation's Apprentice Program.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

The very phrase "spa cuisine" holds the promise of luxurious food (at empyrean prices), dazzlingly presented and of course, more nutritious and healthful than you could ever imagine. To his credit, Neff, chef at Chicago's Miraval Life in Balance Resort, makes good on most of these superlatives in his book, which is as much a manifesto for a beautiful way of life-wholesome, elegant, flavorful-as it is a cookbook. Earnest and articulate, Neff is an able culinary innovator. In an entire chapter on low-fat sauces he coaxes strange bedfellows into happy marriages: carrot-cardamom sauce, saffron-chive sauce, beet-ginger sauce. All the recipes are low-fat, just daring any home cook to try saut ing a pound of protein in 1/4 teaspoon of olive oil. There is, of course, a catch in this too-good-to-be-true formulation: these are not simple dishes to prepare. Easy-sounding "Vegetable Casserole" calls upon four separate recipes dispersed throughout the book. And that's child's play compared to the side dish Layered Spinach, Wild Mushroom, and Carrot Mousse. Neff trained as a traditional chef, which may explain his assumption that readers have an army of prep staff and dishwashers awaiting orders. In any case, it seems clear that this is not a cookbook for the average weekday night-unless one commits to living with the "conscious cuisine" ethos ("to become more conscious or mindful of food") for weeks at a time, in which case one might have Toasted Fennel and Tomato Sauce, or Beet, Cranberry and Jicama Relish on hand at any hour of the day or night. (Oct.) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

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