Against the Grain: 150 Good Carb Mediterranean Recipes

by Diane Kochilas

Book Overview

Healthy food doesn't have to be boring and bland. Look to the Mediterranean for innovative, fresh, and nutritious ideas. In Against the Grain, award-winning cookbook author Diane Kochilas offers up a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060726792
• Release Date: August 2005
• Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.48 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.0" x 7.4"

Customer Reviews

Exceptionally Good

I have several hundred cookbooks and this one's a treasure. It consider it great just as a Mediterranean cookbook: it compares favorably to the works of Joyce Goldstein, Marcella Hazan, Phaidon's Silver Spoon, and other great cookbooks of that region. But this book goes further than great recipes: it is low carb, grain-free, gluten-free, mostly dairy-free, and mostly paleo. It is by far the best low carb cookbook out there; I have them all. The emphasis is on fresh vegetables, fresh meat/poultry/fish, olive oil, and Mediterranean flavor ingredients like olives, capers, etc. I've made more than a dozen of the recipes so far, and each has been great. Not just good, but exceptionally good. I can only hope that the author will write a second volume (and third, and fourth ...).

Meera

Book came very quickly and was in perfect conditon for a fraction of the new price which I could not afford, Thank you so much, I love the book and it's most helpful for those who are needing to do little grains in their diets and want delicious meals. This is Meera's review not Alex's.

Tasty resource for low-carb recipes plus good foodie reading

`Against the Grain' is the fifth book by leading culinary writer in English on Greek food, Diane Kochilas. And, it is written as a source book on Mediterranean recipes for low carb diets, primarily in response to the author's taking up first the Atkins and then the South Beach diet regimens which limit carbohydrate intake. The title of the book is a pun on the fact that grains, especially wheat, rice, and corn are such a big part of the Mediterranean diet. This book raises the issue that while the Mediterranean cuisines are commonly thought to be so healthy, why is it that not only carbohydrates, but especially carbohydrates from processed white flour are such a bit part of classic Mediterranean cuisines in bread, pasta, couscous, and dumplings of various sorts. The author answers part of this question when she cites that until quite recently, white flour and its products were simply not available to people with average or low incomes except on special occasions. However, one of the most basic poor people's staples, chestnuts and chestnut flour are very high in carbohydrates with little collateral nutrition in the calories. Another part of the answer is that the `healthy Mediterranean diet' story arose from a demographic study of residents of Crete, which is a very small sample of the whole Mediterranean cuisine. In opening this book, I feel it is actually more difficult for it to attain a high rating than a straight cookbook on Mediterranean food. This is because in addition to presenting good recipes, the book aims to present recipes that will help you loose weight. Bobby Flay's latest book, `Grilling for Life' takes a very similar tack, in that he is using a nominally healthy (low fat) food preparation technique and telling us what the (negative) nutritional analysis of each dish is. By negative, I mean the amounts of all the things we wish to avoid on one or another style of diet, that being calories, saturated fat, cholesterol, sodium and total carbohydrates, plus the good stuff, fiber and protein. Neither book deals at all with the principles behind the various diet regimens. This means that these books are probably not really going to help you unless you know the ropes of your diet of choice. Kochilas does spend a little time discussing the difference between saturated and unsaturated fats and how the latter (olive oil) is better than the former (animal and tropical fats), but neither book explains how the nutritional analyses were done and neither book has a nutritional expert as a co-author. Kochilas nine chapters are: Eggs for Breakfast, Brunch, and Dinner Small Plates of the Mediterranean The Mediterranean Garden in a Bowl Side Dish and Main Course Vegetables The Mediterranean Soup Kitchen Fruits of the Wine-Dark Sea Chicken and a Few Duck Dishes The Sacrificial Lamb The Ubiquitous Pig and a Few Beef Dishes The first two chapters really puzzled me, as the calorie, fat, and sodium counts on so many of these recipes seemed rather hi