At Home in the Whole Food Kitchen: Celebrating the Art of Eating Well

By Amy Chaplin

James Beard Award Winner (Vegetarian)
IACP Award Winner (Healthy Eating)

The 10th anniversary edition of the James Beard Award-winner that gives all the tools you need to be at home in your kitchen, cooking in the most nourishing and delicious ways--from the foundations of stocking a pantry and understanding your ingredients to preparing elaborate seasonal feasts.

With her love of whole food and her know-how as a chef, Amy Chaplin wrote an influential book ahead of its time that includes all you need to eat well at every meal, every day, year-round. Ten years later, it remains a beloved, go-to guide for home cooks.

This anniversary edition begins with an updated introduction detailing the author's journey working with food. Part one educates the reader on stocking the pantry, offering not just a list of items needed but real working knowledge on how and when to use ingredients, including a foundation of simple recipes for daily nourishment. From there, the book presents a collection of recipes celebrating vegetarian cuisine in its brightest, most sophisticated form. Black rice breakfast pudding with coconut and banana? Yes, please. Beet tartlets with poppy seed crust and white bean fennel filling? I'll take two. Fragrant eggplant curry with cardamom basmati rice, apricot chutney, and cucumber lime raita? Invite company. Honey vanilla bean ice cream with roasted plums and coconut crunch? There is always room for this kind of dessert. This is whole food for everyone.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1645471454
• ISBN13: 9781645471455
• Release Date: April 2025
• Publisher: Roost Books
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 3.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 8.2" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

The aim of this book is confusing

This is a beautiful book aesthetically and offers a ton of useful information on building cooking techniques and the tools needed to do it. What’s confusing is that the instructional information seems geared towards people like me - those who are wanting to transition to a Whole Foods diet and are starting from a novice level - yet 90% of the recipes are very complicated and require specialized equipment and ingredients that can only be sourced from specialty stores. She is clearly writing from the position of extreme privilege having access to incredible foods right down the street from where she lives in Manhattan and the money to buy high end ingredients conveniently and the expensive tools to cook them with. Unless you are in that category this book is basically useless aside from the educational piece. Truly after the first 100 pages you might as well stop since after that only experienced chefs with outstanding resources will find the rest useful. I wouldn’t say it was a complete waste of money but if you’re new to this journey I’d suggest looking for something much simpler to start with.