Williams-Sonoma Essentials of Healthful Cooking: Recipes and Techniques for Wholesome Home Cooking

by Dana Jacobi, Mary Abbott Hess, Marie Simmons

A fresh approach to healthy cooking emphasizes the creative use of ingredients to ensure maximum freshness, flavor, and nutrition and presents more than 130 tempting recipes, full-color photographs of every finished dish, how-to images to teach a variety of cooking techniques, nutritional sidebars, a detailed glossary, and suggestions for alternative toppings, sauces, and accompaniments. 20,000 first printing.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Reference

304 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 2003

Reviews

[Aaron · Rating 5 out of 5]

Useful cook book. The recipes are good tasting, not hard to follow but it does have some that will challenge you and healthy of course. I use this book when I'm having company over for dinner. Most of the time the meals are a hit but you can't win them all ; )

Leave a comment or message me if you want to know which meals turned out to be a hit.

[K · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is truly a beautiful cookbook with good, tasty, simple recipes, and it was so nice of Miriam to give it to me as a gift. I love receiving beautiful cookbooks as gifts, especially when they contain interesting recipes worth trying. The salads are particularly appealing – the chicken, roasted red pepper, and green bean salad was great! And although I haven’t had a chance to try a lot more recipes at the time of this writing, I will definitely be trying more of the salads.

It was interesting to be trying out this cookbook in tandem with “Kosher by Design Lightens Up,” because while these cookbooks appeared to have a similar mission and even some recipe overlap, they were very different. The Williams-Sonoma cookbook concentrates on simple, straightforward flavors. There’s not a whole lot of ancillary spicing – just various combinations of different foods. There’s something to be said for this, especially since it really simplifies the cooking process. I wasn’t expecting to find easy recipes in a snooty Williams-Sonoma cookbook.

On the other hand, when I tried the Kale, Sausage, and White Bean soup, it kind of felt like I had taken hot dogs and beans, boiled them in water with a few vegetables, and called it soup, as opposed to just eating hot dogs and beans, but basically, it was hot dogs and beans (although maybe that’s just because I don’t have access to fancy sausage in Israel and had to use what I could find). So that’s where I sort of prefer Susie Fishbein’s recipes, because I think they’re a little more interesting in that way. Of course, they’re also more patchkedig which is the flip side.

The other advantage of Susie’s books is that the recipes are more conducive to a frum family’s lifestyle. The Williams-Sonoma cookbook had some nice omelet recipes, and pasta recipes, and baked vegetables with cheese kind of things, but it was hard for me to figure out where these recipes would fit into my life. If I decide to make scrambled eggs or pasta for my family for supper, it’s because I’m feeling lazy – not because I want to start with the basil and the cheddar. A lot of the recipes seemed a bit fancy for a weeknight supper, but inappropriate for a Shabbos or yom tov (especially since many were milchig – this is a problem with non-kosher cookbooks). Even when I appreciated the cooking results, my family sometimes didn’t. When I tried the pasta with goat cheese and tomatoes I actually thought it was great, but my kids begged me to go back to regular baked ziti. So much for that.

So anyway, I really don’t want to sound negative because I do think it’s a good cookbook with good recipes. I may not end up using as often as I would like because it’s not so compatible with my lifestyle. But for a non-kosher cook with either very sophisticated children or no children, I recommend this cookbook, and the recipes that did work for me were winners that I will pass on to my friends.

[Michaiah · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love this cookbook, as I love almost any Williams Sonoma cookbook. I need pictures and WS never disappoints in that area. What I love about this book is that, compared to other WS cookbooks, this really does focus on healthful foods. Not everything is low-cal or low-fat or low-carb, but there is a real effort to cut down on bad fats, bad carbs, sodium, etc., and use real, whole foods for a variety of healthful dishes. Additionally, unlike some of the other WS healthy cookbooks, this one uses more easily accessible ingredients - I don't have to drive across town to the whole foods store or go to a farmer's market to find most of the ingredients. I've tried many of the recipes and have loved nearly every one. The oatmeal raisin cookies are to-die-for, and the salmon and potato salad is absolutely out of this world. As with most WS cookbooks, the recipes take time to prepare - this is not your go-to, busy weeknight cookbook, but when you have the time, the results are worth it.

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this cookbook -- I copied several of the recipes and look forward to cooking! The best part about the book was that it included a guide for how to cook food in a healthy way (what oils are best, the type of preparation and cooking style is best for particular protiens) which takes the book from the level of a basic collection of healthy recipes to a real chef's manual.

Looking forward to cooking a whole lot more.

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

This cookbook is below average for desirable recipes for me. The sole reason I'm giving it 3 stars is because it does have a good bit of helpful knowledge when it comes to eating healthy. It also offers basic techniques and describes tools that are handy to have around a kitchen. Plus, the pictures are beautiful and helpful when preparing the foods. It's just not a useful cookbook that I would go back to time and time again.

[Devon · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite cookbooks. The pictures alone want me to eat healthy. Versitle enough to, for instance, make a lentil portage without the halibut, if desired, even though they are together as one recipe. No calorie/nutrition information is included in the recipes, just a general "low cholesterol" or "high in protein" description. The eggplant "lasagna" is a favorite.

[Lindsay]

I'm writing here because of Devon's review. If I recall correctly, there is nutrition information in the back of the book that includes calories.

[Ana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good recipes.

[Catherine Woodman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This series is very well produced and the recipes do tend to work out--just not especially imainative