The Five Elements Cookbook: A Guide to Traditional Chinese Medicine with Recipes for Everyday Healing

by Zoey Xinyi Gong

A stunning and accessible guide to cooking with Traditional Chinese Medicine, featuring over 50 nourishing recipes to eat for healing every day by TCM chef and registered dietitian Zoey Xinyi Gong.

Chef and registered dietitian Zoey Xinyi Gong offers an incredibly fresh, elegant, and authentic approach to food therapy and a truly accessible guide to cooking with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), a thousands-year-old practice for holistic wellness.

Named after a foundational theory of what balance and optimal health looks like, The Five Elements Cookbook is a stunning introduction to the beginner concepts of TCM and offers a photographic guide to the most commonly used medicinal ingredients (American ginseng, turmeric, reishi, and more), their healing properties, and how to use them seamlessly in your cooking—whether in a warm tea, restorative bone broth, a sweet smoothie, or your favorite dinner.  

Each of the over 50 delicious recipes ingeniously incorporates a food-as-medicine ingredient, with consideration for seasonality, digestion, and body constitution, and specific concerns, like menstrual pains, nausea, anxiety, blood circulation, respiratory health, and more. For those with dietary restrictions, each recipe also includes a key for vegan, nut free, dairy free, gluten free, plus the TCM energetics and uses. Recipes span all day and every meal, plus beverages and

Sesame Goji GranolaPumpkin and Lotus Seed Hummus with CruditéReishi Mushroom Miso Soup Steamed Whole Fish with Herbal Soy SauceWarming Lamb Noodle Soup Saffron Mulled WineWith beautiful photographs throughout, this soothing, practical guide is perfect for those looking to eat for healing, nourishment, and joy.

Genres: Cookbooks, Food, Cooking, Health, Nonfiction

288 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 14, 2023

Reviews

[Cailin Hong · Rating 4 out of 5]

This must be how some ppl feel when they read gender theory lol. I’m excited abt the idea of food as medicine and holistic, systems-level approaches to health but the conceptual associations and implications did not resonate w me. I felt like lists of words and unrelated vibes were being arbitrarily assigned to buckets. Maybe has to do w the incommensurability of translation (raw foods cause dampness? Late morning is spleen time?). I’m glad I can return to this as a reference, bc very little stuck w me!

I think there were opportunities to reference more clinical studies and invoke western frameworks to explain why certain foods work and are grouped, at least at a starting point (eg - warming = carbs)

This sounds negative but I liked this overall. I don’t know of a more accessible English lang guide out there and the layout is nice

[Maris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this more useful as a crash course on TCM than as a cookbook. Informative and interesting.

[Dianelys · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting and informative book. It explains how Traditional Chinese Medicine uses food to help balance and improve the body.
I wasn’t a big fan of most of the recipes at the end, but I appreciated that they were included along with photos.

"Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food." One Ayurvedic proverb from India says, "When diet is wrong, medicine is of no use. When diet is correct, medicine is of no need." In Korea, the saying goes, "No matter how good medicine may be, it will never be as good as good food."

“A truly healthy diet is one that can induce happiness after all, so why give up joy trying to be healthy?”

“Eating according to your own body is paramount. Following a trendy diet blindly may cause more harm than improvement.”

[Iroquois · Rating 5 out of 5]

Too bad I’m not a cook (nor have the financials to run out and buy all these cool ingredients lol) cuz I’d love to try some of the food in this. The pics are gorgeous, and I love a cookbook that uses full color and shows the food/dish clearly. I also like the idea of food as medicine. Hopefully some point in the future when I have my own place again I can give some of these recipes a shot.

[Nikkers · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great information on the herbs and for a beginner, the overall TCM introduction was interesting, if not a little overwhelming. I will likely come back to the recipes after becoming a bit more informed.

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great TCM reference book to guide you on what foods can treat different illnesses.

[Elke Giles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good info for over 50 herbs. I only wanted to try 2 of the recipes mention. Very good and complete information on Traditional Chinese Medicine.

[Ying · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice introduction of TCM in food