Super Natural Every Day

Published in 2011 by Hardie Grant Books.

Hardie Grant Books (Australia)
Ground Floor, Building 1
658 Church Street
Richmond, Victoria 3121
www.hardiegrant.com.au

Hardie Grant Books (UK)
Second Floor, North Suite
Dudley House, Southampton Street
London WC2E 7HF
www.hardiegrant.co.uk

First published in the United States by Ten Speed Press, an imprint of the Crown
Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Swanson, Heidi. Super natural every day / Heidi Swanson.
Includes index. EISBN 978 174273 682 2
Cooking (Natural foods). Vegetarian cooking. 641.563

Text and photographs copyright © 2011 by Heidi Swanson
Photographs on
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copyright © 2011 by Wayne Bremser
Design by Toni Tajma
Colour reproduction by Splitting Image Colour Studio
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright Page

introduction

Breakfast

Lunch

Snacks

Dinner

Drinks

Treats

Accompaniments

acknowledgments

index

INTRODUCTION

I
LIVE IN A MODEST SIX-ROOM APARTMENT
with three-and-a-half-metre-high ceilings on the second floor of a Victorian apartment in the middle of San Francisco. And by “middle” I mean that if you threw a dart at the centre of a map of this city, you’d likely hit my house. My street dead-ends into an east-sloping neighbourhood park, and when you stand at the front window you can watch a parade of pugs and pinschers, big kids on dirt bikes and small kids on scooters, dealers, joggers, and the occasional flute player go by. There are times when two girls set up a music stand in the shade and practice trombone.

San Francisco is a vibrant city that punctuates the top of a fistshaped peninsula, contained on one side by the Pacific Ocean and flanked by its namesake bay on the other two. It is where the North American continent jets out of the sea in dramatic fashion before rumbling east. I’ve lived within a short drive of this coastline nearly all my life, and at the right moment, on the right day, in the right spot, there is no more inspiring place to explore.

Within reasonable walking distance of my front door, you’ll find plenty to eat and drink—paneer-stuffed
kati
rolls, freshly baked walnut sourdough, Neapolitan-inspired thin-crust pizzas, and egg sandwiches served on English muffins fresh from the oven. There is a tea shop pouring silver needle,
gyokuro
, and monkey-picked oolong teas nearby. And as far as coffee goes, I often walk to one of the two coffee shops roasting beans on their premises. There is a boisterous bar worth braving just up the block with dozens of Belgian ales, India pale ales, stouts, and hefeweizens on tap. And when I’m in the mood for something more low key, the beer shop in the other direction has a similarly impressive selection in bottles I can take home.

There must be two dozen places to buy groceries. Some are chains; many are independently owned and small in scale. On any given afternoon I might stumble upon a box of purple rice grown by a workers’ co-op in Thailand on a shelf just a metre or so from a jeweltoned jar of locally produced bergamot marmalade. Or, farm-fresh eggs a few hours old across the aisle from hand-harvested Mendocino nori. And the farmers’ markets? There’s one nearly every day of the week, and choosing which to go to depends on how far I feel like walking.

But as exciting as urban living is, I often feel the pull of quieter realms. Drive an hour from where I am right now, and you might find yourself in the midst of a redwood grove, or standing on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, or making snowballs at the summit of one of the neighbouring peaks. There have been mornings in late spring when I’ve found myself travelling through wildflower-lined highways in west Marin County, poppies spilling from the ditches to flood the black asphalt. Farther inland, in the summertime, you’ll find endless stretches of golden hills punctuated by the craggy silhouettes of old oak trees. In these moments, there are few places I’d rather call home.

I live here with my boyfriend, Wayne, and it’s against this backdrop that I cook each day. The markets, shops, and restaurants define the palette of ingredients I reach for; they influence the flavours I crave.

The hills and vistas, blooming flowers, and candy-coloured houses shape my overall aesthetic sensibility and inspire me to highlight the natural essence of each of the ingredients I choose to use.

Super Natural Every Day

This book is a glimpse into my everyday cooking, with the hope that some of what inspires me will inspire you as well.

I resisted the urge to include over-the-top, special-occasion productions. I left out recipes requiring all day Saturday and on into Sunday to prepare, and skipped the ones with six different components. Instead, I kept a simple notebook over the past couple years of my favourite everyday preparations—ones I revisit often.

The recipes are rooted in whole and natural foods, typically feature a handful of seasonal ingredients, offer some inkling of nutritional balance, and (broadly speaking) come together with minimal effort.

For those of you with
Super Natural Cooking,
consider this a companion volume. Many of the building blocks I outlined in that book are put into practice here. Simply put—here are real foods and good ingredients made into dishes that are nourishing and worth eating.

Natural Foods

If you peek inside my kitchen cupboards you’ll probably notice I prefer my rice brown, red, purple, or black; and that I keep a spectrum of golden honeys close at hand. You’ll see soba noodles are allocated a good amount of real estate in the cabinets to the right of the stove, and heirloom beans have taken more than half-a-metre of shelf space on the left. You might (rightly) suspect my favourite section at the health food store are the bins containing grains, dried beans, and flour.

I tend to cook with whole, natural foods—wholegrains, wholegrain flours, minimally processed sweeteners, and fresh produce—ingredients that are as seasonal and nutritionally intact as possible.

I’d be misleading you if I said I don’t look forward to moments when I happen upon something new and special: a raw, vanilla-scented Fair Trade Certified cane sugar from the Philippines, or giant, golden salt grains from the Menai Strait in Wales. Those sorts of ingredients aside, a good portion of the food I buy is grown or produced locally. I find local ingredients taste better and often have a glow and vitality you don’t see in ingredients that have travelled long distances, particularly when you are talking about produce or perishables. And while I run the risk of sounding a bit preachy, supporting good ingredients grown or produced by people who care about our health and the health of our environment is something about which I feel strongly.

Some of you might be confused by the term “natural foods.” It is used in many different contexts, and it means different things to different people. By “natural foods,” I mean ingredients that are straight from the plant or animal. Or that are made with as little processing and as few added flavourings, stabilisers, and preservatives as possible, keeping nutrients and original flavours intact. For example, wheat berries ground into flour, grated coconut pressed into coconut milk, cream paddled into butter, or chopped tomatoes simmered into tomato sauce (
passata
). For me, focusing on natural ingredients also means doing my best to avoid genetically modified and chemically fertilised crops, as well as dairy products that come from cows treated with growth hormones. I want each meal I eat to deliver as much nutritional punch as possible, and focusing on a range of real, minimally processed foods is the way I go about it.

I occasionally use unbleached plain flour or white sugar, usually in baked goods, when using 100 per cent wholegrain flours (or less refined sugars) doesn’t quite deliver the results I want. For those of you who bake strictly with wholegrain flours, I try to make note of what you can expect from using 100 per cent wholegrain flours in those recipes.

This is as good a place as any to mention that I’m vegetarian, and have been for a long time now. I’m happy to do what I can to leave a lighter environmental footprint on our planet, and I have enjoyed the challenge of shifting my way of cooking and eating to be lower on the food chain. For me, this means being vegetarian, buying a good percentage of my ingredients from local producers, and seeking out sustainably produced ingredients. That being said, it’s each individual’s own personal journey to work toward a way of eating that works for them. Many people seem to be looking for ways to incorporate more meatless meals into their repertoire for a whole host of reasons, and I’m happy to try to provide a bit of inspiration. Many of the recipes in

this book, particularly the main dishes, welcome substitutions, and I encourage you to use some of the ideas as starting points. Go from there based on what is available in your area, or what your family likes to eat.

I think it’s also worth mentioning that while I try to shop, cook, and eat mindfully, I also do my best to remember why I was drawn into the kitchen in the first place—the punch of garlic hitting me in the face after being dropped into a hot pan, the perfume of chocolate wafting from room to room when a cake is in the oven, the explosion of colour I discover every time I slice into a blood orange, or the pleasure of sharing a simple meal I’ve prepared with a group of friends or family. These are the sorts of things that get me excited to cook each day, and I do my best to let them inspire my time in the kitchen before all else.

Where I Shop