Staff Review: Pure Foods

Christine Cushing’s new book “Pure Food: How to shop, Cook and Have Fun in Your Kitchen Everyday” takes the aspiring chef right from the supermarket shelves through the preparation of delicious meals. Cushing provides her own flavour and ideas for buying locally and eating fresh, healthy food.

1. Flavor, Flavor, Flavor
2. Quality of Ingredients
3. In Season
4. Ease of Preparation
5. Health

Cushing encourages the use of unique produce, and the diversification of the reader’s produce consumption away from just “peas and carrots”. To ease any potential hesitation, she includes pictures, descriptions and purchasing tips for various types of produce such as gai-lan, rapini and kumquats. Her shopping tips also expand to include seafood, meat and poultry. I found all of the tips incredibly helpful, especially for foods that I am not very familiar with. Cushing also provides her own recommendations for pantry staples and kitchen organization.

Once she has walked you through the supermarket, Cushing presents her actual recipes which are fantastic. They range in difficulty and preparation time but they are all nutritious, creative, fresh and flavourful. The difficulty of the recipes ranges from the very simple Tomato-Olive Mint Salad to the more complex Green Tea – Dusted Duck Breast.

Most of the recipes do require a little more than just a basic knowledge of cooking techniques and skills, and also include unique, and potentially tough to find, ingredients. Having said that, the recipes are quite versatile and I have found that ingredients are easily substituted for and variations on the dishes are still delicious. Cushing encourages creativity during the cooking process and comments that “[she] can adjust the ingredients to whatever [she has] in the fridge”.

In fact, my favourite recipe so far is the Chipotle Coconut Chicken with Tamarillo Salsa and I completely omitted the salsa the first time I made the dish. (The chicken is fantastic)!

Overall, Cushing’s book provides a great shopping guide for quality ingredients. The recipes are perhaps a little more difficult than they intend to be but I have yet to encounter much difficulty in locating ingredients or following the recipes. The fact that Cushing’s dishes are so versatile allows each chef to simplify or adapt each recipe to suit their own taste and skill level. I love this book and can’t wait to try more recipes!!

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