Monday, April 11, 2016

Review: The Whole Coconut Cookbook

The Whole Coconut Cookbook
by Nathalie Fraise
  • Hardcover: 128 pages
  • Publisher: Ten Speed Press (January 26, 2016)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1607748053
  • ISBN-13: 978-1607748052
Since I started trying to be gluten-free, I've been experimenting with chickpea flour and coconut flour. Plus I can't really drink milk either. Plus coconut oil is good for massages. Plus I'm Jamaican. So all this comes together to make me want to reacquaint myself with coconut again.

Hence this book. It's one of a few coconut cookbooks out there so it looks as if coconuts are making a comeback. The good thing about the coconut is that it can be used in many forms; the other good thing is that it's a staple of many cultures. So it's in different kinds of cuisines: Thai, West Indian, etc.

So: the good thing about this book: the recipes are easy and healthy.

The good (but also possibly bad) thing about this book is that it's made for a foodie generation. I was hoping for a lot of  Southeastern, African, West Indian, etc dishes. No such luck. The recipes here are the kind of recipes one would find in a healthfood store. Tasty but healthy and seemingly created by the author or  I guess that's okay because Americanized taste buds may not connect to anything too exotic-tasting or too full of fat, meat, wheat etc. So that's good.

Coconuts, in all their forms, are present in all the dishes...whether it's flour, sugar, "aminos," milk, vinegar, kefir, water, nectar. Sometimes the coconut is a large portion of the meal, sometimes it is merely present as coconut milk or coconut oil (which might feel like a bit of a cheat but I guess the taste of coconut does go a long way.) The chard chip recipe, for instance, consists of chard, sea salt, and coconut oil.

The book's chapters consist of the following:
Introduction
A guide to coconut ingredients
Cooking with coconut
Breakfast dishes
Main Courses (which includes mostly vegetarian dishes)
Salads and sides
Snacks
Drinks
Desserts
Resources
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Index.

It's a small book and for those who generally don't eat coconut or veggie meals, this is a good introduction. It's a good-enough book, I think. Not bad, but not great.

I received this book free in exchange for a fair and honest review.

 

Blog Archive