Dada Eats Love to Cook It: 100 Plant-Based Recipes for Everyone at Your Table An Anti-Inflammatory Cookbook
256Dada Eats Love to Cook It: 100 Plant-Based Recipes for Everyone at Your Table An Anti-Inflammatory Cookbook
256Hardcover(Illustrated)
-
PICK UP IN STORECheck Availability at Nearby Stores
Available within 2 business hours
Related collections and offers
Overview
“When I’m looking for something quick that doesn’t use refined sugars and refined flour, Samah is the person I turn to. I can’t get enough!”—Giada De Laurentiis, New York Times bestselling author of Eat Better, Feel Better
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR BY FOOD52 AND LIBRARY JOURNAL
Samah Dada doesn’t buy into the all-or-nothing mentality of healthy eating. By using real, unprocessed ingredients in surprising ways, she shows you how to have your cake and eat it too—because it’s actually made out of chickpeas.
Samah knows that eating well doesn’t mean eating boring food. She uses only the most nutritious ingredients, not because she’s cutting out food groups to follow the latest fad, but to create drool-worthy meatless dishes that are mostly vegan (with options for dairy and eggs), mostly gluten-free (with easy substitutions to go entirely gluten-free), and all helpful in reducing inflammation. She reinvents Indian cookbook staples—and other classics—with recipes such as:
• Sweet Potato Aloo Tikki
• Creamy Black Lentils
• Spicy Eggplant Masala
• Chocolate Chip Tahini Cake with Chocolate Frosting
• Cauliflower Cacio e Pepe
• Masala Mac and Cheese
• And more!
With Dada Eats Love to Cook It, you’ll discover how to use healthy ingredients for maximum flavor and joy.
Grain-Optional. Gluten-Flexible. Mostly Plant-Based. Totally Inclusive.
Product Details
ISBN-13: | 9780593138236 |
---|---|
Publisher: | Harmony/Rodale |
Publication date: | 06/08/2021 |
Edition description: | Illustrated |
Pages: | 256 |
Sales rank: | 167,870 |
Product dimensions: | 8.10(w) x 10.10(h) x 0.90(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Introduction
How can I adequately sum up what it means to me to be here, sharing with you what is not just my food, but my heart? On one level, food might look like my job. It manifests as a carrot cake with a peanut butter frosting, or hummus so smooth you get emotional. It can disguise itself as tahini used with a heavy hand right to the edge of social acceptability. It is undoubtedly all of these things. But reducing food to just a merging of ingredients would be doing a disservice to myself and to you. For me, food is not simply the end result. It is my hobby that accidentally turned into a career. It is the language I taught myself so I could be better understood. It’s how I share myself with others, and ultimately how I became more, well, me.
My parents immigrated to the United States from India when they were in high school, bringing their values and respective parents’ recipes with them. Sometimes I wonder how they grappled with raising my sister and me in California after experiencing an upbringing that was so wildly different from ours. Though they instilled cultural values and practices in us both, the reality is that I didn’t grow up as part of an Indian community, and as a result, the color of my skin and my Arabic name have constantly made me feel like an aberration.
Though I had friends, it was pretty obvious that I didn’t look like the other kids in school, making it even more jarring when I brought sukha gosht sandwiches for lunch when my peers whipped out Lunchables and Pop-Tarts. I never felt sure of where I belonged, and my only certainty at the time was that I didn’t. I was straddling a line of not being Indian enough, yet ultimately not completely American—and I often still feel that way.
To cope, I became exceptionally skilled at being an accommodating human, friend, and classmate—a perfectionist at being a perfectionist to ensure that, well, if I stuck out, at least it would be in a praiseworthy way. I was, above all, a people-pleaser. And although this innate tendency may have subconsciously given me grief back then by prohibiting myself from failing in any way, I realize now that being wired this way has led me to one of my greatest strengths. It led me to cooking, to pleasing people and their palates. Cooking has become my language for expressing my identity and my confidence in it. Nothing has ever made more sense to me.
I have taken mental notes my entire life, watching my mom cook Indian food every night, wondering if I’d ever be able to comprehend, let alone replicate, the ease with which she’d toss together unmeasured ingredients to yield an unfailingly delicious result. She has taught me so much, yet my path to cooking has materialized as much outside of the kitchen as within it. While a student at the University of California, Berkeley, I assumed the role of unofficial restaurant critic for my friends, always prepared to rattle off a ranked list of my favorite places. Looking for a place to take your parents? Impress a friend? Ethiopian food? The best ice cream? I had everyone and everything covered. I started an obscenely long note on my phone, listing all the restaurants in the Bay Area that I wanted to visit, with asterisks next to them if I had successfully made the trek. I took pride in the street cred my restaurant expertise had bestowed upon me. It was one of the first times in my life that I felt recognized for something that felt like my thing.
It was during college that I became interested in the minutiae of food as it pertained to my well-being. I started taking boxing classes, practicing yoga, and working out at the gym. I also began to pay more attention to ingredients, studied restaurant menus like they were the hottest literature around, and visited the Berkeley Student Food Collective, a nonprofit grocery market dedicated to stocking unique fair-trade health products and local produce. My appetite for information came second only to my appetite for food itself.
After my junior year at college, I moved to New York for a summer internship at CNN, following my dream of working in television. To say I consumed New York voraciously would be a gross understatement. Though my heart knew I’d return to New York again, my brain clearly didn’t get the memo. I walked miles to Brooklyn to eat Roberta’s pizza, and then a million miles in the opposite direction to get the Salted Crack’d Caramel ice cream at Ample Hills Creamery. I learned the hard way that fresh coconuts from the summer food market Smorgasburg were not worth the price, but definitely worth the photo.
I started running in Central Park, and consequently getting lost in Central Park too many times, almost beginning to enjoy the way my feet hit the pavement. I earned the coveted “local coffee shop,” the one where the baristas knowingly smile at you when you swing the door behind you, already prepared to hand over your almond milk au lait, extra hot. I tried vegan sushi for the first time—not the kind with imitation meat, but with ripe mango, avocado, black rice, and a spicy sauce that you want to drown your entire life in. I started checking all of these things off my list, all while watching my phone’s camera roll overflow with photos upon photos of food. I decided to put them on Instagram. A part of me thought no one would care, but it wasn’t for anyone else but me. My page came into existence as a hobby, and I had no intention of it being anything else.
After coming back to Berkeley with more restaurants checked off my list, I dove deeper into conscious eating and intentionally sourced food that made both my body and my soul feel good. At the same time, I ran up against an all-or-nothing mentality. If I care about what I’m putting into my body, am I not supposed to have a chocolate chip cookie? I need cookies to function, and I don’t think I’m alone in this sentiment. What about a creamy pasta or chips with queso? Is that not “good”? Who is making these rules? Why are there a million ingredients on the wrapper of this granola bar, and is it just me or do these supposedly “healthy” crackers taste like sawdust? All of these persistent questions and realizations served as the catalyst behind my desire to start developing recipes that sacrificed neither “indulgent” nor “real.” If I was disillusioned by the options I found, then I could make my own dishes, simpler ones that used whole ingredients.
After graduating from college and traveling for a month, I ended up moving to New York for my dream job in the NBC Page Program. Armed with my own kitchen for the first time in my life, I discovered that there’s a lot you can do in there, even when your arm span takes up the entire width of the kitchen itself. Any way you slice it, the demanding nature of the Page Program should have limited my capacity or desire to cook in my minimal spare hours, but it didn’t.
I would go to work six days a week, show tourist groups around the NBC studios for hours a day, work the Tonight Show, and come home to bake brownies. I’d wake up at 3:30 a.m. to get to work at 4 a.m. for my assignment at the Today show, change into my stiff Page uniform (you’d love to see it), and head to my wobbly desk in the studio’s green-room. I would book cars for our talent and escort guests from their dressing rooms to the set and proceed to come home in the afternoon to immediately blitz spinach and basil in my blender to make a five-minute pesto.
With a new set of best friends in my Page cohort to feed, I had accidentally acquired a second job that I enjoyed just as much as the dream one I had at the network. Beyond that, I became someone in my class who was known for something. I had never felt a sense of belonging like I did in this program. And while that could very well have been because I brought cookies to work every other day, I think it ran deeper than that. Cooking for others without occasion or reason gave me a sense of confidence that finally allowed me to feel seen.
Funnily enough, it was never my aim to make my recipes fall into a specific diet or lifestyle. But a lot of my dishes happen to be vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, and dairy-free. I don’t lead with these labels because they can seem clinical or trendy—I mean, no one is calling broccoli “vegan broccoli.” The truth is, by using minimally processed and real ingredients, the results often come with the potential to satisfy a wider audience, including those who battle with dietary restrictions or simply want to follow their preferences.
The accidental plant-based energy of this book, and of my style of cooking, has been just that, an accident—but I couldn’t be more thrilled about it. These recipes represent all the ways you can be creative with a short list of ingre- dients. It’s about doing more with less. Sure, I love boast- ing that the ridiculously soft and chewy cookie you ate was mainly made up of almonds, coconut, and maple syrup. Or that the creamy pasta had no cream in it at all, but was created using just ripe avocados, fresh basil, and olive oil. It can be a flex, definitely, but it’s more than that. The fact that my recipes can be relished by individuals who never thought they could enjoy a gluten-free brownie or a slice of dairy-free carrot cake represents the inclusivity that I both chase and seek to shine on every aspect of my work. This is something that I am extremely proud of.
Table of Contents
Introduction 11
Pantry Essentials 15
Sides + Apps (Read: A Lot of Dips) 23
OG Hummus 25
Pesto Hummus 26
Tahini Beet Dip 28
Spicy White Bean Dip 30
Creamy Sweet Potato & Garlic Dip 31
Roasted Jalapeño Queso 32
Cucumber Ribbon Karchumber 35
Masala Sweet Potatoes 36
Snacking Bread 39
Hummucado Toast 40
Turmeric Cornbread 43
Sweet Potato Aloo Tikki with Spiced Coconut Yogurt 44
Any Occasion Crackers 47
Roots 49
Breakfasts to Dream About 53
Carrot Cake Muffin Tops 54
Rice Crispy Granola 55
One Banana Only Muffin Tops 56
Fluffy Pillow Pancakes 59
The OG Green Smoothie 60
Peanut Butter & Jelly Smoothie 61
Pancake Bread 63
Maple & Olive Oil Tahini Granola 64
Cinnamon Pain Perdu with Almond Butter Caramel 67
Blueberry Muffin Loaf Cake 68
Honey-Tahini Scones 71
Masala Scrambled Eggs 73
Spicy Turmeric Quiche 75
Tomato Egg Curry 76
Caramelized Onion Savory Oatmeal 79
Morning Soft-Serve 80
Khichdi 83
London 84
Not Just a Salad 87
Cabbage Is Cool! Salad 89
Kale & Romaine Za'atar Caesar Salad 90
The Crunchy, Creamy Carrot Salad 93
Spice Up Your Pomegranate Salad 95
Fattoush Salad with Sourdough Za'atar Croutons 97
Chilled Chaat Masala Chickpea Salad 98
Inverted Roasted Vegetable Salad 101
You Will Want to Eat Your Vegetables 103
Masala Cauliflower & Sweet Potatoes with Cilantro-Mint Chutney 104
Cumin-Roasted Carrots with a Cool Almond Butter 107
Charred Broccoli with Turmeric Tahini Sauce 108
Turmeric-Roasted Cauliflower with Cilantro Tahini 111
Baingan Bharta (Spicy Eggplant Masala) 112
The Broccolini Crunch 115
Honey-Lime & Tahini Brussels Sprouts 116
Roasted Butternut Squash & Co. 119
Don't Miss a Beet Masala 120
Cauliflower Cacio e Pepe 123
Chic Cabbage & Carrot Stir-Fry 124
Berkeley 126
Legume Situations 129
Dal Makhani (Creamy Black Lentils) 130
Dal Saag (Lentils with Spinach) 131
Rajma (Kidney Bean Stew) 133
The Best Dal Ever 134
Ghana Masala (Chickpeas with Tomatoes) 137
Chickpea & Riced Cauliflower Curry 138
A Little Crispy Chickpeas 140
A Toast to Chickpeas 141
Sesame-Crusted Lentil Falafel with Lemony Tahini Sauce 143
Chickpea Patties with Toasty Cumin & Fennel Seeds 144
Beyond Pasta and Grains 147
Kind-of Carbonara with Garlic & Kale 148
Lentil Bolognese 149
Spaghetti Aglio e Olio 2.0 151
Miso-Tahini Butternut Squash Pasta 152
Caramelized Lemon & Olive Oil Pasta 155
Avocado Cream Pasta 156
Turmeric-Tahini Pasta Salad 159
Plot Twist all' Arrabbiata 160
Herby Farro Bowl 163
Miso-Tahini-Glazed Roasted Eggplant with Farro 164
Masala Mac & Cheese 167
Quinoa Masala Pulao 168
Garlicky Mushroom & Kale Spaghetti 171
The Unforgettable Spicy Tomato Pasta 172
Lemon Rice with Curry Leaves 175
Brown Rice Biryani 177
Coconut Rice 179
New York 180
Desserts, a.k.a. The Reason I Have Friends 183
Brookie Pie 184
Chocolate Chip Tahini Cake with Chocolate Frosting 187
The Best Chocolate Chip Banana Loaf Cake 188
Strawberry Halva Crumble Bars 191
Pretzel Tahini Cookies 192
Chocolate Chip Cookie Pie 195
Carrot Halwa (Gajar Ka Halwa) 196
Chocolate Chip Chickpea Blondies 199
Cinnamon Sugar Coffee Loaf 200
Date Caramel Fudge Brownies 203
Not-Too-Intense Lemon Olive Oil Cake 204
No-Bake Raspberry Cheesecake 207
Kheer 209
Sticky Date Cake with Salted Toffee Caramel Glaze 210
Strawberry Maple Granola Crisp 213
Chocolate Avocado Brownies 214
A Chocolate Lover's Dream Truffles 217
Churro Pancake Truffles 218
Cookie Dough Truffles 219
Peanut Butter Coconut Cream Cookie Sandwiches 221
Carrot Cake with Peanut Butter Coconut Date Frosting 222
Salted Peanut Butter Caramel Bars 225
Marbled Chocolate Tahini Loaf Cake 227
A Love Letter to Peanut Butter 231
My Favorite Hobby: Snacks 233
Chewy Lemon Coconut Bites 234
Carrot Cake Bites 235
Fruit Chaat (Spiced Indian Fruit Salad) 237
Almond Butter-Stuffed Chocolate-Covered Dates 238
Salted Peanut Butter Freezer Fudge 241
Masala Popcorn 242
Acknowledgments 244
About the Author 247
Index 248