Healthy French Cuisine for Less Than $10/Day
by Alain Braux (295 pp., $19.95 paper)Local macrobiotic chef and nutritional therapist Alain Braux’s third cookbook focuses on the challenge of providing healthy menus and recipes for a family of four for $40 a day – thus the title’s claim of $10 a day per person. This adds up to a food budget of $280 per week, which is still incredibly liberal. That said, the strategies for cleaning up one’s diet and trimming food costs outlined by Braux in the first half of the book are perfectly reasonable: eat smaller portions of higher-quality fruits and vegetables, go to the grocery store or farmers’ market with a clear plan and a precise shopping list, and, most importantly, eat in season. Eating seasonally, argues Braux, helps to slash food costs while amping up the nutritional value of what’s on the plate. To that end, the menus and recipes in the book are organized by season, starting with spring and ending with winter.
The winners from that winter section include a quiche lorraine and spinach-mushroom crepes, which have a slimmed-down fat profile and can be tweaked to suit the home cook’s preference of vegetables. Those who are squeamish about food handling practices might approach the Provençal-style beef stew with caution, as it advises marinating the meat at room temperature overnight, then using the marinade as the cooking liquid. While the stew could do with a heavier vegetable component, we found it delicious (and safe to eat). The baked apples are a perfectly light and tangy dessert and would do well on the Rosh Hashanah table. However, typos and inconsistencies hamper some of the recipes: “four” instead of “flour” adds a layer of confusion to a crepe recipe, while the béchamel sauce recipe as written for the cannelloni with tuna yields not a sauce but a frustrating lump of butter, flour, and milk (it needs at least four times as much milk as written). Proofreading issues aside – and I wish Braux had budgeted for some photos as visual aids – this cookbook could serve as a useful primer for families who don’t want to sacrifice quality (or bacon) in the quest for a healthy, delicious weekly menu.
This article appears in January 13 • 2012.