How to Lower Your Cholesterol with French Gourmet Food: A Practical Guide

by Alain Braux
Alain Braux International Publishing, 269 pp., $19.95 (paper)

If you’ve been eating around Austin for a while, it’s likely you’ve encountered the food artistry of Alain Braux. Since the 1980s, this classically trained pastry chef has cooked in various local venues, such as the Amandine Bakery and the Barr Mansion. He also taught baking and pastry at the Culinary Academy of Austin.

Now Braux’s culinary career has veered in a different direction. Interested in healthy eating, he asked, “Wouldn’t it be great if I could combine my 30 years of knowledge as a chef and my newfound interest in nutrition?” After obtaining a degree from the Clayton College of Holistic Health, he became the executive chef for Peoples Rx, and he maintains a nutritherapy practice. Braux has written this personal guide to eating healthfully, particularly in terms of controlling cholesterol. He’s convinced that healthy eating and sophisticated, flavorful foods aren’t mutually exclusive. Although traditionally French, Braux offers updated approaches to cooking and eating for health and pleasure.

The book includes a disquisition on health, disease, and American diet, and it discusses how specific foods affect cholesterol. The second half is dedicated to beautiful, enticing recipes. With roots in French family cooking and burnished by decades of professional cooking, Braux’s recipes are adjusted toward health without sacrificing flavor. If you’re conversant with French provincial food, many dishes are familiar. Most are simple, and Braux embraces quick weekday preparations. Despite what you might expect, there are meat dishes and, in a bow to his pastry background, some elegant desserts, including a raspberry soufflé “like a cloud” and cocoa-and-almond meringues.

Each recette is titled in French and English – the better to practice French food words. Doesn’t pamplemousse sound more fun than grapefruit? Or pain de viande aux herbes du Midi than Southern France meat loaf?

My only quibble is the difficulty in finding specific information. There’s no index, simply a 12-page table of contents. Because page numbers are positioned on the top inside corners, it’s not easy to locate a page. The text refers to influencing nutritionists and studies; a bibliography of sources would be helpful for further reading.

One of the book’s pleasures is Braux’s distinctive voice. He’s relaxed and quirkily conversational, as if he’s chatting over a glass of vin rouge and a petite pissaladière. His recipes sure make you want to get cooking. As he says, “Miam! (Yum!)”

To have the author sign your book, stop by the West Lake Peoples Rx, 4201 Westbank, Monday through Friday.

This article appears in October 16 • 2009.

A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.

SUPPORT US

MM Pack is a food writer/historian and private chef who divides her time between Austin and San Francisco. A regular contributor to The Austin Chronicle and Edible Austin, she’s been published in Gastronomica, The San Francisco Chronicle, Oxford Encyclopedia of Food & Drink in America, Nation’s Restaurant News, Scribner's Encyclopedia of Food and Culture, The Dictionary of Culinary Biography, and Southern Foodways Alliance’s Cornbread Nation 1.