Gold, R. (2009). Eat fresh food: awesome recipes for teen chefs. Photographs by Phil Mansfield. New York: Bloomsbury.
ISBN-13: 978-1-59990-282-1
Summary
This cookbook is comprised of more than 80 recipes that emphasize healthy eating with fresh foods. The author is encouraging her readers to get out of the junk food rut. There are seven chapters focusing on different courses: Bread, Butter, & Breakfast; Bowls: Soups & Pasta; Sandwiches, Burgers & Pizza; Salads, Big & Small; Dinner Specials With Vegetables; Side Dishes; and Desserts & Drinks. Additionally, an Introduction includes a nutritionist’s notes, information about organic food, the pantry, equipment, safety, and getting started. At the end of the book, a list of menus offers suggestions for important events and get-togethers with family and friends such as New Year’s Breakfast, Valentine’s Day Dinner, A Birthday Party, and the Last Gasp of Summer. Each recipe includes a list of ingredients, clear step-by-step instructions, and colorful photographs.
Critical Evaluation
Eat Fresh Food: Awesome Recipes for Teen Chefs is a colorful, inspiring cookbook for teens who are interested in cooking or who are seeking alternatives to fast food, junk food, and snacks. In the Introduction, Rozanne Gold explains the acronym FRESH: farmer-friendly, ripe-ready, easy-exciting, sustainable, honest-healthy. An memorable acronym might encourage young chefs not only while they are shopping but also when they are cooking. Vibrant photographs show examples of ingredients, equipment, final products, and happy young adult sous chefs in action and having fun in the kitchen. Seeing the multicultural group of sous chefs enjoying themselves promotes creativity in the kitchen, makes readers want to join in, and emphasizes that everyone can do this. The recipes are relatively easy with minimal ingredients; because the lists of ingredients are short, young chefs will not be overwhelmed and discouraged from trying them. Furthermore, the descriptions of the dishes are told in a relaxed, encouraging tone. Sidebars on many pages provide helpful tips and suggestions. Quotes from young chefs appear in colorful circles throughout the page. For example, Dan exclaims, “I always make things spicy, to see how hot I can take it.” Fun quotes like this appeal to the reader because he or she can connect with them. Many of the recipes are also vegetarian, even though none of them point that out. Young chefs will learn the difference between ground cinnamon and ground cumin, and they will have fun cooking healthy food that all will enjoy.
Reader’s Annotation
Teen chefs cook more than 80 recipes in this cookbook that encourages FRESH eating. From ultra-thin breakfast crepes with fresh blueberry syrup in the morning to hot-milk shortcakes with strawberries and cream for dessert, these delicious recipes will delight family and friends.
Author Information
Rozanne Gold, a renowned chef, author, and restaurant consultant, began her career at age 23 as first chef to Ed Koch, mayor of New York City. She has won the prestigious James Beard Award four times and has won the IACP/Julia Child Cookbook Award. She has helped re-create the Rainbow Room at the top of Rockefeller Center in New York as well as worked at Windows on the World, the restaurant that was at the top floors of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. She has been named one of America’s Top 5 Enlightened Chefs and Hospitality Professional of the Year. She is known for “keeping it simple,” and one of her cookbooks, Fabulous Food Using Only Three Ingredients (1996) has been published in three languages. Her book Healthy 1-2-3 (2001) won the IACP (International Association of Culinary Professionals) award.
Chef Gold is a graduate of Tufts University where she majored in psychology and education. She then studied cooking in Italy and France. She is a trustee of Arts Horizons, a nonprofit organization that brings the arts to city schools. The movement to help teens eat more healthfully is important to her and Eat Fresh Food: Awesome Recipes for Teen Chefs is her 11th book.
Rozanne Gold lives with her husband and teenage daughter in the Park Slope neighborhood of Brooklyn in New York and her son lives in Silicon Valley, CA.
More information about Chef Rozanne Gold can be found at her website:
http://www.rozannegold.com/
Genre
Young adult
Nonfiction
Cookbook
Curriculum Ties
Home economics
Book Talking Ideas
Tired of eating the same old junk? Why are farmer’s markets so popular? What is it like to be a chef?
Reading Level/ Interest Age
Appropriate for ages 14 and up
Challenge Issues
N/A
Challenge Defense
N/A
Why did I include this title?
I love chefs. Their creativity and passion comes through in everything they do. This cookbook is no exception. Rozanne Gold’s enjoyment of food and young adults is obvious. The recipes look delicious. I think the first one I want to try is Bombay Sliders with Hurry-Curry Sauce. See how much fun that sounds? Every page has color photographs, which is nice. How often do we look at cookbooks without pictures and wish we could see what it was supposed to look like? I have a student in class who is always looking at cookbooks and writing recipes down. She says she will bring me some of what she makes, but she never remembers. That’s ok. I hope she enjoys this book.
