It's not a book, but I swear by the magazine "Cooking Light" -- and they actually do put out an annual recipe collection in book form.

I like CL because the recipes are so damn good. They aren't junky - their team builds flavors the way a restaurant chef would, and I usually find their dishes perfectly balances. They're never too complicated. They draw on a lot of inspirations - ethnic, seasonal, trendy. They have a column called "Superfast" of all dishes that can be made in 20 minutes or less. And their approach is slightly 'friendlier' than Cooks' is, but no less consistent and reliable.

Highly recommended. Their baseline for including a recipe is no more than 30% of calories from fat, and they're huge advocates of a whole-food diet in which no foods are labeled 'bad,' but in which balance and moderation are the central idea. So there are wonderful, amazing dessert recipes, meat dishes, rich savories, etc. It's good to know that whatever you cook from there, if you're watching the portion size and overall calories per day, it fits into a basic healthy diet just fine.

Hey Miko, thanks for the link! I think I might make some turkey tamale things (Sorry, I forget the name of it) tonight!

If healthy but not low fat is your aim, Nourishing Traditions has some good recipes. There is a lot of proselytizing in the margins, though. It's very pro-meat, dairy, and whole grains and annoyingly, stridently against refined sugars, refined grains and transfats. Worth flipping through at the bookstore to see if it suits you. I have had good luck with a lot of the recipes.

On a tangent, by brother swears by Wild Fermentation which, as you might guess, teaches yogurt, sauer kraut, pickles, kimchi, beer, wine, sourdough, etc.

I haven't had great luck with the Cooks recipes except for the meat and cookies. Anything "ethnic" comes out tasting like it's via Iowa or someplace midwest. It has a very regional focus and that region is not here (Northern California). (It's the midwest or Wisconsin or someplace.)

So now that I've revealed my bias, can I recommend a California Cuisine cookbook? The reason California Cuisine bothers with its over-done presentation is because the cuisine's premise is as simple as you can get- you get the most in-season ingredients you can find and alter them the least amount possible to make them edible and yummy. This works best in the summer, though, when there are good things in season. (Even Chez Panisse's menu suffers in the winter.)

Oddly enough, I've found some good recipes in the Weight Watchers cookbooks. Probably one third of them are pretty decent. The other 2/3 do that thing that involves substitutions with exclamation marks. (Save 3 points by substituting plain, non-fat yoghurt for sour cream!)

Also, I have found that Italian recipes lend themselves to light cooking. Often if you make a normal recipe but leave out the cream and some of the cheese, you end up with a really tasty dish that in no way resembles the one the recipe was originally for.

I'll back up the Cooking Light suggestion. They go for foods that are healthy by nature, not "diet" versions of normal foods.

Thanks for the suggestions so far--most of things look like they have a lot of potential.

So now that I've revealed my bias, can I recommend a California Cuisine cookbook?

That sounds right up my alley, actually. Is this a specific cookbook, or just a genre of cookbooks? Any Amazon links?

It's very pro-meat, dairy, and whole grains and annoyingly, stridently against refined sugars, refined grains and transfats.

That definitely sounds like what I'm after, but the proselytizing sounds hella annoying. I'll look for it at the bookstore.

mullacc, when I get a chance I'll go peruse them at the bookstore. A classic one is the Chez Panisse Cafe book, but it assumes you can buy fresh, local, in-season, rather exotic vegetables at your corner grocery store, which is kind of true in Berkeley but probably nowhere else. So by the time you're done with the recipe you've driven 50 miles looking for ingredients and the whole thing is exhausting. So I'll see if I can't find a more realistic one.

Also, a lot of it is seafood heavy. Is that realistic where you live?

It's not specifically designed as a healthy cookbook, but I love Madhur Jaffrey's Eastern Vegetarian Cooking. Hundreds of interesting things to do with vegetables, grains, and beans from Turkey to Japan, and I've yet to make something from there that didn't taste great. Her instructions are clear and easy to follow, and she includes illustrations for the more tricky bits.

small_ruminant: Between a decent Safeway, Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, I imagine I'd be able to get my hands on most of the produce so long as I'm willing to violate the principles of "local and in-season." And, while I respect those principles, I'm willing to violate them for a number of reasons (mostly that my first priority right now is my health and I don't want to impose additional barriers). Though the seafood part may be a problem. Anyway, I'll check some out at the bookstore.

If you have a Trader Joes and a Whole Foods you're completely set. I'll check out our bookstore, too, but not til Monday.

Just who exactly do I have to do what exactly to in order to get a Trader Joe's in my Area Code? *pouts*

You guys are making me hungry.

Chez Panisse vegetables has some wondrous recipes, and I love the way it's organized: by vegetable. That way, if you suddenly end up with a random bunch of beets or pile of parsnips or something as a result of a farmer's market trip, you can instantly find 20 delicious ways of preparing them.

Just be a bit careful: Alice Waters, with her French training, does get involved in the cream soups and the cheesy bechamel-type dishes. But there are plenty of really great recipes in that book. Besides which, it's beautiful enough to be a coffee-table book, with nice watercolors of veggies.

Oh, and s_r, I agree with you about Cook's. It's very 'safe' in its orientation toward cooking.

Heh- but safe in that "we-put-mayo-in-our-guacamole"* way. Funny. I have gotten some wonderful meat recipes out of it, and pie recipes, too.

*especially offensive since they declared this made it Californian.

*gak*

Way to take nature's healthiest form of fat and saturate it up!

Let alone what that must do to the texture.

Eeeuch.

The South Beach Diet Book has several dozen recipes in it, all them low-carb. It's really enough variety to live on for several months worth of meals.