Naturally, Delicious!

The first thing to do when you get the book is to sit down, comfortably, and turn the pages oh-so-slowly as you digest the luscious photographs of internationally awarded food photographer Edmond Ho. From crisp greens to the reddest meat to pristine tofu to a perfectly browned filo crust, this is a "look book" as much as a cook book.

Naturally Peninsula–Flavours is the venerable Peninsula group’s first cook book, featuring 76 recipes from the kitchens of The Peninsula hotels throughout Asia and the United States. It has chapters on Appetizers, Soup, Fish, Shellfish, Poultry, Meat, Vegetables & Bean Curd, Rice & Pasta, Desserts, and Smoothies.

The book comes as part of the group’s new "Peninsula Wellness" program that aims at lighter and healthier cuisine offered at the hotels’ dining outlets. The food concept is based on the principle that "to live well is to eat well," meaning healthy "without compromising flavor."

The group has engaged the services of a guest nutrition advisor, Gabrielle Tuscher, who has been conducting nutritional analyses leading to adjustments in recipes to have lower content of saturated fats and sugar, and avoiding the use of the new "bad boy" of nutrition, trans fats. These recipe adjustments will have a major impact on improving the final nutrient content of the "Naturally Peninsula" dishes.

"An emphasis on wellness and balance is the common thread that runs through these recipes," says Peter Borer, chief operating officer of The Peninsula group’s parent company, The Hongkong and Shanghai Hotels Ltd. "The dishes reflect a lightness of flavor and ingredients, of a different approach to food–and what resonates most is the fact that they represent a modern approach to dining with a focus on today’s healthy food principles."

Not surprisingly, emphasis is on freshness of the dishes’ main ingredients, enhanced by the creative use of a host of spices, herbs and condiments. With chefs from their seven properties–in Hong Kong, Beijing, New York, Bangkok, Chicago, Beverly Hills, and Manila–contributing dishes, the recipes offer a wide array of tastes.

And require a wide array of ingredients. From quinoa grains to Thai rosella to pomegranates to Chinese wolfberries to morels, chanterelles and black perigord truffles (calamansi or "kalamansi lime" is also listed here), cooking the dishes will prove to be as much of an adventure as savoring them.

Each recipe is accompanied by a full page colored photograph, which should serve as a guide for those who will attempt to replicate the recipes at home. There is an assurance that the recipes are do-able in the average home kitchen: "We commissioned a recipe tester to test and re-test these recipes numerous times to allow for replication in a ‘home kitchen’ environment," says Borer.

Further assistance comes in the form of a helpful glossary of ingredients, and a step-by-step how-to on kitchen techniques like cleaning asparagus and artichokes and shelling a cooked lobster. Again, both sections come with pictures. There is also a helpful guide to weights and measures and oven temperatures, including metric and English equivalents.

The photographs will either intimidate or inspire you to try out the recipe at home; hopefully it will be the latter, and bring you as much joy in the cooking as in the eating.

"Naturally Peninsula–Flavours" is available at The Peninsula Manila Newsstand or online through www.peninsulaboutique.com or www.amazon.com