Lean and lovin' it: 'Deliciously Ella' finds audience for healthy recipes on the Internet
The Internet age sure has changed the way we go about finding recipes and connecting to cookbook authors.
Culinary icons Julia Child and James Beard never blogged, had a Facebook page, tweeted or hung their names on a smartphone cooking app and they seemed to build a fan base just fine.
Today's generation of young cookbook authors embrace all the new media and technology that some of us are still trying to figure out and they're doing it in fun ways.
Take “Deliciously Ella” by Ella Woodward (Scribner, 2015). Woodward's story begins bleakly with a hard-to-diagnose (it took more than four months), fairly rare but debilitating disease (postural tachycardia syndrome — POTS — an autonomic nervous system issue) and follows her dietary shifts until she reaches glowing health.
When her doctors seemed out of help, from her bed Woodward Googled “alternative health.” That lead her to give up gluten, dairy, sugar, meat, eggs and all processed foods with its chemicals and additives. Her parents chuckled, since they knew she'd hated vegetables and fruits since early childhood. In three weeks, Woodward's health began to change significantly for the better.
During those weeks, Woodward made only three dishes each day: porridge with blueberries and bananas; buckwheat bread with mashed avocado for lunch and brown rice pasta with canned tomatoes and as she's quoted “any vegetable that wasn't too scary.”
Woodward altered her good, but far too limited, dietary path and really began to cook. That's when she discovered what she had viewed as culinary oddities like tamari (wheat-free soy sauce), tahini (sesame seed purée and a key ingredient in hummus), quinoa (a rice-like grain), and dairy-free milks (like almond milk).
Woodward learned to make strawberry jam with chia seeds instead of pectin (jams with pectin require sugar to thicken). She makes blueberry muffins without wheat by substituting either buckwheat (not a cereal grain; it's a fruit seed) or brown rice flour. Her Easy Avocado Mousse uses both avocado and bananas to make a thick mousse-like chocolaty purée. She substitutes brown rice lasagna sheets for wheat pasta in her Veggie Lasagne and she creates butterless Almond Butter Fudge.
Some ingredients may be difficult to locate, such as hazelnut butter (you'll have to make it). She frequently uses Medjool dates for the body they bring and maple syrup for sweetening (she uses both in her Sweet Potato Brownies).
Is Woodward an authority? Only on her own life. She started her blog (deliciouslyella.com) when she wasn't well intending to share her journey, her stories and to keep her on her new path. Now her blog gets some 2.5 million visitors a month.
Woodward's book is strong on pictures, enthusiasm and opinions. If you're counting calories, it's weak on nutritional information, as well as cooking utensil sizes.
Of the 100-plus recipes Woodward shares she has, interestingly, two brownie recipes: one baked, one raw. Here are both of them.
• Don Mauer welcomes questions,
comments and recipe makeover requests. Write to him at don@theleanwizard.com.