Cookbook of the Week: 'The Sprouted Kitchen Bowl and Spoon'

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Yahoo Food’s Cookbook of the Week: The Sprouted Kitchen Bowl and Spoon: Simple and Inspired Whole Foods Recipes to Savor and Share (Ten Speed Press) by Sprouted Kitchen blogger Sara Forte. All of the healthy, hearty dishes in the book are meant to be served in bowls; the chapters are “Morning Bowls,” “Side Bowls,” “Big Bowls,” and “Sweet Bowls.”

Noteworthy: Sara did not grow up eating whole foods — “my dad made us blue box mac-n-cheese with hot dogs in it … and I am not referring to the organic, grass-fed kind,” she writes in the book’s introduction, but she fell in love with seasonal produce while working on an organic farm near her San Luis Obispo college. After school, she interned at an olive oil farm in Tuscany. A handful of years enjoying California and Italy’s best is enough to uproot the frozen, canned, or mixed-from-a-packet roots in any person with taste buds.

The Team: This is the second cookbook for husband-wife duo Sara and Hugh Forte. She develops health-focused recipes — her work has been featured in many publications, including Food and Wine, Bon Appe?tit, and In Style — and she’s also a private chef. He is a photographer. Sprouted Kitchen, which won a Saveur best food blog award, is their labor of love together, as is their son, Curran.

The Cuisine: Simple, nutritious food — in bowls. These are the recipes Sara makes in her everyday life — healthful, practical — served in the vessel that, she writes, “has an aesthetic gentleness to it that feels stark on a plate —ingredients nestled within each other, tangled to make most sense as a sum of their parts.” She leans toward vegetables, whole grains, lean proteins, and big salads, all flavored with bold dressings and sauces.

Who Should Buy It: Those who crave healthful, colorful foods that taste good and can be packed up easily.

Must-Make Recipes: The Za’atar Roasted Carrots dressed with tahini; the Hippie Bowl, packed with sprouts, sunflower seeds, tofu, avocado, and millet; the Tropical Smoothie Bowl, which has mango, pineapple, coconut water, coconut milk, and turmeric for its anti-inflammatory benefits; the savory Golden Quinoa Breakfast Bowl.

Check out more cookbooks we like:

Manger blogger Mimi Thorisson’s A Kitchen in France

Chef Sean Brock’s ode to the South

At Home in the Whole Foods Kitchen, by Amy Chaplin