Leslie Kenton Cook Energy

Celebrating the life-enhancing power of living foods; wild crafted herbs, fresh organic fruits and vegetables, fish, meats and poultry are prepared in surprising new ways in menus for every occasion - from breakfast on the run to spending an afternoon in bed with your lover. Showing you how to use food to enhance your energy, alter your mood, strengthen your body, protect yourself from aging and degeneration, and increase your sexual pleasure.

From the cover COOK ENERGY by LESLIE KENTON

Leslie Kenton's Cook Energy is not only a one-stop guide to the life-enhancing power of food - it's a dynamic new approach to cooking and eating that is quick, easy and enormous fun. Packed with the latest information about the nutraceutical properties of food and with fresh, full-flavoured recipes, it shows how you can call on ingredients to enhance your energy, alter your mood, strengthen your body and protect yourself from illness and premature ageing.

The phytonutrients found in living foods can have extraordinary effects - the anacardic acid in mangoes, for example, has antidepressant properties; watermelon, rich in cucurbocitrin, can help lower blood pressure; and common spices, such as cayenne pepper, are mild stimulants. Chapters ranging from One-bowl Meals - simplicity itself - to Power Foods - protein rich feasts to boost energy- and Midnight Feasts - night foods to aid sleep - contain fabulous recipes which show you how to harness these benefits and eat extremely well. Most of the recipes are simple to prepare, allowing the maximum taste, texture and vitality of the foods to shine through.

The focus of eating for health has now shifted from eating less of this or that, to eating more - more fresh, life-giving foods. Recipes such as Sage Slashed Chicken, Grilled Prawns and Rocket Salad and Rosemary and White Wine Granita lay to rest forever any notion that for something to be good for you it has to taste awful. Healthy meals are now those that are rich in colour, vitality and flavour.

With mouthwatering photography by Leslie herself, Cook Energy allows you to indulge in the pleasure of eating deliciously well, enjoying food that will help you look good and feel great decade after decade.

Extract COOK ENERGY by LESLIE KENTON - sumptiously illustrated using macro photography

Put your kitchen scales away and forget the complex routines for preparing a béchamel sauce. Cook Energy breaks all the rules. For it is not rules that matter when preparing foods. It is a kind of passion for the foods themselves – a feeling reflected in our passion for the earth and for life itself. You see it in a small child as he enthusiastically devours a bowl of fresh strawberries drizzled with honey. It’s good because it tastes good. Such passion, which is visual, visceral, and sensuous, becomes the inspiration which in food preparation leads you automatically to make certain choices. If two things look good together they taste good together. You wouldn’t put octopus and chicken in the same dish.

Open wide your kitchen window. Welcome the breezes of experiment, wit and spontaneity. Inside you will find the traditional meal of roast meat and boiled Brussels sprouts topped off with a piece of sticky toffee pudding replaced by something far more hedonistic: slivers of raw Pacific salmon, luscious garden-fresh salads with a slice or two of Russian black bread followed by a winter sorbet of cranberry and mint. These foods are lighter, richer in protein and full of texture, flavor and surprises. Most of the recipes are easy to prepare and all the foods they call for are replete in the newly-discovered nutraceuticals – natural plant and animal chemicals – to help you look good and feel great decade after decade. The real joy in eating fresh, light, protein-rich foods lies in their taste, their texture and the remarkable ability they have to bring excitement to a palate jaded by too many highly-processed, unimaginatively-seasoned or overcooked dishes.

I love these recipes, first because they taste delicious, and second because together they make up a way of eating and living that supports the body and the highest levels of energy and well-being. I look on food as a source of both delight and life-energy which is passed on to us from the earth. I believe this energy needs to be preserved by not cooking food too much, by eating it fresh and by respecting its essential nature. Food eaten this way becomes a medium through which we build our own vitality – energy to protect the body from premature aging and illness, to enhance good looks and to keep the mind clear. It is the life-energy present in abundance in fresh foods and the clean, simple protein from fish, game, organic meat and poultry that makes these foods irresistible and helps us look and feel great.