The Healthy Kitchen - Hardcover

The authors' combined pedigree is excellent. Weil wrote the best-selling Eight Weeks to Optimum Health and Eating Well for Optimum Health; Daley is Oprah Winfrey's chef. The problem for the British market is that they write from a very American perspective, using many examples from the American diet in advocating healthy, wholefood recipes and some of their routes (eating organic, cutting down on butter and other dairy produce in favour of olive oil and soya) have been well trodden by others on this side of the Atlantic. But the 135 recipes include some true novelties and could provoke a vogue for giant Alaskan crab legs, seaweed, and a crunchy Mexican vegetable called jicama. Dr Weil, a clinical professor of medicine, offers segments of sound nutritional advice.

Lifelong health begins in the kitchen, so this is a lifestyle book as well as a cookbook. But thoughout, "The Healthy Kitchen" emphasizes the pleasure of food - in the writing, the anecdotes, the commentaries, the photography and in the recipes themselves. The book contains 135 recipes and information on what constitutes genuinely healthy eating today. Dr Andrew Weil brings to this cookery book a comprehensive philosophy of nutrition grounded in science, while Rosie Daley brings to it her innovative spa cuisine.