Eat Like You Give a Fork

February 18, 2019
In this ambitious book, Ibrahim (The Cleaner Plate), host of the Facebook Live show The Real Dish, offers strategies for developing healthy eating habits. She encourages readers to retrain their taste buds by avoiding sweet and salty foods in favor of those packed with sour, bitter, and umami flavors, such as dark leafy greens, toasted seaweed, and pickled vegetables. She divides the book into eight strategies, such as restocking a kitchen with wholesome foods and “going vegan two days a week.” Each section concludes with a handful of recipes, many of which have a Middle Eastern flair, such as molokhia soup (made from the leaves of an Egyptian plant that can be found frozen in specialty stores), stewed brown fava beans with cumin and tahini, and kaniwa tabbouli with parsley and mint. She also replaces meat and pasta with vegetables in several classic dishes, most notably braised celery puttanesca, zucchini carpaccio with an arugula stack, and spaghetti squash pad Thai. Ibrahim’s thoughtful recipes and sense of humor (“Greens are your new friends with bennies”) keep this book entertaining and accessible.