The idea for cookbook author Vanessa Seder’s latest book, Eat Cool: Good Food for Hot Days (Rizzoli, March 2021) took root in her kitchen in the summer of 2018. She was working on unrelated recipe development and food styling projects that required nonstop use of her oven during a stretch of steamy weather; her home in Portland was older and lacked air conditioning. At the ends of those long, hot days, Seder says she was desperate to create interesting family dinners that didn’t require prolonged use of a heat source to prepare.
Neither raw food fanatic nor vegetarian, trained scientist nor outspoken environmentalist, Seder, a native Los Angeleno, instinctively fixed on bright, flavorful, vegetable-forward dishes that required few fossil fuels to prepare (think breakfast salads, cold noodle entrees, and parfait desserts) and included ingredients that are naturally cooling to a body (think fresh yogurt, chilled seafood, and crisp vegetables).
This enticingly styled book offers up 100 approachable recipes that draw on Seder’s zest for exploring the world through food. There are Asian, Indian, South American, Mexican, Middle Eastern, and Mediterranean influences sprinkled throughout Eat Cool not only because those cuisines are among her favorites, but because they are “also rich sources of climate-savvy culinary wisdom, having evolved over thousands of years in hot and humid regions,” she writes. Here, we reprint a subset of those recipes that demonstrate Seder’s keen insight on how to best merge spices and techniques from afar with ingredients local to Maine.
Look for Eat Cool at your favorite independent bookstore. Go to www.vanessaseder.com to learn about the COVID-safe book events Seder will be participating in this summer.
