Raw Food/Real World: 100 Recipes to Get the Glow

An edgy, sexy, and practical guide to making and presenting raw meals that entice and satisfy any type of diet

In this lushly illustrated book, chef Matthew Kenney and Sarma Melngailis will show readers that raw food does not mean bland, unsatisfying meals. By teaching new skills such as dehydrating, Vita-Mix blending, and a nuanced understanding of spices, this book will explore a whole new outlook on dining that transfers beautifully and easily from their acclaimed kitchen to yours. They also address the positives of eating raw food, and how you can benefit from them even if you don’t plan to keep strictly to raw food, and they take us to meet some of the zany characters from the raw food universe. A more practical version of Raw, with the sexier feeling of Marco Pierre White’s White Heat, Raw Food Real World is destined to become a top-shelf cookbook classic for lovers of colorful, flavorful, inventive, and healthy food.

“A book worth taking a look at, especially if you can’t take the heat in your kitchen anymore.” — Daily News

Praise for Kenney and Melngailis, Pure Food and Wine Restaurant “Fashionable cuisine…Pure is more about uplifting discoveries than culinary I-dare-yous… At a place you’d assume might be all about denial, it’s one awfully sweet reward.” — New York magazine

“Manhattan’s hot new restaurant…Raw food is going glam at Pure Food and Wine.” — New York Post

“Whether or not you’re counting calories, your body will appreciate the innovative, health-driven summer menu at…Pure Food and Wine.” — Time Out New York

“Our quartet of gourmands is beguiled by tomato tartare, the spicy Thai lettuce wraps, and a pineapple-cucumber gazpacho…After zebra-tomato lasagne, hummus-slathered flatbread pizza topped with a savory salad, “creamy” golden-squash pasta with summer truffles, and dessert, I cancel plans to stop for a burger on the way home.” — New York magazine

“With its burnt-orange walls, low lighting, and intimate bar, Pure Food and Wine is both urbane and seductive. The colorful food is equally stylish—the fact that all of it is prepared according to strict raw-food principles…seems almost beside the point to the diners who fill the narrow restaurant and its verdant garden every night.” — Organic Style

“Matthew and Sarma are five-star masters of organic cuisine. I am continually impressed by the taste sensations and culinary skills they bring to their restaurant, and now to the pages of this book! It’s filled to the brim with recipes, ideas, and strategies to make your kitchen jump to life. This is the best food ever!” — David Wolfe, author of Eating for Beauty and Naked Chocolate

Top New York chef and restaurateur Matthew Kenney and his partner, Sarma Melngailis, had been thinking of opening a Moroccan restaurant. But one night they were invited to a raw food restaurant -- and it changed their lives. They instead opened Pure Food and Wine, a restaurant devoted to creative, tasty raw food, and it has been drawing rave reviews. Dishes such as Zucchini and Green Zebra Tomato Lasagne, Golden Squash Pasta with Black Summer Truffles, and Dark Chocolate Ganache Tart with Vanilla Cream have given raw food a sexy new appeal.

The decision to go raw was shocking at first for these two ex-carnivorous chefs, but they soon found that preparing and eating raw food made them and their guests feel their physical best. Melngailis noticed a difference almost immediately -- "Light, clean, natural, and alive foods make you feel light, clean, and more alive. And sexy." This new way of life has changed their outlook on eating and cooking and connects them to the world around them. As Kenney says, "Raw foods and the lifestyle associated with it are so compelling and complex that we will be forever learning and growing. Already it seems that we have discovered some of the magic that life offers."

In this lushly photographed book, Kenney and Melngailis share some of that magic -- and show that preparing and eating raw does not mean bland, unsatisfying, or impossibly time-consuming meals. Using dehydrating, Vita-Mix blending, a nuanced understanding of spices, and unprecedented creativity, they explore a whole new outlook on raw food that transfers beautifully and easily from their kitchen to yours -- no matter what your present diet. And you'll immediately begin to reap the benefits of healthful, delicious, life-giving raw food.

Matthew Kenney and Sarma Melngailis are the head chefs and co-owners of Pure Food and Wine. Matthew Kenney has been the chef and partner of numerous successful restaurants including Matthew's, Canteen, Commune, Commissary, and Mezze. In 1994, Food and Wine included him as one of their Ten Best New Chefs of the Year. His other books include Matthew Kenney's Mediterranean Cooking and Big City Cooking. Kenney and Melngailis live in New York City.

Sarma Melngailis is the cocreator and owner of Pure Food and Wine and founder of the online boutiques One Lucky Duck and Shiny Happy Pets, through which she is expanding her reach with all things raw and organic. The coauthor (with Matthew Kenney) of Raw Food/Real World, she lives in New York City with her two cats.