Coconut Panna Cotta (recipe review) from Super Natural Cooking

Yeah, it was that good that this gem of a recipe deserves an entire post! I made the Coconut Panna Cotta with Berry Coulis from Super Natural Cooking, a lusciously illustrated vegetarian cookbook by Heidi Swanson of 101 Cookbooks fame.

While I am certainly not a vegetarian, I enjoyed perusing this cookbook nonetheless. Each page is like staring at a fresh, edible piece of art! I really appreciated that the author does not shun what I believe to be good-for-you traditional fats like real butter, ghee and coconut milk. My main criticism of the book is the overall nutritional quality of the recipes, though each looks delicious, many of the recipes contain lots of starches, gluten-grains and too much sugar (albeit "natural" sugars such as maple syrup and agave, but they still affect your body just like regular sugar). For the recipe I made, I halved the sugar called for and still found it to be overly sweet. Yet the texture of the panna cotta, made with agar-agar rather then gelatin, turned out perfectly smooth and firm, and as you can see in my photo, the presentation is really pretty.

All in all I'd say this book is worth adding to your cookbook collection, so long as you add a nice grass-fed steak or perhaps some fresh salmon to the many veggie dishes found within its pages. Oh, and try the recipes with less sugar then called for.

What are your favorite recipes you've tried lately?

p.s. I'm sharing this post with Food Renegade's Fight Back Friday!