Devotees of the itsu restaurants and shops will love this cookery book, featuring as it does 100 Asian-inspired recipes of many of their most popular dishes.
Actually even if you’ve not come across itsu before this book is still a winner. It is all about healthy eating with each recipe under 300 calories, and, as a bonus the dishes are quick to prepare.
Friends tease me about my dislike of salads but the salads included in this elegantly illustrated book bear no resemblance to the lettuce, tomato and beetroot combinations of my childhood. The carrot and bean salad with toasted seeds not only looks appetisingly colourful it looks delicious too; as does the crisp salad with sesame dressing weighing in at a mere 87 calories.
But it’s not just salads. How about tiger prawn tempura, seared tuna with sesame and spicy sauce, a seared miso-marinated steak? Chocolate mousse comes in at 232 calories. There are also step-by- step instructions for making various kinds of sushi.
Also included are recipes for many different sauces and dressings and for those of us who might have trouble finding Japanese or Asian food stockists a thoughtful list of online sources has been listed. The list also includes three well-known supermarkets.
For anybody interested in nutritional and healthy eating this book really is a ‘must’.
Itsu: the cookbook. Julian Metcalfe & Blanche Vaughan/Nutritional consultant Angela Dowden. Mitchell Beazley. ISBN 978-1-84533-894-7. £15.99. www.octopusbooks.co.uk