Gorilla Food: Living and Eating Organic, Vegan, and Raw

Gorilla Food may inspire you to alchemy! Read on to see what I mean!I don't believe I have had a new recipe book since Borders closed, so I was excited to receive this copy of Gorilla Food, by Aaron Ash, of the Vancouver restaurant by the same name. Oh, this book is nice! Enticing new flavor ideas, fresh innovative recipes, pretty pictures - oh my!This is not a "beginners'" book, in that it has no overview of the raw living food diet and why you should join up, nor does it speak the author's food politics or dietary beliefs. It is a recipe book - you asked for raw recipes and here they are. After a two page introduction, which tells the curious how the Gorilla Foods restaurant in Vancouver, BC, Canada came into being, and shows a picture pictures of a 1960s-throwback-looking space, it launches into clarification of terms and descriptions of the appliances and tools needed to work the magic, as well as a shopping list, i.e., all of the ingredients which will be eventually called for in the recipes.After that come the recipes. In the interest of saving paper, I guess, the recipes often include other recipes which you have to page to.Now, if you are a person who likes more or less "instant food" (not much more than a food processor involved), and doesn't like to plan a day or two in advance, many of these recipes will not work for you *as they are written* (many require dehydration, or include dehydrated recipes detailed on other pages), but, often, the "raw" parts, i.e., the parts before you dehydrate, are good enough on their own (I'm looking at the Morning Curry Crepes right now: they require the dehydrated Ginger Tomato Crepe listed on another page, but the recipe without the crepes would be just as good sitting in a bowl for you to spoon up. So it goes... I see this book as requiring a bit of creativity if you are to get the most from it - just about every page has something exciting, mouthwatering, or really curious.That said, there are some truly innovative recipes (as in: I haven't seen this before) recipes for vegetable mixes, sauces, cheezes, condiments, crackers/breads/wraps/chips, and desserts. If you take the often unique vegetable mix ideas, and start adding different sauces, you get altogether different and exciting experiences. If you are willing to do the dehydrated breads/crackers/chips/wraps (which you can do in advance and freeze - you knew that, right?), you expand your options exponentially.When you get to the desserts in Gorilla Food, you will start to drool. Many of the desserts just involve combining the ingredients, and voila! Of course, the really fancy looking ones in the pictures will require you to use a dehydrator, but, often, the ingredients will taste good without the dehydrator, and will just be more like goo, or something you have to eat with a spoon.There! I've just taken apart Gorilla Food and digested it into a recipe book for people who only have a knife, or, at best, a food processor. You can make almost all of these things (save the breads, the chips, the crackers) in a beginner raw food kitchen (how do I know? Once upon a time, the only equipment I had was a serious knife --I still have it - it is a solid stainless steel Chinese cleaver, and a cutting board).

Do you hate kale? I mean do you really, truly DESPISE kale?Do you feel guilty because you know kale is good for you, but you just can't bring yourself to eat it?Then buy this cookbook now!I was a HUGE fan of Aaron Ash's restaurant in Vancouver by the same name "Gorilla Foods". I ate there for years before I became vegan, and then of course all the time when I was vegan. I took many carnivorous friends to Gorilla Foods and everyone always loved the food.My favorite item on the menu was something he called the "mix up salad". It was a pure kale salad with some little zucchini and red pepper niblets and what they called "lemon herb flax" dressing. Despite the fact that I HATE kale, I LOVED that salad. Then one day I moved to California and I could get that salad no more. Then low and behold I saw that he released a cookbook, awesome!!!I ordered the cookbook and I was super nervous making the recipe. I hate kale so much I was actually gagging a bit from the smell as I was ripping apart the leaves. As I was making the recipe I was thinking in my head "There is no way this is going to taste good, Aaron must have some sort of special kale that he uses". Anyways, long story short, I finished making the recipe, nervously sat down to eat the salad, and YEEESSSSSSSS!!!!!! It tasted so delish I finished off the entire bunch of kale. HOOOOORRAAAY!!!! Seriously, order the cookbook for just this recipe and it will be worth every penny.The book is about 240pages long and has about ~100 recipes, about 1 out of every 3 pages has a picture of the food. I will update this review as I work my way through the recipes, but here are some other dishes that I love from his restaurant that are included in the cookbook.*Tossed and tenderized deep greens p134 (Kale recipe)*Lemon Herb flax dressing p73 (Kale salad dressing recipe)curry squash breadital herb tomato saucewalnut cheez crumblebasic olive tapenadethe great gorillawater wisdom saladKunda linguini risingSunny Buckwheat pizza crust (BEST RAW PIZZA CRUST EVER!!!!!!!!)favorite topping variations - Pesto Pizza and Ital Veg PizzaMain St Monkey (my husbands favorite)Finally, the piece de resistance, the desserts!The dessert section derserves a review all of its own. Forget about any raw dessert you've ever had, Gorilla Foods are the best!!!! The chocolate pie is quite possibly the best chocolate pie I've ever had, vegan or not. Also, I really like that he doesn't use any agave in his recipes.Favorite desserts:Gorilla Biscuit, yummmmmmmm (but make sure you put on a chocolate topping and coconut sprinkles like he shows in the pic, for some reason he doesn't include that bit in the recipe)Apple Pie, TO DIE FOR!Chocolate Hemp See Pie, AMAZING!!!!Carrot Cake, So sweet but soooo good.Choco Gorilla Shake, best chocolate shake EVER!

GREAT BOOK

I have personally made many of these recipes, many times, and they are all incredible!The Thai Wraps especially while time consuming are worth the effort.The raisen chutney is addictive!Do yourself a huge favour though & buy a dehydrator and a decent food processor also, get serious about making good-for-you food then get uncooking!Pros:*Delicious & creative recipes*Variety*Emphasis on quality ingredients*From Gourmet to Simple recipes*Professional Raw Chef Tested!-the ingredient combos work!Cons: only one*several recipes require multiple & lengthy prep steps.

This book is a piece of art. The recipes are delicious and healthy. If you are wanting healthy food that tastes great I highly recommend you pick up a copy of Aaron's book. And if you are the type who 'reads' cookbooks, it fits the bill for that too.It has become my go-to book for gifting to others. I have yet to have a disappointed recipient.

After making multiple recipes, now I decided to update my review and give this book a 5 stars. The recipes are not overly complicated, do not required tons of ingredients and rare ingredients. My favorite recipe is the veggie burger (see photo). I highly recommend this book.

The recipes range from overly simple to very complicated... I did expect to see how the dishes were plated and was very disappointed by the lack of photographs of the finished product... Good book if you have eaten in the restaurant and you wanted to recreate a dish.