Overview

It seems like we’re forever being told to eat healthier, lighter food yet at the same time there aren’t exactly a mountain of attractive food books that really focus on interesting healthy options. Too many healthy-eating books make food much less fun than it needs to be. To my surprise, Jill Dupleix successfully combines the ideas of lighter eating without making you feel like you’re launching into a 100% fat-free nightmare. Lighten Up offers a welcome diversity of good, appetising recipes in an attractive package. The tone won’t suit everyone, and the trendy ingredients might put some people off at first, but this is a book well worth looking at. I was surprised at how interesting I found the range of recipes.

Full review

About the book and the author

Lighten Up is divided into twelve recipe sections, including headings such as Morning Food, Salad Food, Steamy Food, Fruity Food… you get the idea. There are also some special two-page spreads of four simple ideas or tips, titled Bananas x 4, Raw x 4, Breads x 4, Tofu x 4, Umami x 4, Tools x 4. The book finishes with a glossary and conversions. The aesthetic will be familiar to owners of previous Dupleix books — clean sans serif fonts, sometimes sparse, sometimes annoyingly cluttered (the table of contents is barely readable). The photography is crisp and attractive, giving a good idea of the deliciousness of some dishes. Dupleix’s introduction starts:

“This is not a diet book or a nutrition-based regime — it’s much more fun than that. This is a book of recipes for people like me who love ther food but who want to be healthy. It’s a way of movin your kitchen, your cooking and your eating to a lighter place.” (p6)

The book is being reissued with a new cover and ISBN, but the content remains the same as the 2007 paperback (ISBN 9781740665681).

Jill Dupleix is a well known Australian cookery writer whose reputation has grown while living in Britain, becoming a prizewinning columnist for The Times and cookbook author. Dupleix’s books usually have a straight-forward, practical tone. Lighten Up is in part a reflection of her quest with her husband, restaurant critic Terry Durack, to change their food habits for a less rich, heavy diet. In the process of this change of diet, Durack apparently lost 38 kilos.

How is this book interesting/special/new/useful?

I found this a refreshing addition to my shelves. My scepticism about many books which focus on “health” as a sort of punishment for people with functioning tastebuds meant that I wasn’t entirely looking forward to Lighten Up, but it was clear fairly quickly that the recipes were almost entirely interesting and appetising. From granola to chilli omelette with coriander chutney, seaweed salad with edamame to chicken tortilla soup with avocado, pineapple and coconut soufflé to spice-crusted venison with beetroot, it was clear that the dishes were contemporary in feel, using popular ingredients. Recipes are fairly short and most dishes are quick to prepare. The instructions are generally clear, with the process (heat, mix, peel, bake) always the prominent first word of each step in the recipe. There are a good number of vegetarian savoury dishes.

This book won’t scare food-interested readers and keeps the trend-for-trend’s sake fairly well under control. Sure, there are a few lines espousing the virtues of organic food, and sea salt is more than unnecessary in many of the dishes, but there is a wide enough range of choices to make it a useful book for a modern kitchen.

Problems/flaws and target audience

Dupleix is an engaging writer, but has a somewhat bourgeois tone in the manner of Nigella Lawson. Luckily, it’s not quite as precious as Nigella and there’s a practical style which feels distinctly Australian (at least to me). Nonetheless, in her quest to convince you of the merits of some recipes or ideas, some readers could be irritated:

“… perhaps I just lost the taste for [cream] when I discovered tangy low-fat yoghurt, rich in live, active cultures.” (p195)

“Make it easy to be a good cook. Update your cookbooks, invest in well-made pots and pans, treat yourself to great olive oil, bread and wine. Make your kitchen a beautiful place to be.” (p9)

While the clear presentation of instructions was good, at times I felt there was a bit too much brevity. An inexperienced cook might sometimes feel a little lost or need to experience a few problems before getting a certain dish right.

The book is very clearly positioned for a particular market. If you aren’t part of the urban middle class, you might not have quite so easy access to many of the interesting, popular ingredients employed. The tone isn’t to everybody’s taste, as mentioned above. Nonetheless, it is a good cookery book that I would recommend to anyone looking for contemporary ideas for lighter cooking without the “diet” or “healthy” edge screaming at you from page and plate.