Cooking by Colour

Written by Trish Davies

Trish Davies, a chef who works with Jean Christophe Novelli at the Novelli Academy, has just published her eighth book, Cooking by Colour. Cooking by Colour is not specifically a diet book, it is a cookery book filled with recipes that stick to one key dietary principal: that you should eat all the colours of the rainbow in any plateful.

Parts of this book might seem to be a bit fanciful, such as red foods being good if you need a boost of energy, but bad if you’re feeling angry. However, a great deal of scientific research has gone into formulation this diet. While the diet is all to do with colour pigments in food, it is not actually the aesthetics of the food that are important. The minerals in food that make them whichever colour they are have certain properties that can affect and benefit our health and our mood in particular ways. Therefore red food is not bad if you’re angry because red is traditionally a colour associated with anger, but because the pigment that makes the food red affects your mood.

Needless to say, the book is beautiful, and full of colourful photography. Its layout is something more like the layout of a textbook than a cookery book, but cooking by colour is a science after all!

Science aside, Cooking by Colour is brimming with delectable looking recipes. In fact, if the science wasn’t there, you wouldn’t think it was a healthy cook book at all. There are oodles of recipes for sorbets, and pies, and cocktails; hearty casseroles, omelettes, and naughty things with caramel in. Yes, there’s the odd salad too, but with all those pies and sweets, you’ll probably fancy a nice multicoloured salad every now and then.

Cooking by Colour is more than a diet or a cookery book, it is a new way of life, and a compelling read. 

Priced at £10.99, published by Lorenz Books

**Reviewed by: **Emily Boyd