NUTRITION IS CONFUSING. IT’S COMPLEX. The good news is that all the health experts—no matter what “diet” they promote—say the same thing: Everyone should eat more plant foods and less processed foods. More real food and fewer packaged food “products.” More sweet potatoes and fewer bags of sweet potato chips. The naked truth is that we are overfed and undernourished—particularly in industrialized countries. We just need to eat more whole fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, beans, lentils, and whole grains. Scientists have discovered that plants can help protect us against everything from Alzheimer’s and diabetes to heart disease and many cancers. There’s even some research showing that plant protein can keep you feeling full longer than animal protein, which may help prevent overeating. Researchers have also found that eating more plant foods can help improve everything from our body weight and eyesight to our skin and gut health. Think about it. Almost all preventative and healing medicines are made from plants. Why not just eat the plants themselves?
Wicked Healthy is a commonsense approach to health. Everybody knows we should eat more plant foods. It’s better for us. It’s better for the planet. The problem is, we’re just not used to doing it, and most of us don’t have the kitchen smahhts to make these foods taste their best. We’re used to reaching for a bag of Doritos, not a handful of almonds. At some point in your life, you realize you gotta take care of yourself. It’s hard to change. However, when you eat something really delicious that also happens to be real food, that experience alone can inspire you to eat better.
Maybe you think healthy food can’t be delicious. This is where Wicked Healthy flips the conversation. Just because it’s plant-based doesn’t mean it doesn’t taste good. We are chefs. We’ve spent decades practicing and perfecting our craft, making all sorts of plant foods taste great. You’ve heard that “an apple a day keeps the doctor away.” We’re here to show you the 2.0 of that concept. We’re drizzling that apple with Mango Sriracha Caramel (here) to make it irresistibly good. We’re caramelizing that apple in a hot pan and adding it to a bowl of oatmeal for a comfort-food breakfast. We’ve got a lot of tricks up our sleeves. Thinking like a chef also means getting yourself organized in the kitchen. A well-stocked pantry and a few pro-cook habits can make cooking a breeze, not a chore. Ever hear of batch cooking? If you’re making rice, beans, or noodles on the weekend, make a double batch so you have some for quick meals later in the week. If you’re making Wicked Healthy Cheese Sauce for Mac & Cheese (here), blend up a couple of quarts and keep the sauce in the fridge for a week of different dishes like Smoky Poutine (here) and Sweet Potato Gratin with Crispy Onions and Rosemary (here).
“There is absolutely no nutrient, no protein, no vitamin, no mineral—no nothing—found in meats and dairy products that you cannot obtain from a plant-based food.”
—MICHAEL KLAPER, MD
The Wicked Healthy approach is all about the food. Put down that bag of potato chips for a second and get your ass in the kitchen. Take control of what you put in your body. We’ll show you how to build flavor with some basic—and not-so-basic—techniques. Did you know that searing and browning food actually create new flavors that weren’t there before? That’s why grilled food tastes so awesome! A more personal question: Do you shave your vegetables? You should! If you don’t already have a mandoline (vegetable shaver), pick up a cheap handheld one so you can cut radishes, asparagus, cucumbers, and other vegetables wicked thin, wicked fast. Shaving vegetables makes it soooo easy to put together a crunchy fresh salad. We also developed this really cool press-and-sear technique that intensifies the taste and texture of mushrooms. It makes them super dense and meaty. Check it out here.
THIS WILL BE THE BEST $20 YOU EVER SPENT!
EAT PLANTS, GET HEALTHY
Eating more plants is a simple dietary approach endorsed by every doctor and health organization in the world. We like to focus on making plants taste wicked delicious. But here’s how the health experts get the point across.
“The basic principles of good diets are so simple that I can summarize them in just ten words: Eat less, move more, eat lots of fruits and vegetables.”
—MARION NESTLE, award-winning professor of nutrition at New York University, What to Eat (North Point Press, 2006)
“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
—MICHAEL POLLAN, award-winning author and professor of journalism at the University of California, Berkeley, In Defense of Food (Penguin Press, 2008)
“Eat a healthy diet with an emphasis on plant foods. Choose foods and drinks in amounts that help you get to and maintain a healthy weight. Limit how much processed meat and red meat you eat. Eat at least 2½ cups of vegetables and fruits each day. Choose whole grains instead of refined grain products.”
—AMERICAN CANCER SOCIETY, Summary of Guidelines on Nutrition and Physical Activity, June 2016
“A healthy eating pattern includes a variety of vegetables from all of the subgroups—dark green, red and orange, legumes (beans and peas), starchy, and other; fruits, especially whole fruits; grains, at least half of which are whole grains; fat-free or low-fat dairy, including milk, yogurt, cheese, and/or fortified soy beverages; a variety of protein foods, including seafood, lean meats and poultry, eggs, legumes (beans and peas), and nuts, seeds, and soy products; and oils.”
—2015–2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, U.S. Departments of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Agriculture (USDA), Key Recommendations
“We are at the cusp of a seismic revolution in health. This revolution will not come about through the invention of another pill, another procedure or an operation. This revolution will come about when we in the medical profession ultimately share with the public the lifestyle and specifically the nutritional literacy which will empower them as the locus of control to vanquish chronic illness through plant based nutrition.”
—CALDWELL B. ESSELSTYN, JR., MD
80% Healthy + 20% Wicked = 100% Sexy
Before we geek out on you with more chef talk, we have to say that following the Wicked Healthy path will help you no matter what special diet you’re on. As chefs and brothers, we’ve spent (collectively) more than 30 years consulting with various doctors, nutritionists, retailers, food manufacturers, restaurants, students, and clients about diets ranging from macrobiotic and diabetic to gluten-free, low-carb, no-added-sugar and no-added-oil. Over the years, we combined the expert advice of numerous respected health professionals with the concerns and tastes of busy home cooks just like you. Then we rolled it all together. That’s how we came up with our formula: 80% healthy + 20% wicked = 100% sexy.
Simply put, that means we should eat healthy foods 80% of the time. We all know what the healthy foods are: whole, unprocessed plant foods! Explore the thousands of vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, beans, whole grains, herbs, flowers, and mushrooms out there. Try new ones and find the ones that taste good to you. Use the recipes and ideas in this book to make them even more delicious. The other 20% of the time, give yourself a break. Get wicked. Indulge—whatever that may mean to you. Go ahead and give yourself that 20% of latitude. That way, you’re more likely to stick with your overall eating goals.
How do we stay Wicked Healthy? We’ll admit it straight up: We do not plan all our meals for every day of the week. And not every meal is low-calorie or packed with superfoods. We’re chefs. We love to get inspired by ingredients and flavor. Texture! Temperature! Aroma! So maybe today we indulged a bit too much. Tomorrow we’ll eat healthy. No problem. It’s all good. It’s all about finding the balance that works for you. We had a client call us once because she “fell off the wagon” and ate a handful of cookies. “What have I done?” she cried into the phone. “It’s okay!” we told her. Eating a couple of cookies is not a big deal. Now, eating the whole bag while sitting on the couch and watching TV soap operas… day after day… that’s not so good. Maybe it’s time to get out of the house.
We will never tell you not to eat certain foods. We’re plant pushers, pure and simple. Wicked Healthy is here to show you all the great food you could be eating when you put plants at the center of your diet. Like our Avocado Toasts with Radishes and Meyer Lemon (here). So friggin’ good. Orecchiette with Grilled Squash, Preserved Lemon, and Herbs (here). Yum. Grilled Almond Butter, Chocolate, and Raspberry Sandwich (here). Bring it!
“We should all be eating fruits and vegetables as if our lives depend on it—because they do.”
—MICHAEL GREGER, MD, founder of nutritionfacts.org and author of the best-selling book How Not to Die
“When you eat healthfully, your body gravitates relatively rapidly toward a better weight.”
—JOEL FUHRMAN, MD
You have to figure out exactly how the 80/20 approach fits into your lifestyle. Maybe it means you eat healthy Monday to Friday, then Saturday and Sunday you party like a rock star. Or maybe you just try to eat a healthy breakfast and lunch every day, then indulge at dinner. Angel by day, devil by night. Or maybe you like to get really focused and go for 80% healthy and 20% wicked at each meal, like having a breakfast bowl of oatmeal with cranberries and pecans (all healthy), then topping it with a drizzle of rich coconut cream and warm maple syrup (both wicked). That works, too. Just keep it 80/20. No matter how you divide it up—by week, day, or meal—if you stick with it and eat 80% healthy, those good-for-you foods will start to edge out the less healthy foods you were eating before. As your palate adjusts, you should find that your cravings for salty, fatty, sugary junk food start to fade. You should also start to feel good about what’s going on in your body—especially if you had been feeling low energy or struggling with your weight. When you’re on the Wicked Healthy path, you will start feeling better and more confident, and have more energy. That vitality alone will make you look and feel 100% sexy inside and out.
No matter what your health goals are, even if you’re following strict doctor’s orders for a specific health condition, you’ll find 150 inventive recipes here to keep you satisfied. We make it real easy by indexing all the special diet recipes, starting here. Doc told you to cut back on sugar? Go check out the list of no-sugar-added recipes. Gluten-free? No problem. Heading into a dry January cleanse? We have a list of recipes for that, too. We found the missing link between the doctor’s orders and a delicious meal on your table. Our Spicy Coconut–Corn Crack (here) has no added oils, limited sugars, and minimal salt. It’s also wicked good because we know how to make food taste amazing without always reaching for the processed oils and sugars. That Wicked Healthy Cheese Sauce we mentioned earlier? It’s gluten-free, oil-free, and added-sugar-free. And we could eat it every damn day of the week.
“One of the main causes of death is fretting about your diet.”
—JIM HARRISON, author of A Really Big Lunch
Our recipes range from quick and easy everyday meals to fancier dishes for special meals with friends and family. None of it is “diet” food. Forget the idea that good-for-you food tastes like shit. It’s all freaking delicious and you don’t need tweezers to make a sexy meal. Two things guide all our recipes: flavor and plants. We like to pack in as much of both as possible. We’re talking about everything from simple Potato and Cauliflower Bisque (here) to warm you up on a chilly winter night, to a nice plated dish of Spring Agnolotti with Favas, Mint, and Sherry Cream (here) for that special someone you’re having over for dinner.
“Approximately 70% of the calories consumed on the standard American diet come from the same ingredients used to make doughnuts (added oils, sweeteners, and refined flours). Whatever diet you decide to follow, at the very least, please be sure you are not eating doughnuts for two out of every three meals per day!”
—ALONA PULDE, MD, AND MATTHEW LEDERMAN, MD
Don’t get bogged down in all the nutrition confusion. Take the keys and get your ass in the driver’s seat of your own health. Keep it simple and have fun with your food. There’s nothing wrong with spending a little time to prepare dinner. It’s part of the commitment you should make to treat yourself right. Hang out in the kitchen and enjoy making good food for yourself, your family, and your friends. Just aim to eat 80% healthy and 20% wicked, and you’ll feel 100% sexy inside and out.
How Did We Get Here?
You can take the boys out of New England, but you can’t take New England out of the boys. That means we still have the same can-do, wise-ass attitude we had as kids growing up in New Hampshaah. We love taking risks and solving problems—especially if it means we get to play with food. Our family was a huge influence on us, foodwise. We cooked with our nana and mom all the time. Nana always had something on the stove, from her signature red sauce (here) to traditional Italian dishes like manicotti. At one point, Mom dove into Cantonese cooking and turned us on to the pleasures of stir-fries, dumplings, and bamboo steam baskets, which we still can’t get enough of. In high school, we both ended up taking kitchen jobs. From there, we went our separate ways to refine our craft and passions. Eventually, though, we ended up back in the kitchen together making Wicked Healthy food.
Wicked Healthy took root on a farm in Maine sometime in 2003/2004. Inspired by Helen and Scott Nearing’s book, The Good Life, Derek started the South Hill Farm project. As a chef, he wanted to go to the source and see where his food came from, and how it was grown. He planted 350 tomato plants, 100 blueberry bushes, and rows and rows of potatoes, salad greens, and herbs. Chad was living in Maine at the time and we started cooking together at the farm. It was rocky at first. We figured it out as we went. We had been going our separate ways for more than ten years, and although we were brothers, we were very different cooks. One of us had a backpack full of sprouting equipment and the other had a classic French mandoline. We made fun of each other in the kitchen—and still do. Secretly, though, each of us wanted to know more about what the other was doing. We cooked together at a couple of food events and combined our passion for local foods, clean ingredients, and smart techniques. That’s when the seeds of Wicked Healthy were sown.
In high school, I was a pretty good kid, but my senior year, I had zero fucks to give and was still dealing with the sudden losses of close family members and my best friend. After graduation, I reluctantly went to culinary school in Rhode Island. There, I learned how to drink beer and make a roux. Let’s be honest.
I began cooking professionally at a place called Lucas’s Greenhouse in Hampton Falls, New Hampshire. The head chef, Skip, took me under his wing for four years and taught me more than any school ever could. I worked with some talented people in restaurants up and down the East Coast, from Massachusetts to Maine, at ski resorts, and even on a lobster boat off Little Cranberry Island, Maine, for four seasons.
In 1999, my son Jake was born and that lit a fire under my ass. I struck out on my own and opened a slew of restaurants and catering companies in New England, including Mahalos Catering, the One Hundred Club, and Mizuna. I also gave organic farming a shot. I wanted to learn more about good ingredients, where they come from, and how to grow them. Our catering kitchens were located on the Seacoast of New Hampshire, and we handled big and small events for corporate executives with a focus on private jets and parties. Even back in 2005, we had prepared dinners to go and e-commerce meal services, and we catered big movie premieres like The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. I’m very grateful to the Browns for introducing me to the Buddhist monastery I would later enter into when I sold my businesses and went off the grid.
—DEREK
After high school, it became clear that I had to leave our small town in New England and explore the world. I went to college in the sticks of Colorado to figure out life. That’s where one of my closest friends, Michael, passed away suddenly on a hiking trip, which shook me to the core and propelled me to do some soul searching. I left school and started hitchhiking around the country, looking for a deeper purpose in life. I spent a ton of time camping, foraging for food, taking kitchen jobs for cash, and living like a nomad. I completely immersed myself in the world of clean eating and animal rights and had the passion to learn and hone my kitchen skills. I had already been following a plant-based diet due to asthma. Yes, I was the lucky kid dependent on inhalers to get him through the day. Fortunately, in my teen years, a family friend suggested cutting out dairy products, and after trying it for a few months, my asthma subsided. That one simple dietary change schooled me on the fact that food has a tremendously powerful effect on your health. That experience carved my path ahead. From that point forward, I was a sponge, learning all I could about the food-health connection and teaching it to anyone who would listen.
I eventually wound up cooking at Breitenbush Hot Springs, a plant-based retreat center in the middle of the Willamette National Forest in Oregon. By the end of the 1990s, I took a position as staff chef at Living Light Culinary Arts Institute, a small raw-food culinary school in northern California. That job propelled me deep into the plant-based and raw-food communities.
Fast-forward a few years, and I found myself in Maui, where my dad and our other brother, Darren, lived. While beach camping and exploring the island, some crazy good fortune struck and a woman named Laura, now a close friend, picked me up. I found out later that Laura’s partner was Woody Harrelson. After this chance meeting, I worked with Woody and his family for several years as their personal chef on a number of film sets.
In 2005, my daughter, Amaya, was born, and then came four whirlwind years opening plant-based SAF (simple authentic food) restaurants and living in Europe. I was bouncing to a different restaurant every couple of weeks—from three SAF locations in Istanbul to one in Munich to another two locations opening in London. Business was booming.
—CHAD
