Terry Walters’s Clean Start (Sterling, Nov.) is filled with delicious-sounding recipes that put fruits and vegetables in the spotlight, such as Baby Bok Choy with Hot Sesame Oil and Lime, Chopped Salad with Blackberry Shallot Vinaigrette, and Pan Seared Sweet Corn. Look closer, though, and the Rhubarb Cream with Strawberries and Candied Ginger isn’t made with cream--it’s made with silken tofu and arrowroot. Sweet Potato and Cashew Soup with Avocado Cream is thickened with soy yogurt. Here, Walters talks about how she cooks and why home cooks should look to ingredients like teff flour and almond meal.

PW: What was the reaction to your first book [Clean Food, which Walters self-published in 2007 and Sterling published last year]?

TW: The reception was really tremendous. People were so grateful for the help and the perspective. I think that people were feeling like they never really knew what to do with foods like kale. But they said following the recipes in the book was easy and delicious, and that even their kids liked them.

PW: What’s new in Clean Start?

TW: I took out all the canola oil [some of Clean Food’s recipes did include canola oil]. Many of the baked goods don’t have any oils in them at all. I used bananas and dates and natural sweeteners. This book is gluten-free. It isn’t geared toward people who are gluten-free specifically, but it’s just terrific food. I missed the opportunity with Clean Food--it was so close to being gluten-free, and it would’ve been easy to make it gluten-free.

PW: The recipes in Clean Start are vegan, too, but it doesn’t say so in the title, subtitle, or in any of the recipe head notes. Why not?

TW: I think that labels sometimes turn people off. I wanted it to be inclusive, not exclusive. I don’t believe that there’s one diet that’s right. The perfect diet is unique to the individual.

PW: So should we all be baking with teff flour, garbanzo bean flour, almond meal, and potato starch--even if we don’t have a gluten allergy?

TW: There’s so much to be gained by baking with those ingredients, whether or not you’re looking to eliminate. They are so savory. They really are delicious in their own right. And [many of them, like] almond flour and chickpea flour, are super-nutritional flours. I don’t like thinking of anything as an alternative--then you just miss what you used to eat.

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