Nutrient Matters: 50 Simple Whole Food Recipes and Comfort Foods

By Sara Abdul-Aziz

Easy Comfort Foods Made Nutritious for a Healthy Lifestyle

"Absolutely love this cookbook. Many great recipes that taste delicious! Super detailed and user friendly." —Amazon review

#1 New Release in Vegetable Cooking

This nutrient-forward feel good cookbook has over 50 easy recipes for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Enjoy a variety of simple meals with pescatarian, vegetarian, and meal prep friendly options.

Not your basic cookbook for healthy living. Every recipe has the golden touch of Chef Sara, the founder of Nutrient Matters, where she creates food content to celebrate the consumption of whole foods—without sacrificing taste. Chef Sara intentionally curates recipes that can be added to your healthy meal prep each week.

Enjoy easy recipes and easy meals for a healthy lifestyle.This feel good cookbook has easy simple recipes for beginning and experienced cooks. The recipes include Bruschetta Bites, Avocado Chicken Wontons, Beef Mushroom dumplings, Chimmichurri shrimp skewers, Crispy Fish Tacos, and so many more delicious meals.

Inside, you’ll find:

• The personal and interesting story of Chef Sara, founder of Nutrient Matters
• Simple meals and easy comfort foods to make every member of your family happy
• Easy recipes for nutrition to be a part of your everyday breakfast, lunch, and dinner options

If you're looking for books for lovers of food or if you liked The Comfortable Kitchen, Half Baked Harvest Every Day, or Making Vegan Meat, you’ll love Nutrient Matters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jul 25, 2023
• ISBN: 9781684811946

Book preview

Copyright © 2023 by Sara Abdul-Aziz.

Published by Yellow Pear Press, a division of Mango Publishing Group, Inc.

Cover Design: Elina Diaz

Cover Photo/illustration: Sara Abdul-Aziz

Layout & Design: Elina Diaz

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Nutrient Matters: 50 Simple Whole Food Recipes and Comfort Foods

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication number: 2023933226

ISBN: (hardcover) 978-1-68481-193-9, (paperback) 978-1-68481-294-3, (ebook) 978-1-68481-194-6

BISAC category code CKB127000, COOKING / Comfort Food

Printed in the United States of America

For,

Mama Iman, May God keep you healthy & happy

Baba Walid, May God have mercy on your soul (1966–2021)

Your dedication and sacrifice to immigrate to a new country provided me with a life of opportunities that I may not have had otherwise. For that, I am eternally grateful.

Table of Contents

Nutrient Matters: How and Why It All Started

My Food Is Not Healthy: Why I Don’t Use the Word Healthy to Describe My Recipes

Conscious Consumption: How This Book May Help You Achieve It

Kitchen & Pantry Staples

Cooking 101

Bites

Roasted Garlic Whipped Feta Bites

Chicken & Chive Dumplings

Avocado Chicken Wontons

Zucchini Tots & Lemon Aioli

Mango Habanero Chicken Wings

Tandoori Bang Bang Cauliflower

Crispy Cheesy Garlic Bread

Ginger Ale-Battered Fish Tacos & Avocado Crema

Honey Garlic Pan-Seared Smashed Potatoes

Truffle Pecorino Potato Wedges

Buffalo Ranch Chicken Wrap

Fajita Chicken Wraps

Beef Shawarma Pita

Roasted Garlic Mayo Pasta Salad

Spinach Pesto Agnolotti

Hot Honey Shrimp Bites

Bowls

Thai Red Curry Buddha Bowl

Spicy Lime Salmon & Mango Salsa

General Tso Tofu

Juicy Kofta Kebabs

Chipotle Chicken Bowls with Spicy Pinto Beans

Shrimp Sushi Quinoa Bowl

Shawarma Chicken & Rice Bowls

Katsu Chicken & Peanut Sauce

Teriyaki Salmon & Spicy Korean-Inspired Cucumber Salad

Sweet & Spicy Tofu Chow Mein

Satay Chicken Skewers & Spicy Peanut Sauce

One-Pot Piri Piri Chicken & Spiced Rice

Honey Sesame Chicken

Grilled Greek Chicken Quinoa Salad

Spicy Kung Pao Chicken Stir-Fry

Creamy Spinach & Chicken Linguine

Spicy Basil Chicken

Grilled Pineapple Salmon Skewers

Jalapeño Coconut Lime Chicken

Broths

Tomato Vermicelli Soup

Hot & Sour Soup

Spicy Tomato Beef Stew

Beef Bone Broth

Bakes

Roasted Red Pepper Salmon

Cream Cheese Dill-Stuffed Salmon

Miso-Glazed Cod

Spinach, Mushroom, & Feta Pizza

Eggplant Lasagna

Turmeric Lemon Chicken

Perfect Roast Chicken & Potatoes

Ponzu Salmon

Breakfasts

Lemon Beef & Peas

Blueberry Soufflé Waffles

Strawberry Mango Smoothie Bowl

Strawberry Coconut Chia Seed Pudding

Spicy Shakshuka

Fattet Hummus (Crispy Pita, Chickpeas, & Garlic Yogurt Bowl)

Bonus Chapter: Hosting 101

Themed Menus

Conclusion

About the Author

Calorie Index

General Index

NUTRIENT MATTERS

How and Why it All Started

During my second year of university, I went through a stage of heightened self-consciousness toward my body and overall physique—I struggled with weight gain and seemed to always be bloated. Aside from the external body image issues, I also experienced some internal health obstacles. I constantly had terrible headaches and, like many other university students, I was always tired, needing three cups of coffee a day to function. My eating habits in uni didn’t help my case either, as I typically only had two meals a day—the first being a cup of coffee (not sure that even counts) and a bowl of teriyaki chicken with noodles from my local university cafeteria, for my final and pretty much only meal.

Between my external and internal body-image and health issues, I was primarily concerned with the superficial: the way my body looked. So I did some research and asked Google the golden question: how to lose weight and get a flat stomach. The internet works in mysterious ways and somehow knew what to put right in front of me. I got a pop-up that offered a way to lose weight fast—so I clicked on it and watched a one-hour webinar. The pop-up preached this so-called leptin diet which relies on the body’s leptin response (hunger hormone) to get you to eat less. I remember taking notes and being so intrigued, thinking this was going to cure all my body image issues. One of the key points that stood out to me in the webinar—and something pretty much every unsustainable diet has in common—was the demonization of carbs.

I decided I was going on this leptin diet, which required me to eat strictly three meals a day, have my final meal by six o’clock, and entirely cut out carbohydrates. For breakfast, I ate two hard-boiled eggs, my lunch was a quinoa salad, and dinner was grilled chicken with some sort of vegetable. The diet lasted one week. I could not carry on for two reasons: (1) I was always hungry, and this affected my productivity more than anything, and (2) I knew that I simply could not follow these strict eating rules forever. If it’s not sustainable, it’s not going to provide much lasting benefit—so, I landed back at square one.

I’m not a nutritionist nor a professional chef. I’m just someone who became obsessed with the way my body looked and diet culture, which caused a downward spiral of thinking the majority of foods were unhealthy and made me gain weight. This quickly changed after reading How Not to Die by Michael Greger; my perspective on food and health took a complete 180-degree turn. I discarded everything I thought to be true about healthy eating and adjusted my focus. It was no longer my concern to separate foods into healthy versus unhealthy. (What does that mean anyway? We’ll talk more about this in the following pages.) My primary focus shifted from my external dilemmas of how I wanted my body to look to the more essential internal issues of how I wanted my body to feel. I had a revelation that carbs, contrary to what I believed to be true for most of my life, were not a waste of tummy space, and—get this—they have nutrients in them! I shifted my focus from eating foods based on black and white labels of good vs. bad, resulting in food elimination, and instead placed my intentions on eating foods that contain nutrients, in any amount. Let me tell you, that opened up a whole new world of food options for me that I could now consume, and feel good about consuming!

The realization that my meal options could encompass so much more than chicken breast and vegetables and still be nutritious was like discovering a whole new world—the opportunities to put together a recipe felt endless and inspiring. Since I was constantly trying new recipes, I began sharing my weekly Sunday meal prep on my personal Snapchat story with family and friends. I didn’t follow any recipes and went out of my way to try and adjust the traditional recipes I grew up with to suit my personal needs and goals. Though it meant that the meals I was inspired by were no longer authentic and traditional, it gave me the opportunity to eat delicious foods while also feeling good and energized after eating them. Comments and compliments on the food I was