Easy Exotic: Low-Fat Recipes from Around the World »

Padma Lakshmi is a successful model, actress, and a regular host on The Melting Pot series on Food Network.

In Easy Exotic: Low-Fat Recipes from Around the World, Padma Lakshmi offers luscious recipes culled from her many travels, in easy-to-prepare, low-fat versions. These simple yet elegant dishes are perfect for the busy, health-conscious cook.

Easy Exoticfeatures low-fat versions of many savory dishes, such as Provencale Tomato-Potato Stew, Baked Swordfish with Tomato and Basil, Rani Rice Pilaf, Coconut Chicken, Penne all' Arrabbiata, as well as mouth-watering desserts like Warm Indian Rice Pudding and Apple Gallettes. Each recipe-there are over sixty in all-includes preparation and cooking times, and a complete nutritional profile. And all the recipes can be prepared in under thirty minutes. This is the perfect book for anyone who wants cooking to be fast, fun, healthy and delicious.

Easy Exotic: Low-Fat Recipes from Around the World won the 1999 Versailles World Cookbook Fair Award for Best First Book.

Library Journal

Here are two celebrity cookbooks by celebrities, not celebrity chefs. Singer Labelle loves food and cooking; she even takes her pots and pans with her when she's on tour so that she can whip up a meal in her hotel room after a show. Here are recipes for what she likes best, many of them family favorites handed down from her grandmother, mother, and others: Pass-It-On Pot Roast, Aunt Verdelle's Savory Red Rice, Fierce Fried Corn, Baby Henry's Bread Pudding. Childhood memories, anecdotes about life on the road, and touching recollections about her family are interspersed throughout the book. LaBelle's memoir, Don't Block the Blessings (Riverhead, 1996), was a huge best seller, and her cookbook is sure to be popular. Lakshmi is a supermodel who was born in India, grew up in the United States, and travels frequently to exotic--and less-exotic--locales for her job. Here she sets down about five dozen recipes for the food she likes to cook and eat, organized by country (or continent) of origin: Spain, France, Italy, India, Asia, and Morocco. Most are standards, and the text, while well written, would seem to be of little interest to anyone other than supermodel groupies. Not a necessary purchase.