The Natural Cook®
Training – Topics
Core Essentials Topics
Details and Inspiration
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Additional Topics included in the Complete
Details and Inspiration
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The Language of Intuitive Cooking™
I refer to The Language of Intuitive Cooking as a “living language.” That is because it serves the purpose of organizing cooking from any culture or all dietary situations through generations.
Published in 2007, this companion book can accompany you through the training. It has a different personality than the online classroom. However, the online classroom should be considered the latest greatest presentation of terms in the language. You might find contradictions. Hopefully you will see the evolution.
The language lives in the heart and mind of any natural cook. When students find a relationship with this language, it speeds up the organization of what is possible in whatever kitchen they are cooking in. It is not difficult to learn. Like a foreign language, or any art form, music, dance, fine art, we first have to understand our medium. What materials we are using, and what is their purpose?
It’s like writing a story. Begin with the sentence.
Highlights
Organizing ingredients by putting them into categories.
A system for positioning cooking methods helps create a balanced meal.
Theories of cooking engage intuitive cooking skills for measuring and selecting ingredients when no one tells you how much or what to use.
Theory of design applies traditional principles for using numbers and colors.
Several ways to approach fixing a dish that you want to change.
Understanding creativity and the two hemispheres of our brain, and how this applies to The Natural Cook training.
Setting Up a Natural Kitchen
A natural kitchen in this topic means allowing for ingredients to be from the highest quality of soil for growing all categories grains, vegetables, beans, oil, cooking liquids, herbs/spices, and salt.
We focus on quality ingredients because each one counts. Each one has a purpose in the dish. If an ingredient is grown in chemically fortified soil, our cooking methods will either heighten the chemical taste or the natural flavor of the vegetables.
Organic is good, but it is not the issue these days. Paying for the term “Organic” is an expensive cost to farmers who may already be growing bio-dynamically or other natural farming techniques are superior to organic fertilizers. We need to support the “real food” movement too.
Highlights
Tools and equipment requirements and suggestions
Pantry set-up with all ingredient categories
Virtual lab equipment and kitchen set-up
The quality, growing style, and function of oils, cooking liquids, herbs/spices, and salts
History and perspective on Whole Dish-Grains (GF) and Bread Grains
Understanding vegetable selection, storage, families
Classification and identity of Plant Protein
Natural sugars—more whole than refined
Ingredients belonging to the Living Food Cuisine kitchen
Visual Rhythm – Japanese Vegetable Knife Skills
One of the things I love about cooking and teaching cooking skills is to carry my dance experience into the kitchen. From first picking up a knife, students feel how it is connected to their body and how it moves through the vegetables without a sound, in silence.
The relationships of knife to chef, knife to board, and knife to the shape of the whole vegetable is what we study. It’s about these angles in relationship to each other, adding the motion of the knife, front to back, back to front, and how they all coordinate with the mind of the chef. The final look of the cut vegetable is visually rhythmical.
One type of knife can be used for almost everything. It’s a Japanese style vegetable knife formulated from three kinds of steel. The blades are wide and long, becoming an extension of the forearm.
Because we are cooking within the concept of wholeness, the idea of casting aside rounded edges to produce an evenly measured diced vegetable look is unconscionably wrong for everyday cooking. Just because a carrot at one end is tapered small and at the other end is tapered large, there is no need to discard parts of the whole. Instead, look for finished cuts that give a sense of visual rhythm that suits the original shape of the vegetable—restful on the eye and energetically whole.
Highlights
Knives: Selecting, sharpening, and safety
Cutting: How to achieve common cuts and invent new ones
Vegetable Shapes: Understanding the appropriate cut in respect for the shape of the vegetable and the cooking method
No waste in the approach to each shape of vegetable
Proper positioning to protect the cook from repetitive motion body injury
Energetic Nutrition
This unique topic is optional for all participants.
“Nutritional science” is a respected field of study, and because it’s such a vast topic, to gain a thorough understanding would be a journey beyond our goals to have to people easily eating well, easily. We designed this unique course material from a different perspective altogether.
There is actually nothing new about the principles in this topic of Energetic Nutrition. They have been lived and taught through Eastern cultures since the earliest known written record of Chinese medicine, the Huangdi neijing (The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic) from the 3rd century bce. The gift of Ayurveda came from the Hindu gods about 5,000 years ago.
Energetic nutrition principles actually pre-date Western nutrition, which took roots in the18th Century when western doctors were first looking at the link between isolated nutrients and what was missing in a sick person. According to Wikipedia all the vitamins were discovered between 1913 and 1948. Separating all the pieces of the human’s body systems is complicated.
This topic is about seeing how The Natural Cook training relates to wholeness, through Nature, which in turn helps people live well. It’s about learning to see simplicity in the connection between food, earth, eating, digestion, activity, weather, and many more pieces of living.
Highlights
Definitions of nutrition and energetic nutrition
How variety is the KEY to good health
Clarification of Whole, Processed, and Refined
How age, activity, color, texture and the direction that food grows inform our decisions for balance
How the cooking methods and The Language of Intuitive Cooking are structured to support the Physical, Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual parts of human wholeness
Meal Composition
A balanced meal is especially satisfying when using the nutrient-dense whole foods cuisine that you are learning here. One can actually stop eating, and eat less, after eating a balanced meal of energetically whole ingredients.
Design principles are the same for simple meals to the most complex and exotic. In this topic, artistry relies on detailed study from the Core Essentials training topics. We challenge students with imaginary meals in order to practice theories of meal composition. Then we apply these design principles adding topics of soup and dessert, living foods cuisine, bread and spreads, and world cuisine.
As a young person, when my dad was at the dinner table, he would turn dinner-time into a presentation of the principles of art and design. He was an artist and a teacher. We listened, and chewed our peas. When it was time to have my students create meals, his wise words filled my chart and rule book. Today, SNC has very clear guidelines to help organize the mind and the possibilities. Flexibility in the moment and clarity on where to change are all part of the training.
Exercises in theories of meal composition are woven throughout the entire Natural Cook Training. As the program goes further, the meals become more complex.
Highlights
Designing a balanced meal for any diet
Weather & climate
Age & activity
Variety is the key
Color & shape
Taste & flavor
Texture & substance
Complex & simple
Where to begin the composition
Time & organization
Amazing Grains: The Art of Preparing Whole Dish-Grains (gf)
The creative process we are teaching here is to recognize that there are infinite possibilities for cooking dish grains, maintaining their energetically whole form.
This process includes learning how to manipulate the elements of texture, taste, and color to create original dishes with quinoa, millet, rices, buckwheat, amaranth, oats, and others that we may not know about.
In 1980 USA, eating grains in their energetically whole form was rare. It was easy to find white rice on a restaurant’s menu, and “brown” rice was starting to appear in Chinese restaurants and health food stores and restaurants. The possibility of manipulating color, texture, and taste was not yet even a thought for cooks preparing rice, with a label of ‘boring.’ Rice showed up to be a background for something more colorful, more “meaty.” Rice was a filler.
And I, as a consumer interested in health, was not supposed to notice that brown rice was usually bland, pasty, or dry—because it was “healthy.” But…I did. And for me, it was never boring.
A few years later, I worked for The Quinoa Corporation, the company who first brought Quinoa to the USA. My responsibilities included managing the scheduling and training of people to set up demonstrations in every kind of grocery store—both health food stores and regular, large chain supermarkets. In this position, I created recipes for the demonstration staff to cook and offer samples to each customer that had enough curiosity to step up to the table. “Cook quinoa like rice, boil it” we told the customer. But my cooking experience checkmated the standard answer that “boiling” is the only method. Words started to organize in my mind for more interesting ways to prepare dish grains.
Highlights
Understanding the anatomy of a dish-grain and a bread-grain
Selecting and Storing Grains and Beans and Vegetables
Rice Family, Buckwheat, Quinoa family, Oats, Millet, Amaranth, Teff, and Job’s Tears
Creating textures
Boiling and Steeping
Excellent method for whole grain pasta
Grain salad technique
Shaping
Croquettes
Patties
Free form color infused
Earth Angels: The art of cooking vegetables
Our techniques in these cooking methods highlight amazing versatility of vegetables and sea vegetables.
When we understand how vegetables grow, we are able to select the right amount of cooking liquid; which intern informs how long the food can be in the fire.
Charts organize the thought process, providing information on the best practices for selecting and storing vegetables, treating vegetables for optimum results (when to cut, and when to keep whole), and even what to keep on hand for those days when going to the store is not an option.
To me, vegetables are angels. If I had the choice of eating a beautiful carrot, a juicy beet or a brilliant pea instead of eating dirt and rocks, it would appear that earth had turned into a delicious angel. I notice that when using a variety of vegetables, which have been transmuted by the power of healthy soil, dishes are very simple and satisfying.
We explore this brilliant food group just as explorers give attention to their surroundings. Some vegetables have a “gang consciousness.” They are wild, tough, domineering and complex; these gangs often rely on the friendship of others. Then there is the “soloist.” The star of the dish. Our guidelines prevent chaos in complex combinations and when faced with the potential of infinite possibilities.
Highlights
Designing vegetable dishes
Vegetable families defined by how they grow
The best use of oil
Cooking methods taught to clarify confusion in any culinary terminology
Teriyaki Baking
Pressure Cooking Slow-Cooking
Pressure Steaming Stir-frying
Steeping Tempura
Braising Pickles
Refrying Pressing
Roasting Dehydrating
Blending Marinating
Romancing The Bean: The Art of Bean Cookery
Romancing a bean is easy with The Language of Intuitive Cooking. Important technical information is in this topic. In addition we apply the creative process to produce dynamic, satisfying and somewhat seductive unrefined protein dishes.
The approach for protein in The Natural Cook – training is to understanding how to stage the cooking methods for proper cooking, and storage. Understanding whole beans as protein also teaches us how to place this group of ingredients in a meal’s composition to avoid the chaos that could result, both visually and digestibly.
Like grains, beans are a beautiful canvas for expressing color, taste, and forms. But, unlike either grain or vegetables, how we handle the cooking process (yes, we are doing the processing in bean cookery) is critical to have the beans meet the human body without disruption. We have to coax, care, and “romance” the bean into its best performance.
Highlights
Protein from beans
History of beans
Storing
Cook’s family of Beans – categorizing
Short term
Medium term
Long term
Properly cooking beans
To soak or not to soak
Ten minute dishes
Technical exercises
Bean Salads
Bean Patties
Refried Beans
Falafel
Soups & Single Binder Sauces
You will begin to master the art of creating exciting vegan soups and sauces with the simplest, most flavorful techniques. Every soup, in every cuisine, falls into one of the five styles of soup in this course. The single binder sauces that we study alone, before combining them into complex binder sauces, follow the same principles as the soups. The perfection of one informs the technique of the other.
At first glance, I could not understand why French sauces seemed so complicated. Maybe it was because I didn’t speak French. When I did learn to speak French, a bit, I realized that the sauces were categorized not too differently from the styles of soup and sauce in The Language of Intuitive Cooking.
The organization of sauces in plant cuisines are less complicated, because of the ingredients. Our methodology for these forms—soup and sauce—is developed specifically for working without animal broth, eggs or dairy products. When soup and sauce techniques are studied from the plant perspective, there is understanding about how and why one could include the animal product ingredients. But animal products are not in this training.
Highlights
Spice stock
Vegetable stock
Roasted vegetable stock
Clear broth
Clear starch sauce
Creamy vegetable soup
“Loose” vegetable soup
Stew
Bean soup
Croutons
Plant Protein: Tofu, Tempeh, Seitan
When making these seed proteins from their whole seed, it is difficult to avoid being in awe of the miracle. Since these seed protein ingredients are readily available, it isn’t necessary to make these foods from scratch. However, the information about how to do so is in the classroom.
Through cooking, we process soybeans, whole wheat and whole spelt. They go through several consecutively arranged cooking methods to create interesting and memorable “comfort food.”
This topic will apply combinations of 15 cooking methods with creative processes to further manipulate texture, flavor and taste. Once these proteins are fully designed into a texture/color/taste/flavor profile, they are then ready to be incorporated tastefully into beautiful dishes with vegetables or grains, and/or sauces.
This information is valuable when inventing new plant-based food products and menus designed to replace traditional animal protein dishes.
Highlights
Making Tofu & Tempeh from the whole bean
Making Seitan from the whole grains
Storing
Creating dishes that focus on texture, color, taste
Placing these proteins into meal compositions
Improvising Desserts: Whole Sugars and Fats
In this topic, we learn to create desserts with the forms of cookies, cakes and custards. We are inventing, so we don’t look at a recipe or think about a particular dessert.
By understanding the form we are creating and the function and action of how to work with quality sugar, fat and binders, we are able to expand our creative process similar to our experience in savory cooking. Following the techniques as a roadmap, students will design sensually satisfying, whole, nutritionally valuable desserts.
Studying dish-grains in the Core Essentials prepares students who want to develop gluten free desserts, by learning how these grains become dessert binders.
Whole sugars, whole fats, and a myriad of quality binders easily come together to lay the foundation of most desserts. Thus, you will accomplish the basic dessert forms of cookies, bars, pies, cakes, muffins, clear and creamy custards, frostings, and fruit desserts.
Highlights
Cookies: drop, bars, pie crust
Health cookie (no flour)
Cakes: coffee style, quick breads, muffins, cup-cakes
Creamy frostings and clear glazes
Clear custard (natural “jello”)
Creamy custards
Mixed Binder Custards
Living Foods Cuisine: The Art of ‘Raw’
At SNC, Living Food Cuisine goes beyond the idea of simply ‘raw’ food. It takes the culinary concept of “living food” into the understanding of how live enzymes are preserved during the transformation (cooking) process. Based on The Language of Intuitive Cooking, this portion of the curriculum adapts cooking methods and techniques for creating beverages, soups, sauces, main plates, and desserts using whole grains, nuts and seeds, fresh fruits and vegetables.
Meal composition theory that aligns to a living foods diet informs on how to design satisfying menus.
The Natural Cook training delivers the experience to sustain a life-time of working with living foods. Rather than relying on making this a strict dietary regime, here it is intended as a part of a healthy, balanced diet, where living food methods embellish life. Studying this topic with the purpose of shifting a personal diet is, however, a great opportunity to feel its power.
In addition, this topic includes preservation methods for food storage and an environmental contribution of sustainability eliminating waste.
Highlights
Transformation without using a cooktop
Methods used to energetically release and preserve
All seed-based ingredients: grains, nuts, seeds, vegetables, and fruits
Real food oils: olives, coconuts, seeds, and nuts
Real food binders: sea vegetables, sprouted grain, soaked nuts and seeds
Plus: All menu planning forms—— soup, sauces, salads, main dishes, and desserts
Natural Bread: Mixed Binder Sauces & Spreads
Study bread grains and learn four basic styles of dough: 100% sprouted grain, sourdough, traditional yeast, and natural rise. Any of these dough types can be formed into many shapes of bread, including baguette, pizza, pita, crackers, both crescent and round dinner rolls, filled batard, and even spiraled cinnamon rolls, bread sticks and crackers.
At The School of Natural Cookery, we see grains as occurring in two main categories, “Bread Grains” and “Dish Grains,” according to how they grow.
Bread grains (ie: wheat, corn, rye, spelt, barley, kamut, and more) grow differently from dish grains (ie: quinoa, millet, rice, amaranth, buckwheat, oats). Because of their exposure to nature’s elements, and when they have no protective hull, bread grains have a tough skin. Their tough skin makes them less palatable to eat and more difficult to digest without pre-treatments, which helps them be part of main dishes. Unlike “dish grain,” which are usually cooked and served energetically whole, Bread Grains are most often milled into flour to make crackers, breads, and pastas. Although the grain flour is called “whole,” milled bread grains are not “energetically whole” when we eat them.
Bread Grains may be prepared with the same techniques as Dish Grains to soften their tough skin and manipulate their texture. But the focus of this topic is about bread forms and not main dishes. Advance sauces use combination binders and the paté form is very exotic and deep. Great when served as a spread with bread, crackers, and fresh vegetables.
Highlights
Techniques and tools
Sprouted bread
Commercial yeast
Natural sourdough
Natural rise
Mixed binder sauces
Spreads & paté
Recipe Translation of World Cuisine
The goal of this topic is to bring together everything you have studied into the context of dishes that have names and expectations. Until now, the training pushes students to improvise, invent and cook with confidence not knowing what the result will be.
In this section we study classic recipes but we practice recipe translation into The language of Intuitive Cooking. In other words, we are inspired by classic cuisines and upgrade their quality to “wholeness” and plant-based, without compromising the well-known flavors, personality, sensuality or nutritional benefits of classic dishes. It’s amazing to see students cook an entire meal with dishes from a foreign cuisine without having ever seen or tasted it before.
As a student, this caps your training to have the confidence to both invent dishes and to translate classic dishes without having to have eaten them before.
Highlights
American Comfort
Middle Eastern
Thai
Japanese
Southwest
Italian
Persian
East Indian
Additional Topics included in the Natural Chef Training
Details and Inspiration
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Chef Skills
Chef Skills
In additional to comprehensive Natural Cook training the following topics provide structure throughout the Natural Chef student’s curriculum. These additional topics round out the experience to gain strength in skills that enhance any chef profession.
- Mastery of technique, timing and co-ordination with cooking and organization required in a plant-based kitchen help to qualify a chef for professionalism.
- Learning food management systems begin with understanding the amount of time a food remains energetically viable; how to store effectively and safely; how to cook and order quantity of ingredients
- Leadership in meal composition and production is an art rooted in communication. Because we are teaching through a language unique to empowering the creative process and accuracy of cooking, it supports a chef to understand and learn how to think and communicate effectively and efficiently while leading collaborators, clients, and customers. It is this skill that helps a graduate of SNC gain the contract with confidence that they can perform it well.
- Throughout the Natural Chef training teachers might include to how to use the topic of the week for different styles of business. A student’s question lead discussions on business topics.
- Food photography lessons create images that communicate to a teacher about the student’s weekly assignment. Using the language from SNC, teachers and students dialogue about taste, color, texture, cooking methods, design of dishes, and more. Hundreds of assignments make this training a lifetime of photographic memories.
- The online platform is available for 9 months following graduation. Developing a portfolio with images and templates to organize the dishes ingredients , cooking methods, and process with instructors notes on the student’ homework is available to review and to create a professional portfolio for building business relationships.
- Energy exercises are taught in the live labs to initiate a training on how to use portions of the chakra system to control normal pressures associated with intense cooking objectives. This is especially important to bring into a cooking practice when working “in the unknown” creating dishes, on the spot, with ingredients at hand, under the time pressure of being a professional.
