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Even though she’s chatted with Oprah and Bryant Gumbel about humane and healthy eating, lived a month in someone else’s shoes in 30 Days, and helped her significant other—filmmaker Morgan Spurlock—through the trials and tribulations of a fatty, flesh-fuelled fast-food diet in the eye-opening and award-winning documentary Super Size Me, Alex does her best work in the kitchen as a gourmet natural-foods chef. After graduating from the Natural Gourmet Cookery School in New York City in 2001, “Healthy Chef Alex” began her professional career by cooking vegan and macrobiotic meals under the supervision of Chef Mohamed Tourkey in Milan, Italy.
Attracted to the healthy side of vegan cooking, she is now a holistic counselor and personal chef whose specialty is healing with foods. Using healthy cooking techniques in menu planning, cooking, and catering for clients all around the world, Alex has provided her clients with specialized menus that protect against a host of diseases and ailments including cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, infertility, and wheat and other food allergies. Along with offering individual instruction in healthy vegan cooking, she’s also penned a new book, The Great American Detox Diet, which is packed full of tasty tips on eating right.
Combining her emphasis on good health with her talent for creating great-tasting meals, Alex’s many mouthwatering specialties include fresh-baked falafel patties with parsley, green salad with a potato-leek vinaigrette, Croatian mushroom-stuffed tomatoes, triple-layer chocolate cake with coconut cream, and seasonal fruit tarts with an almond-coconut crust. |
Chef Spotlight:
Alexandra Jamieson
Age: 30
Restaurant or company: Naturally Flavored Chef, LLC
Do you have companion animals? If so, can you describe them?
Our manly cat, Sue. We got him the day Johnny Cash died, so we named him in honor of a great Cash song. He was a foundling in a local East Village garden. Sue is a tiger-stripe with white legs, paws, face, and tummy and a very cute pink nose.
How long have you been a chef?
Unofficially, since I was 8 and started making chocolate-chip cookies on my own. Officially, since 2001, when I graduated from culinary school.
What type of cuisine do you focus on?
Vegan, whole foods cooking. I love Indian, Italian, and Mexican.
Have you or has your restaurant received any awards?
I don’t work in a restaurant now. I have worked mainly as a private chef, teacher, writer, and health counselor.
Do you have a specialty?
Helping people learn how to cook when they have to remove certain trigger foods. Helping people to detoxify themselves and their diets.
What are the most important elements in cooking great vegetarian cuisine?
Fresh ingredients, simple preparation, and good company!
What is the key to getting meat-eaters to enjoy vegetarian food?
Just make good, fresh veggies with lots of tastes, textures, and colors. It can be nice to make a comfort food to introduce them to vegetarian food, like bean-and-rice burritos instead of meat. Adding a great homemade salsa and guacamole will ensure a big hit!
What, in your opinion, does the future of plant-based cuisine hold?
I believe that we will see more and more people turning to plant-based cuisines as the media and old-school medical establishment catch up with what we already know. Vegetarian food is generally healthier for you! Also, with our natural resources under more and more strain, I believe that plant-based, locally produced food will become more popular as well. It simply takes too many resources to try and sustain our meat-eating ways as they currently stand.
Do you have a favorite cooking method?
I love baking veggies. I cube everything to the same size (whether it’s broccoli, cauliflower, beets, sweet potatoes, carrots—anything!); toss them with a little oil, salt, and pepper; and bake them until they are a bit caramelized—delicious and easy!
Where did you train to become a chef?
The Natural Gourmet Cookery School in New York City.
What are your favorite ingredients to work with?
It changes all the time—whatever is in season and just begging to be cooked!
In your opinion, what vegetarian dish or type of food is most frequently poorly prepared, and why?
Sandwiches. I am so sick of going to nonvegan restaurants and all I can find on the menu is always a grilled-veggie sandwich. The grilled eggplant is either too thick or too oily, the zucchini tastes like nothing, and they never have anything other than mayo or cheesy pesto to spread on the bread—come on, kids! Get a little creative!
If you were stranded on a deserted island and could eat only one kind of ethnic food, what would it be?
Oh, tough one! I guess Mexican—it has always been close to my heart. One of my first jobs was at a Mexican restaurant.
Do vegetarian restaurants face any special obstacles that meat-based restaurants don’t have to face?
I think the quality has to be even higher than at meat-based restaurants if they want to succeed. If they have below-average food, they won’t pull in nonvegetarians easily, and it’s hard to exist by only serving vegetarians! You have to cater to a wider audience.
Can you give us one great cooking tip for aspiring vegetarian chefs?
Learn and do! Read veggie cookbooks and articles about food and watch Food TV (even though it doesn’t have a vegetarian cooking show—yet!). Keep learning about food and keep cooking, and even if you make a few mistakes along the way, don’t get frustrated. Just keep cookin’!
What are some ingredients that you recommend vegetarians and vegans have in their kitchens to cook with?
Good quality basics—a tasty sea salt, extra-virgin olive oil, sesame oil, coconut oil, a variety of basic herbs and spices (like basil, marjoram, cumin, curry, cayenne, cinnamon, etc.), garlic, onion, ginger, and lemon.
Are there any newer vegetarian products on the market that you are particularly fond of?
Agave nectar—it is my sweetener of choice these days. I like all the brands that I’ve tried so far.
Have you had any noteworthy comments from or experiences with diners?
I find that trying to have a calm, happy attitude while cooking really translates to lovely food.
Choose one area to give some specialty tips for:
How best to prepare tempeh: My favorite way to use tempeh is to marinate it—in anything! I have marinated it in pineapple juice and then grilled the cubes on skewers. I love tempeh marinated in apple juice, apple cider vinegar, and soy sauce, then baked until just brown. I can’t stand tempeh that isn’t marinated.
• Guacamole
• Berry Fudgy-Cicles!
• Spicy Sweet-Potato Fries
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Chef: Kimiko Ikeda
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