The Ancestral Table: Traditional Recipes for a Paleo Lifestyle by acclaimed home chef and paleo blogger Russ Crandall is a glorious celebration of history and heritage of traditional and gourmet cuisines from around the world. The recipes (all gluten-free), easily accessible to both novice and experienced cooks and chefs and can fit into just about any diet-style (other than a Standard American, fast-food, processed-style diet).

This tirelessly researched, beautifully crafted, artfully photographed cookbook combines several seemingly disparate food philosophies. It incorporates principles from the Paleo and Primal approaches to eating with The Perfect Health Diet (Paul Jaminet’s interpretation of Paleo Diet), the Real Foods and Weston A Price movements and the ethnic traditions of almost 20 world cuisines.

You’ll find recipes for eggs, fish, poultry, meat, vegetables, white potatoes, white rice, and dairy as part of nutrient-dense and sustainable way of eating. Dairy products are optional and so are the grains, potatoes, and starchy vegetables. The author provides ideas for substitutions for these for many of the recipes, the back of the book.

Here is the Keto Colcannon I made low carb. The red pieces you see sticking up and on the cloth napkin are pieces of toasted dulse leaf (not the same as dulse flakes), one of my favorite sea vegetables. I also added soft boiled eggs and had it for breakfast a couple of mornings in a row.

Whether you follow a low or moderate carb diet, or any other diet, you will find plenty of delectable recipes, ideas, and dishes from around the world–––all made with high quality ingredients and designed with health in mind. This is not the typical paleo, primal, whole foods, real foods cookbook.

It will broaden your culinary repertoire with an array of traditional recipes (revamped a bit) from more than 20 world cuisines, such as Irish, British, North African, Hawaiian, Kashmiri, Cuban, Spanish, SE Asian, Swedish, Korean, Russian, and American Regional, among others.

Imagine unique offerings, such as these
Brazilian Cheese Buns
Japanese Beef Curry
Sephardic Jewish-Style Roasted Eggs
Colcannon (made with kale)
(Grain-free) Chesapeake Bay Crab Cakes
Preserved Lemons
Tostones
Loco Moco (doesn’t the name just make you want to see it and taste it?)
Gravy thickened with starch or coconut flour

So far I’ve made a low-carb version of the Colcannon twice and the Sephardic Jewish-Style Roasted Eggs twice. I’ve served the Colcannon for dinner with fish and with meat and breakfast with soft boiled eggs and toasted, crumbled dulse leaf (a sea vegetable native to the British Aisles as well as the East and West Coasts of the U.S., and Canada, and chives. Photo above.

I’ve added the roasted, smoky tasting eggs (photo right before removing the shells) to green salads, used them to make Deviled Eggs, and rolled them in herb and spice infused Celtic Sea Salt. They look a bit smoky colored on the inside. They’re also delicious with homemade mayo or Aioli. I found and flagged so many recipes I want to make from this book. It’s also a great read if you want to learn more about the history behind tradititonal recipes.Thank you, Russel, for sharing your story and the recipes and research you’ve done to bring so many culinary traditions to life on the pages.

Now I want to make Kim Chee and daikon radish pickles, again, something I haven’t done in more than a dozen years! I plan to make more from this book! The Ancestral Table would make a great gift for any lover of real, fresh, home cooked, organic, pasture-raised, traditional, and healthy foods. It would also be inspiring to anyone who has suffered from an autoimmune disorder, a life threatening illness, been on immunosuppressive drugs and/or massive amounts of (other) medications and gotten off of them (as Russ Crandall has) or aspired to wean off meds. Really anyone in search of better health  and wanting to nourish his or her body and a family with thenutrient-dense natural foods we were designed, by nature, to eat, would enjoy this book. (Vegetarians and vegans would find some offerings here but not as many as omnivores.)

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