The Natural Gourmet

Colbin's imaginative vegetarian recipes borrow ingredients and methods from cuisines as diverse as Japanese (shoyu consomme with enoki mushrooms), Italian (asparagus risotto) and American (apple-cranberry pie). Encouraging a balanced diet based on whole foods--mainly beans, grains and greens--Colbin uses seasoning to broaden our horizons. The founder and director of the Natural Gourmet Cooking School in New York, she eschews most dairy products, white sugar and meat, but approves of fish and light, whole-grain desserts (some of the latter include eggs and butter). And, influenced by macrobiotic nutrition, Colbin ( The Book of Whole Meals ; Food and Healing ) suggests a new method for achieving needed nourishment. ``I am inclined to philosophy,'' she writes, ``and an eating style based on firm philosophical principles makes more sense to me than one based on constantly changing scientific data.'' In her Chinese-derived ``Five-Phase Theory of Eating,'' less practical than Colbin's more traditional prescriptions, foods are categorized into one of five ``phases'' (wood, fire, earth, metal, water), with meals composed of foods from each. Author tour. (Mar.)