Michelle Woo Photographs by Eric Sueyoshi
Turn to page 215 and you’ll find Ani Phyo’s recipe for fresh mango cobbler. (It’s absolutely delectable, reviewers have raved.) On page 118, she explains how to make her mouth-watering Japanese miso-shiitake soup. Page 194 reveals her step-by-step process to preparing sun burgers on black sesame sunflower bread.
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Gazing at her culinary creations, one might say Phyo is one heck of a cook.
Except you can’t exactly call her that. You see, the 39-year-old doesn’t even own an oven. In fact, nothing in her award-winning guide, Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen: Easy, Delectable, Living Foods Recipes, is to be heated above 104 degrees. Phyo uses only fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds, along with herbs and spices, to simulate the flavors and textures of cooked foods. Her main kitchen tools are a food processor, dehydrator and blender.
“Sometimes, I’ll eat cake for lunch,” admits Phyo, strolling through a farmer’s market in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo district. “That’s one of the best parts of eating raw. Even dessert is good for you.” (Her cake “dough” can be made with ingredients such as nuts, dates and bananas.)
Dressed comfortably in a metallic-print tank top and cotton pants, Phyo is glowing. Her tanned skin radiates, as if she just returned from the most relaxing vacation.
“Wow, these are all raw,” she says, stopping to check out a juice vendor. Phyo frequents local farmers’ markets at least once a week, sometimes strapping a grocery backpack on her dog Kanga, whom she lovingly refers to as her “urban mule.”
Raw foodists, as those who only or primarily consume raw food are often called, believe that heat alters the chemical structure and destroys vital nutrients, enzymes and vitamins in foods. Raw food, they say, maintains natural enzymes that aid in digestion and absorption. The growing movement has drawn those looking for detoxification, longevity, more energy and even cures for diseases such as chronic fatigue syndrome, Crohn’s disease and cancer. While there is a lack of scientific evidence to back such health benefits, raw food devotees swear by the diet’s powers. (Before making any drastic change in your diet, check with your doctor.)
Phyo’s first introduction to healthy eating wasn’t a very tasty one. As children growing up in upstate New York, Phyo and her brother would plug their noses as they gulped down a homemade vegetable concoction that their mother insisted they drink each morning before school.
“Ugh, it was so thick and gross,” Phyo says, wincing.
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Still, her parents’ eating habits inspired her own health-focused lifestyle. In her house, candy and pizza were forbidden. For a snack, Phyo recalls the way her father would pick a bell pepper out of their organic garden and bite into it like it was an apple. “I’ve come full circle, back to the way I was raised,” she says.
While working as a multimedia designer in San Francisco, Phyo, who became a vegan shortly after graduating from Cornell University, stumbled across Juliano’s Raw Restaurant, which was founded by a pioneer in the raw food movement, Juliano Brotman. “The food tasted so delicious,” she recalls. “He makes this amazing lasagna, and his alfredo sauce is really good. They were so unlike the boring raw foods I had as a child.” After researching the raw food diet, she discovered what she believes are its benefits and became hooked.
In 1999, Phyo moved to Los Angeles to work as a design consultant, but soon felt frustrated in the corporate environment. She had kept in touch with Brotman, who happened to be starting a catering business in L.A. Phyo ended up leaving her job to lead Brotman’s live catering events, soaking up knowledge and eventually contributing recipes to his menus.
“People always thought she did a great job in the kitchen,” Brotman says. “She made sauces that blew their minds.”
For Phyo, inventing dishes was all about creative simulation.
“I learned to look through recipes and ask myself, what are the key flavors? What are the key spices? For instance, for tuna salad, instead of using mayo, you can blend nuts to get that creamy texture. Instead of using fish, you can use the pulp of carrots. To make pasta, you can spiralize squash. The trick is to use the same herbs and spices as the cooked dishes,” she explains.
At her own dinner parties, Phyo loved surprising people. “I don’t always tell people when something is raw, because that turns them off,” she says. “Once, at a potluck, I had made these mock crab cakes. People were like, ‘Oh my God, that’s so good. What kind of fish is that?’ And I told them it wasn’t fish. And then they asked, ‘Well, how did you cook it?’ And I told them it wasn’t cooked. That’s what gets the buzz going.”
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Phyo soon launched her own catering company, SmartMonkey Foods, which hosted raw food events across Los Angeles. Raw foodists and the raw-curious would show up at lofts and warehouses to stock up on meals for the week. The success of the events led Phyo to create packaged goods such as dressings, sauces, breads, crackers and desserts. Today, SmartMonkey Foods primarily focuses on its line of snack bars, available in flavors like Carob Brownie, Cacao Cookie and Ginger Snap and sold at health markets such as Whole Foods.
With Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen, now in its fifth reprint, Phyo wanted readers to feel as if they’re stepping into a day in her life. “ … This book is like a farmers’ market itself,” she writes. “Just take a leisurely stroll through the pages.” She did most of the writing late at night.
“That’s the thing about raw food,” she says. “You just have a lot of energy, mental clarity and concentration. But it makes it hard to sleep.”
Along with working as the executive chef for SmartMonkey foods, Phyo is busy working on her second “uncookbook,” filming uncooking show “webisodes” (some of which are featured on her DVD), meeting with TV networks in hopes of launching her own show and presenting workshops and lectures on the benefits of healthy eating.
“Working for corporations, I wanted to do something that would make a difference in people’s lives,” Phyo says. “Now I consult for those corporations. I’m not trying to push my beliefs onto others. Instead, I just sort of do what I do and let people come to me. I see their skin clearing up. I see them losing weight and becoming more active. They’re getting their lives back. For that, I’m so grateful.”
