Dean Rucker with Marah Stets

Since coming to the Golden Door in 2000, Chef Dean Rucker has received raves for his inspired, bold, and innovative cuisine. With a focus on lean proteins, whole grains, fresh vegetables, and other wholesome foods combined in uniquely delicious ways, Golden Door Cooks at Home shares Chef Dean Rucker’s most sought-after recipes.

You’ll also get tips from Chef Rucker’s popular cooking classes, information on how to boost flavor healthfully, recipes for easy-to-make sauces and vinaigrettes, and sidebars on fitness, nutrition and other tantalizing glimpses into Golden Door experience.

“Dean Rucker offers many of my favorite Golden Door dishes–from the modern Coriander-Crusted Tuna on Wonton Chips to the warming Corn and Scallion Pancakes–allowing all cooks to savor a light, healthy, wholesome, appealing cuisine.”
—Patricia Wells, author of Vegetable Harvest

"Bringing out the seasonal freshness in ingredients, without using butter and other unnecessary fats is the cornerstone of my cooking" says Michel Stroot, who has helped make the Golden Door's "spa cuisine" so popular with guests for three decades. In The Golden Door Cooks Light & Easy, he really brings his concepts home, providing nutritious recipes that are innovative, delicious, satisfying, and pleasing to the eye- yet easy enough for the home cook to make.

Shopping wisely, cutting time in the kitchen, and reducing fat while enhancing flavor - Chef Michel shares all his trade secrets in this book. You'll feel like a guest at the famous spa as you sample from chapters covering appetizers to desserts, poultry and seafood to meatless main courses, plus breakfast and refreshing spa beverages. Color photos and Michel's own narrative take you inside the Golden Door, where stunningly beautiful surroundings are a fitting backdrop for the spa's program of exercise, beauty treatments, opportunities for reflection, and, of course, Chef Michel's delicious food.

• Chef Michel Stroot, James Beard Foundation Award nominee
• Special recipes with no butter and unnecessary fats
• Tips on shopping wisely and cutting time in the kitchen
• An inside view of Golden Door and its famous regime