The Five Elements Cookbook

A stunning and accessible guide to cooking with Traditional Chinese Medicine, featuring over 50 nourishing recipes to eat for healing every day by TCM chef and registered dietitian Zoey Xinyi Gong.

Chef and registered dietitian Zoey Xinyi Gong offers an incredibly fresh, elegant, and authentic approach to food therapy and a truly accessible guide to cooking with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), a thousands-year-old practice for holistic wellness.

Named after a foundational theory of what balance and optimal health looks like, The Five Elements Cookbook is a stunning introduction to the beginner concepts of TCM and offers a photographic guide to the most commonly used medicinal ingredients (American ginseng, turmeric, reishi, and more), their healing properties, and how to use them seamlessly in your cooking—whether in a warm tea, restorative bone broth, a sweet smoothie, or your favorite dinner.  

Each of the over 50 delicious recipes ingeniously incorporates a food-as-medicine ingredient, with consideration for seasonality, digestion, and body constitution, and specific concerns, like menstrual pains, nausea, anxiety, blood circulation, respiratory health, and more. For those with dietary restrictions, each recipe also includes a key for vegan, nut free, dairy free, gluten free, plus the TCM energetics and uses. Recipes span all day and every meal, plus beverages and desserts:

Sesame Goji GranolaPumpkin and Lotus Seed Hummus with CruditéReishi Mushroom Miso Soup Steamed Whole Fish with Herbal Soy SauceWarming Lamb Noodle Soup Saffron Mulled WineWith beautiful photographs throughout, this soothing, practical guide is perfect for those looking to eat for healing, nourishment, and joy.