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INTRODUCTION:
EAT HAPPILY AND HEALTHILY.
Like most Americans you're probably not only hungry for good food
in a hurry, you're watching your waistline too. But is it possible
to prepare a dinner in 15 minutes that's delicious and low in fat?
You bet it is. Here's how.
As in Cooking to Beat the Clock, Low-Fat Cooking to Beat the Clock
is built on the four pillars of flavor, organization, focus and
creativity. Flavor means a pantry well stocked with ingredients
that have great taste and texture. Organization
is having the right equipment and in the right place to simplify
and speed up preparation. Focus requires being single-minded about
getting the meal out in a hurry. Creativity involves thinking beyond
recipes so you don't always have to follow a specific formula. This
book also keeps an eye on using less fat. Thus, pantry suggestions
have a slimmer look with items such as nonfat yogurt and part-skim
ricotta.
The 60 recipes in this book, like those in Cooking to Beat the Clock,
are designed as meals, not just dishes. Portions are intended for
humans, not hummingbirds, unlike many low-fat recipes in other cookbooks.
So you won't leave the table still feeling hungry.
While some low-fat recipes reduce portion sizes to microscopic levels,
others lower the fat so drastically that the resulting dishes are
often bland and boring. It doesn't matter how low in fat a dish
is if people don't eat it. So isn't it better to eat a Taco Salad,
which has 10.62 grams of fat per serving and 28.73 percent fat,
but which recipe tester Jane Hibbard described as "wonderful.
We all thought the dressing was superb," than a dish with 15
percent fat, which leaves you unsatisfied? Of course, sometimes,
you get great taste and extremely low fat, like wih Monkfish Osso
Buco. Tester Marion Russo-Lleras found it "absolutely rich
and delicious" and "very satisfying" despite only
7.10 grams of fat per serving and an overall fat content of 12.92
percent.
Nutritionists tell us that the ideal diet has less than 30 percent
of overall calories from fat. My aim in this book was to create
recipes with fat calories that are less than 30 percent or which
contain less than 12 grams of fat per serving, or both. (In fact,
more than half of the recipes in the book, are below 20 percent
fat. Almost a quarter are below 15 percent.)
The reason I include grams of fat in addition to the percentage
of fat is that sometimes percentages can be misleading. For example,
Cobb Salad has only 8.8 grams of fat per serving. But because it
has a mere 248.10 calories, the percentage of fat is 31.28 percent.
From my perspective, the percentage of fat in each serving of this
dish is far less significant than the total grams of fat and overall
calories.
You may be surprised to see a tablespoon or two of butter or heavy
cream here and there. Years ago I learned that a judicious amount
of fat, even saturated fat, can add an amazing degree of richness
to a dish, especially if it is added just before serving. Thus,
for example, I've added two tablespoons of heavy cream to the Spaghetti
Squash with Turkey Bolognese Sauce. Yet despite this seeming extravagance,
each serving contains only 9 grams of fat, and the overall percentage
of fat in the dish is 24.96.
While you can expect some surprising, even dramatic satisfaction
from the recipes you cook from this book, don't expect those love
handles to melt off the moment you finish your first dish. For that
you need a comprehensive program that includes, among other things,
regular exercise. But it can be done. Several years ago, at the
San Jose Mercury News, I wrote a series of articles called Fat
City,
chronicling my 30-day low-fat diet, in which I lost 10 pounds, 2
inches from my waist, and 62 points on my cholesterol-all without
feeling as if I was starving myself. To create this book, I've taken
what I learned from that series, combined it with additional low-fat
cooking experience in the ensuing years, and fused it all with my
quick-cooking expertise. The result, I believe, is something you
can use to eat happily as well as healthfully for many years to
come.
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