Meal Prep

This was one of the first dishes that brought the taste of contemporary Italy to the Italian-American restaurant scene. It came into vogue in the early seventies when red radicchio and arugula became available in the States. While the Italians will toss any vegetable in their salads, I think the addition of endive was a play on the color of the red, green, and white Italian flag. This salad is a great base for additions, from walnuts and pine nuts to different cheeses and cold cuts, such as salami or turkey, and even fish such as tuna, shrimp, or poached whitefish.

I love this salad—it’s so fresh and clean-tasting. Sometimes I make a meal of it. Because I really want you to make this salad, I’m calling for store-bought fillets. But if you have a whole striped bass that you’ve filleted, this salad is a great way to use odds and ends from the fish. Poach the fish head and the belly parts you’ve trimmed from the fillets in the court bouillon. Remove the meat from the cheeks and along the top of the head, and trim the bellies of bones and skin. I like the crushed red pepper to be conspicuous in this salad, so don’t be afraid to use it. Start with about 1/2 teaspoon and go from there. And don’t throw the cooking liquid out: save it to make the salad nice and juicy. You could use crabmeat or even chicken instead, I guess, but white fish, like the bass, is perfect prepared this way.

To top baked fish fillets, scallops, shrimp, or chicken breasts

This recipe was created for my friend Bill, who told me he couldn’t get his daughter to eat fruit. I asked him what her favorite food was and the response was “ice cream.” (Well, what would you say?) These pops are mostly fruit, with just a little bit of “ice cream” made from low-fat Greek yogurt and sugar substitute. But when the pureed fruit was mixed with it, she couldn’t tell the difference. At just about 60 calories a pop, you can eat these all summer long.

I know, I am a fool for even trying to take on a butter sauce for this book, but I would be remiss if I didn’t. In doing my research, many of you expressed your delight with this magical buttery emulsion, and I have to confess I am a fan as well. When I was a young chef, we used to have contests to see who could make the best hollandaise sauce. It’s actually a lot of fun to make because the chemical reaction that takes place makes it a bit challenging. This version is virtually impossible to mess up because when you remove most of the butter, you don’t have to worry about tricky emulsifications and the sauce “breaking” if the heat is too high. While it’s not the butter bomb that the original is, having only one-third of the original fat and calories is worth making some adjustments for.

This rich French sauce made of pepper, Cognac, and cream is traditionally served on steak, but it’s equally good on pork or salmon. Instead of cream, this version is given body and richness with cornstarch-thickened evaporated milk.

There are many ways to flavor tartar sauce. I like cornichons, capers, onions, and Worcestershire sauce (it’s a great flavoring with little caloric significance). There are also many uses for tartar sauce—it’s not just for fried fish. Try it with grilled steak or shrimp, or as a spread on a sandwich.

This slightly spicy horseradish-tomato concoction makes a one-note boiled shrimp sing like a tenor. The typical ingredients are mostly healthy except for the sugar load—usually in the form of high-fructose corn syrup. This recipe calls for reduced-sugar ketchup and all the usual suspects, including prepared horseradish. Don’t mess with grating fresh horseradish—believe it or not, it’s not as strong as the jarred stuff.

This sauce is great on chicken wings, of course, but it’s also very tasty on steak, grilled fish, and barbecued shrimp—even on cooked greens like kale and collards. It’s an all-purpose sauce based on Buffalo wing sauce—with a twist. The most important twist may be that it has zero fat and only 33 calories per serving. Traditional Buffalo wing sauce is loaded with butter.

Most gravies are made from meat juices and a thickener called “roux,” a 50/50 combination of pure fat—like lard or butter—and white flour. This flourless, butterless gravy can be used as a stand-alone sauce for almost any roast meat or poultry—and even some fish like cod and salmon. Play around with it: add low-fat bacon pieces, chopped olives, parsley, tarragon, basil, roasted pearl onions, diced cooked sweet potatoes, lemon zest, crushed peppercorns—whatever you can think of that fits into your caloric budget.

You can buy all-purpose Asian sauces at the grocery store, but most of them are loaded with sugar and fat. This one—with lots of ginger and garlic and just a little bit of oil—is very flavorful.

This aromatic puree is designed to be a base ingredient and is a great way to build flavor and texture without adding fat. It eliminates the need to add a lot of butter and cream to Macaroni and Cheese with a Crusty Crunch (page 174), for instance. You can stir it into just about any sauce or soup for a fat-free flavor punch.

Barbecue may be America’s greatest contribution to the global culinary repertoire. We figured out how to take rich, fatty, often tough cuts of meat and smoke them into submission until they’re melt-in-your-mouth tender. Then we slather them with sugar-laden, high-fat sauce. Here’s a sugar-free, zero-fat BBQ sauce that packs flavor without pulling punches.

Typical pesto can be more than 50 percent pure fat, and even though a little goes a long way, that’s just too many calories. This is a re-invention of the classic pesto alla genovese. The garlic, pine nuts, basil, and Parmigiano-Reggiano are all still there, but low-fat sour cream stands in for the olive oil. It may not be 100 percent authentic, but you’ll love what it does for your dress size.

The key to making this basic meat sauce taste so great is to use beef shank—a very flavorful cut—and a splash of dry red wine. The long cooking time breaks the meat down until it is meltingly tender.

I first learned how to make a real French vinaigrette when I was eighteen years old and living with a very generous chef in Paris. It was actually his twelve-year-old daughter who taught me. The first thing she did was separate two eggs and put the yolks in a bowl; these were followed by Dijon mustard, then vinegar, then olive oil—fat (egg yolk) followed by fat (olive oil). It’s the Dijon–sherry vinegar combo that really makes this dressing—and those are both fat-free. A shallot puree provides the thick texture you normally get from creating an egg yolk/olive oil emulsion. Use this to dress salads and cooked vegetables—both hot and cold.

Toss this creamy sauce with hot cooked pasta, or drizzle it over steamed broccoli or roasted Brussels sprouts.

The original Russian dressing was actually made with yogurt. Early in the 20th century, some chef in Chicago replaced the yogurt with mayonnaise—and that’s when it became one of the most popular salad dressings in the country. That little tweak also made it one of the most caloric and unhealthy salad dressings around. In this version, the best of both Russian and Thousand Island dressing, the fat has been reduced from 16 grams to less than 1 gram per serving. It’s perfect for salads, charcuterie—and, of course, the classic Reuben sandwich.

Ranch dressing has been the top-selling dressing in this country since 1992, when it overtook Italian. Given that the bottled stuff has 19 grams of fat and 180 calories per serving, something had to be done! We may want many things like our mamas’—but not the fat-laden version of this dressing.

Real mayonnaise is made with egg yolks and oil—which might explain the 10 grams of fat per tablespoon. You can very easily wind up slathering at least a tablespoon or two on a sandwich. This very good approximation uses Greek yogurt as a base, rather than oil.