Julee Rosso may have co-authored two of the country’s most popular cookbooks as well as a text that gives up-to-date basic instruction to culinary neophytes, but what has she done for us lately?
A lot with less. In “Great Good Food: Luscious Lower-Fat Cooking” (Crown, $29 hardcover, $19 paper) she has provided a thorough, well-thought-out cookbook, bulging with doable recipes, on how to cook with less fat and less cholesterol.
What’s so good about that, you ask? Hasn’t it been done often, ever since low-fat cooking came into vogue a few years ago?
Yes, but this time it’s different. This time it’s Julee Rosso doing it. She’s the woman who with Sheila Lukins wrote the best sellers “The Silver Palate Cookbook” and “The Silver Palate Good Times Cookbook,” books which showed modern Americans easy, realistic ways to make contemporary meals, then went on to do “The New Basics,” a down-to-earth book about things your mother neglected to tell you during the sexual revolution. Together these books have sold more than 4.5 million copies.
Like these books, “Great Good Food” is fraught with detail and fun. There are meaty dishes with beef, pork, chicken, goat and hare, vegetables ranging from artichokes through the alphabet to zucchini, seafood and fish, grains, mousses and even some low-fat cocktails: How does a skim milk pina colada sound?
Perhaps what makes Rosso’s books so appealing is her curious mix of East Coast sophistication and Midwest practicality. She grew up in Michigan, spent 25 years in New York City, some of them running The Silver Palate gourmet shop, then returned to Michigan to run a woodsy bed-and-breakfast inn near Saugatuck. So while Rosso thinks nothing of dashing off a recipe for red snapper with black bean salsa or a tarragon lobster, she is equally at home baking a walleye sprinkled with herbs.
Moving into low-fat cooking was an evolutionary process, says Rosso, who stopped by the Tribune test kitchen recently to promote her latest book.
In person she reflects the attitude of her book: She does not preach to teach but rather seems to share the learning process. She talks, but also listens, and has quite a bit of fun in the process.
“The public reaction to my lower fat dishes (mostly in the Parade magazine column she writes with Lukins) was overwhelming, but I also was seeing people who are confused. There were more questions about lower-fat cooking than on any other topic.
“By now we know that you can’t live on the Earth and not say, `I want to change my eating habits.’ I wanted to take the fat from foods without losing the flavor.
“It all starts with the flavor: If you can make foods taste the way you want them to without using fat for cooking or flavor, then why not do it?”
But for Rosso it wasn’t as simple as cranking out a few low-fat recipes.
“Fat is a habit. I used to just pour the olive oil into the pan. I seldom measured. Then when I started measuring, I found you could do the same thing with a lot less.”
Her recipe for vegetarian paella is a good example. It only has one tablespoon of oil for two cups of rice and a motley crew of vegetables.
Addressing all the issues concerning lower fat cooking called for a larger book, one that hits basic points of kitchen skills, describes how to buy the right foods, stock the pantry and cook using low-fat methods.
There’s plenty of nutritional material, and each recipe has been analyzed for calories, carbohydrates, cholesterol, sodium and fat, along with the percentage of fat calories. Most recipes are far less than 30 percent fat, the government’s arbitrary recommendation, but in most cases this is fat that will not be missed.
The country’s trend to low-fat was not the only reason that Rosso became interested. Her late father had suffered heart disease and in 1973 had been one of the country’s first heart bypass patients.
Then there’s “Wills,” her husband, Bill Miller, who shares duties operating the bed-and-breakfast but not always Rosso’s taste in foods. Wills had the good taste to marry Rosso, but he also has high cholesterol and high blood pressure and still considers himself a “meat and potatoes guy.”
“He sometimes says, `Enough of the weed food,’ ” Rosso says with a chuckle. “That’s what he calls all the green vegetables.”
There’s plenty of weed food in “Great Good Food,” but also steak, venison, pork ribs and meatloaf, pared of excess fat, of course.
“I can’t imagine being a vegetarian,” Rosso says. “I love steak and lamb chops. If you only do a cassoulet (a French pot of beans, pork, goose and fat) once a year, there’s no problem. But you can’t have it every night. It’s a question of balance. There are no bad foods.”
But she also is reminded that Jane Fonda once said eating ice cream is like eating frozen butter.
“I’ve always remembered that,” Rosso says.
“As you start to eat less fat, you find that fatty foods taste waxy and greasy and you are feeling lighter and more energetic. You start to think of eating this way forever. A lot of people want to. So you do it one recipe at a time, and soon you learn to adapt on your own-you learn how to integrate it into everyday life.
“I encourage people to focus on ingredients. We always are trying get more flavor. Isn’t that the key when you take the fat out?”
The following recipes are adapted from “Great Good Food.”
VEGETABLE PAELLA
Preparation time: 30 minutes
Cooking time: 1 1/4 hours
Yield: 10 servings
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 heads garlic cloves, peeled, chopped
2 cups long grain white rice
6 cups chicken broth (see note)
2 red onions, coarsely chopped
1/4 teaspoon saffron threads
1 teaspoon paprika
2 tablespoons marjoram
2 yellow bell peppers, diced
16 asparagus stalks, washed, trimmed, cut into 2-inch pieces
16 green onions, green part only, chopped
4 medium zucchini or yellow squash or 1 medium eggplant
1/2 pound spinach, cleaned, trimmed
1 cup fresh flat leaf Italian parsley
2 cups fresh green peas, shelled, or 16 ounces frozen peas
1/2 cup chopped fresh dill
1/2 teaspoon each: salt, crushed red pepper flakes
1. Heat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Put the oil and garlic in a big paella pan or ovenproof skillet; cook over medium heat until garlic softens, about 4 minutes. Add rice; cook, stirring frequently, 3 to 4 minutes longer. Add 2 cups of broth, the onion, saffron, paprika, marjoram and yellow pepper.
3. Cover pan and bake 20 minutes. Add 2 cups of broth and bake another 10 minutes before adding the asparagus, green onions, zucchini, spinach, parsley and remaining 2 cups of broth. Return the pan, uncovered, to the oven and bake for 30 minutes. Stir in the peas, dill, salt and red pepper to taste. Bake for 5 more minutes. Serve from the pan.
Nutrition information per serving: 252 calories; 49 g carbohydrates; 10 g protein; 0 mg cholesterol; 3 g or 11 percent fat.
Note: Julee Rosso recommends using a homemade chicken stock that has been defatted or a low-fat canned stock, such as College Inn brand.
STRAWBERRY MOUSSE
Preparation time: 25 minutes
Chilling time: About 8 1/2 hours
Yield: 4 srvings
2 heaping cups fresh strawberries
2 tablespoons each, fresh: orange juice, lemon juice
1 teaspooon unflavored gelatin
1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar
1 cup low fat blend (recipe follows)
1 egg white, at room temperature
1. Puree strawberries, orange juice and lemon juice in a blender or food processor until smooth. Set aside.
2. Soften gelatin in 1/4 cup cold water in a small saucepan; let stand for 1 minute. Dissolve gelatin over low heat, stirring constantly. Add 1/3 cup sugar, stirring until sugar has dissolved completely and mixture has thickened slightly. Transfer to a large bowl and whisk until just warm to the touch. Do not allow the gelatin to set.
3. Slowly whisk the low-fat blend and strawberry puree into the gelatin mixture. Place in the freezer until the mixture is quite thick but not set, 30 to 40 minutes. Whisk the mixture occasionally to prevent lumps from forming.
4. Beat the egg white to soft peaks. Add remaining 1 tablespoon of sugar and beat until stiff. Gently fold the egg white into the gelatin mixture, blending well and making sure there are no lumps.
5. Transfer to a serving bowl and cover. Refrigerate for 8 hours.
Nutrition information per serving: 145 calories; 30 g carbohydrates; 6 g protein; 1 mg cholesterol; .7 g or 4 percent fat.
LOW-FAT BLEND
Preparation time: 5 minutes
Yield: 2 cups
Rosso says she makes a double batch of this at the beginning of every week. She prefers to make it in the blender or by hand-never the food processor-it tends to break the mixture down and make it watery rather than creamy. If non-fat cottage cheese is available, so much the better, as the nutritional analysis shows.
1 cup non-fat plain yogurt
1 cup low-fat cottage cheese
1. Put the ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. The mixture can be blended by hand. A food processor will not give the same consistency.
Nutrition information per cup with low-fat cottage cheese: 142 calories; 11 g carbohydrates; 20 g protein; 5 mg cholesterol; 1.8 g or 12 percent fat.
Nutrition information per cup with non-fat cottage cheese: 130 calories; 12 g carbohydrates; 20 g protein; 0 mg cholesterol; 0 g fat. –
