Fat: An Appreciation by Jennifer McLagan

By JULIETTE ROSSANT Consider fat. Without it our culinary lives would be rather dull. Think of summer corn dripping in butter, crispy potatoes roasted in the pan next to a juicy chicken, or ice cream. Think of what fat can do. Jennifer McLagan wants to redress the imbalance in cookbooks and re-establish the importance of fat in our lives. She is the author of Bones, a cookbook that reminded us that meat is better with bones. Now she turns her attention to fat, which we work to trim from our lives and our diets. She is launching a crusade to make sure we don't. Fat is what gives food its taste. Follow her and read - Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes (Ten Speed 2008) and you'll learn about the history, the meaning, and the importance of fat, and how to increase flavor in the dishes you make. For Jennifer, fat isn't a feminist issue (as Susie Orbach has argued): it is the stuff that makes life wonderful. Fat makes everything we eat taste better and eating fat is satisfying, so we eat less and our desire to snack is reduced. Enjoying our meals makes us happy and lowers our stress. And, as hard as it might be to believe, fat is good for us, too. (p. 11) Fat is more than a cookbook, it is a mission statement: This is not simply a cookbook. These pages are larded with the history and culture of fat, exploring how fat has entered our language and literature, our economies large and small, and the fabric of our daily lives. Fat is indispensable and delicious. We should celebrate it, cook with it, eat it, and enjoy it without guilt. (p. 11) This isn't an anti-diet book, but a rethinking of what role fat has to play in making satisfying, delicious food. There are a mere four chapters: Butter, Pork Fat, Poultry Fat, and finally Beef and Lamb Fats. Butter starts with a history and analysis of butter, a consideration of margarine, and finally recipes in which butter is the star. She starts with recipes for Homemade Butter (p. 21), Clarified Butter and Ghee (pp. 23-25) and moves on to complex butters like Spiced Ethiopian Butter (p. 25) which comes from Marcus Samuelsson – flavored with garlic, ginger, cardamom, cinnamon, oregano and turmeric. There are wonderful sidebars about Butter Stinkers (p. 29), Mafia Butter (p. 30) and Butter as a Cosmetic and Medicine (p. 53) and the Butter Tower of Rouen (p. 59). The recipes range all over the globe wherever butter is the star. She covers butter based sauces like Beurre Blanc (p. 37) to Maltaise Sauce (p. 42) a blood orange based sauce for asparagus. There is a recipe for Indian Morgh Makhani (Buttered Chicken) (p. 44) though, of course, almost any savory Iranian dish calls for butter as part of the sauce, rice, or finishing preparation. Among the desserts are Sweet Butter Pastry (p. 49) and Breton Butter Cake (pp. 58-59). This is a glorious book of celebration. There are luscious photograph by Leigh Beisch. There is plenty to explore, and plenty of interesting facts about fat to chew over. Previous articles: Bones: Jennifer McLagan [Cookbook Reviews - complete] Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, blogging, food blogging --> back to Super Chef