Cured Meat

I use slab bacon here because I like large pieces that are brown on the outside but still moist in the center. If you cannot find slab bacon, use the thickest-sliced supermarket bacon you can find. Just be sure not to overcook it. If you prefer, you can pour off all the bacon fat after browning the bacon and replace it with an equal amount of olive oil, but remember, the bacon fat has a much more pronounced flavor. If you don’t have the stock called for in the recipe, just use water from the pasta pot. Often you will see this dish prepared with cream. It’s not the traditional style, but that’s not to say it doesn’t taste good. But I prefer my carbonara made this way, the sauce thickened lightly with egg yolk. The heat of the pasta is enough to cook the egg yolks, but if you like, you may bring a small saucepan of boiling water to a simmer and, about a minute before draining the pasta, slip the yolks into a small sieve placed in the simmering water, to coddle them for a minute. Carefully lift the sieve from the water and add the coddled yolks to the pasta as described below.

The same principle I use to bring out the cauliflower’s sweetness in this sauce—cooking raw cauliflower in olive oil—works well if you’d like to make cauliflower as a side dish. In that case, cut the cauliflower into individual florets rather than small pieces. You might want to use a little fresh oregano here, but parsley fits right in. Finishing this dish, like the Linguine with White Clam and Broccoli Sauce on page 122, is a bit of a balancing act. Bread crumbs will continue to thicken the sauce as it simmers, so be careful—it’s easy to end up with a sauce that’s too thick. On the other hand, if you don’t add enough bread crumbs, the sauce will be too watery. If either of these is the case, remember, you’re in control. Simply add a little hot stock or pasta-cooking water if the sauce is too thick. If it’s not thick enough, add bread crumbs—a little at a time, because it takes a few seconds for them to do their thing.

This is the way we first served spinach salad at Ristorante Buonavia—and the way it was served in a lot of other Italian-American restaurants at the time. I love it just as much with sliced, roasted or boiled beets in place of the mushrooms. If you don’t have bacon, or don’t want to use it, make a spinach-and-mushroom salad with an oil-and-vinegar dressing (using about 1/4 cup olive oil to 3 tablespoons of vinegar). With a vegetable peeler, shave 1 cup of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and toss it in at the end.

If you haven’t bought a deep-frying thermometer yet, this is a good time to do it. A few of the pizzette may “spring a leak” while they fry—you can minimize the risk by not overfilling the pizzette, and by wetting and sealing the edges well as you form them.

You can prepare the clams right in their baking dish up to several hours in advance and bake them just before you serve them.

This classic and delectable pasta dish originated in the region of Abruzzi, in the little town of Amatrice, northeast of Rome, where it was traditionally prepared without tomatoes. But it is the Roman version of pasta all’amatriciana, with tomatoes, that I share with you here—the version that is best known and deservedly popular. Lots of onions; chips of guanciale (cured pork cheek, now available in the United States, see Sources, page 340), pancetta, or bacon; and San Marzano tomatoes are the essential elements of the sauce, Roma style. Note that the onions are first softened in water, before olive oil is added to the pan—a traditional but unusual step that is said to make the onions sweeter. The standard pasta used is bucatini or perciatelli (spaghetti are only tolerated). The long, dry strands of perciatelli resemble very thick spaghetti but are hollow like a drinking straw. When cooked, they are wild and wiggly, so you might be tempted to cut them. Do not—once you’ve got them on your fork, they’re delicious and fun to eat. It is quite all right to slurp them. Indeed, as kids we would suck them in so fast that the end of the noodle would whip us in the nose, splattering sauce all over our faces. What a wonderful memory!

This is a healthy version of one of the greatest inventions of the 1980s: the hollowed-out deep-fried potato skins filled with sour cream, bacon, and cheese that first appeared on the menu at T.G.I. Friday’s in New York City. There are a few differences, though. Here, the potato skin is baked until crisp, not fried, and the fillings are all reduced-fat products. The result is a pretty spectacular loaded potato skin at one-third of the calories and less than one-fourth of the fat of the original.

There are two basic types of potato salad: mayonnaise-based and sugar-and-vinegar-based. I have always preferred the latter because of the sweet-and-sour element—plus it has bacon in it. This alluring sweet-and-sour salad replaces not-so-nice white potatoes with sweet potatoes (much nicer for you), and the texture of the salad has been bulked up with cauliflower.

The beans in this dish are native to North America, but baked beans in some form are served all over the world. We most probably borrowed the recipe for this version (beans in tomato sauce) from our friends in England a couple hundred years ago. Baked beans are usually prepared with high amounts of sugar and salt, but other than that are generally good for you. By using a sugar-free, low-fat barbecue sauce as a base, there was some room in the calorie budget for low-fat bacon. If you prefer a more Southern taste, try substituting 1/2 cup canned, drained collard greens for the kale.

Though they are both outrageously rich pasta sauces, carbonara and Alfredo are distinctly different. The base for Alfredo is cream and Parmigiano-Reggiano. The base for carbonara includes onions, bacon or pancetta (originally it was guanciale—cured pigs’ cheeks), egg yolks, and Parmigiano-Reggiano or Pecorino Romano. At almost 1,000 calories per serving, this dish was ripe for a makeover.

Grits, butter, and cheese have a highly symbiotic relationship. Similar to polenta, grits are simply ground dried corn that is rehydrated and reheated with milk, water, or broth and flavored with cheese, butter, salt, and pepper—and sometimes some other very good things. While I’ve been known to serve grits with black truffles, the traditional additions can pile up the fat and calories fast. Using low-fat cheese and extra-lean turkey bacon and omitting the butter reduced the fat grams from 46.7 to 7.4 and cut the calories by half.

Almost all of the fat in this dish comes from the salmon. Fish fat is a “good” fat, rich in omega-3 fatty acids, which have been shown to reduce cholesterol and the risk of heart disease. While this specific dish may not be an American classic yet, salmon sure is, and it’s a wonderful ingredient to include as a staple in your diet. Its rich flavor, ease of use, and availability make it a perfect three-times-a-week feature. Dijon mustard, citrus, and spinach are some of my favorite flavors for salmon. You can cook this in minutes under a broiler or on a grill.

Using turkey bacon would have been the shortest route to making over this classic sandwich—but when bacon is the first ingredient in the name of a dish, you have to figure out a way to use the real thing. So I made over the mayonnaise instead.

This pizza is so good, I could eat it every day—and at 218 calories per serving, that wouldn’t be a bad thing! It takes more effort than most of the dishes in this book, but few things are as satisfying as making your own pizza from scratch. If you are deterred by the concept of making your own dough, there are alternatives. Boboli makes a very good prepared whole-wheat crust (although it is loaded with sugar and is made from a mix of whole-wheat and white flours, unlike this all-whole-wheat version). Mix and match the toppings for variety.

Cobb Salad gets its name from Robert Cobb, owner of the Brown Derby restaurant in Los Angeles and first cousin of baseball great Ty Cobb. The story goes that he was browsing through the refrigerator late one night, looking for a snack, and could only find bits and pieces of leftovers—which he chopped up and turned into a salad. The rest is history. Here’s a version of Cobb Salad that was put together with a little more thought—and a lot fewer calories.

Who doesn’t love a big thick chunk of iceberg lettuce with bacon and blue cheese dressing alongside a juicy cowboy-cut ribeye? It’s one of my favorite steakhouse meals. Problem is, at 700-plus calories and more than 80 grams of fat—for the salad alone!—it’s a very bad bargain. Thankfully, the availability of reduced-fat blue cheese means you don’t have to choose between the steak and the salad.

Black beans are a very good source of cholesterol-lowering fiber and have many healthy properties that make them a good go-to ingredient. The best thing about black beans is their rich, meaty flavor. They lend themselves to many preparations, are great hot or cold, and the best news is that you don’t ever have to cook them if you don’t have the time or inclination. When purchasing, watch out for sodium levels, and buy organic if you can.

A hollowed-out mushroom cap makes an ideal little edible bowl, perfect for filling with cream cheese and bacon, creamed spinach and ham, Italian sausage and cheese, or crabmeat. These—made with fresh crab, a little bit of low-fat mayo, and real bacon—are a real caloric bargain. A single serving (4 large mushrooms) nets you only 4 grams of fat and just under 120 calories.