Customer Reviews

Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am so tired of fat free everything these days in the grocery store, so it was a real pleasure to read about fat...glorious fat. Maybe my cholesterol is getting jacked to Jesus, but my food has flavor now that I am cooking with fat. I tried McLagan's roasted chicken recipe and it was the best chicken ever...flavorful, juicy...I swoon at the memory. I look forward to trying more of the recipes from the book as soon as I can locate sources for well marbled meats, fatty fowl, and pork bellies. My in-laws are in their eighties and have cooked with lard all their lives. They are happy, healthy, thin, and the food just tastes good. I may croak a few weeks earlier than expected, but I will go out with happy taste buds. I really enjoyed reading about fat.

You've just gotta love a book that has a big fatty slab of meat on it! And while fat has gotten an unfair bad rap over the past few decades from the low-fat diet apologists, the fact is that fat consumption is an important part of living as healthy a lifestyle as you can. This is something Jennifer McLagan wanted to convey with her book to give people a greater "appreciation" for what is arguably the most flavorful ingredient you could put into a recipe (nope, not salt, not sugar, and not spices of any kind can compete with good old-fashioned FAT!).

From butter to meat fats, McLagan gives you quite a history lesson on the subject of fat (and you can't miss the section on where the ghastly margarine came from!) to whet your appetite for some truly incredible fat-based dishes to make. Not all of them are low in carbohydrates, but they can easily be adapted to just about any diet. Except for a low-fat one. Sorry low-fatties!

I love this book and it could be my cookbook of the year. I have a library and I have been cooking long enough that I do not really need a cookbook unless it is very good. I bought the book primarily for reading about fats and why they could be good for you. However, I have made several recipes including the above mentioned roast chicken, which was fabulous. I slow baked a lamb shoulder by her method of slow cooking. And I saved the fat to make some lamb fritters, (not of this book) frying them in the left over fat. I have baked sweet potatoes in lard inspired by the book. I have rendered lard for myself and my girls. It has all been quite fun. And now that I am having so much fun and the food is so good, I really am not sure I care about the health issues.

Here is one thing I will say, since I have cooked out of this book this week, I am not hungry or craving food.

...there was a magical land where people ate real food, and it didn't kill them. Then one day an evil wizard came along, and told everybody they had to live off lentil loaf and canola oil. And the wizard's name was--Dr. Oz!

Okay, a serious review--this is a great cookbook. I've made a few of the recipes in this book(braised oxtail and bone marrow tacos), and they are really good. But my absolute favorite part is the beginning, where McLagan discusses why animal fats are unjustly blamed for heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. Dare I say the current food pyramid is a political plot? A vast left-wing conspiracy? Am I the only person who saw SOYLENT GREEN?

Of course, gentle reader, you will have to watch your portion sizes when you cook these foods--this is not an "all you can eat" air-popped whatever. The point is not to eat all you can, but to get full, and stop eating.
I especially liked this book because I just finished reading "The Vegetarian Myth", which is a much longer argument against a grain-based diet, and is chock-full of nifty scientific evidence that animal fat doesn't kill people.
But get this cookbook--you will feel like Martha Stewart and Ted Nugent all at once!

This is a very attractive book and well written. I ordered this for my wife as she is the cook in the family. She is currently in culinary school. She has found the book to not only be enticing but a good resource. I do not often read her cook books, but this one caught my attention. Nice stories, good reasoning, and helpful hints. This book will make you want to eat fat, and it makes a very good case for it to be a good thing to eat. There is some thing to be said about moderation in every thing for a balanced life.

IF you like to cook in teflon and don't like to use anything with "oil" in the name, don't read this book.

IF you don't like eating food that you think you need an engineering degree to make, read this book.

I am not some Zen guru or yoga master...I am a guy who has always liked to cook. What I seem to notice and dislike more and more these days is that everything we seem to eat is "produced" somewhere...in some factory. For me, the beauty of cooking is in simplicity. FAT is a book that has helped me to focus on the important parts of cooking. I am not sure how accurate all of the information in the book is, but 99.99% of it just makes sense in my head...and that is what I care about.

If you love to cook or you love someone who loves to cook, then get this book. You will be happy you did.

I should amend the title (it was just a come-on!) to say that I rarely read cookbooks: I buy them if the recipes look good (this has led to a library of about 600 books), but almost never read the chef's musings. In this case, the reverse has been true. I've read "Fat" from cover to cover, with fascination. Jennifer Mclagan is a highly articulate advocate for this much-maligned (nowadays) ingredient; her observations give great support to those of us who enjoy cooking for taste, rather than rectitude. And the recipes span a huge number of cuisines, from French to Indian to "American." Last night was my first adventure with a "Fat" recipe, Cheong Liew's braised pork belly. It was a spectacular success. I am now going into my "cook everything from this entire book" phase, and look forward to rillettes, confits, palmiers, and bone marrow crostini. A MUST-have for any good cook.

Jennifer McLagan has once again opened my culinary eyes. I've gone from avoiding almost every form of fat, to embracing fat in, believe or not, healthful, flavorful ways. Her writing is engaging and knowledgeable. And her recipes are foolproof and fabulous. I highly recommend this book. It will open your eyes to fat in eating, too.

The introduction is refreshing; a voice of sanity.

Two quotes used in the introduction:

"For millennia people have known how to make their food. They have understood animals and what to do with them, have cooked with the seasons and had a farmer's knowledge of the way the planet works. They have preserved traditions of preparing food, handed down through generations, and have come to know them as expressions of their families. People don't have this kind of knowledge today, even though it seems as fundamental as the earth."
- Bill Buford

"I've been fat and thin so many times in my life. People aren't allowed to be fat any more. You can be an addict or go to prison, and that's socially acceptable, but being fat? That's not socially acceptable."
- Sharon Osbourne

I have to add more.

"We have essentially transformed our fear of the diseases we believe fat will cause into the fat itself."
- Roberta Pollack Seid

"Leave the butter in the pie crust, but TAKE A SMALLER PIECE OF PIE." [emphasis mine]
- Shirley O. Corrieher

Priceless.

What happened? Why have we moved away from this? The introduction is a must read.

Fat does not make fat. It is, however, delicious, versatile, and useful. McLagan offers several recipes that use the misunderstood and recently vilified ingredient in delicious and beautiful presentations. She also does a wonderful job of explaining the idea that fat is not necessarily unhealthy, but, in many ways, quite beneficial. This book is a must for anyone who cares about food.