And the winner is....FAT!

Categories: Cookbooks

Can you believe that the 2009 James Beard Foundation Awards Book of the Year is Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, With Recipes?   Jennifer McLagan’s groundbreaking study of dietary fat and how it is vital for our health is an eye-opening read. 

Contrary to the current trend to defat everything, McLagan shows us how people have used and appreciated fat in their diets for thousands of years.  The fat phobia that reigns in our current culture has led us down the slippery slope to trans fats, high fructose corn syrup galore and an obsessive preoccupation with the dietary analysis of what we eat.

McLagan describes how fat is actually essential for good health and, of course, how it makes food taste good.   Besides a thoughtful discussion of the history of fat and its health benefits, McLagan offers unctuous recipes with butter, chicken fat, beef tallow and that most maligned of fats, pork.   

For the past thirty years, cooks have shunned lard and bacon drippings, both so essential to good cooking.   And both have a good mix of saturated, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats that ensure good health and stable shelf life.  Sadly, despite a slight rise in the use of lard in the past few years, most of what is available is hydrogenated to extend shelf life. Of course,  McLagan solves that problem with instructions on rendering your own lard.  

Other recipes to try are pork cracklings, pork belly (one of my favorite cuts of meat) and her terrines and pates.   Besides this wonderful book, McLagan has written an earlier book, Bones, winner of the James Beard Award for single subject food writing.  I find great recipes in that book, too.  I can’t imagine what topic she will address next, but I am eternally grateful for finding Jennifer McLagan.  Because of her, I keep a jar of bacon fat in my refrigerator once more.