About My Recipes

     The most important thing about any recipe in FABULOUS LO- CARB CUISINE is the taste.  One thing I've discovered over the years is that it doesn't matter how well a recipe fits into an eating plan.  If it doesn't taste great, nobody will eat it.
     Each recipe in this book arises from a unique confluence of factors.  Each has its own story.  In designing these dishes, I strove to balance the number of carbs with the taste I wanted to create.  Basically, that meant testing each recipe many times to achieve the desired effect.
     One good example is my Key Lime Pie. To create the familiar taste of this dessert, most traditional recipes combine a blend of ingredients including key lime juice and condensed milk.
     It's impossible to use condensed milk in a low-carb key lime pie recipe because the carb count is much too high.  But a similar taste can be achieved by substituting evaporated milk, another canned milk product and sweetening the pie with Splenda.
     To cut the carbs to the bone, most low-carb recipes for key lime pie omit canned milk and often include non-traditional ingredients such as cream cheese.  But that approach compromises the flavor.  So I began testing recipes with the idea of achieving a balance between taste and carbs.  In other words, what was the smallest amount of evaporated milk I could use and still create a key lime pie that would taste authentic.  The result is the recipe I included in FABULOUS LO- CARB CUISINE.  It's a 9-inch pie that serves nine and it's as low in carbs as I could make it (7.7 grams per slice) and still taste like the key lime pie I love.
     Another recipe I'd like to tell you about is my Barbecued Beef Brisket.
     My mom probably made the worst beef brisket in the world, a meat dish with very little flavor.  We had it often for Sunday, and it was even worse on Monday when Mom reheated it swimming in beef bouillon.
     I grew up dreading Monday dinners.  Then I was invited to dinner at the home of my sister's mother-in-law, Sarabel Burka.  When I found out the main dish was beef brisket, I groaned inwardly.  Then I tasted "Aunt" Sarabel's version, and groans turned to smiles.  The Barbecued Beef Brisket in my book is my homage to her recipe.  She made hers with catsup and lots of onions.  I substituted tomato sauce sweetened with Splenda.  To further cut the carbs, I limited the number of onions and enriched the sauce with spices.  And to ensure moist, tender meat, I added water and sealed the baking pan with aluminum foil.
     Long, slow baking makes the meat tender.  As the final step, after the dish is cooked, I set the pan on a burner and boil down the sauce to a rich, thick, flavorful consistency.
     Each recipe in my book has received special thought and consideration.  With some, I went back to favorite old dishes that I hadn't cooked in years.
     For example, in the early seventies, a friend served us a blue cheese ball as an appetizer.  At the time, my palate was much less sophisticated, and I thought I didn't like blue cheese.  But this spread was very mild--a wonderful combination of blue cheese and cream cheese.  I copied down the recipe  and made the appetizer frequently  until the low-fat craze came in, and I decided that anything with cream cheese was just too high in fat.  But as I was going through some of my old files looking for dishes I might include in FABULOUS LO-CARB CUISINE, I came across the Blue Cheese Ball.  The recipe needed some modifications, but it has the same basic flavors that I loved so much.  And it never fails to get rave reviews when I serve it now.
     One of my aims was to use as many different techniques and ingredients as possible to vary our diet.  Looking for wheat products with very low carb counts led me to investigate phyllo dough, thin pastry leaves commonly used in baklava, spanakopita and other Middle Eastern dishes and available from the freezer case at my local grocery store.
     When I read the nutritional label, I got excited.  Because the leaves are so thin, the amount of carbohydrate in each one is quite low--leading me to a whole new area of recipe development.
     By cutting up phyllo sheets into four-inch squares, buttering them, and nesting them in muffin cups, I was able to make individual pastry shells.  I've used these shells for a variety of elegant desserts: Strawberry Custard Tarts, Pecan Cream Cheese Tarts, Pecan Custard Tarts, Strawberry Whipped Cream Tarts.
     Taking an entirely different approach, I've made a Greek Lasagna--replacing the high-carb noodles with thin layers of phyllo.  And I've designed a Greek appetizer dish that duplicates the taste and texture of Spanakopita in a lasagna-like bake.  Incidentally, I do keep working on recipes, even after they've been printed.  Recently, when I had my vegetarian daughter and her family over to dinner, I decided to try the Spanakopita Bake without any phyllo layers.  It makes a very nice, quiche-like baked dish.  Next, I'm planning to increase the number of eggs and see how I like the texture.
     One thing I've tried to do throughout the book is use readily available, familiar ingredients.  For this reason, although I did want to include a cake in my book, I didn't get into using health food store products such as soy protein or whey protein for baking.  Instead, I focused on the French torte approach, substituting ground nuts for flour.
     Nuts seemed like a good choice for many baking recipes. I used ground pecans for one cake.  Although the taste is good, I was disappointed that the Splenda sweetener I used produced a somewhat rubbery texture.
     So I switched my focus from cakes to other desserts.   I started off with almond macaroons, a recipe in which ground nuts are held together with beaten egg whites.  The result is a cookie very much like a traditional macaroon.
     After that success, I decided to try cookies made with other nuts. One combination that sounded promising was hazelnuts and chocolate, since the flavors complement each other so well.   But making it work was more difficult than it sounded.  Since the chocolate had to be cocoa powder, to keep the carbs down, the  cookies tended to be dry.  Even though the flavor was wonderful, I almost gave up on the recipe, then discovered that I could keep the cookies moist by cutting the baking time.
     Another gratifying use I found for ground nuts was in making the crust of my Fruit Pizza.  In the past, I'd enjoyed this dessert at friends' houses.  And sliced fruit over a layer of sweetened cream cheese seemed perfect for a low-fat diet.  The cookie crust was another matter, however, since it was impossibly high in carbs.  As I pondered how to solve the problem, I remembered that traditional French Pear Tarts include a marzipan layer, and I started wondering if I could make a crust from marzipan.  To make my crust, I ground almonds and combined them with Splenda, egg whites, almond extract, and water, and spread the mixture in a pie plate.  Then I microwaved the plate, creating a layer that could be used as a fruit pizza base.  I'm really proud of this recipe.  It won't be long before you see it somewhere else, but you'll know that it came from my kitchen.
     As I was working on FABULOUS LO-CARB CUISINE, I began looking  through old cookbooks for recipes that I might adapt.  Stove-top custard or Creme Anglaise seemed like a natural choice, because  the high egg content makes it high in protein.  I thought all I had to do was substitute cream for milk and Splenda for sugar, and I'd have a wonderful low-carb dessert.  But I was wrong.
     When I started working on the recipe, I found that for good flavor, Splenda-sweetened custard needs additional vanilla.  In addition, I discovered to my dismay that without real sugar, custard tends to have an unattractive, lumpy texture.  So included in my Creme Anglaise recipe are directions to beat the mixture to smooth it out.
     There are many approaches I take to recipe development.  Sometimes I think about a dish I like and create a low-carb version.  Take the wonderful combination of bacon, lettuce, and tomato, for example.  A sandwich is out of the question (unless you use special low-carb bread), but I found I could produce the same crisp texture and wonderful combination of flavors in a Bacon, Lettuce, and Tomato Salad.
     I did the same thing with Philly Cheese Steak.  Recalling the ingredients of this sinfully-rich fast-food meal, I cooked up thin-sliced round steak with some onions, then added cheese, and served the dish without a roll.
     Many of my ideas come from dishes I've enjoyed in restaurants.  I don't ask for the recipe, I simply go home and try to recreate the dish.  Like the Brazilian Green Beans in my vegetable chapter.  Near my home is a Brazilian steak house where waiters circulate among the tables offering various grilled and roasted meats on skewers.  You can have as much as you want--which is perfect for low-carb diners.  There's also a salad bar--where I found green beans in a mayonnaise dressing.  My tasty version adds chopped red onions and peppers.
     There's a list of the recipes from FABULOUS LO-CARB CUISINE on this web site.  If you'd like my thoughts on any of these, let me know through my guestbook, and I'll tell you how I designed the particular dish.