500 More Fat-Free Recipes

by Sarah Schlesinger

While more and more Americans are discovering the health benefits of a low-fat diet, the thousands of cooks who made 500 Fat-Free Recipes a bestseller and a classic on fat-free cooking are also enjoying the rich flavors Sarah Schlesinger brings to fat-free meals. With 500 More Fat-Free Recipes, Schlesinger has created an even more diverse collection that should make every meal of the day a healthy and delicious success.

Beginning with a much expanded list of ingredients--reflecting the greater variety of foods now available on supermarket shelves--Schlesinger has drawn inspiration from cuisines around the world--Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Thai, Indian, and more. Wonderful, often underused flavors like curry, lemongrass, fresh ginger, rose water, and balsamic and wine vinegars brighten dishes that are a far cry from the bland, repetitive meals people often associate with the restrictions of fat-free cooking. Who would imagine that dishes like these have only one gram of fat or less per serving?: Persian Apple-sauce, flavored with rose water and mint; Cardamom-Ginger Cantaloupe; Cold Carrot Soup with Thyme; Cucumbers with Horseradish; Wild Rice-Red Grape Salad; Curried Lentils and Rice; Baked Ziti, rich with roasted red peppers, eggplant, and mushrooms; Cannellini Beans with Shells and Sage; Spinach-Topped Crostini; Papaya Sorbet; and Molasses Cake.

Schlesinger makes steamed dumplings with wonton wrappers, and blends blueberries and seltzer water to make a frozen fruit ice. Robust vegetable stews are made more interesting with barley, bulgur, and couscous. She moistens and enriches cake batter with prune purée in place of butter or shortening and makes crumb crusts from fat-free cookies. And in her variation on chocolate-covered strawberries, cocoa powder, which has no fat, replaces the melted chocolate.

This fresh and wonderful collection is a celebration of the foods we can eat on a fat-free diet, and its five hundred dishes guarantee that every day will bring meals that are healthy and full of great tastes.

421 pages, Hardcover

First published January 20, 1998

About the author

Sarah Schlesinger is the author of 500 Fat-Free Recipes, 500 (Practically) Fat-Free Pasta Recipes, and 500 Low-Fat Fruit and Vegetable Recipes, and the co-author of The Low-Cholesterol Olive Oil Cookbook, among others. Her interest in fat-free cooking resulted from her husband's ongoing battle against coronary artery disease. A lyricist and librettist for musical theatre, she is the chair of the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. Schlesinger lives with her husband in Greenwich Village and in Lewes, Delaware.