Fat Fast Cookbook: 50 Easy Recipes to Jump Start Your Low Carb Weight Loss (7 page)

Liquid Coconut Oil
: In its native form, coconut oil is solid at room tempertevrature, unless your house is pretty warm. This makes coconut oil unsuitable for making mayonnaise or salad dressing, or for adding to smoothies or other cold drinks. New to the market is liquid coconut oil—coconut oil that is liquid at room temperature. It is pricey. (I paid $28 for 20 fluid ounces!) However, if you are determined to stay in a strongly ketogenic state, it may be worth the investment. So far as I can tell, liquid coconut oil—mine is bottled by
Nature’s Way
, a well-known herbal supplement company—is substantially similar to
medium-chain-triglyceride oil,
long sold
as an athletic supplement. Liquid coconut oil has a coconut aroma, which may or may not suit a particular recipe.

Let me be clear: COCONUT BUTTER IS NOT THE SAME AS COCONUT OIL. I emphasize this because I have had so many questions about it, and more than a few readers have had recipes fail because they used coconut oil where a recipe called for coconut butter.

Coconut butter
(Nutiva calls it
Coconut Manna
) is to coconut what peanut butter is to peanuts, or almond butter is to almonds: Simply coconut meat ground to a paste. As word about the healthful properties of coconut spreads, coconut butter is gaining popularity. I have used it in several recipes in this book.

You can buy coconut butter at health food stores or, like everything else in the world, online. However, at this writing, jarred coconut butter is running $12 to $16 per pound. This is why you’ll find a recipe for coconut butter in this book—it’s a snap to make if you have a decent food processor, and
unsweetened, shredded coconut
in bulk is quite cheap.

There are now two kinds of
coconut milk
on the market: The
thick, traditional stuff
that comes in cans, and a
thinner, more pourable variety that comes in cartons
like dairy milk, soy milk, and almond milk. These recipes use the thick, rich, canned stuff. Look for it in the international foods aisle at your grocery store, with the Asian foods. Buy the full-fat variety, not the low-fat, of course.

The only genuinely low-carb and low-calorie noodle I know of, shirataki are traditional Japanese noodles made from the root of the
konyaku
or konjac plant. They are sometimes labeled
yam noodles
or
yam bean noodles
, but that’s a mistranslation; konjac is not related to sweet potatoes. (Technically, yams aren’t related to sweet potatoes, either, but that’s another story. The two terms are used interchangeably in the USA.) Koontthe USAnjac is the source of a fiber called
glucomannan
, and that’s what shirataki noodles are made of.

They come in two varieties:
Traditional
and
tofu shirataki
. The traditional shirataki are translucent and sort of gelatinous—for lack of a better description, they’re very Asian. I like them, but only in Asian recipes—you’ll find a recipe in this book for sesame noodles, for instance. My friend and fellow cookbook author Judy Barnes Baker (
Nourished: A Cookbook for Health, Weight Loss, and Metabolic Balance
) tells me that Nasoya now makes a noodle called Pasta Zero that has the flavor and texture of tofu shirataki without the soy. 1 gram of usable carb per serving. At this writing I have not tried Pasta Zero, but you can bet I’m going to! If you can’t find them locally, you may well be able to special-order them through your local health food store.

Tofu shirataki
, as the name strongly suggests, have a little tofu added to the glucomannan fiber. This makes them white, and gives them texture that is more tender than the gelatinous, traditional variety. They’re certainly not identical to the Italian pasta we’re all familiar with, but they’re considerably closer than the traditional variety, while still being super-low-carb and super-low-calorie. Unlike traditional shirataki, I like the tofu variety in all sorts of recipes—mac and cheese, chicken noodle soup, fettuccine Alfredo, you name it.

The great thing about shirataki is that because they are so low in carbs and calories, all you have to do is add some sort of high-fat topping to them and you not only have a Fat Fast meal, you have a full-sized serving. With most Fat Fast portion sizes being so small, shirataki noodles are a real ace in the hole. When you get tired of nibbling a quarter-cup of macadamia nuts, you can sit down to a full, satisfying bowl of food.

Shirataki come pre-hydrated in a pouch full of liquid, so they don’t require the ten minutes or so of boiling that standard pasta needs. However, I find them best with a little quick-and-simple prep:

Put a strainer in the sink. Snip open your shirataki pouch, and dump them into the strainer. You will notice that the liquid they’ve been packaged in smells unappealingly fishy. Panic not.

Dump your drained shirataki into a microwaveable bowl, and nuke them on high for two minutes. Back into the strainer and drain them again—I bounce the strainer up and down a little, to knock off even more liquid. Nuke for another minute, and drain one more time.

Why all this heating and draining? Because without it, shirataki will exude liquid into your sauce, making for a watery finished product. You’re getting the excess liquid out of them. I find this also does away with the fish smell and improves the texture.

Shirataki noodles are really long—apparently long noodles are considered good luck in Japan. I use my kitchen shears to snip across them in an X pattern, so I have more a rI have manageable lengths.

Shirataki will disintegrate if you freeze them. Keep this in mind if ordering in the winter.

Like other pastas, shirataki come in different shapes. I have mostly used
House brand tofu shirataki
, which come in spaghetti, angel hair, fettuccini, and macaroni shapes. I like the fettuccini and macaroni shapes best. I find that traditional shirataki is most often available in spaghetti-like strands, but have also seen it in little rice-shaped bits, similar to orzo.

One more thing: For those of you avoiding soy, tofu shirataki have only a teeny bit of soy in them. I did the math, and it’s like a teaspoon of tofu per serving. Since they’re about the only source of soy in my diet, I don’t worry about it, but make your own decisions.

Stevia is a calorie-free and carb-free sweetener derived from the leaves of a South American shrub. This sounds ideal, but for a long time I didn’t use much stevia. It was too sweet, it had a bitter aftertaste, and I found it difficult to use.

However, I have discovered
liquid stevia extracts
, and I find them far easier to use than the powdered stevia extracts. Liquid stevia extracts come in little dropper bottles; there are both alcohol-based and alcohol-free versions. I don’t find a lot of difference between them in use. Liquid stevia comes plain, i.e., just sweet, and in flavors. I have used both chocolate and French vanilla liquid stevia extract in some of these recipes.

Note: Most liquid stevia extracts take roughly 6-8 drops to get the equivalent of 1 teaspoon sugar in sweetness. That means that you can substitute, say, 2 teaspoons of granular Splenda for 15 drops of liquid stevia extract. Other sweeteners should give their sweetness equivalency on the labels; if they don’t, try their websites. Keep in mind, though, that if a recipe calls for a flavored stevia extract, you’ll lose that extra flavor; you may want to add vanilla or chocolate extract to make up for it. Do not assume that the sugar-free coffee flavoring syrups are interchangeable with the liquid stevia extracts—they are far less concentrated.

Also, please take it to read that all sweetener quantities include the words “or to taste.” I mean, who’s in charge here, you or the food?

This is only mentioned in one recipe, but it’s a really good recipe.
Erythritol
is a sugar alcohol or polyol sweetener that is almost completely unabsorbed by the body, and therefore can be counted as zero carbs. Also, unlike some of the sugar alcohols, erythritol has very little gastric impact. It’s become one of my go-to ingredients. Look for it at health food stores or order online.

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Liquid sucralose
, however, is carb-free, and has therefore become very popular in the low-carb community. I like the
EZ Sweetz
brand.

These are the sort of syrups you find at coffee places. I know of three brands of sugar-free coffee flavoring syrups:
DaVinci Gourmet
,
Torani
, and
Monin O’Free
. I have tried them all, and found them all to be terrific, versatile ingredients. I keep vanilla, chocolate, caramel, and hazelnut sugar-free syrups on hand, and have tried many others. If you’re a coffee drinker, you may enjoy a
breakfast
feeding of a cup of coffee with ¼ cup heavy cream plus whatever syrup appeals to you that day.

One of the great tribulations of my professional life is the Sweetener Wars. No matter what sweetener I use in a recipe, someone will complain. Some feel artificial sweeteners are terribly dangerous, while others find stevia difficult to use or too expensive. Others demand to know why I’m not using xylitol (It’s toxic to dogs, and I have three), or why I use any sweeteners at all. Truly, I don’t care; my feelings will not be hurt if you substitute the sweetener of your choice in any of these recipes. Suit yourself. And if you prefer to use no sweeteners at all, there are plenty of non-sweet recipes in the book for you to enjoy.

These three odd sounding items,
Guar Gum
,
Xanthan Gum
, and
Glucomannan Powder
are thickeners made from finely milled soluble fibers. They add a velvety texture to soups, smoothies and sauces. Since these thickeners consist only of fiber, they can be discounted on a Fat Fast.

I consider these three pretty much interchangeable, and can get them all at my local health food stores. Keep an old salt shaker filled with one of these thickeners by the stove. When you want to thicken something, start whisking first, then sprinkle the thickener lightly over the surface. If you just dump in some thickener and
then
whisk, you’ll get lumps.

Use a light hand with these thickeners, and stop when your dish is not quite as thick as you want—they continue to thicken on standing.
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I would like to put in a word here in favor of salt. Not only does it make things taste better, but it is also an essential nutrient. Yes, an essential nutrient; a severe deficiency can and will kill. Hyponatremia—low blood sodium—is fairly common among low-carbohydrate dieters (this, from Drs. Phinney and Volek), because once chronically high insulin levels are lowered, the kidneys starts eliminating sodium properly; at the same time the low-carb dieter, having ditched most processed foods, will be getting considerably less dietary sodium.

Low sodium levels can make you feel weak, achy, dizzy (especially when you stand up) and headache-y. Not fun, as I happen to know.