500 Practically Fat-Free One-Pot Recipes

Here is a cookbook founded upon two noble human ambitions: eating without becoming noticeably wider, and cooking without turning the kitchen into an archaeological site composed entirely of dirty saucepans. Sarah Schlesinger promises 500 meals that are practically fat-free and require only one pot, leaving the reader with very little to blame if dinner still arrives in a cardboard box carried by a man on a moped.

The word “practically” is doing some careful legal work in the title. These recipes are not absolutely, metaphysically or spiritually free of fat, but each conforms to the FDA’s low-fat guideline of three grams or less per serving. This is sufficiently close to fat-free for everyone except laboratory technicians, fanatical nutritionists and anyone intending to eat all six servings directly from the pot.

Schlesinger applies her low-fat principles to soups, stews, poultry, fish, shellfish, grains, beans, pasta and vegetables. Familiar comforts such as Chicken Cacciatore and Three-Bean Chilli appear beside more adventurous combinations involving ginger, garam masala, yoghurt, pumpkin, okra, seafood and other ingredients that briefly persuaded the late 1990s that healthy eating might not necessarily involve staring resentfully at a rice cake.

The central philosophy is gloriously straightforward: put the ingredients into one receptacle and allow heat, seasoning and optimism to negotiate the result. Oil is frequently replaced by stock, richness is supplied by reduced cooking liquids and fat-free dairy products, and herbs and spices are encouraged to perform the work formerly undertaken by butter. Butter, meanwhile, has presumably been escorted from the premises and warned not to return.

There are substantial stews, soups and casseroles, along with lighter dishes for people who regard the phrase “substantial stew” as a threat. Lobster, clam and shrimp stew sits alongside curried potatoes with cauliflower and peas; flounder encounters tomato and orange; chicken tenderloins are sent into an extraordinary number of situations. Vegetarians are well provided for, although committed carnivores may occasionally gaze into the pot and wonder whether a sausage could be introduced without the FDA finding out.

Five hundred recipes is a serious quantity. Even cooking one every evening, it would take nearly a year and a half to exhaust the possibilities, by which point the pot itself would deserve a pension. There is inevitable variation on the one-pot theme, but that is rather the point: the book provides enough ideas to prevent the conscientious low-fat cook from preparing the same mournful vegetable broth every Tuesday until civilisation ends.

The format is practical too, with comb binding that allows the book to lie open on the worktop instead of snapping shut at the crucial moment and concealing how much cumin was required. It is a sensible piece of kitchen engineering, although the cover’s enormous red lettering makes “FAT-FREE” look less like nutritional guidance and more like an emergency announcement from the Department of Cholesterol.

Published in 1998, this comes from the heroic age of low-fat cookery, when fat had been identified as the principal villain in the human diet and carbohydrates were still permitted to walk the streets unchallenged. Nutritional fashions may march endlessly backwards and forwards, but easy meals, fewer dirty pans and 500 possible answers to “What are we having?” remain stubbornly useful.

This copy is in Very Good condition, with light signs of previous handling but no indication that it has spent twenty-eight years propped beside a violently bubbling tomato stew. The binding remains functional, the pages are ready for service and any particularly successful recipe stains will have to be supplied by the next owner.

An excellent book for health-conscious cooks, reluctant washers-up, one-pot devotees, owners of very small kitchens and anyone who has ever used six saucepans to make dinner and then decided never to eat again.

From Crappy Old Books—where the book is practically immaculate, the recipes are practically fat-free and the business model is practically under control.

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