Eat Fat, Lose Fat (35 page)

In another large bowl, beat egg yolks with vanilla until pale in color, about 3 minutes. Gradually add ¼ cup sweetener and beat until yolks are pale and a thick ribbon falls from the beaters, 6 to 7 minutes.

With a rubber spatula, fold about
¹
/
₃
of whites into yolks. Sprinkle about ¼ cup of dry ingredients on the yolk batter and fold in gently. Continue to alternately fold in egg whites and dry ingredients. Finally, quickly fold in the coconut.

Turn batter into prepared pan, gently smooth top, and place in oven. Bake 30 minutes, or until cake pulls away from sides of pan and middle springs back if gently pressed. Let cool on a rack about 10 minutes. Release sides and wait another 10 minutes before removing cake. Place on a serving plate and chill well. Ice with whipped cream and gently press freeze-dried coconut into top and sides of cake.

Mix together flour, yogurt, and cultured cream in a large bowl. Cover and leave in a warm place for 12 to 24 hours. Preheat oven to 300°F. Butter a 9 by 13-inch Pyrex pan, coat it with unbleached flour, then line it with buttered parchment paper and coat the paper with unbleached flour. Cream butter with sweetener. Beat in eggs, baking soda, cinnamon, vanilla, and salt. Gradually add flour mixture. Fold in pineapple (with juice), carrots, coconut, and nuts. Pour into pan and bake for about 2 hours or until a toothpick comes out clean. Let cool slightly and turn onto a platter or tray.

To make icing, place cream cheese, butter, vanilla, and honey in a food processor and blend until smooth. Generously ice top and sides of cake. Decorate with flowers.

Beverages and Tonics

Our Coconut Milk Tonic contains the same amount of calories and calcium as milk. It’s an excellent substitute if you can’t obtain raw milk or are allergic to milk.

Mix all ingredients together in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat, and heat until warm and dolomite is dissolved.

Quick and Easy Weight Loss version:
Use a pinch of stevia powder instead of maple syrup (189 calories per cup).

Place all ingredients in a blender and process until ice is broken up.

Place all ingredients in a blender and process until frothy.

Place all ingredients in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat and warm, stirring with a whisk, until ingredients are blended.

Place all ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend until frothy.

This easy beverage from colonial times is surprisingly good. The vinegar taste disappears after two days at room temperature, leaving complex sweet-and-sour fruit flavors. Our thanks to Liz Pitfield for her adaptation using coconut vinegar.

Mix all ingredients together in a glass container. Cover tightly and leave at room temperature for 2 days. Strain and store in the refrigerator. To serve, mix ½ cup shrub with 1 to 2 cups sparkling water and add a pinch of sea salt.

Coconut juice is widely valued for its medicinal properties and is considered especially beneficial for the kidneys and for digestion. When fermented with kefir powder or grains (see Resources), it makes a tart, bubbly drink loaded with minerals, enzymes, and beneficial bacteria.

If using green coconuts, pierce coconuts with an ice pick, screwdriver, or electric drill and allow juice to drain through a non-metallic strainer into a glass bowl. Place coconut juice in a glass container and stir in kefir powder or grains. Seal the top of the container. Leave at room temperature for 48 hours.

Store the coconut kefir in the original glass container in the refrigerator, or, for extra bubbly results, transfer to glass beer or soda bottles capped with wire-held cap (see Resources).

Note: Do not store kefir in decorative vinegar bottles that have wire-held stoppers; these have a tendency to explode and can be quite dangerous!

You can reuse the grains immediately to make more coconut kefir, or store them in the refrigerator in a small glass jar with ½ to 1 cup coconut kefir or water plus 1 tablespoon Sucanat or Rapadura. The grains double in size every time you use them, so you can give them to your friends.

If you have used the powder, reserve about ½ cup of the finished kefir and use it instead of powder to inoculate the next batch of coconut kefir. The reserved coconut kefir will work for 5 to 6 batches before you need to use powder again.

In this chapter, you’ll learn how to make a variety of traditional foods, as well as basics like stocks and lacto-fermented condiments, that you can incorporate into a wide range of nourishing and satisfying recipes.

Note: Many of our recipes call for
Mary’s Oil Blend
. It’s a good idea to make a large batch, so you’ll have it on hand whenever you need it.

Stocks

Given our hectic modern lifestyle, it may seem that preparing stocks from scratch is just too much trouble. Remember, though, that stocks are key, not only to good health, but to delicious food. Bone broths or stocks are the basis of wonderful sauces, soups, and gravies. They also provide minerals—especially calcium—in an easily absorbable form, as well as digestion-enhancing gelatin.

The easiest stock to make is chicken stock. You can make it from raw whole chicken or raw chicken parts, or you can use the bones left over from a chicken meal. Either way, you’re making use of the whole animal. If you’ve never made stock before, one try should convince you that it’s really not very difficult, and the health and culinary benefits will be very gratifying!

If making stock just doesn’t fit into your busy schedule—especially beef stock, which is more complicated—you can buy good-quality frozen stock in certain specialty stores and through the Internet (see Resources). Be aware, though, that this is an expensive alternative. If you’re on Health Recovery, which calls for stock with almost every meal to provide minerals and help heal the digestive system, you will find it much more economical to make your own.
Quick Chicken Stock
is a less than ideal alternative to regular homemade or frozen stock, but
Quick Fish Stock
is an excellent easy, traditional stock that is nutritionally equivalent to the more classic
Fish Stock
recipe.

Conveniently, stock can be made in bulk and stored until needed. Clear stock will keep about five days in the refrigerator, longer if reboiled, and several months in the freezer. You may find it useful to store stock in pint-or quart-sized plastic containers in order to have appropriate amounts on hand for sauces and stews. (Be sure to let it cool completely before transferring it to plastic containers.)

If space is at a premium in your freezer, you can reduce the stock by boiling it down for several hours until it becomes very concentrated and syrupy. This reduced, concentrated stock—called
fumet
or
demi-glace
—can be stored in small containers or ziplock bags. Frozen
fumet
in bags is easily thawed by putting the bags under warm running water. Add water to thawed
fumet
to turn it back into stock. Be sure to mark which kind of stock you are storing with stick-on labels—they all look alike when frozen.

Calorie count: Stock provides about 15 calories per cup (30 calories per cup if reduced by half).

Making stock is the best way to use the bony parts of a chicken, or the bones left over from a chicken meal. If you want a lot of leftover meat, to make chicken salad, for example, start with a whole chicken. Whenever possible, use pasture-fed and/or organic chicken. If you buy chicken directly from a farmer, be sure to ask for the head and feet and use these in the stock—they contain a lot of gelatin. (In France, when you buy a chicken from a butcher, the head and feet are always included, precisely for stock making.)

Preheat oven to 400°F. Place chicken parts in a large stainless-steel pan and brown for about
₁
/
₂
hour. (Omit this step if you are making stock with a whole chicken.) Place chicken in a stockpot and add remaining ingredients. Leave 1 hour. Place on the stove and heat over medium heat. When stock starts to simmer, reduce heat to lowest setting. Stock should gently simmer, not boil. Simmer for at least 2 hours, or as long as 24 hours. Remove chicken pieces and strain stock. Remove any additional meat from backs, neck, and wings and use in soups and salads. (If you are using a whole chicken, separate the meat from the bones and the skin after it cooks. The bones may be used to make stock a second time.)

Chill strained stock and remove any fat that congeals at the top. (There is nothing wrong with this fat, but the best clear sauces are made with chicken stock from which the fat has been removed.)

Place stock and dolomite in a medium saucepan over medium heat, and heat until dolomite is dissolved.

Beef stock is more difficult to make than chicken stock—but not that difficult. And it’s the first step in producing delicious pot roasts and meat sauces. Whenever possible, use grass-fed and/or organic meat and bones.

Preheat oven to 400°F. Place marrow and knuckle bones and calf’s foot, if using, in a very large pot. Add vinegar and cover with water. Let stand for 1 hour. Meanwhile, place meaty bones in a roasting pan, place in oven, and bake until well browned, about 1 hour. Add meaty bones to pot, then add vegetables. Pour fat out of roasting pan, add cold water to pan, set over high heat, and bring to a boil, stirring with a wooden spoon to loosen coagulated juices. Add this liquid to pot. Add additional water, if necessary, to cover the bones, but liquid should come no higher than within 1 inch of rim of pot, since volume expands slightly during cooking. Bring to a boil. A large amount of scum will come to the top, and it is important to remove this with a spoon. After you have skimmed, reduce heat and add thyme and crushed peppercorns. Simmer stock for at least 12 hours and as long as 72 hours.

Remove bones with tongs or a slotted spoon. Remove any meat and use in soups and salads. Strain stock into a large bowl. Let cool in the refrigerator and remove congealed fat that rises to the top. Transfer to smaller containers and to the freezer for long-term storage.

“Fish broth will cure anything” is a South American proverb. Fish broth is the basic ingredient for nourishing fish soups, sauces, and stews. Use only heads and carcasses of non-oily fish, since oily fish may become rancid, with off-flavors.

Melt butter in a large stainless-steel pot over low heat. Add onions and carrot and cook, about ½ hour, until soft. Add wine, raise heat to high, and bring to a boil. Add fish carcasses and cover with cold filtered water. Add vinegar. Bring to a boil and skim off scum and impurities as they rise to the top. Tie herbs together and add to pot. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for at least 2 hours or as long as 24 hours. Remove carcasses with tongs or a slotted spoon and strain liquid into pintsized storage containers for refrigerator or freezer. Chill well in refrigerator and remove any congealed fat before transferring to the freezer for long-term storage.

This is an easy version of fish stock from Japan.

Place all ingredients in a large stainless-steel pot, bring to a boil, and skim. Lower heat, cover, and simmer for 2 to 3 hours. Let stock cool and strain into storage containers.

Lacto-Fermented Condiments

We’ve described the magic of lacto-fermented foods in Chapter 5. These foods involve a partnership between the cook and the microscopic world. They’re not just easy but fun to make. And if you’ve never made lacto-fermented condiments before, you’ll be amazed at how well the foods are preserved and how wonderful they taste. Lacto-fermented vegetables, such as sauerkraut, will keep up to a year in the refrigerator, and lacto-fermented fruit, such as chutneys, will keep at least two months.

Lacto-fermentation requires two basic pieces of equipment and two basic ingredients. For equipment, you will need quart-sized, widemouthed mason jars, available at any hardware store, along with some kind of pusher or pounder, such as a small meat mallot that you would use to tenderize meat.

The two ingredients are good-quality unrefined sea salt and homemade whey. The whey acts as an inoculant, a source of lactic acid–producing bacteria, and the salt preserves the foods until enough lactic acid is produced to take over that role.
Do not use powdered whey
—bacteria are killed by the powdering and drying process. Fresh whey is easy to make (see following recipe) and lasts a long time in the refrigerator. (For recipes that don’t contain fruit, you can omit whey and double the amount of salt.)

Whenever possible, we suggest you eat fruits and vegetables that have been grown organically; but for lacto-fermentation, organic fruits and vegetables are a must. Pesticides can inhibit the fermentation process, and if the food is of poor quality, the lactic acid–producing bacteria cannot proliferate. The better the quality of the food you are fermenting, the better your results will be.

If you feel you don’t have time to lacto-ferment foods, we’re happy to report that commercial lacto-fermented condiments are now becoming available, especially the more common ones like sauerkraut and pickles. Authentic, nonpasteurized kimchi (Korean sauerkraut) can be purchased at Asian markets (but look for a brand that does not contain MSG). See Resources for sources of these products.

Note: To separate and sour raw milk, place in a glass container, cover, and leave at room temperature for several days—it may take up to 5 days—until the milk has clearly separated into curds and whey.

Line a colander or large strainer with a kitchen towel and set it over a bowl. Place yogurt, kefir, or separated raw milk in the towel-lined colander or strainer, cover with a towel or plate, and leave overnight. The whey will drip into the bowl. The next day, tie up the ends of the towel with string and suspend it by tying it to a spoon set across a deep container. Transfer the whey that has already accumulated in the bowl to a jar and refrigerate. Additional whey will drip out of the towel over the next day or two—add this to the jar. Remove the cream cheese from the towel and store in the refrigerator. The whey will keep for many months, and the cream cheese will keep for about 2 weeks.

Note: If you don’t use whey, use 2 tablespoons sea salt.

In a large bowl, mix cabbage with caraway seeds, salt, and whey. Pound with a wooden pounder or meat hammer for about 10 minutes to release juices. Let sit for 30 minutes or so to allow cabbage to wilt. Pound again for a few minutes and stuff into a quart-sized, widemouthed mason jar, pressing down firmly with a pounder or meat hammer until juices cover top of the cabbage. The top of the cabbage should be at least 1 inch below the top of the jar, since it will expand somewhat during fermentation. Cover tightly and keep at room temperature for about 3 days before transferring to the refrigerator. The sauerkraut should bubble when you first open the jar. It may be eaten immediately, but it improves with age.