Mediterranean Women Stay Slim, Too: Eating to Be Sexy, Fit, and Fabulous! (59 page)

4.
Stir in the stock and bay leaf, and cook until the tomatoes are tender and the sauce thickens slightly, about 10 more minutes.

Remove the bay leaf.

5.
Using an immersion blender, puree the sauce, or puree in small batches in a regular blender or food processor. Pass the sauce through a sieve. Serve over the pasta. Garnish with the pecorino cheese shavings.

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Fresh Corn Fritters

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√Fried food? Can you possibly eat fried food? Sure you can, if the ingredients are fresh, the food is fried quickly so that it doesn’t absorb much oil, and you eat only a little. Indulgences like these aren’t for every day, but one or two golden-brown corn fritters are okay once in a while. Serve these as a garnish to a big salad. They also pair beautifully with Yellow Velvet Soup (page 186).

1 cup fresh corn, cut from the cob

1 teaspoon chopped fresh marjoram

3 egg yolks, beaten

1⁄4 teaspoon salt

1⁄2 cup all-purpose flour

About 1 cup canola oil

1.
Put the corn in a large bowl and mash it with a potato masher or a fork.

2.
Add the egg yolks, flour, marjoram, and salt, and thoroughly combine.

3.
Fill a small skillet with deep sides with about 1 inch of the canola oil. Heat over medium-high. Carefully drop the batter in 1-tablespoon dollops into the hot oil. Cook for 2 minutes on each side. Drain the fritters on paper towels and serve immediately.

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Ricotta Cheesecake

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√A small, perfect slice of ricotta cheesecake is one of life’s great pleasures, and like other indulgences, certainly not for every day. But when life warrants a big celebration, try this recipe.

Expect rave reviews. The ricotta gives the cheesecake a unique texture, lighter and airier than what you can get with cream cheese. You need to make the crust at least a few hours before you make the rest of the cheesecake, so plan ahead if you are making this recipe for a big event. The nice part about this crust is that you are making crumbs out of it, so you don’t have to worry how it looks when you roll it out.

A note about the marsala in the filling: Marsala is an Italian fortified dessert wine. If you don’t have any, consider purchasing a bottle. It makes a nice
digestivo
or stand-in for dessert, and it is very Italian. Dry marsala is lighter and makes a good
aperitivo
. Both are good to use in cooking, too, adding a sweet, smoky depth to food.

FOR THE CRUST

FOR THE FILLING

12 tablespoons unsalted butter

1⁄2 cup golden raisins

3⁄4 cup sugar

1⁄4 cup sweet marsala

1 egg

1⁄2 cup pine nuts

1⁄4 teaspoon vanilla extract

4 cups whole-milk ricotta

11⁄2 cups all-purpose flour

3⁄4 cup heavy cream or milk

3⁄4 teaspoon baking soda

4 large eggs

1⁄4 teaspoon salt

9 tablespoons sugar

Pinch of cinnamon

1⁄2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1⁄4 teaspoon almond extract

5 tablespoons all-purpose flour

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FOR THE CRUST

1.
In a large mixing bowl, combine 8 tablespoons butter and the sugar. Cream them together until light and fluffy.

2.
Mix in the egg and vanilla extract, beating until smooth.

3.
Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt. Stir the dry mixture into the butter mixture until combined. Turn out the dough onto a sheet of plastic wrap and form it into a ball. Wrap it up and chill for 2 hours or overnight.

4.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Divide the chilled dough into two pieces. Roll each half out into a rectangle 1⁄8 inch thick.

5.
Place the rectangles on a baking sheet and bake 10–15 minutes, until golden. Cool slightly and crumble them both. Place the crumbs in a bowl.

6.
Melt the remaining 4 tablespoons butter and stir into the crumbs. Butter an 81⁄2-inch round springform pan and press the crumb mixture onto the bottom and up the sides of the pan to form an even crust.

FOR THE FILLING

1.
Preheat the oven to 350°F. Place the raisins in a bowl.

2.
Heat the marsala in a sauté pan over medium heat. When it is hot but not boiling, pour it over the raisins. Let stand for 20

minutes to plump.

3.
Meanwhile, spread the pine nuts onto a baking sheet and toast in the oven 2–3 minutes until golden but not dark. Set aside.

4.
Place the ricotta, heavy cream, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla extract, and almond extract in a bowl. Sift the flour over the top and whisk the ingredients together for 4 minutes, or until well combined.

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5.
Add the plumped raisins with the marsala and the toasted pine nuts and mix well. Spoon the batter into the prepared crust.

6.
Put the springform pan on a baking sheet and bake for 11⁄4 to 11⁄2 hours, or until the top is golden brown and has puffed.

7.
Cool on a rack for at least 20 minutes, then chill in the refrigerator for 1 hour. Run a spatula carefully around the sides and unmold. Enjoy one tiny, perfect slice!

Are you in touch with your inner food snob yet? I hope so! I really believe this is one of the easiest, most pleasurable, and quickest paths to weight loss. If it isn’t quality, if it isn’t absolutely irresistibly delicious, then why bother? It is important to snack often to keep your metabolism fueled, but shun that junk food and you’ll be shunning pollution. You don’t need to be

“fancy” or “gourmet” to be devoted to quality. A juicy apple, a handful of unsalted cashews, a small cube of beautiful French cheese, a little dish of bright red pepper strips, a spoonful of savory hummus . . . quality snacking that fuels your body the right way. Because you deserve only the best. You’re a goddess—like the Louvre’s
Winged Victory,
take flight with confidence, strength, and style. You’re fit to fly!

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S

12

What’s Good for Your Heart

Food may nourish the soul, but in many ways—both physically and emotionally—it also nourishes the heart. Your heart is your emotional center. Love may not literally flow from your heart, but humankind has decided to think of the heart that way for so many centuries that you may be tempted to think it’s true. Even if it doesn’t actually govern feeling, your heart does keep the lifeblood flowing through your body, making all the parts work, nourishing your muscles, feeding your brain, and flushing your cheeks when you really
feel
something. So perhaps the heart and the emotions are linked after all.

In the Mediterranean, heart disease rates have been among the lowest in the world. Unfortunately, this is starting to change as people eat a more Americanized diet. A diet of plant foods rich in olive oil with small amounts of red wine does wonders for the heart, but that isn’t the whole story. Eating heart-healthy food can help you stay healthier longer and avoid chronic diseases,

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but it can also feed your heart in other ways. Sharing good food with the people you love is a way to express your love for them.

Eating food produced locally helps you become connected in a meaningful way to your community. That sense of connection with others helps to lower your stress and make you feel better about your life, which is also very good for your heart.

I think that family closeness and coming together around the table does a lot to feed the heart and keep it healthy and strong.

Mediterranean families stay together, and several generations may live together long past the time when American families have split apart and gone their separate ways. This emotional closeness and physical proximity throughout the years really does feed the heart by giving every family member a sense of place, belonging, and emotional support.

In the Mediterranean, another heart-healthy aspect of life is that famous tendency to vent emotions. Recent studies show that holding in anger and repressing feelings may actually dam-age the heart—and what loud, boisterous Italian family would disagree? Mediterranean women express their feelings and move on. They don’t fret and stress about things without speaking up. They express themselves because they have a clear sense of who they are and what their role is. And they fall back into their loving relationships with the air perfectly cleared.

Educating the mind without educating the heart

is no education at all.

—Aristotle, Greek philosopher

A friend of mine recently mentioned how much she loved Italy because she felt like a woman there. I asked what she meant, and she explained that men and women in the United States seem more confused about their roles. “Women often feel they have to act like men, so they forget how to act like women.

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A lot of us earn the money, run our lives, and find ourselves in charge of other people, and suddenly we don’t know what it means to be a woman anymore.” My friend quickly explained that many women in Italy also earn money, run companies, and manage their own lives, but somehow they also seem to be very comfortable with themselves as women—and men respect them as women. “In Italy, men truly love and respect women for being women, and women have this beautiful sense of what it means to be a woman. They don’t try to take on both roles.

They can separate what they do from who they are.”

Understanding who you are as a woman and embracing

your feminine side doesn’t mean being subservient or staying home while your partner works (unless you can and want to) or even dressing or acting a certain way. It means just being yourself and feeling good. It means embracing who you are. It means finding balance in your relationships and with the world as a whole, feeling comfortable, feeling good in your own skin, and letting other people feel good in their roles, too.

In France, where love is practically a national pastime, the heart is nourished by romantic energy. How easily the French fall in love! But in Italy, Spain, and Greece, passion is just as intense, emotions just as free, love just as ubiquitous. There is something to be said for filling up on love instead of food. Engage your passions. Reach out and touch the object of your desire (within legal limits, of course!). Love and be loved, and overeating will be the last thing on your mind.

People in the Mediterranean spend a lot of time walking, working, and just existing outside in the fresh air and sunshine.

They build up the heart’s endurance with hard work and fill the blood with oxygen by deeply breathing the unpolluted sea air.

Do you see how this all fits together, putting food in its place as just one part of a pleasurable life? It is all about balance. A balanced life builds a healthy heart. We can learn a lot from this
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approach to life. If we nourish our heart with heart-healthy food, keep our heart in good shape with exercise, fill our heart with love, and give that love away easily and openly, we can share in the spirit of the Mediterranean culture. Mediterranean-inspired pleasures are good for the heart: an appreciation for beauty, art, nature, and close friendships. The world has much to offer the seeker of pleasure, and only one slice of it has to do with food. Of course, that one slice is important to people in the Mediterranean, to me, and I’m sure to you, too.

JESSIE’S JOY

Jessie came to the United States by boat from Sicily in 1914 with her mother, Vennera, and her four brothers and sisters; Jessie was just five years old. Reunited with her father, Jessie and the family settled in Balti-more. Like so many European immigrants, Jessie and her family learned to love this country and warmly embrace American values such as freedom and opportunity. “America is a great country that opens its arms to everyone. It did for me,” Jessie loved to say, and she meant every word.

But, like so many first-generation immigrant families, Jessie’s family brought with them the traditions and values of the “old country.” Jessie grew up in the best of both cultural traditions—old and new.

Well into her eighties, Jessie still insisted on shopping at the best markets and buying only the freshest meats and produce. In the days when American moms were heartily endorsing supermarket conveniences, Jessie stubbornly chose to be “old-fashioned”; she picked out her own meats and watched the butcher cut and prepare her selections—

trimming the fat and grinding hamburger from good steak. “Never buy hamburger already ground,” she’d advise. Jessie rarely cooked with canned or frozen vegetables—only fresh would do.

Jessie passed away in 2003 at age ninety-four. Her granddaughter, Lee Ann, takes heart from her example. Lee Ann spent many years as an edi-What’s Good for Your Heart

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tor in New York City; now she lives in the Pacific Northwest and is our book producer, creative director of Amaranth. Lee Ann remembers trips to the markets with Jessie. She decided early on to take advantage of New York’s wonderful ethnic markets and specialty grocers. Lee Ann loved talking to Jessie about Zabar’s and the Union Square farmers’ market and the perfect cannoli from Little Italy. Now Lee Ann enjoys perfect peaches and figs from the Port Townsend farmers’ market. Thanks to Jessie’s wisdom, she understands the importance of good food that is grown, purchased, and prepared with love. (And she highly recommends that you try the Copper River salmon recipe later in this chapter; Copper River salmon is a Pacific Northwest regional treasure.) Jessie always told Lee Ann, “The heart knows how to love; trust it and you’ll have more than gold.” I couldn’t say it better myself!