Full Flavor, No Apologies

By Warren Rojas

Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes

According to award-winning food scribe Jennifer McLagan, annual butter consumption in North America has dropped 13-and-a-half pounds per capita over the last 100 years—and she’s none too happy about it.

“To share and pass on the knowledge of food means being active participants … It requires understanding where our food comes from, respecting the animals we kill, and being able to cook them—all of them, including the fat,” she argues in “Fat,” her ode to nature’s most mouthwatering of lubricants.

McLagan makes her case for pleasurable yet salutary dining throughout, attacking what she perceives as an unhealthy obsession with preternatural thinness (“Few of us are designed to be fashion models”) and the widening sociological disconnect between why we eat what we eat (“I am not talking about being up with the latest food trends, but the ability to cook a simple meal from scratch”).

No mere fanatic, McLagan argues for becoming reacquainted with animal extracts above our manmade substitutes (margarine, hydrogenated vegetable oils) through scientific and anecdotal evidence alike. She plots the burning points, saturated/monounsaturated/polyunsaturated fat content and nutritional value of each flavor enhancer chronicled, and the book is peppered with etymological snippets of butter speak through the ages.

Noteworthy recipes include: larded-up Portuguese peas, pumpkin-bacon soup, duck-fat biscuits with cracklings, miso-orange roast pork belly and rhubarb King cake.

“Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes.” Jennifer McLagan. Ten Speed Press, 240 pgs., $32.50

(December 2008)

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