What We’re Eating: Fat

A media-mail package arrived one morning, and when I pulled the book from the envelope, I gasped. It said, “fat.” In this day of calorie-counting, health-seeking yoga aficionados, why would anyone write a cookbook promoting fat? Then I looked at the author photo of this James Beard Award-winning writer, Jennifer McLagan — she’s anything but fat. So she and the book had my attention.

In Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes, McLagan addresses fat in four chapters: butter, pork fat, poultry fat, and beef and lamb fats. She writes, “Fat makes everything we eat taste better, and eating fat is satisfying, so we eat less and our desire to snack is reduced.” I get it, but it seems the mantra of our overweight society is, “It tastes better, and I want to eat more.” Conclusion: Maybe an education in fat is just what’s needed, and this book lays out the (very) good, the bad, and the ugly.

If you aren’t interested in a full education, just remember that fat has an important role in the kitchen and adds flavor. I chose three recipes, each of which uses a different fat: Cornish Pasties (beef dripping), Fat Fat-Cooked Fries (duck fat), and Salted Butter Tart (butter). All are utterly fantastic. In the end we’re reminded of three words that should rule our lives (well, 90% of the time): everything in moderation.