Cheese

The carriage in the title refers to the bread that the mozzarella rides in. Like the preceding recipe, this dish was originally made with white bread. Whole-wheat bread adds texture and complexity. You can see in the directions below that everything is laid out before the oil is heated. Once the oil comes to temperature, you should be ready to start frying right away.

Serve these nice and hot, or let them cool to room temperature. If you’d like to make this a little more contemporary, you can add a dash of balsamic vinegar to the red peppers and scallions as they cook. In true Italian-American style, these are topped with butter, but in Italy, we would use olive oil. Best yet, top them with butter, then “bless” them all with a little olive oil. This wonderful stuffing is delicious in celery stalks baked with a light tomato sauce. You can also line up blanched asparagus on a baking sheet, sprinkle the bread crumbs over them, and bake them until the crumbs are crispy. I’m sure you can come up with a lot of uses for the bread crumbs. Remember, I give you the basics, but I want you to go and play.

If the vegetables you are preparing can cook in 10 minutes or so—thin asparagus or thinly sliced zucchini, for example—there is no need to precook them. Boil vegetables that take longer—sliced carrots or parsnips—in salted water until al dente, then proceed.

Tiramisù is a high-calorie dessert if there ever was one. I started the makeover process thinking the lighter version should include from-scratch sugar-free ladyfingers—homemade génoise piped in perfect finger shapes and baked. Then I got my head screwed on straight and realized that no one would make this dessert if it meant making your own génoise. The fat-laden original was transformed into something even an Italian grandma would love.

Typical pesto can be more than 50 percent pure fat, and even though a little goes a long way, that’s just too many calories. This is a re-invention of the classic pesto alla genovese. The garlic, pine nuts, basil, and Parmigiano-Reggiano are all still there, but low-fat sour cream stands in for the olive oil. It may not be 100 percent authentic, but you’ll love what it does for your dress size.

Toss this creamy sauce with hot cooked pasta, or drizzle it over steamed broccoli or roasted Brussels sprouts.

Believe it or not, it wasn’t so long ago that most people thought blue cheese was a bit exotic—a stinky, strange cheese with (heaven forbid!) mold in its veins. But blue has gained traction because its rich, creamy texture and tangy taste are fabulous—whether eaten out of hand, crumbled over a salad, or stirred into a dressing. But this is no lean cheese, my friends. Thankfully, a little goes a long way, and there are great-tasting low-fat blue cheeses available in most major supermarkets today.

This is a healthy version of one of the greatest inventions of the 1980s: the hollowed-out deep-fried potato skins filled with sour cream, bacon, and cheese that first appeared on the menu at T.G.I. Friday’s in New York City. There are a few differences, though. Here, the potato skin is baked until crisp, not fried, and the fillings are all reduced-fat products. The result is a pretty spectacular loaded potato skin at one-third of the calories and less than one-fourth of the fat of the original.

This was a tough one. Everyone loves cheesy garlic bread, but between the white bread, the butter, and the cheese, it’s a tough sell to the health-conscious. The task was to figure out how to get whole-wheat bread to respond like white bread. Toasting the bread first, then dipping it in chicken broth before topping it with a generous amount of low-fat cheese, and finally broiling it did the trick.

Though they are both outrageously rich pasta sauces, carbonara and Alfredo are distinctly different. The base for Alfredo is cream and Parmigiano-Reggiano. The base for carbonara includes onions, bacon or pancetta (originally it was guanciale—cured pigs’ cheeks), egg yolks, and Parmigiano-Reggiano or Pecorino Romano. At almost 1,000 calories per serving, this dish was ripe for a makeover.

Of all the dishes that were suggested for this book, mac ’n’ cheese came up most often. Everyone loves it—and everyone knows how nutritionally bad it can be. Calories start at 600 per serving and go into the thousands. It’s a dish that has become so rich that taming its fatty side proved to be quite a challenge. The base of the sauce in this version isn’t cream, but a puree of cooked onions and garlic. It gives the dish lots of flavor with not so much as a gram of fat. The very hot oven makes the breadcrumbs on top get nice and crunchy. It’s the combination of crisp and gooey textures that makes this a winning dish.

These little lasagnas, made with fat-free ricotta and reduced-fat mozzarella, are cheesy and satisfying and totally big on flavor. Make sure the dishes (8-inch, preferably) you use are broilerproof—they go under the flame to make the cheese brown and bubbling right before serving.

This is for the pasta shunners out there who still find themselves pining for a big, gooey serving of lasagna. Nothing can really replace the toothsome texture of fresh pasta, but given the amount of “bad” carbs a serving of pasta contains, it’s understandable that some choose to avoid it altogether. Thin slices of zucchini and eggplant stand in for the pasta in this lasagna, made with fat-free ricotta and low-fat marinara sauce. It all adds up to a truly delish alternative to traditional high-calorie lasagna.

Gnocchi are small dumplings made with cooked potatoes and just enough flour to hold them together. I swapped the traditional white potatoes for far-more-healthful sweet potatoes and paired the gnocchi with broccoli. The color combo is fabulous and so is the flavor, thanks to a sprinkling of Parmigiano-Reggiano. And while many gnocchi recipes include a cream- or butter-based sauce for tossing, these are served in a garlicky broth stirred together with a bit of Greek yogurt instead. They take a little while to make, but given the great taste and the powerhouse nutritional value of sweet potatoes—and just under 350 calories per serving—they’re more than worth the trouble.

I once ate true Fettuccine Alfredo at Ristorante D’Alfredo in Rome, where a giant picture of its namesake owner hangs on the wall. The big flavors of the dish were brought to bear by combining outsized amounts of butter and Parmigiano-Reggiano. It was that simple: butter and cheese. Not so simple, though, if you’re watching your waistline. This version eliminates the cream that many American versions call for but retains a little bit of the butter for flavor. The velvety-smooth texture is re-created with yogurt and thickened chicken broth. It may not be as authentic as the original, invented by Alfredo di Lelio, but it’s a very tasty version we can all live with (for a very long time).

This recipe calls for lean boneless pork loin, and to avoid added sugar, we use fresh apples instead of applesauce. Tart Granny Smiths contribute great texture and flavor—as does a grainy Dijon mustard.

Who would have thought those thin little crepes filled with ricotta and baked in red sauce and cheese could be so diabolically caloric? The fat in the ricotta, the fat in the mozzarella, the fat in the Parmigiano-Reggiano, and even the fat in the olive oil—it adds up quickly. A typical serving has about 46 grams of fat and more than 900 calories. With a few clever swaps, I got it down to just over 8 grams and 200 calories. A few meals like this, and you’ll be into your little black dress in no time.

Classic Salisbury steak is a patty made of ground beef and seasonings that is fried in butter or oil and smothered in a brown sauce. Although it was once considered health food by its inventor—a 19th-century English-American physician named James Salisbury—it’s really not. This grilled version, made with ground turkey breast and fresh vegetables and smothered in a low-fat cheese sauce, makes the grade.

There is much debate over whether chili should have beans in it. Some folks think beans make chili cheap—in the same way, they say, that breadcrumbs do to meatloaf. Actually, in both cases, those interloping ingredients contribute substantially to the dish. Breadcrumbs make meatloaf tender, while beans add texture and additional meatiness to chili—and lots of fiber and antioxidants, too.

In this country, dishes of Mexican origin have a reputation for being fat-laden and bad for you. At the same time, we can’t seem to get enough of them! The funny thing is that in Mexico, the traditional food is generally fresh, healthy, and wholesome—lots of grilled fish and meats, intensely flavored (and cream-free) sauces, fresh vegetables and fruits, and herbs. The problem is the blanket of full-fat cheese and sour cream under which most Mexican-American dishes are served. The Mexican flavors we love come from healthy foods like bright-tasting tomatillos and cilantro, so I banked on them in this new version of enchiladas.