Snack

Editor's note: The recipe and introductory text below are excerpted from Charlie Trotter and Roxanne Klein's book, Raw.

If you have a nice sharp chef's knife, this is a breeze. (Or if you don't, you should buy a sharpening stone, and you'll never have blunt knives again.) The idea for this recipe came about when we were catering a HUGE job on a TINY budget. They wanted tuna tartare, but I knew it would be expensive, and it's best eaten soon after it's made or it starts to get all gummy. Gravlax, on the other hand, needs at least a couple of days to cure, so I decided to use diced salmon instead of tuna, for economy, and to marinate it with our gravlax spice mix a day before the event, freeing up the chefs for other last-minute things. In my test run, I added orange zest, thinking, isn't orange good with salmon? Normally you would put something like this on a cucumber slice and that would be fine, but the juniper in the marinade suggested potato, so we served it on a slice of crisp potato, and it was ravishing in the extreme. The potatoes can be made ahead of time too, as long as they're cooked until they're completely crisp and stored in an airtight container until you need them. Any potato not cooked all the way through will soften the others; if that happens, pop them all in a 350°F oven for five minutes, or until they've crisped up again. The salmon can be sticky, so use two teaspoons to put it on the potato. I could never remember of which there was more in the gravlax cure, sugar or salt (since in the basic gravlax recipe one is three tablespoons and one is four). So after years of irritably looking up such a short recipe, I decided to THINK for a second and realized salt has four letters so salt is the four tablespoons. Welcome to my world.

This fruit butter makes a quick dessert. It's also a great snack on bread or toast. We use it in a low-fat recipe for a moist and chunky apple butter spice cake. We have found preserving in half-pint (250 mL) jars convenient, since that recipe calls for that amount of apple butter. But if you use larger jars, you'll have lots left for other uses.

Crumbly and melting, easy and irresistible, at the catering company, we keep the dough for this shortbread on hand in the freezer for in-house treats and for extra hors d'oeuvres or snacks for a party that balloons at the last minute. I first tasted this shortbread when my friend Gail Monaghan passed it around in a silver basket before a dinner party at her house. I took one bite and said, "OK, where's the pen? Hand over the recipe (there was a "please" implied): this is amazing and I need to put this in my book." She very angelically wrote it out nicely, and here it is.

I purposefully made this beef marinade super powerful. With this hors d'oeuvre, you only end up with a little mouthful and the peppery flavor needs to come through loud and clear. In the catering company, we shave the beef into small pieces which are then piled onto the crostini, so you can easily bite through without too much effort.

Our all-time favourite snack — salty, spicy, dried meat — also makes a great garnish for salads, soups and vegetables when finely shaved with a sharp knife. Creative cooks even blend it into pâté to spread on toast. Drying meat and fish was a necessary method of preservation prior to refrigeration. The concept isn't the sole preserve of Afrikaners, though. An earlier delicacy — tassal meat — was similarly prepared: strips of meat were rubbed with salt and coriander, laid in vinegar for a time, then panfried. In rural communities, black tribes would cut up and dry the flesh of animals that died accidentally or of natural causes (cattle were seldom slaughtered for food). The Swazi people call it umcweba or umcwayiba. Coriander seeds, formerly brought from Asia, are an essential ingredient in the preparation of good biltong. The name is Greek for bedbugs — nasty goggas that the seeds resemble!

For Kill Bill, Uma Thurman had 10 weeks to lose 50 post-baby pounds. "I was being trained from every angle. Nine to five, five days a week. Every part of me hurt," she says. Easier to take: no-deprivation diet changes that Jackie Keller, founder of L.A. food-delivery service NutriFit, masterminded. Her dried-fruit nougats satisfied Thurman's chocolate yen.

She may be a world-class diver, but Kimiko Hirai Soldati, 30, has the same diet goal as the rest of us: She wants to look good in a swimsuit. She eats 40 percent protein, 40 percent carbs and the rest fat, spread out over five small meals a day. Eating frequently "keeps you satisfied, so you're not starving and overeating," Soldati says. She freezes peeled fruit so she can always whip up a drink.

Sunday snack. From Sanctuary on Camelback Mountain in Paradise Valley, Arizona. A (barely detectable!) hit of flaxseed oil transforms this smoothie into a treat for your digestive system. (Flaxseed aids regularity.) The oil is rich in healthful omega-3 fatty acids.

Another breakfast option: Whip up a smoothie with other fruits.

Tip: If you brown the butter, you can use half as much.

These cookies have a low-fat secret. They're full of beans! Idaho State University researchers in Pocatello replaced 75 percent of the butter with beans to create cookies with 105 calories and 3 fat grams (compared with 150 calories and 7 fat grams).

If you spend evenings camped out on your sofa staring at the boob tube, take note: People who spend four hours or more in front of the TV are twice as likely to be overweight as those who watch less than an hour a day, a new study from Australia reports. Study participants' body-mass index (which measures how much of your weight is fat) increased for every hour of TV time. If you watch two hours a day, you're 57 percent more likely to be overweight than those who keep tube time to an hour or less; if you watch three or more hours, you're 91 percent more likely to be overweight. What's worse, past studies show that this pastime triggers the munchies for high-fat snacks, though researchers aren't sure why. If you must gaze at the box, channel your snack urges toward something healthful, like this creamy, low-fat dip.

La Merenda di Victor When my husband was a schoolboy in Bologna, his favorite afternoon merenda was a crusty slice of grilled bread that his grandmother would top with Parmesan cheese and olive oil. It doesn't need a recipe, just a description.

Lori Hartman of New York City, writes: "I'm looking for a good madeleine recipe similar to the delicious ones (lemony, buttery, and spongy, but crispy on the edges) I used to buy at Bouley Bakery in Manhattan's TriBeCa neighborhood. Can you get the recipe?" The crisp edge on these delightful citrus-scented cookies sets them apart from any other classic madeleines our food editors have tasted. We're never going back.

These buttery fruit-and-nut bars taste like rugelach but are much easier to make.

If you are looking for a cookie that's lower in calories than your favorite chocolate chip recipe, whip up a batch of these palate-pleasing bites from pastry chef Heather Norkin. They're easy to make, and almost all of the fat is the heart-friendly unsaturated kind, from the pecans.

These delicate little almond cookies are perfect for entertaining; the contrast between the crisp cookie and gooey-sweet jam will keep guests coming back for more. And it takes less than 30 minutes of hands-on cooking time to whip up a batch.