Fear of fat

Animal products are a crucial part of our diet. So why are we so scared of them? Lissa Christopher reports.

Jennifer McLagan, an Australian-born chef and food stylist in Toronto, is establishing herself as something of a culinary contrarian.

We might live in olive oil-drenched, lite- obsessed times but after writing a book on the virtues of cooking with bones, she has turned her attention to fat.

"I think we have all been so brainwashed [into fearing fat]," McLagan says. "We've been using it for 6000 years and then just suddenly in the last 30 it becomes a killer.

"I don't want the book to turn people into extreme fat-lovers nor have them eating loads of it every day but I hope it makes them think about fat again, about the flavour it delivers and how perfect animal fats are for cooking because they are so stable."

In 2005, she published Cooking On The Bone. In 2007, Fat: An Appreciation Of A Misunderstood Ingredient, With Recipes went on sale. She is considering a future volume on neglected animal cuts - cheeks, tripe and brisket among them.

Fortunately, McLagan is also persuasive. Her prose in Fat - on making pasties with suet, and hot chips with lard, on caramelised foie gras and the myriad joys of bacon, for example - is vivid and tantalising. Fat-phobes may find themselves struggling to maintain a grip on their convictions.

Fat dips into the alleged health risks of animal fats and points out that many, such as largely monounsaturated duck fat, for example, aren't as treacherous as their reputations.

McLagan has found intriguing tidbits about the ways animal fats have been used throughout history, fat-focused quotes from sources ranging from A A Gill to the Bible and has devised recipes ranging from roast chicken to bacon baklava.

Cooking On The Bone sold fairly well and won a prestigious Beard award, yet Fat was not an easy project to bring to market.

"[Publishers] were scared of the concept," McLagan says. "They didn't get it. Some said things like 'How awful' and 'That's such a contrarian idea'."

McLagan holds strong views about the kitchen and the table. She wants to raise the value of home cooking and hopes her books will help preserve traditional cooking skills.

"[Younger people] know the latest exotic vegetable, the hottest new chef, which restaurant to go to," she says, "but not how to roast a chicken.

But that's far more important and it's not hard. Everybody should know how to cook their dinner. If you don't eat you die and if you outsource all your food to someone else you don't know what you're eating. You can't even wash your own lettuce any more. It's pre- washed and in a packet. Give me a break."

McLagan's approach to cooking and eating could be described as a bit French, a bit nostalgic for the good old days of our grandparents, a bit slow (as in the slow-food movement) and all underlined by an admirable fearlessness about viscera.

"I think we've just got very lazy about food and eating. If it's too much trouble we don't want to know," she says.

"I grew up eating tripe and onions in white sauce and I wanted to die every time my mother served it. It was the worst, most horrible . . . [she can't finish the sentence]. But then I tried it again in France, cooked with carrots and tomato, and it was delicious."

So many animals are slaughtered for our dining pleasure, she adds, yet so much goes to waste. McLagan has as much respect for France's modest serving sizes as she does for its nose- to-tail approach to meat and its passion for pastry and butter.

Which brings us to one final point. Between the brown butter icecream and the salted butter tart, does McLagan struggle with her weight? And how's her cholesterol?

"I have no idea what I weigh," she says. "I judge by my clothes. I'm still wearing the same clothes I wore 10 years ago. And my cholesterol? Absolutely no problem."

BEGINNER'S GUIDE

Tallow Fat: rendered from cattle and sheep. Lard: Rendered pork fat.

Dripping: Fat that drips from meat while it's cooking.

Suet: The fat around an animal's kidneys, most commonly beef.

Clarified butter: Butter that has been heated and the milksolids siphoned off.

Ghee: More correctly named "usili ghee". Similar to, but not to be confused with, clarified butter. The milksolids in ghee are browned before being poured off. Retains more flavour than clarified butter. 

WHAT THE DOCTOR SAYS

Dr Rosemary Stanton is a vocal advocate for using olive oil rather than animal fats but she's unlikely to come to blows with Jennifer McLagan should the two ever cross paths.

Stanton agrees there's no pastry like pastry made with lard. She eats butter, sees no problem with a sliver of foie gras and says there's much to admire about the French diet.

"The whole picture of the French diet is one of moderation; fine food served in small quantities," she says.

"I do agree people have become so frightened of fat in general and [butter] in particular . . . I agree we're a bit out of whack but I disagree that there's nothing wrong with animal fats.

"If we got back to the days when people ate a lot of these fats, when we used beef dripping and lard and lots of butter, early deaths from heart disease - that's people under 65 - were more than twice what they are now.

"Ghee, for example, is lovely for cooking but it's not particularly good for your health. If you look at India, where it's [commonly] used, there is also a very high incidence of heart disease."

That said, Stanton adds, "it doesn't matter what you do occasionally as long as the quantities are small".

* Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, With Recipes by Jennifer McLagan, published by Ten Speed Press/Simon And Schuster, $44.95.

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