New Spa Food
The proprietor of a Connecticut health spa, Safdie ( Spa Food ) persuasively presents dieting, best known as a process of self-deprivation, as a luxurious thing indeed. Voluptuous color photos accompany more than two weeks' worth of fully planned menus that illustrate first "the spa program" (1250 calories per day) and later "Yankee ingenuity," a 1500-calorie-a-day maintenance diet. Safdie's fare--low in sodium and cholesterol as well as in calories--is delicious, varied and inventive. For example, filo dough, held together with vegetable spray instead of butter, dresses up spinach pies, forms tulip "shells" to hold vanilla ice cream (made with skim milk and low-fat cottage and ricotta cheeses), and replaces standard pastry in chicken pot pie. Omelettes are made with a combination of whole eggs and whites, and are puffed up under a broiler during the last stage of cooking. Clever applications of nontraditional ingredients--fructose, unusual grains, etc.--will teach home cooks to adapt their own favorite recipes. One caution: those unused to the aesthetics of abstention may find themselves unhappy with Safdie's portion sizes (a 10-inch cranberry-apple pie is said to feed 16, at 247 calories per serving; a mere six ounces of pasta contribute to a dish for four).Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.