MyrtleBeachRestaurantNews.com

Second Helping

By Russ Lane

Flavorful portion control and breaking out of Rice Cake Hell

How on Earth can City Bar’s Grilled Chorizo with Fig Balsamic Glaze small plate be healthful? Well, it’s not necessarily, which Divine Dining Group’s Director of Cuisine, Kurt D’Aurizio, would be the first to say.

But there’s a tome of knowledge hidden within the sausage’s taut casing. It just requires looking beyond ingredients to examine cooking principles involved in its creation.

If you do that, you’ll realize flavor intensity can be a tool for keeping portions small, healthful and so delicious they’re shudder-worthy.

First, let’s break down the dish to illustrate the principle.

A balsamic glaze is made by heating balsamic vinegar over low heat, cooking down so the vinegar becomes syrup and coats the back of a spoon. You can either soak the figs in the vinegar or add them into the vinegar as it slowly thickens. Finally, you can brush on or drizzle the glaze over a meat or dish (the spicy Spanish sausage, chorizo, in this example) and serve.

The final result is the thick syrup is perked up with a strong, sweet fig note, both accenting the spicy sausage and undercutting its heat.

It’s delicious to be certain; it’s also not something you can attack like the Macaroni and Cheese at a Golden Corral buffet. The dish’s flavor packs such a wallop you can only eat so much before your palate becomes overwhelmed.

It’s for that reason D’Aurizio said he would only serve this dish in a small, tapas-sized portion at City Bar.

“I love to use intense seasoning in small proportions and balance, like fish sauce (disgusting to smell but great taste), hot sauces, citrus juices, intense herbs, garlic, etc. to intensify a dish’s flavor,” D’Aurizio said. “To me, a dish is more satisfying if it has character and intensity. I could see an absolute correlation between a dish’s intensity of seasoning and its ability to satiate in smaller portions.”

Science seems to supports the idea. A 2003 study by the Department of Food Technology in Helsinki, for example, confirmed among other findings that people will eat less if the flavors and/or smells of a food are strong. You can read the study HERE.

So let’s apply this to healthful eating.

You could prepare a traditional fattening food and keep the fat content and richness so strong that only a fraction of the usual portion can be tolerated. I often point to Alfredo sauce as an example, and it’s a trick I use when entertaining for those who protest eating healthfully.

I make a standard Alfredo, giving the sauce ample time to thicken and condense the nutmeg-heavy cream/lemon juice/white pepper/Parmesan/Romano mixture into a powerhouse of sinful eating. But instead of it being the primary component of a meal, I use it as a garnish for baked or grilled salmon and steamed broccoli. It’s a preparation that works only because the portion is small. It’s a special event dish to be sure, but that hint of richness is all that’s needed to avoid feeling stuck in Rice Cake Hell.

Alternately, I purchase a high-quality ounce of dark chocolate to serve in a smorgasbord dessert of fruits and nuts – essentially trading high-quality brie for chocolate.  Or I might add a small ball of boursin or pimento cheese to a salad. Prepared with intensity in mind, these garnishes provide lasting flavor without wrecking your caloric or fat intakes.

I even use balsamic glazes, akin to D’Aurizio’s fig-vinegar-sausage dish, for desserts. Used sparingly, balsamic reductions or glazes pair beautifully with strained plain nonfat yogurt and strawberries. Presented in a martini glass or a pie plate creates a beautiful and healthful dessert.

In all these examples, the array of textures and flavors are so intense that portion control stops being a question of “discipline.” If you can enjoy only a few bites before your mouth and stomach scream “That was great, but enough!” and beg for mercy, the discipline is essentially taken care of for you.

Using flavor to give a dish intensity works as an automatic portion control for fattening foods; the same principle can be used to make traditionally healthful foods more interesting.

I pair meats or eggs with homemade or fine-quality salsa, olive oil, Chinese five-spice powder, horseradish, anise, raspberries, boursin cheese, roasted nuts, balsamic vinegar, garlic confit,  cilantro, or various salad dressings – Annie’s Naturals Goddess Dressing (available at most high-end supermarkets and New Life Natural Foods in Myrtle Beach) and Girard’s Light Champagne Dressing are my two most reliable. In an earlier column I mentioned using toasted garlic slivers, which is my favorite technique to give a healthful dish taste and crunch.

Finally, keeping the flavor principle in mind is how to navigate good-to-you-but-bad-for-you restaurants. Yes, I do select a salad as a main course, but I also order two promising appetizers and share them with a dining compatriot. The small plates again offer built-in portion sizes, and still allow you to taste nibbles of interesting, creative dishes such as the ones served at City Bar.

“In a restaurant setting, it is usually a richness that would make a smaller portion appropriate; a rich (i.e. fatty) dish is pleasant in small portions but unpleasant in a large portion for most people,” D’Aurizio said. “I think the more intense the flavor, the more sparingly it is usually used but also the more it can be manipulated to personal taste and used in a way to create satisfying low calorie or fat dishes.”

It’s yet another demonstration of how understanding and appreciating great food can help your health or weight goals. Keep searching for healthful applications to old techniques, and you’ll have a cooking arsenal far beyond the confines of Rice Cake Hell.

Second Helping

By Russ Lane

Recipe Recon        

One of the scariest questions you can ask a writer is “where do you get your ideas?”  It’s usually too complicated a process for someone to explain to receive a satisfactory answer. Ideas are everywhere.

Looking for great healthful recipes isn’t unique in that sense. They’re everywhere if you know where to look.

Beyond what Kevin DeMarco taught me (you can read a few of his recipes HERE in the Rabbit Food for Lions column), I quickly tired of relying on Cooking Light, Men’s Health or new upstart Eating Well. All present wonderful recipes, but more are available.

You realize this once you understand “looking for recipes” is a trap, another of those often misunderstood pesky concepts. Having a fully-realized recipe you can follow unquestioningly is wonderful in theory, but in reality I don’t see many folks coming from busy weekdays following recipe cards to the letter.

My thinking is if you cook most of your weeknight meals, improving their quality will considerably improve your relationship with food. So it helps to look not just for recipes, but also for techniques or interesting flavors to complement what you’re already capable of executing in the kitchen. Save the recipes for the weekends or occasions where you have time to learn something completely new.

Another way of saying this is: look to recipes for inspiration, not instruction. Don’t just look for recipes you can think you can copy verbatim; look for those that teach a new way to use a flavor, or a new technique on an old standby – even if you never cook that exact dish a day in your life, you can still apply what you learned from it elsewhere.

Looking at recipes in that manner, TV food shows and your everyday food experiences offer a wealth of information – and not just from the super gourmands.

Sandra Lee, for instance, shortens time and saves cash by mixing and matching store-bought items with gourmet flourishes – a perfect weeknight strategy I have applied to many a grocery-store rotisserie chicken. Buy a whole bird and slice half of it for sandwiches or stir fries, chop the other half for salads or mixed salads, and simmer the carcass to make an easy soup with root vegetables and seasonings.

Following that idea, keep nuts in the freezer so they stay fresh and you can grab handfuls for salads or to add a little extra texture to recipes. Rinse a can of black beans, and keep the beans easily available in the fridge for the same reason. Add a small drizzle of oil to pasta, and it can keep fine in the fridge.

For smaller households, spending the extra money on the 90-second quick-cooking brown rice is priceless, but it’s good to also know a box of whole-wheat couscous cooks quickly and can be paired with almost anything. Plain yogurt is an excellent substitute for mayonnaise and sour cream, and salad greens should always be on hand.

To bring your recipes to a lip-smacking level, invest in a wealth of fine herbs and seasonings: saffron, lavender, fresh garlic, Chinese five-spice powder, fresh and dried basil, onions or shallots, dried mushrooms. If you have fine flavors in your pantry, you can quickly transform pre-made, pre-packaged foods in your sauté pan.

Once you have a grasp on efficient cooking, you can find interesting flavors and approaches everywhere. If you’re looking for an example, look to Rachel Ray’s programs. Ray is masterful with mise en place, a French cooking term for organizing your kitchen. So she’s no stranger to efficiency, either, if you can look beyond her catchphrases and public persona. 

But she also teaches something more powerful, even if it’s implicit – many of her recipes are based on translating restaurant dishes for home cooks. Next time you eat out, after the food’s initial impression wears off begin thinking of how they prepared it. Look for interesting flavor combinations, a certain cut or technique.

I learned how amazing roasted beets can be at a Taste of the Tidelands event during my Sun News stint. The chef paired them with boursin cheese, but I skipped the cheese and just use the beets in salads, risotto, or to complement some slice roasted chicken.

The same with fried sage: at another tasting event I experienced it with clarified butter and homemade pasta. At home I fried sage in olive oil for a pesto (I added nuts and substituted the sage for basil) to serve with chicken – which can then be used as an omelet filling, salad topping or tossed with a whole-grain pasta.

After seeing a roasted garlic used three different ways on a menu (served whole in a salad, mixed into a cream sauce and smeared over grilled bread), I keep a jar of roasted garlic cloves in the fridge packed in oil, ready to jump into action. I also keep fresh garlic if I want to slice cloves thinly and sauté them over medium-low heat, or mince them fine to add to roasted vegetables.

This observant eye doesn’t just apply to restaurants either – the inspiration for the recipe below comes from a Sweet Potato Salad recipe offered occasionally at a salad bar in Wilmington called Lovey’s Market.

Lovey’s uses organic sweet potatoes often – usually paired with rosemary, sea salt and other spices – but once they made a superb grilled sweet potato salad. A few google searches later and I came across an old Gourmet Magazine recipe HERE providing a basic version open to interpretation. Alternately, you can just coat the sweet potatoes, bake them in the oven, and serve at room temperature. You can also substitute the coriander for sesame seeds, for crunch a nutty note to balance the potato’s sweetness.
 

The possibilities are endless and omnipresent; they just require opening yourself to the idea that health and quality food can co-exist.

Second Helping

By Russ Lane

Thai Food: Found in Translation

There’s a question I dread that inevitably surges forth, Jaws-like, just to complicate the hell out of any discussion of ethnicity in American dining.

I hear the Jaws theme cue after any story about an ethnic restaurant appears. The phone rings, and in my mind I see ocean waves frothing from fresh movement. It’s almost with suspicion and trepidation the caller asks “Is it authentic?”

Yes, authenticity’s the shark and I’m a naïve Californian in the water. “Authentic” is the ultimate offense, in my eyes, the F-bomb determined to malign any understanding of great ethnic food.

And few popular ethnic cuisines demonstrate this better than Thai. My first experience with the cuisine was in my food writer days in Myrtle Beach, at a Mom and Pop restaurant near the Pavilion’s remains. It didn’t actually have a name, I don’t think: the sign said “Thai Cuisine” and it doesn’t get more straightforward than that.

And to its credit it was authentic, in the most understood sense of the term: if you went to Thailand, this is pretty close to what you’d be served.

And for the standard American palate, it was almost inedible. Not because the food was shoddy. On the contrary, for its lack of marketing savvy curries at Thai Cuisine weren’t cooked to oblivion, and their papaya salad merrily mish-mashed many textures with skill.

Rather, its authenticity made it inedible. The waitress looked stunned as I ordered glass of water after glass of water, finally asking for pitchers. The entire rest of the day I couldn’t feel my tongue. I could scarcely note the texture as my mouth was filled with an overbearing, blinding heat. Tasting food is akin to listening to music, and I was struck deaf.

See, Thai palates put most American Iron-Man pepper eaters to shame. Few Americans can actually withstand authentic Thai, so what does authenticity mean? Different Thai restaurants have different approaches to answering this question.

The Blue Elephant in Murrells Inlet pays close attention to guiding its patrons through the menu on ordering, and will customize each dish according to heat. Thai Season, a newly-opened Thai restaurant in North Myrtle Beach, cooks conservatively – so much that the “hot” descriptions on their menu aren’t actually that spicy.

Although I have not eaten there, Black Thai near downtown is looked fondly by Myrtle Beach residents as a go-to place if they don’t want to make the drive to Murrells Inlet. And by the way, Blue Elephant’s owner makes many trips to Thailand, so the restaurant might seem closed when they really just left the country for a bit.

One of the more interesting approaches to Authentic Thai I found was in New Orleans, at an Uptown restaurant called La Thai. The restaurant opened in January, but by a family that’s credited with bringing the cuisine to the Crescent City in the 1970s.

When I visited the restaurant in March, owner Diana Shauvin (daughter of Pannee Varnishung, the mother of New Orleans Thai) explained that La Thai’s menu was a Louisiana-Thai fusion. Fusion strikes as much fear into my heart usually as Authenticity does. 

Their latest iteration is posh and pricey, but let’s just stick with food quality for a moment. At La Thai, Fusion didn’t mean “ill-conceived dishes valuing creativity over taste by treating a dish like a precocious science project,” but, oddly enough, Thai.

I was served that evening’s special: curried vegetables cushioned a crab cake, itself cushioning a soft-shell crab and garnished with lump crabmeat. Yes, it was decadent and I did spend hours on the treadmill working it off. Lord knows it was worth it.

While unorthodox, I found in the dish all the elements of Thai cooking that I studied but couldn’t taste through Thai Cusine’s heat. Every bite contained a different a flavor, like most traditional curries full of lumps of ingredients. Heat, sweat, rich, crunchy, freshness all followed in different intensities at various times during eating.

Instead of “authenticity” as most consider it, La Thai did something far braver. Rather than replicate one culture into another with no consideration of palate differences, instead they translated Thai food and did so thoughtfully.

In doing so, they honored the spirit of the cuisine, such that you could taste at La Thai the same sensations a Thai native would taste at the Myrtle Beach mom and pop Thai Cuisine. If might not been the same food or traditional preparation, but at its heart, is that thoughtful translation a more genuine expression of Thai food than “authentic Thai?”

This all might sound like a cheap semantics game to you, I realize. But distinguishing what you say from what you mean is such a vital element to understanding good food. Your assumptions will shape your dining experience, and your assumptions stem from the language we all take for granted but use every day.

For the last six weeks we’ve been examining all the assumptions with weight loss, gyms and healthful eating. Food suffers from the same assumptions, and it doesn’t just apply to Thai, but to any cuisine we deem “foreign.”

And as a critic that’s what I look for when encountering “foreign” food: not “Is it authentic?” but “Does it honor the spirit of the cooking?” 

It’s not that I long for Sam’s Club chicken nuggets worked into a delicate tangerine sauce. That’s not a question of authenticity, that’s a question of respect for your patrons and your food.

It’s more that authenticity, as a concept applied to an ethnic restaurant, has become so murky in actual meaning the term has become flaccid and useless. And yet it’s bandied about as a self-evident standard, striking fear into the hearts of diners like a culinary shark descending on a July 4 beach party.

It might sound like a pointless semantics game but it’s a genuine (dare I say authentic?) question for serious foodies to answer. If you’re using a blanket term to judge a restaurant, what are you really saying? More important – what are you really tasting? The food or just your expectations of it?

And to mix reality with your expectations is to disrespect the food and your own experience on a fundamental level. It’s a common offense, and one of the more damaging.

Leave your comments, counter-arguments, questions and more at Second Helping’s new discussion forum.

Second Helping

By Russ Lane

Kevin DeMarco: Mr. June?

This is the finale of a three-part interview with former Little River restaurant DeMarco’s Café owner/chef and current Wilmington, N.C-based personal trainer/gym owner Kevin DeMarco. You can read parts one and two at  www.myrtlebeachrestaurantnews.com/secondhelping.html.

So back in my Sun News days I joked about pitching a “Hot Chefs of the Grand Strand” calendar to the marketing department.

It would have been perfect! Nominees included Darren Smith riding his bike though Conway on a hot summer day in biker shorts; longtime area chef Kim Lloyd with a giant salmon as only she could; Sea Blue chef proprietor Kelly Graham poaching pears; and of course Kevin DeMarco in jeans and chef’s jacket whipping cream with a whisk and a smirk. We’d have made a fortune! I grinned wickedly as co-workers smiled politely, adding “Oh, Russ” with a heavy sigh.

Years later, I listen to Kevin DeMarco in his Wilmington, N.C. fitness studio explaining how he wanted to lean out for the summer: “A lot of my clients tell me when I say it ‘Are you crazy? You don’t have any body fat!’” DeMarco said. “Even the way the clients perceive you is totally different than how you perceive yourself.”

On hearing this I sighed and thought “Oh, Kevin.” After all, that’s not the talk of someone I slated for the June slot in my gleefully inappropriate calendar. It’s certainly not the talk of a man who taught me so much about balancing fine food and health. Yet beyond the tawdry jokes and mild hero-worship, I understood what Mr. June was saying all too well.

But I want to make sure you do because this is important. The following clichés hold some truth: It’s hard to argue with success. It’s just as true that success can be as troublesome as failure. And the real kicker – what if you get what you want only to find it’s the old carrot-horse routine? And if the goal you were after isn’t really what you wanted all this time, what the hell do you do then?

Conventionally, these quips usually relate to a number of things. Say, rock stars who can’t handle selling a million records, or marrying the “right” spouse only to find they’re all wrong for you. But those clichés apply just as well to weight loss, and this is what the Subway ads and diet plans don’t want to tell you.

Of course they wouldn’t, it’s neither pretty nor comfortable. But isn’t the point of all the success stories to empower others to succeed themselves? Understanding just how complex weight loss is emotionally can provide people a vital tool in achieving their goals permanently and meaningfully – it’s far less likely to happen if you the dark underbelly underneath the flawless washboard stomach catches you by surprise. It’s not fun and “inspiring” per se, but it’s a topic that needs attention it’s not getting.

As this applies to Kevin: You push yourself to improve constantly while guarding yourself against the negative implications of that drive: it’s never enough. I and the world might see someone who’d sell scores of calendars – he still sees his stomach and left wanting.

In some ways, it’s as difficult for him as it is for me to articulate occasions when he saw himself and thought: “Nice to meet you, Mr. June. This is it.”

“Maybe like, y’know, Man that’s … I don’t, I don’t think so. Maybe the day before a show. With a competition sometimes you’re peaking out a week beforehand, a day or two after, and two shows I did I peaked two days before the show. And I knew it. You look in the mirror and think ‘Shit, I’m not going to get any better than this,’” DeMarco says. “But then you know what? Two or three days after that competition, your water comes back and you’re pretty much the same as you were. With my genetics I can’t be one of those washboard abs type of guys, it’s just not in my genes, so…”

Now that his health problems are abating, that lure of bodybuilding – the same thing he attributes to the nerve damage in his face – beckons. A local competition in Wilmington has a slot in his age bracket. On one hand, at 39 he’s the younger of the “mature” crowd; on another he’s up against bodybuilders with lifelong, very mature muscle definition. Having won all three Excalibur competitions he entered in South Carolina, he’s wary of entering and losing. He’s equally wary of it impacting his health again.

In that sense DeMarco learned to balance the drive with the wanting; treading lightly, questioning his motives, listening to what his body tells him. At least most of the time.

He just wishes he could meet someone who does the same. “[Relationships are] problematic, to a point,” DeMarco says. “Now that I’m dating now, and especially being in my late 30s, well, early 40s, it’s a … couple girls I’ve dated. It’s always a compliment ‘You really have a nice body.’ And I’m not used to hearing that. I don’t know if it’s because I’ve been married so long, or what.”

Just dealing with the attention causes pause when you don’t know how to respond to it. I never seriously needed to learn this until I was well in my 20s and began slimming down. Even now when strangers approach I half-think it’s some kind of sick joke, like the sitcom plots involving the high school jock bribed into taking the sheriff’s homely daughter to the prom. The other extreme are folks you’re dating explaining “you really ought to work out more” until they realize you’ve whittled down 200 pounds and then they’re suddenly impressed.

And these things frighten me. It’s about as scary and as not recognizing yourself in photos yet still feeling like the kid mindlessly munching his way through an entire Cheerios Box. Always trying to prove to yourself you’re more than who you were yet also wondering if you’ve lost touch with who you are now.

In a lot of ways, what I hope I encourage in these columns – being OK with who you are and what you want to achieve – I can’t fully do for myself, and I strive to be OK with that. I can’t honestly say that I am.

Yet as similar as Kevin and I are, these things don’t plague his mind much. “Just because you lose the weight doesn’t mean you won’t have the insecurities you had before, or the confidence, in some people it’s just the way you carry yourself,” he says. “It might make your life easier, it might complicate things. Y’know? You have a little more attention, you’re dealing more with people and relationships and before, but hey, you wanted it.”

Wanting something and being prepared for it are two different things, just not for Kevin’s dating adventures. You see a glimmer of Mr. June in Kevin’s demeanor when he talked about enjoying the ego stroking and getting taken down a peg if his ego gets reckless. He’ll even giggle. It’s a manly giggle, granted, but a giggle nonetheless.

And through the giggles I’m chalking up his machismo to that weird Dating Darwinism that exists in large cities where tons of guys are vying for attention. Survival of the buffest, if you will. Maybe it’s just a hetero thing. But then again maybe I’m kidding myself into thinking I don’t like the ego stroking, too.  

Instead, Kevin’s difficulties come in finding someone can balance health and fine food as he does. “This is where the problem comes in: I was dating two, well, three girls, recently – casually – and with me it becomes very hard to find somebody because I’m very healthy, I eat good, and I exercise. Then the food aspect comes in where I like to dine out, and I love wine. You see, with people I date they usually gain weight with me.”

Then his significant other starts dieting strictly, suddenly a moratorium gets placed on eating out, and a mutual interest in food dissolves. “I’m not vain either, the type of women I go out with is personality first, but I want them to be in shape, or at least trying, be in the way of being in shape,” he says.

This is murky territory in terms of his own expectations, self-image and desires, let alone the irony being now that he’s a personal trainer full time and not a chef, he’s learning to navigate through his clients’ similar struggles.

DeMarco describes one client who runs upward of five miles daily and yet can’t slim out her legs. He’s trying to teach the mind-bending lesson that she doesn’t eat poorly or too much, but rather too little.

He makes progress with his client, but he explains that she can’t see any progress except what the scale decrees. “I want to throw away the scale,” DeMarco says, equally amused and vexed. “I don’t know if it’s because they have it ingrained from childhood or what, but it’s annoying, it really is.”

And all the same he’s all too aware of his own theoretical scale, his box of Cheerios – the standard of comparison he’s matching himself to, or maybe even trying to get distance from.

The more Kevin discusses his own transformation, it becomes clear the pompadour-clad version of himself doesn’t faze DeMarco as the muscleless pastry chef, newly single after a botched engagement and toughening up for the New York restaurant world. He found a family photo of himself, all sticks and bones, and couldn’t believe he ever looked that way.

“And you never lose that because you never look at yourself in the mirror the same way. You do have kids, friends and family saying ‘Wow, you’ve gotten so thin,’” DeMarco says, remember how police refused to believe his license photo and the driver of a stopped car were the same guy.

“And for what you got to do and what you got to put in to do it, people are the worst critics of themselves. It’s never enough. It’s just how society is. And you, some people are never content, never. But there’s got to be a level, what it comes down to, is you gotta be happy with yourself. And it’s taken God knows how many years to be happy.”

“And I say that and meanwhile I’m trying to lean out a little more for the summer.”

Kevin DeMarco is a chef and personal trainer who has advice for eating well and healthily.

Second Helping

By Russ Lane

Rabbit Food for Lions

This is the second of a three-part interview with former Little River restaurant DeMarco’s Café owner/chef and current Wilmington, N.C-based personal trainer/gym owner Kevin DeMarco. You can read part one at www.myrtlebeachrestaurantnews.com/secondhelping.html.

Even though he doesn’t create dishes professionally anymore, personal trainer Kevin DeMarco’s cooking philosophy of health food roots itself in lessons learned as a pastry chef and a palette immersed in an avalanche of New York City cultures.

Last week we gave an example of how he created a health-aware Caribbean menu: Toasted coconut black rice and mint/mango vinaigrette for an arugula salad topped with jerk-roasted almonds, heirloom tomatoes, grilled balsamic-marinated onions and coriander-dusted scallops. This week we have recipes for them.

But the descriptions alone give an example of DeMarco’s cooking style, which is at once solidly grounded on age-old cooking principles yet wildly creative and dramatic, intensely flavored and oozing come-hither sexiness. After years of drab salads and “lite” versions of sinful classics that just make you crave the real thing, Kevin’s health food is an empowering alternative.

Yes, empowering. It helps you look great, but what’s more important is that you feel great exploring his creations. The division between health and good eating ceases to exist, and you’re left feeling sexy. This is sexy food, and who the hell ever said that about a rice cake or a heaping mass of lasagna? 

When creating such recipes or an equally-empowering line of all-natural protein bars, DeMarco doesn’t think in terms of recipes but cooking qualities: salty, sweet, sour, spicy, tart, funky [his term for pizzazz ingredients like blue cheese or truffles] and texture. He pays attention to the food, not a recipe guideline; what’s missing, what does it need? How can you give a dish what it needs and still maintain healthfulness?

Using roasting, toasting, caramelizing, drying, rubs, marinades, spice and purees, DeMarco is able to expand the use of the everyday vegetables and meats that are usually associated with diets, giving them newfound depth and character.

DeMarco taught these principles during a series of cooking classes at the now-defunct DeMarco’s Café, and the classes were a revelation to someone like me when I was beginning to lose weight and write about food. DeMarco didn’t teach how to cook so much as how to think about cooking, and that difference allows tremendous culinary freedom. It becomes easy to chiffonade spinach, soak dried mushrooms in white wine, slice cooked chicken and quickly create a satisfying meal by enhancing the flavor with flavored oils, herbs, fruit purees and spices.

“I think if you’re going to take out fat, where are you going to get your flavor? You’re going to put flavor back in, which I do with certain fruits in season, or fresh herbs,” he said. “Also with my desserts, which I think it crossed over into my food, is texture. With desserts there’s a lot of crunchy, salty, spongy, stuff that has a lot of texture. When I diet I crave that, because so many ‘diet’ foods are very soft.”

Many of these lessons were learned first at Union Square Café, one of two restaurants that courted DeMarco upon graduating cooking school as a pastry chef. The other, Park Avenue Café, was one of the first to create elaborately-designed desserts, or, as DeMarco describes them, Van Goghs on a plate. He also described them as tasting like plastic.

Then he interviewed with Union Square Café, which ignored over-the-top designs for an apple pie. “He said, ‘I want you to taste that apple pie.’ I was like ‘OK, it’s apple pie. Big deal.’ It was apple pie with buttermilk ice cream. I thought ‘buttermilk ice cream, that’s cool.’”

With that pie, DeMarco described a tasting experience much like the experience of tasting his food.

“It was by far the best apple pie I ever had. Between the crust and the way he made it – and one of the things was he layered the apples with lemon zest and lemon juice,” he says. “What it did was cut the sweetness of the sugar and bring out the cinnamon, and made the apple more tart. Again, that balance. Just tasting that dessert, I wanted to go there.”

That pie launched DeMarco’s fascination with creating food without gratuitous fats or sugars, if there are any fats or sugars present at all. He filled notebooks with ideas of herb and fruit combinations, various presentations, examining New York life and architecture for inspiration – essentially combining the pizzazz of Park Avenue Café with the subtlety of Union Square Café.

“I always try to make them full of flavor and less sweet, which is very hard with desserts. You don’t have much to work with in pastry. You use herbs and spices and a lot of citrus to cut a lot of the sweetness,” he says. “That was how I really started cooking. How can you cook healthy when you’re making a dessert? That to me was when I really loved to cook.”

But it was another life ago, and now Kevin draws on his cooking expertise to train his clients, even cooking for them on occasion a la DeMarco’s Caribbean meal. Kevin was kind enough to provide recipes for some of those dishes, which follow shortly.

Even if you don’t follow his recipes, or even try cooking them, there’s much to learn observing his approach about what dishes to select when eating out, how to stock your own pantry, and what tricks you can learn so that your dieting is forever separated from suffering.

Here’s a condensed version of his advice:

·        Must-have pantry items include chicken stock stored in a vacuum-sealed container, not in a can. Dried or sun-dried tomatoes unpreserved in oil. Roasted peppers – either jarred or homemade (I found if you buy them in a jar, cover half-used jars with a layer of olive oil to prevent the peppers from spoiling). Garlic and various citrus fruits. Purchase various nuts either roasted and unsalted, or raw. Dried fruits of any kind are equally versatile, but use sparingly to keep sodium or sugar contents low.

·        Instead of butter or salt, Demarco keeps olive oil and balsamic vinegar at his table. A little goes a long way with both, and Demarco cites vinegar or acids as prime alternatives to extra sodium. For an example, a pot of black bean soup from his New York chef days when the head chef decided something was missing: “I was like ‘OK, we’re going to put more salt,’” DeMarco says. “But he went and got a lemon and squeezed two lemons in there. The acid and the tart just woke up the soup. Because it’s very starchy, and the starch can be very oily and coats your tongue, the acid cut and got the receptors on your tongue to wake up.”

·        Even whole-wheat bread is best used in moderation. DeMarco recommends expanding your grain palate to include couscous and quinoa – both cook similarly to rice but are faster and more healthful. Couscous traditionally can be served with meat since it absorbs juices well, though DeMarco adds dried fruit, a few nuts and various proteins; quinoa creates hearty salads. And as with rice, you can substitute various stocks and broths for water.

·        When eating out, look first for Mediterranean, Asian stir-fry or Californian cuisine, eating styles which tend to be health-friendly. Otherwise, check out nicer restaurants for standard dieting fare a la salads – a great restaurant can make a wonderful salad paired with a protein so much better than mundane iceberg and pseudo-Italian dressing.

·        No matter what restaurant you’re in, first scan the menu. Really pay attention to it. Look for vegetables first – even better when paired with a bean. Look for whole grains. With proteins, look for proteins that are poached, grilled or pan-seared. Pan-fried proteins can also be a last resort, since pan frying involves little oil. Never be afraid to ask for substitutions, ever. Most restaurants have a vegetable side or two you can trade out for pasta.

Next week is the grand finale to “The Kevin Columns.” Like Russ, Kevin’s body has gone through many transformations in his lifetime -- has how he thinks about himself changed along with it? For those interested in DeMarco protein bars, visit http://www.demarcobar.com

Mango-Jicama Salsa

Yields about 3 cups

This salsa can be paired with various fish or proteins as a garnish; it’s also great on its own with toasted whole wheat pita chips with sea salt. DeMarco also recommends purchasing wonton wrappers, sprinkling them with Chinese five-spice powder and baking them in the oven until crisp.

·        1 ripe mango, chopped in small dice

·        2 oz. roasted pepper, chopped in small dice

·        1 oz. sweet red onion, chopped in small dice

·        3 oz. Jicama, chopped in small dice

·        1 tsp. honey or organic rice syrup

·        1 tsp. rice wine vinegar

·        ½ oz. fresh mint, chopped fine

·        ½ fresh basil, chopped fine

·        Juice and zest of 2 limes

·        Sea salt and pepper to taste

·        ¼ jalapeno, seeded and diced (optional)

1. Mix the chopped mango, roasted pepper, sweet red onion and jicama with the lime juice, zest, honey, fresh herbs, rice vinegar and salt and pepper

Arugula Salad with Mango-Mint Vinaigrette and Jerked Crusted Almonds

Yields 1 quart vinaigrette

In his preparation of this salad, DeMarco also pan-sears scallops dabbed on each side with coriander and cumin. This salad could accommodate a number of different protein options. Both the vinaigrette and almonds can be prepared separately.

For the salad:

·        8 oz. arugula

For the vinaigrette:

·        ½ small mango

·        3 oz. rice wine vinegar

·        1 ½ oz. honey (or organic rice syrup)

·        2 oz. water

·        2 oz. fresh mint

·        ¼ of a small red onion

·        1 clove garlic

·        ¼ tsp. sea salt

·        ¼ tsp. pepper

1.     In a blender, puree all ingredients

2.     After the mixture is pureed, add water to puree until smooth

Coconut Black Rice

DeMarco explains that most coconut rice in restaurants is prepared with a mixture of water and high-fat coconut milk, which you often can’t taste. Instead, DeMarco adds toasted coconut for a diverse texture and superior flavor.

·        1 cup uncooked Black Forbidden Rice (available at most high-end grocery stores and Asian markets)

·        2 cups raw unsweetened coconut

·        Jerk-Crusted Almonds to taste (optional, see recipe below)

1.     Prepare rice according to package directions

2.     Toast coconut at 350 F until golden brown and fragrant

3.     Mix rice and coconut

4.     Add almonds for added texture 

Jerk-Crusted Almonds

Makes 8 ounces

The beauty of this recipe is its versatility; using the nuts and egg whites as a base you can add any number of spices or seasonings to perk up plain nuts.

·        8 oz. unsalted almonds (whole or sliced)

·        1 oz. jerk seasoning

·        1 egg white, unbeaten

·        1 tsp. cinnamon

·        2 oz. honey or Splenda

·        Pam nonstick cooking spray

1.     In a bowl, mix almonds with jerk seasoning, cinnamon and Honey/Splenda

2.     Slowly add egg white until nuts are evenly coated

3.     Spray cooking spray on a cookie sheet and then spread the nuts in an even layer

4.     Bake at 350 F, mixing every 10 minutes until nuts are toasted and dry, about 25-30 minutes

Second Helping

By Russ Lane