The Conspicuous Consumer

Gourmet food brings to mind a great variety of foods and styles of cooking. It can mean fine dining at restaurants like Per Se, The French Laundry, or one the myriad 4- and 5-star restaurants scattered around the United States and world.

Healthy gourmet food sometimes seems to be a misnomer - too often when we think of gourmet food we think of rich sauces made with cream and butter, heavy in starches, and loads of things that are both tasty and fatty. Fortunately, that attitude seems to be changing and gourmet food is rapidly becoming “healthy”.

The simplest way to cook healthy gourmet food in your own kitchen is to do what chefs around the world are doing: Focus on whole foods and simple preparations. By simply shifting the focus of a dish away from those rich sauces and focusing more on the ingredients themselves, a meal almost instantly becomes healthier.

Take my dinner this evening, for example. I’ve lapsed somewhat on my vegetarianism (just can’t do it 100% - sometimes I just really want a nice lean cut of beef or fish) and was craving a staple of home cooking: Beef and Green Peppers. My mother made this all the time when I was growing up and it is a dish that is just too satisfying to abandon completely. The way I typically see it prepared is heavy on soy sauce, salt, etc. Instead of preparing it that way this evening, however, I went the healthier route and skipped the soy sauce entirely and simply did a stir fry of yellow bell pepper, green bell pepper, cherry tomatoes, and lean top sirloin. I used 0 calorie olive oil spray instead and, at the end of cooking, added about half a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce for a little extra flavor.

So, instead of loading up on the sodium by using a large amount of soy sauce I avoided most of it by simply using a small amount of the Worcestershire and let the real flavors of the dish come from the peppers, tomatoes, and beef.