Sunday 2 September 2007
Fat-free cheese
As an avid reader of April's blog I naturally want to cook some of her creative dishes, but I haven't been able to locate two vital ingredients - fat free mozzarella and ricotta. I was at the Kensington Wholefoods market yesterday. It's a good thing I can regard some food merely as art, dining off its beauty rather than its calories! I will return when I feel a little less dazed by the massive variety there, but I did get some red cabbage and broccoli seeds for sprouting, and an excellent Thai curry paste, packed with herbs and spices (and no oil!). I specifically asked about fat free cheese but they didn't have it or even know it existed. Frustratingly I can find it on the internet, on sale in the USA, but I don't think it's one of those things you can order by mail in the UK! I have just written to the store asking if they plan to stock it. Has anyone in the UK had better luck in tracking it down? The other thing I wanted was cartons of eggwhites. They did have these - frozen. I had planned to buy fresh and then divide them up to freeze in batches. I'm not sure I can use 33 eggwhites up in a week! Has anyone any thoughts on this? I have written to the manufacturers to see if there is anywhere I can get them fresh, but they are not widely distributed.
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4 comments:
Personally, I don't think fat-free cheese (mozzarella, cheddar, etc) is worth finding - it's pretty gross and rubbery and I find it quite gross. It's not cheese, anyway, it's "cheese product" - I think.
I'd stick with small portions of the real stuff, or goat cheese (naturally lower in fat), or reduced fat (not as good as the real stuff, but definitely acceptable - and readily available in England).
Instead of fat-free ricotta, use fat-free quark - they're similar, taste and texture wise.
I would just buy cheap whole eggs for eggwhites, and devote 5-6 minutes to separating them all when you get home from the store. They'll keep a couple days in the fridge, and free the rest.
I think you can order eggwhites from various UK based body-building sites (how ironic!) on the internet, but the whole concept is a bit... urgh! for me. :-) I'd second everything Emily said except for the cheap eggs - cheap surely means eggs from non-free range battery farmed chickens, packed full of chemical feed.
Also I do remember reading in one of my many diet books years ago that you can melt down mozzarella, skim off the fat, and it will re-solidify and still be meltable again. Maybe that would be worth a try?
Well done on your Wholefoods restraint. :-) I'm just not going to go in there for a while; I need to recondition myself not to expect a bite of bread or cheese on a daily basis no matter how artisan or delicious it looks.
Wow - that's great you found frozen egg whites! I currently eat all the egg because I can't find a convenient white source. And I love yolk, so that might factor into it. :-)
I agree with emily that fat-free or reduced hard cheese is generally disgusting gloop. I recently had an ex "Big Food" employee describe to me the industrial process of making your typical supermarket mozzarella. Not for the faint of heart!
F-f yogurt such as Total 0% however, is great. Sainsbury's carry a low fat sour cream and a variety of low fat cream cheeses are available in supermarkets though these are not always low-cal.
I would like to see some fat free ricotta available though, and was quite disappointed by Whole Foods in that respect. I'll have to try some quark.
I have contacted Eggnation who do the eggwhites and they only come frozen in cartons equivalent to 33 whites. I could include them in recipes and then freeze things but it would be quite a job to organise that.
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