Drug Medical Information

HEALTHY KITCHEN: SAUCES, STOCKS, AND SALAD DRESSINGS

This category is full of surprises - and secrets to transforming foods you may feel are too bland into great-tasting dishes. You may have thought you couldn't possibly do without oil, butter, or cream in certain sauces and dressings, so be prepared to learn how wrong you were!
First of all, nonfat milk can replace cream or whole milk in white sauces for meats, vegetables, pasta, or other grains - and will yield a lighter flavor. Mix 2 tablespoons of unbleached flour with each cup of nonfat milk, add fresh and dried seasonings, then heat and stir until thickened. Or you can add cornstarch (usually 1 tablespoon to 1 cup of milk) for the same results. Take the leftover liquid from cooking meats, poultry, or fish (chilled and skimmed of its congealed fat) and, depending on how much liquid you have, add nonfat milk, nonfat dry milk, or canned evaporated skim milk (diluted if necessary) for richness. Thicken as suggested above and season to taste: You've now got an elegant sauce. You can also thicken a sauce simply by reducing it: Boil it until some of its liquid has evaporated. To thin a sauce simply add water, broth, or nonfat milk.
It's easy to make your own chicken stock with any chicken parts (even backs and necks) and assorted vegetables, including carrots, celery, onions, bay leaf, parsley, and garlic. Cover with water, bring to a boil, lower heat, then simmer, covered, for 2 to 2 1/2 hours. Strain and cool, then spoon off from the surface and discard any accumulated fat. Seasonings can change at your whim - there's no one official way to make chicken soup, as you'll find out by querying people at random!
You can make a vegetable stock simply by omitting the poultry and adding some unsalted canned tomatoes for more flavor, color, and richness if you wish. Or puree some cooked vegetables like carrots or broccoli and add them instead, for color, body, and flavor. Stock can be frozen either in plastic seal-top containers or, as we mentioned a bit earlier, in ice cube trays (remember that you can use stock to "saute" other foods and that one or two cubes of stock will cover a medium-size skillet nicely). Anything you can cook in boiling water, you can cook in stock - remember that when you want a more strongly flavored rice or other grain.
As for salad dressings: What, no oil? You can choose from a range of wonderful oil-free dressings - from creamy to vinaigrette - and now they're available in many supermarkets as well. These bottled dressings are also free of all the fats, excess sodium, and sugar you'll find in most other commercial brands (even those labeled "lite" or "reduced-calorie").
Salads don't have to be only lettuce, tomato, and cucumber, either: Make them hearty by adding beans or sprouts, cooked bulgur, rice or barley, or homemade croutons. For a simpler, lighter finish to your salad, consider rinsed capers, grated sapsago cheese, balsamic vinegar or any of the numerous other "gourmet" vinegars on the market (like raspberry or other herbed vinegars), unsalted tomato juice, or even a leftover cold soup like gazpacho, which can make a terrific dressing. Pimentos, horseradish, and salsa are also great salad complements. Just don't resort to high-calorie dressings! Three tablespoons of a traditional oil-and-vinegar mix could add as many as 200 calories to your salad - and pretty soon you'd be eating something almost as fatty and caloric as a hamburger!
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