Quick

This was one of the first dishes that brought the taste of contemporary Italy to the Italian-American restaurant scene. It came into vogue in the early seventies when red radicchio and arugula became available in the States. While the Italians will toss any vegetable in their salads, I think the addition of endive was a play on the color of the red, green, and white Italian flag. This salad is a great base for additions, from walnuts and pine nuts to different cheeses and cold cuts, such as salami or turkey, and even fish such as tuna, shrimp, or poached whitefish.

This rich French sauce made of pepper, Cognac, and cream is traditionally served on steak, but it’s equally good on pork or salmon. Instead of cream, this version is given body and richness with cornstarch-thickened evaporated milk.

There are many ways to flavor tartar sauce. I like cornichons, capers, onions, and Worcestershire sauce (it’s a great flavoring with little caloric significance). There are also many uses for tartar sauce—it’s not just for fried fish. Try it with grilled steak or shrimp, or as a spread on a sandwich.

You can buy all-purpose Asian sauces at the grocery store, but most of them are loaded with sugar and fat. This one—with lots of ginger and garlic and just a little bit of oil—is very flavorful.

Barbecue may be America’s greatest contribution to the global culinary repertoire. We figured out how to take rich, fatty, often tough cuts of meat and smoke them into submission until they’re melt-in-your-mouth tender. Then we slather them with sugar-laden, high-fat sauce. Here’s a sugar-free, zero-fat BBQ sauce that packs flavor without pulling punches.

Typical pesto can be more than 50 percent pure fat, and even though a little goes a long way, that’s just too many calories. This is a re-invention of the classic pesto alla genovese. The garlic, pine nuts, basil, and Parmigiano-Reggiano are all still there, but low-fat sour cream stands in for the olive oil. It may not be 100 percent authentic, but you’ll love what it does for your dress size.

I first learned how to make a real French vinaigrette when I was eighteen years old and living with a very generous chef in Paris. It was actually his twelve-year-old daughter who taught me. The first thing she did was separate two eggs and put the yolks in a bowl; these were followed by Dijon mustard, then vinegar, then olive oil—fat (egg yolk) followed by fat (olive oil). It’s the Dijon–sherry vinegar combo that really makes this dressing—and those are both fat-free. A shallot puree provides the thick texture you normally get from creating an egg yolk/olive oil emulsion. Use this to dress salads and cooked vegetables—both hot and cold.

The original Russian dressing was actually made with yogurt. Early in the 20th century, some chef in Chicago replaced the yogurt with mayonnaise—and that’s when it became one of the most popular salad dressings in the country. That little tweak also made it one of the most caloric and unhealthy salad dressings around. In this version, the best of both Russian and Thousand Island dressing, the fat has been reduced from 16 grams to less than 1 gram per serving. It’s perfect for salads, charcuterie—and, of course, the classic Reuben sandwich.

Ranch dressing has been the top-selling dressing in this country since 1992, when it overtook Italian. Given that the bottled stuff has 19 grams of fat and 180 calories per serving, something had to be done! We may want many things like our mamas’—but not the fat-laden version of this dressing.

Believe it or not, it wasn’t so long ago that most people thought blue cheese was a bit exotic—a stinky, strange cheese with (heaven forbid!) mold in its veins. But blue has gained traction because its rich, creamy texture and tangy taste are fabulous—whether eaten out of hand, crumbled over a salad, or stirred into a dressing. But this is no lean cheese, my friends. Thankfully, a little goes a long way, and there are great-tasting low-fat blue cheeses available in most major supermarkets today.

Real mayonnaise is made with egg yolks and oil—which might explain the 10 grams of fat per tablespoon. You can very easily wind up slathering at least a tablespoon or two on a sandwich. This very good approximation uses Greek yogurt as a base, rather than oil.

This is a healthy version of one of the greatest inventions of the 1980s: the hollowed-out deep-fried potato skins filled with sour cream, bacon, and cheese that first appeared on the menu at T.G.I. Friday’s in New York City. There are a few differences, though. Here, the potato skin is baked until crisp, not fried, and the fillings are all reduced-fat products. The result is a pretty spectacular loaded potato skin at one-third of the calories and less than one-fourth of the fat of the original.

I learned that sweet potatoes are the single healthiest vegetable. They’re loaded with carotenoids, vitamin C, potassium, and fiber. You can dress them up a bunch of different ways, but this simple puree is ideal.

There are two basic types of potato salad: mayonnaise-based and sugar-and-vinegar-based. I have always preferred the latter because of the sweet-and-sour element—plus it has bacon in it. This alluring sweet-and-sour salad replaces not-so-nice white potatoes with sweet potatoes (much nicer for you), and the texture of the salad has been bulked up with cauliflower.

A deli side-dish favorite, macaroni salad is a gimme on every table in America come summertime. Everyone has a favorite recipe—some contain ham, some peppers, some bacon, and some peas. But all contain high-fat mayonnaise and white pasta, a fundamentally bad combo. White pasta is replaced here with whole-wheat shells, and the high-fat mayo with low-fat mayo. I added a few bits and pieces, like smoked paprika, to give it some personality.

Coleslaw goes with so many things. You’ll rarely see a cookout without it. The crunchy shredded raw cabbage and the sweet-and-sour flavor make it a wonderfully piquant counterpoint to the grilled meats and BBQ sauce-slathered main dishes that make up America’s favorite backyard menus.

This was a tough one. Everyone loves cheesy garlic bread, but between the white bread, the butter, and the cheese, it’s a tough sell to the health-conscious. The task was to figure out how to get whole-wheat bread to respond like white bread. Toasting the bread first, then dipping it in chicken broth before topping it with a generous amount of low-fat cheese, and finally broiling it did the trick.

The beans in this dish are native to North America, but baked beans in some form are served all over the world. We most probably borrowed the recipe for this version (beans in tomato sauce) from our friends in England a couple hundred years ago. Baked beans are usually prepared with high amounts of sugar and salt, but other than that are generally good for you. By using a sugar-free, low-fat barbecue sauce as a base, there was some room in the calorie budget for low-fat bacon. If you prefer a more Southern taste, try substituting 1/2 cup canned, drained collard greens for the kale.

Here’s a great steakhouse side dish that can do more harm than the red meat itself. Standard preparations make a bad boy out of an otherwise extraordinarily healthy vegetable. The problem with spinach is that it’s very lean and often bitter—which is why we sauté it in butter or douse it with cream. All-natural Greek yogurt has been employed here to help clean up its act.