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Fixing Fast Food
Cookbook Remakes Fast Food in a Low-Fat Way
By Jenn Director Knudsen
These include Arby's Curly Fries and just about any french-fry dish, she says. She figured out how to trim the Curly Fries down to 2 grams fat and 235 calories from their former heft of 18 grams of fat and 340 calories.
"Basically I make substitutions for food I otherwise couldn't have," says Alexander, who also is owner and executive chef of Cafe Renee Catering, a contributor to 16 national magazines and has made appearances on Good Morning America and other TV shows.
"But I still eat plenty of chocolate," she says, laughing. "I am still eating all the food; I just don't need to eat [the chains'] versions of it. If I could never have french fries again – my version of them – I'd be messed up; I'd be bummin'."
Alexander explains she created her recipes and stuck to her regimen by solely taking "tiny, tiny bites" of real fast-food items rather than "polishing off" an entire dish. (And she upped her exercise routine while working on the book, as she was nibbling more than usual, she says.)
Working fatiguing 14-hour days in her kitchen with two assistants, Stephanie Farrell and Danielle Boule, the trio would purchase, say, a pizza from Pizza Hut and bring it back to Alexander's kitchen to deconstruct and then reconstruct in a lighter version.
The women would take off every single ingredient – from pepperoni slices to melted cheese to the sauce – and then rebuild their own, slimmed-down version of the dish, tasting all the while to ensure an accurate copy.
"Sometimes I think I drove them [my assistants] a little insane," Alexander says, noting a chicken biscuit she got down from 19 to 9 fat grams, but only was satisfied once her version hit 8 fat grams.
Yet, she says of the entire process, "It was a blast. It was an absolute blast."
Alexander's advance for the book helped with her $8,000 bill for fast food, grocery items and even specific cooking and baking tools. (She got a break at one Pizza Hut, where she asked so many questions about the specifics of the pan's material and size, an exasperated employee finally gave her one of the chain's to keep.)
