Cool Tip: Luxury in Your Mouth, Not on Your Waist

If you read the Guilt-Free Panna Cotta recipe, you may have noticed an ingredient called "Faux Fromage Frais", which translates to Fake Fresh Cheese.  Here's the back story and some great uses for this very handy, non-fat ingredient, that we use almost daily.

In France they have Fromage Frais like we have yogurt--in all sorts of formulations and varieties.  It can be eaten plain or used as an ingredient.  When our French friends first introduced us to the Dukan Diet (by French doctor Pierre Dukan, which focuses on non-fat or low-fat protein), the only book on it in English was written for the British, and a key ingredient to making lovely French-style dishes without fat was non-fat fromage frais.  Unfortunately this product is not easy to buy in the US.  To remedy that shortage, Faux Fromage Frais was born... in Colbrook Kitchen.  You take equal parts of non-fat Greek yogurt (we like Fage) and non-fat cottage cheese (we use Trader Joe's) and pulverize them together in a blender until you get a smooth and pretty creamy result.  We keep this as a staple in our refrigerator. It has a great texture and is less tart than plain yogurt.

How do we use it?  On everything!  Here's a partial list, but let your own creative juices flow:

• Guilt-Free Panna Cotta
• mixed into eggs before scrambling, to make them fluffier
• spooned on top of scrambled eggs before you add salmon caviar, to make them luxurious
• With any warmed, reduced meat juices from roasting or sous-vide cooking meat (fat removed first), added after you take the pan with juices off the heat, to bring the sauce together and make it creamy
• as a key ingredient in our morning Dukan Galette (savory crepe) batter.