How to have your carbs and eat them too

THOSE who have attempted a low-carb diet will know what it means – ordering chicken rice without the rice for lunch, making the fish soup shop a regular stop, and stocking your pantry with shirataki noodles and chickpea pasta.

Perhaps you also remember feeling hungry all the time, or missing the smell of bread wafting from your oven.

If the above resonates, know that you are not alone. Cutting back on a food group is not a sustainable way of life – not for most, at least.

That’s also why Carbivore, a new cookbook by New York-based wellness and food writer Phoebe Lapine, might appeal.

Lapine’s career journey has been driven by a diagnosis of Hashimoto’s – an autoimmune disorder with symptoms that can sometimes be managed by dietary changes.

Her 2017 memoir, The Wellness Project, covers her diagnosis, the lifestyle changes she made in response and some gluten-free recipes to help those in similar shoes.

She followed this in 2021 with SIBO Made Simple, a patient guide and cookbook for anyone suffering from small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

With Carbivore, published in March this year, she is targeting anyone with keto fatigue; people who tried to get off the carb wagon but desperately yearn for breakfast muffins, mac and cheese, and fried rice.

Lapine, like so many of us, is a carb lover. In the book’s introduction, she describes her desert island meal as “pasta, served on a plate made entirely of pasta, with shaved pasta on top”.

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While she has given up gluten to manage Hashimoto’s, her elimination diets have taught her that “if you’re stressing about what you’re eating all the time, no amount of kale can make you healthy”.

To that end, the first part of Carbivore is devoted to strategies for enjoying carbs without becoming a victim of the subsequent blood-sugar spikes and crashes that could wreak havoc on one’s health.

The advice here would be familiar to those who follow French influencer Jessie Inchauspe, better known as the Glucose Goddess: eat some fibre before you consume your sugars, add protein and fat, and aim to move a little after each meal, for instance.

Hacks such as these have their detractors, with some saying that the science behind them is fuzzy, but the ways in which Lapine has worked this advice into her recipes are unlikely to attract controversy.

In the second part of the book, she devotes a whole section to salads and dressings, packs veggies into her meal suggestions and offers some healthier options for guilty treats.

A simple preparation for a kale-based salad makes it easy to start any meal with fibre: In a bowl, mash some salt into a clove of garlic. Drizzle on olive oil and lemon juice, toss in some torn-up kale and give it a massage. To this you can add avocado, almonds and something sweet (dried cherries or cranberries; or roasted butternut squash, sweet potato or beets).

We brought this to a party and received compliments from people who were surprised that something that looked so healthy could taste so good.

There is also a vegged-up mac and cheese created in honour of the spinach artichoke dip sold at US chain California Pizza Kitchen. The chopped artichoke hearts almost melt into the cheese sauce; adding fibre, bulk and more crevices for the melted cheddar to creep into.

Although it leans heavily towards vegetables, Carbivore is not just for vegetarians. There is a healthy balance of meat-centric recipes in the book, including a turkey-based meatloaf, shepherd’s pie with sweet potato mash, and salmon-patty burgers.

Lapine has several sweets too, with gluten-free flour options. Her upside-down strawberry-rhubarb cake uses polenta and almond flour, and the black sesame banana bread is based on buckwheat.

Not having any reason to avoid gluten, we don’t have such flours lying around in our pantry. We do, however, enjoy a glorious apple-cinnamon baked French toast, using some gluten-loaded sandwich bread from the freezer.

It’s a grand reminder that some foods just aren’t meant to be eliminated, from a cookbook that satisfies the carbivore in all of us.