Coconut-Peanut Sauce

Lately I’ve been experimenting with multiple versions of Bowl Food, a delicious way to prepare a healthy and delicious feast in a bowl. The concept is to create a layered meal of grains, beans (or tofu, tempeh, seitan, etc.), lightly steamed veggies, and raw or lightly cooked greens, all topped with a flavorful sauce. The possibilities are endless, as you can imagine. I used the “Coconut-Peanut Sauce” (page 557) to top a bowl meal consisting of brown rice, baked tofu, sugar snap peas, corn-off-the-cob, and steamed kale. Honestly, this sauce would add sparkle and pizzazz to anything you drizzled it on. The flavor combination of peanut butter, coconut, ginger, garlic, soy sauce, lime, and cayenne is a match made in heaven and the ultimate in Asian sauces. The recipe calls for coconut milk, a product very high in saturated fat. One cup of coconut milk contains 552 calories, and 57 grams of fat (51 of those saturated fat). By contrast, one cup of almond milk contains 30 calories, and 2.5 grams of fat (with 0 grams saturated fat). For this reason, I chose to create a substitute for the coconut milk in this recipe by mixing ½ teaspoon of coconut extract with one cup of almond milk. This is a delicious way to get the creaminess and flavor of coconut milk with almost zero fat. Your arteries will thank you, and your taste buds won’t know the difference!

Keeping it “McDougall Friendly” checklist:

• While coconut milk isn’t technically ‘forbidden’ on the McDougall plan, it isn’t recommended, either. To create a lower fat version of coconut milk that retains the same flavor, substitute with one cup of almond milk mixed with ½ teaspoon coconut extract.