It's been four decades since Dr. Atkins first introduced his no-carb diet, and yet, no one has managed to come up with a sufficient replacement for a squishy hamburger bun or a pile of spaghetti. But one trendy kitchen contraption is helping cooks find other ways of delivering a burger or holding sauce. Enter the spiralizer.
Related to a mandoline or a julienne peeler, a spiral slicer — or spiralizer — isn't exactly a new concept. Certainly, we've managed to live without a tool that turns vegetables into pretty shapes for eons. Chefs skillful in the art of vegetable garnishes were perfectly handy with a paring knife. But come across a display at any home or kitchen store of the varied and inexpensive spiralizers currently on the market, and you'll wonder where these doohickeys have been all your life.
There's the handheld contraption, in which you insert a long and narrow vegetable and twist it like a pencil in a sharpener. There's the hand-crank option, which drops hair-thin strands into a container below the blade. And then there's the tabletop device, the Cadillac of spiralizers, which acts similar to one of those apple peeler/slicer/corers from Grandma's country kitchen; load up the apparatus with any array of veggies, turn the handle, and out comes your pick of ribbon noodles, spaghetti or fettuccine.
A new pair of cookbooks pegged to this device prove curly fries aren't the only spiralized vegetable worth eating.
In "Inspiralized" (Clarkson Potter, 224 pages, $19.99), Ali Maffucci, a New Jerseyan of Italian descent, shares the joys of discovering she could live a leaner lifestyle and still consume her grandparents' meals from the homeland. Her book offers many vibrantly photographed recipes for noodle dishes of every origin — from Italian spaghetti Bolognese to Thai drunken noodles. In place of pasta for both: zucchini.
For experimental cooks, Maffucci gives alternative vegetable options. Try kohlrabi, rutabaga, celeriac, beets. All of them look like noodles when they pass through the spiralizer. But do they taste like them?
They taste like kohlrabi, rutabaga, celeriac and beets.
A pasta substitute
Zucchini's mild flavor and somewhat slimy texture comes closest to passing for al dente pasta, but true carbo-loaders may not be satisfied. Still, those willing to try mixing and matching different vegetables and sauces may be surprised to find that these meals, while not necessarily a replacement for pasta, are just as good. Those Thai zucchini noodles with ground pork and a just-right blend of Asian sauces was takeout-worthy.