I was still digesting a dinner of pasta with cream sauce when I read the news last week that a low fat diet alone is not enough to prevent heart disease or cancer in women. Woo hoo! I certainly haven't been kicking my own ass by trying to follow a low-fat diet, but at least now I can stop feeling guilty about it. In case you didn't already hear, a huge, long-term, federally funded study showed that women who ate a low-fat diet and women who ate whatever the hell they pleased had the same rates of heart attack, stroke, breast cancer and colon cancer. Boy, do I feel sorry for all you suckers who've been topping your baked tortilla chip nachos with Velveeta Light and fat-free sour cream!
Ignorant of the study results, I fully believed I was increasing my risk of coronary thrombosis the other night at Osteria d'Assisi. You know Osteria, it's that Italian place that has been tucked away just north of the Plaza since 1995. It is owned by Lino Pertusini, whose family owned The Palace for 20 years before he sold it a little over two years ago. The muttering about town has been that since selling The Palace, Pertusini has had more time to work with his chef, Fabrizio Ventricini, on Osteria, resulting in an overall improvement in food. I don't have the long history with this place that some of you may have, but I can tell you that it's worth revisiting if you haven't been in a while. It's not super cheap, but the food is very good and the service swift. Beyond that, Osteria has earned a reputation as the most Italian of the city's Italian restaurants, no doubt because of the pleasant ambient sounds of the staff's Italian and Italian-accented chatter.
The night I visited, I washed down a delicious plate of penne zafferano ($19.75) with a tall glass of bubbly Prosecco. Ah, how I guiltily savored those toothsome tubes of pasta, bathed in just the right amount of seafood cream sauce. Oh, the sweet satisfaction of saturated fat! There were plenty of meaty shrimp to be found in the pasta, but I admit I couldn't detect any of the raisins the menu promised. Meh, who cares. I was too busy admiring the seafoody cream sauce with its light saffron touch. The only strange part of the dish was the addition of untoasted, slivered almonds. I kept thinking as I was crunching through them that the flavor of toasted almonds would have been preferable, and their out-of-place crunchiness could have been avoided if they'd ground the nuts. But I don't want to get too anal retentive here; the pasta was great.
We also tried a dish of spaghetti alla rustica con melanzane ($13.95), chosen primarily because it contained eggplant, which was tender (but not soggy!) and very flavorful. We only wished there'd been more of it mixed in with the light and fresh tomato sauce, molten lumps of fresh mozzarella and shreds of fresh basil.
Oh! And I can't forget to mention that we both ordered small garden salads, expecting to find that the mista giardino ($4.95) would consist of four leaves of baby greens drenched with salad dressing. We were pleasantly surprised to find a substantial heap of mixed greens, not terribly overdressed. The restaurant is better known for its Caesar salad, but if you're still afraid of eggs and cheese, then go for the garden salad.
Otherwise, the menu holds a selection of antipasti, a few brick-oven pizzas, a large selection of pastas (all under $20) and a list of more substantial entrees that range up to $30. This is, for the most part, Northern Italian food, and the menu's cold-weather dishes are perfectly suited to late winter in Santa Fe.
And, if you really care about eating to prevent cancer and heart disease, Italian food's not a bad way to go as long as you choose well. Many researchers, reacting to those low-fat diet study results, pointed out that it�s not how much fat, but the kind of fat in your diet that makes the difference. So even if my creamy pasta had the same amount of fat as my dining companion's (tomato-sauced) dish (which it probably didn't), she would be better off because it included heart-healthy olive oil, while mine was laden with cholesterol-raising saturated fat.
Beyond heart-healthy fats, the latest nutritional buzz has been focusing on so-called SuperFoods, like tomatoes, which have heaps of cancer-fighting lycopene. Author Dr. Steven G Pratt first brought SuperFoods to our attention two years ago when his first book, SuperFoods Rx, encouraged us to beef up on beans, blueberries, broccoli, oats, oranges, pumpkin, salmon, soy, spinach, tea, turkey, tomatoes, walnuts and yogurt. Instead of avoiding a list of tempting foods, the SuperFoods theory was to increase intake of not-necessarily low-fat foods (salmon is relatively high in heart-healthy fat) but those with discernible health benefits. Dr. Pratt's new book, SuperFoods HealthStyle (hardcover, William Morrow, $24.95) adds nearly a dozen new SuperFoods to his original list of 14. The new must-do foods include apples, pomegranates and kiwi; honey and dark chocolate; avocados, onions and
garlic; spices like turmeric and cinnamon; and extra-virgin olive oil. Wait, a doctor is telling me to eat more dark chocolate, guacamole and curry? That's the kind of advice I can heed.
Osteria d'Assisi
58 South Federal Place
986-5858
Open for lunch Monday-Saturday, dinner every night
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