The 10-Gram Solution

Skinless chicken breast. Steamed potatoes. Broccoli. And for dessert: sliced bananas. Spa cooking used to mean doing without--without calories, yes, but also without flavor and without enjoyment.

No wonder it used to be regarded as such an oddity.

But an amazing thing has happened over the last several years. Not only has spa cooking livened up, incorporating new ingredients and styles of cooking, it has also moved into the mainstream, showing up on menus of regular restaurants as well.

Brent Wuest, executive chef at the Ojai Valley Inn and Spa’s three restaurants for the last eight months, says that, in many ways, his cooking hasn’t changed much from when he ran the highly praised French restaurant at Dallas’ luxurious Adolphus Hotel.

“To tell you the truth, there’s not that much difference,” he says. “It’s a matter of not labeling things. I think lot of chefs around the country are cooking very similar things that aren’t labeled spa. But when you slap that label ‘spa’ on food, you automatically alienate a lot of people.

“While we do offer a 1,000-calorie menu in Acorn, our spa restaurant, there are a lot of elements of it that are also on the menu in Maravilla, our fine dining restaurant.

“I think people are interested in both experimenting and feeling better about themselves, whichever restaurant they’re in. I’m trying to create a middle ground for people where it’s not ‘I’ll have a cheeseburger with bacon and avocado today, because I’m going to the spa tomorrow.’ ”

At the Canyon Ranch Resort Health Spa in Tucson, interim chef Mark Clark says customers are even loosening up on fat. “We’re definitely getting away with a lot more,” he says. “It used to be, eight years ago, that you couldn’t have more than four or five grams of fat in a meal. Now the maximum is up to 10 grams. If you put a little bit of fat in food, it tastes better.”

As restrictions on fat are lifted, chefs at spas are experimenting with foods that may have been practically unheard of 10 years ago.

“What’s really changed in my cooking is the ingredients that I have in my pantry,” says Josef Lageder, chef at La Costa Resort and Spa in Carlsbad, Calif. “All different kinds of grains: quinoa, kashi, bulgur, Israeli couscous. Fructose instead of sugar. People are more aware now than they used to be.”

Even at Escondido’s hallowed Golden Door Resort near San Diego, one of the great-granddaddies of the spa world, things are loosening up. Not in terms of nutritional restrictions, certainly--calories from fat still must total less than 20% of every meal--but in terms of ingredients and cooking styles.

“There are a lot of ingredients that we use nowadays that we didn’t have before,” says chef Michel Stroot, who has been cooking at the spa, off and on, since 1974. “Lots of grains: spelt, four or five kinds of beans, three kinds of lentils. It used to be plain brown rice.

“But more than that, we go heavily at least once a week into Thai food, and there are always a lot of Asian influences on the menu.

“It used to be you could pretty well dictate the menu to the guests,” Stroot says. “We could say, ‘You’re going to have a piece of chicken, two steamed potatoes, some broccoli and a carrot. And you’re going to lose weight on that.’

“Today the public is much more informed and educated. They’ve read the books and the magazines and newspapers and they’ve been to other restaurants doing what we do. As a result, we have to do a lot more.”

Yoshe Nobe

Active Work and Total Preparation Time: 30 minutes * Low-Fat

This is an easy one-pot dish from Michel Stroot’s “The Golden Door Cookbook” (Broadway Books, $30). Stroot uses canola oil.

8 small inner leaves nappa cabbage, blanched

2 teaspoons oil

1 onion, halved and thinly sliced lengthwise

1 clove garlic, minced

1 teaspoon minced ginger root

3/4 pound firm white fish fillets, such as sea bream, sea bass or mahi-mahi, cut into 1-inch pieces

12 Manila clams, scrubbed

8 shrimp (about 5 ounces), peeled and deveined, or 5 ounces cooked lobster meat, cut into 1-inch pieces

6 cups vegetable broth, fish stock or water

1/2 cup rice wine, optional

Few drops tamari or low-sodium soy sauce

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 carrot, peeled and cut diagonally into 1/4-inch slices

1/4 pound spinach

4 large shiitake mushrooms, about 6 ounces, cleaned, trimmed and quartered

1/4 pound firm tofu, cut into 1/2-inch cubes

2 green onions, including green tops, thinly sliced

1 lime, quartered

* Blanch cabbage leaves by dipping briefly in pot of boiling water. Remove and pat dry. Lay leaves on work surface and roll into tight cylinders. Set aside.

* Heat oil in wide, heavy saucepan or skillet over medium heat. Saute onion, garlic and ginger in oil until onion is translucent, 2 to 3 minutes. Arrange fish, clams and shrimp separately over onion, and add broth, rice wine if using, tamari and salt. Bring to simmer and skim off fat.

* Arrange reserved cabbage rolls, carrot, spinach and mushrooms separately over seafood and simmer until vegetables are crisp-tender, about 5 minutes. Remove from heat.

* Add tofu and let sit in hot broth until heated through. Sprinkle with green onions. Serve in shallow bowls garnished with lime quarters.

4 servings. Each serving: 366 calories; 670 mg sodium; 186 mg cholesterol; 8 grams fat; 25 grams carbohydrates; 50 grams protein; 3 grams fiber.