DiSpirito: Ditch the calories, keep the sin (AP)

J.M. HIRSCH and HOLLY RAMER, Associated Press J.m. Hirsch and Holly Ramer , Associated Press – Sat Jan 26, 1: 47 pm ET

MIAMI BEACH, Florida – Celebrity chef Rocco DiSpirito wants to transform a collection of healthy recipes in a style of life, and he wants people to feel bad about it.

The key to transforming the comfort food in healthy fare is cut calories while retaining the feeling of "peccata" that comes from eating foods, said on Saturday in an interview for Associated Press to wine and Food Festival in South Beach.

"Fried chicken needs to feel bad. You need to crunch through the skin, you feel like you're committing a sin, "he said, describing a recipe that involves poaching chicken until almost cooked, then flash fried it so that it absorbs only a tenth of the conventional approach of oil.

His new cookbook, "now eat this! Diet "is a follow-up to his best-selling cookbook" Now eat this! ". The new book combines a diet plan with recipes and shopping lists, menus and exercise tips and though joins countless other diet books on the shelves, DiSpirito said its offers a new approach.

"I think professional chef who has a particular focus on the taste was missing" industry book of diet, he said.

DiSpirito, who rose to fame at its restaurant Union Pacific in New York and later starred in the reality show, "The Restaurant," said he thinks Americans are increasingly at the celebrity chef for the orientation of eating healthier. Healthy cooking is not just for Dietitians in the world, he said.

"We are the gateway for information on fun, cooking, food and wine, living large," he said. "We represent a lot of things in a lot of Americans. Now, we are becoming a resource for healthy eating. We have all the old, some of us got healthy. "

But also its look DiSpirito's fans to help with his books, using Facebook and Twitter to gather ideas. What began as throwing out a request for he knew not what to post turned into a useful way to know his audience, he said.

"I just wanted my book one, have more accurate information and two, America's real preferences for comfort food that I was going to transform from the bad boys of real food for healthy food," he said. "The main message was ' we love our food and we want it to be healthy ... but we still eat it if it wasn't healthy. '"

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J.M. Hirsch is food editor of The Associated Press. To see all the videos from the AP coverage of South Beach wine and Food Festival, go to http://bit.ly/f4lFT6:

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