Frozen pulps can be added to sauces, desserts

When restaurant chefs create dishes such as curried lamb with mango essence or duck confit with passion fruit emulsion, the fruit flavor sometimes comes from a jar.

Now home cooks can aspire to such creations without having to puree a bushel of berries.

Perfect Puree of Napa Valley makes exceptional, pure pulps from field-ripened fruit. They come frozen but are otherwise ready for you to add to sauces, vinaigrettes, desserts and cocktails.

The six offerings are passion fruit, mango, red raspberry, strawberry, prickly pear cactus and white peach — the last being particularly nice for making Bellinis. A 30-ounce plastic container is $15.

Perfect Puree of Napa Valley products are available at www.amazon.com.

Low-carb show on Foot Network

The Food Network has succumbed to the low-carb craze with last Sunday’s premiere of “Low Carb & Lovin’ It,” hosted by restaurant chef George Stella.

Stella revamped his cooking style to incorporate a controlled-carb approach back in 1999. Since then, he’s dropped more than 250 pounds to his current approaching-svelte weight of 210.

But in a refreshing change from many proponents of low-carb diets, Stella emphasizes more than just net carbs. Though he swaps soy flour for wheat and Splenda for sugar, he also emphasizes the importance of antioxidants and fiber, suggests lower-fat ingredient options and imparts solid cooking advice, such as what to do when you can’t use yeast.

The first episode addresses the most difficult low-carb dilemma of the day: breakfast. Stella whips up a towering steak, spinach and cheddar omelet alongside a batch of blueberry muffins.

“Low Carb & Lovin’ It” airs at noon on Sundays.