What to Keep on Hand, What to Buy Fresh for the Easiest-Ever 30-Minute Meals: A Cookbook
April 17, 2006
Ray has made quite a name for herself on The Food Network, where she hosts four shows, and in a baker's dozen of cookbooks mostly dedicated to easy-to-prepare cuisine. To love this book is to love the author's quirks, like calling extra virgin olive oil "EVOO" and hearty soups "stoups." But her recipes are tasty, simple and often sophisticated enough to turn even doubters into fans. This cookbook, the author's 11th, is dedicated to quick after-work meals and is separated into chapters called "Meals for the Exhausted," "Meals for the Not Too Tired" and "Bring it On! (But Be Gentle)." A meal for the pretty much awake, Smoked Paprika Chicken with Egg Noodles and Buttered Warm Radishes, is the sort of thick, nourishing plate a person craves when the thermometer drops. Pasta in a Creamy Artichoke and Saffron Sauce is luxurious with its sauce of saffron, heavy cream and parmigiano. The chicken and chorizo burritos called Dinner, Wrapped Up are cheesy, filling kid-pleasers, even if the accompanying text can be wince-inducing ("it's a way-cool mega-rrito, dude!"). But what's most remarkable about these dishes is that they take less than an hour to prepare-often a lot less-but they taste like they took all day. For busy, exhausted cooks, that's worth all the quirkiness in the world.
April 15, 2006
The latest cookbook from prolific author and Food Network star Ray features recipes grouped into three categories: -Meals for the Exhausted, - -Meals for the Not Too Tired, - and -Bring It On! (But, Be Gentle). - She also includes chapters on grocery shopping and stocking the pantry, with the idea that any recipe in the book requires no more than the supermarket's express lane limit of ten items, and she provides a shopping list and another of what to have on hand for each recipe. Some of these seem as if they may take more than 30 minutes to prepare, but that won't stop Ray's many fans from clamoring for her newest title. For most libraries.
Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.