CookSmart: Perfect Recipes for Every Day - Hardcover

Anderson, Pam

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0618091513 ISBN 13: 9780618091515

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2002

Synopsis

Collects basic dishes that can be prepared more easily to accommodate today's hectic lifestyles, pairing culinary essays with simple recipes for such fare as oven-barbecued ribs, easy chicken Parmesan, Caesar salad without raw eggs, and quick chocolate cake. 35,000 first printing.

About this title

About the Author

Pam Anderson is the author of The Perfect Recipe, which won a Julia Child Award, CookSmart, and Perfect Recipes for Having People Over. She is the new monthly food columnist for Better Homes and Gardens and the magazine’s TV spokesperson, a columnist for USA Weekend, and a contributing editor to Fine Cooking.

Reviews

Anderson (The Perfect Recipe; How to Cook Without a Book) brings her wide experience and easy style to this latest offering. She takes the recipes one step further, explaining the testing method of each, much in the style of Cook's Illustrated where she was the former executive editor. Highlighting such dishes as Oven-Fried Chicken That's as Good as Fried, 90-Minute Pot Roast with Rich Red Wine and Onion Gravy, and Pasta Salad, Anderson caters to cravings for comfort food. Once the principles of pasta salad have been explained, for example, a number of versions are put forward, from Greek-Style Pasta Salad with its creamy vinaigrette, through Pasta Salad with Smoked Salmon and Asparagus, to Asian-Style Pasta Salad with Chicken, Baby Corn and Snow Peas. The home cook will feel at ease with the recipes, which have been designed for simplicity; the more advanced cook, interested in the whys and hows, will be able to apply the principles learned to other areas of food preparation. By combining both audiences so successfully, Anderson has once again produced a winner.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Anderson's The Perfect Recipe presented foolproof recipes for classics from roasted turkey to strawberry shortcake. This time, she focuses especially on favorite family-style dishes, from cream of mushroom soup to spaghetti and meatballs to chicken and dumplings. Each master recipe (many include variations) is prefaced by an essay detailing the testing process that led to the final recipe (… la Cook's magazine, where Anderson was executive editor for many years); she notes that for Perfect Peach Pie, for example, she conducted 31 different tests of thickeners alone. There are also informative sidebars, as well as step-by-step illustrations of various techniques. Anderson's previous books have been popular, and she now writes a weekly column for USA Weekend, which has no doubt gained her new fans; for most collections.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0618091513
• ISBN 13: 9780618091515
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 348