'Fast and Easy' Cookbooks

Hi,

I know generally fast and easy is not our style here. I'm big on the taste and don't generally care how long it takes. Unfortunately, not all the peas in the pod think alike. My youngest sister inquired what cookbook I'd recommend for "quick and easy French food in 10 minutes." I said I don't think along those lines, though somebody here may have a response.

Of course is 10 minutes the actual prep time, then you let something simmer for hours? Or is it 10 minutes to the table? Knowing my sister, she is metering her time spent. She is also not as food oriented as many here are, where we are thinking about what to have for dinner when we're eating lunch. I presume she thinks of dinner at the moment she wants to eat. So maybe 10 minutes is food to the table.

I don't know, it's not the way I think or live. So maybe someone is more clued in to what she wants and how to achieve it. Maybe there are websites catering to this?

The easiest, quickest way to French food?

Make reservations.

Cathy,
My last birthday gift from my mom was Jacques Pepin's latest book, "Fast Food My Way". Many of the recipes are truly very fast (if you have the ingredients) and I've found a few that I've worked into my repertoire. The photos are great, the writing is clear and simple, and it's a fun book to look through. It's not entirely French, I would say the theme is more "rustic European"

There was recently a companion show on PBS which was also excellent. Pepin is without a doubt my favorite celebrity chef.

More info about the book at:

http://powells.com/cgi-bin/biblio?inkey=6-0618393129-0
http://www.jacquespepin.net/

Best,
Michael / EC

I agree on Pepin. Also, going back a bit, there may be some Richard Olney books that work. Sorry I can't be more specific, but one could browse the shelves at a good book store and get a sense of the usefulness pretty quickly.

Also, perhaps Patricia Wells.

With the exception of Pepin, it may not be a question of finding a whole book of quick & easy, as much as finding some good books and culling the quickest and easiest bits from them.

Of course there are whole categories of cooking that are at least easy, if not quick, by definition. E.g.roasting. Brown a bird or a piece of meat. Pile on the appropriate veggies. Pour on stock/wine/herbs. Stick it in the oven.

Enjoy nibbles and apperitifs until the timer rings.

Not news to you of course, but a way of thinking about it that might be useful along with just looking for a particular book to solve the problem.

In the end, your sister may have to be a litle bit flexible on the 10-minute time frame but if she can get to 30, sky's the limit!

Michael,

I'm glad I asked ... I especially like Jacque Pepin when he is cooking with his daughter Claudine. You can tell if there wasn't a camera hanging around there was something he just wanted to say and couldn't. Yeah, now that I'm thinking the books with Claudine would work well, also.

The well stocked kitchen is another trick to getting meals fast. It may take her a while to come up to that level. I'm hoping once she has a few successes under her belt, then enthusiasm will kick in and the 10-minute limitation will be lifted.

If there are any more ideas, I'm happy to pass them along.

Pepin's book is fantastic. I would second that recommendation.

As noted, French 'cooking' is fast(er) if a lot of the prep is done. Prep work takes less time if ones techniques are better.

Here's another recomendation that not really french. But is an excellent
resource for fairly quick meals

Little Meals : A Great New Way to Eat and Cook by Rozanne Gold
ISBN: 0316310131

If French is not necessarily requirement, how about some of Rachel Ray's 30-Minute Meals books?

Thanks so much for the recommendations everyone! (I am the baby sister Cathy2 refers to) Being a baby, I have no patience with cooking, so I am grateful for quick and easy routes.

Ma soeur will be pleased I am POSTING!

Merci!

jlo

Again, if you can diverge from French, Giuliano Hazan, Marcella's spawn, wrote a book called "Every Night Italian" with a time limit of 45 minutes per recipe. His 45 minutes is active time though many can be to table in a half hour to an hour.

rien

The program is still on PBS. It will be back on WTTW at 10:30 AM on Saturday, March 26 after the current multi-week begathon ends. WYCC carries the program at 3:00 PM on Sundays.

We have watched most of the shows. I would characterize the recipes as New American as done by a French native who is not a chauvinist and has been in the United States for decades.

I've always been very happy with Pierre Franey's "60 Minute Gourmet" recipies. They're short, sweet, and not dumbed down [well, at least to my eye... but I do feel that I know a good dinner from a bad one at this point in my life]. They appear to still be in print in paperback form [I have them in hardcover from the 80's some time]. I often rely on them when I have company for dinner and want to make something very tasty and still have energy left over after dinner for, um, other things .

I enjoy watching Jacques Pepin cook, but I like these books better than "Fast Food My Way" [which I confess was the only one of his books that I looked at].

Snort if you must, but I am attached to "Martha Stewart's Quick Cook," which was published in 1983 (!), and is still in print. It's a good solid book of relatively fast but elegant recipes in a menu format, and is lavishly studded with photographs, some of which are a hoot, in that they feature a young(ish), apple-cheeked Martha. The incessant references to and foreword by the erstwhile Mr. Stewart, Andy, are fun, too. A lot of the recipes that probably seemed beyond the pale in 1982 - fresh sorrel? Chervil? Wha?? - are lead-pipe cinches now, given the wide availability of interesting ingredients. While not easy to find in stores, Amazon generally has it in stock, and for cheap.

Here's an ultra-fast Easter-y dinner, for example:

Martha.

Most of what's in the Balthazar cookbook is bistro food that's as simple as fry it and sprinkle it with herbs or an easy browned butter sauce or the like. Compared to most such New York restaurant cookbooks, a very practical and realistic book, and I've liked everything I've made from it (including faux-ver sole).

Mike G--

I also think the Balthazar cookbook is an excellent source for real-people recipes. I like that the recipes aren't dumbed down versions of haute cuisine, but rather straight forward meals which require only great ingredients to become great dishes.

Have tried the Duck L'Orange yet?

trixie-pea

I don't really cook with duck much, just out of lack of habit, but I actually had a traumatic childhood experience with duck a l'orange which I've told before (in the Introduce Yourself thread):

...the family well remembers the serious day of labor she once put into Julia [Child]'s duck a l'orange, which came to disappointment in the end when we realized that there was about as much meat on an entire duck as on a single chicken thigh.

Maybe that's a challenge...

Eating Duck L'Orange is one of my earliest and fuzziest childhood memories. My mom claims that I did not yet have teeth--but I must have had at least two.

The Balthazar recipe skirts the skimpy duck meat problem by using just the skin-on duck breast.

sundevilpeg wrote:Snort if you must, but I am attached to "Martha Stewart's Quick Cook," which was published in 1983 (!)

I enjoy collecting older cookbooks, SDP, so thanks for the heads up on Martha! I will look for it the next time I'm at the used book store.

I would like to recommend Jean Anderson's New Processor Cooking for quick and easy recipes for maitre d'hotel butter and duxelles.

"French Cooking in Ten Minutes: Adapting to the Rhythm of Modern Life," by Edouard de Pomiane, was originally published in 1930 and has been reissued by North Point Press (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $16.50).

I almost hesitate to call it a "cookbook," since it's descriptions of how to cook things, and, frankly, they're not all 10-minute dishes; you have to rely on cooking ahead, ie. make a beef broth, then a vegetable-beef soup takes only 10 minutes. It's not a cookbook for someone who doesn't know how to cook, and if you get thrown by someone who says add "a little" of something, or "cook until done," this is not the book for you.

Because it was published in 1930, there's no call for processed or frozen foods, altho he does call for some canned foods. This isn't the definitive French cookbook, but it's charming and the food is very simple to prepare. And I like his instructions:

The intro to the Sauce Chapter: "Now you mustn't think that ten-minute cooking condemns you to eating nothing but minute steaks, with none of the refinements of great French cuisine. Your stove has at least two burners,maybe three. Who can stop you from using one burner to saute some slices of beef kidneyin butter, while you make bearnaise sauce on the other? .."

In 10-minute cooking, he says, "You will be eating neither hare nor rabbit stew, nor woodcook salmis. But if we think about it a little, we can find a number of game dishes that can be added to your menus and that merit the praise of a real gourmet." This precedes a recipe for "Larks en Cocotte."

But most recipes don't call for such obscure ingredients as larks. Most are in the everyday repertoire of sauces, fish, shellfish, eggs, chops, vegetables, sausage, noodles, tripe and its relatives, etc. This is French home-cooking from the early 1900's. It's not "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," but it's a neat little book with handy, quick, sometimes just one-paragraph instructions on how to cook something in the French way.

Carol wrote:"French Cooking in Ten Minutes: Adapting to the Rhythm of Modern Life," by Edouard de Pomiane, was originally published in 1930 and has been reissued by North Point Press (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $16.50).

This sounds delightful! I'm adding it to my list! Thanks, Carol!

I don't know about a cookbook, but I am addicted to Trader Joe's. They have tremendous deals on frozen fish or chicken that cook as fast as fresh (they are IQF so they don't stick together and fairly thin pieces) and have super "simmer" sauces in jars (sauces that aren't over-salted or over-sugared like many are).

With the addition of some fresh or frozen veggies, and some form of starch, these combine in endless combinations for quick week-night dinners. Now, the total time may be more than 10 mins, but your prep really can take only 10 mins and then it just simmers.

For example I make the chicken with tagine sauce - put some frozen chicken to cook in a pan with a little oil. While first side is cooking chop some carrots and green beans (or whatever veggies you like) and nuke carrots to partially cook. Turn chicken. Drain and rinse one can of chickpeas. Start water boiling for couscous. Drain excess fat from chicken pan. Toss chickpeas, veggies (also some frozen cauliflower) and sauce over chicken. Cover and let simmer gently until cooked through.

Other options - cook chicken in pan, remove from pan, deglaze pan with some liquid and acid (for example, wine and chicken broth, or lime and water), throw in a seasoning (thyme or cilantro or maple syrup) and a little bit of fat (butter or oil) and stir a bit then pour over chicken. Viola - a pan sauce.

I really like The Cook's Encyclopedia of Four Ingredient Cooking, by Joanna Farrow. The pictures are great! But for me, even four ingredients is just too much. Most of my meals have just one or two ingredients -- credit card + phone (delivery) or credit card (dine-in). (Seriously, I wish I had more time and energy to cook, I really do like it ... maybe after I retire.)

Mark Bittman of the New York Times who writes The Minimalist food column for that paper published "The Minimialist Cooks at Home" a few years ago.

It contains simple, sophisticated recipes with only a few ingredients.

Carol wrote:"French Cooking in Ten Minutes: Adapting to the Rhythm of Modern Life," by Edouard de Pomiane, was originally published in 1930 and has been reissued by North Point Press (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, $16.50).

I did acquire a copy of this book, which I gave to my sister recently. Or if it was not precisely that book, then it was something very much like it. Thanks for a great suggestion.

My sister called this week with astonishing news: she now has the cooking bug. After years of eating food quickly prepared, she has recently started to cook from scratch. It appears the stirring of her cooking soul was inspired by vegetable soup she liked, but thought was just a bit expensive. In a moment of "What the heck," she purchased vegetables to make soup. A visiting friend observing my sister's quick work with the vegetables, inquired where did my sister learn knife skills. She replied, "From watching my sister all these years." The finished soup was better than her inspiration, launching her into more cooking endeavors.

My sister made a homemade version of Egg McMuffin with some substitutions to her taste. She was so pleased with the result, she ate it three days in row for breakfast. For dinner, she made blackened tuna steaks. Further proof my sister may be occupied by an alien being, , she now reads cookbooks for ideas.

Long ago when my sister was maybe 10 or 12, I called home from New York after arriving from Europe. My sister was counting the minutes until I got home. She wanted to cook a duck and talk late into the night. I wasn't thinking food, I was thinking sleep and lots of it. I came home and went to sleep. We never did cook the duck together, though to this day I still wonder, "Why a duck?" I always felt a little bad I didn't encourage this idea. It just occured to me, maybe the duck was a bow to my interests while the conversation was to hers. Whatever it was, it was certainly a missed opportunity.

Congratulations jlo!

Regards,

I'm a bit surprised that no one has mentioned him yet, but Gordon Ramsay's "Makes it Easy" and "Fast Food" cookbooks are very good. These contain recipes that I have managed to make on a daily basis and ended up being staples because it's all about making easy yet sophisticated and well-balanced meals.

For videos and a preview of the recipes in the cookbooks, do a quick search on youtube. Even the video recipes are very educational and complement the books well.

The Bittman "How to Cook Everything" book is pretty simple but not always boring; his recent Times column listed 101 two-sentence recipes for dishes that take 10 minutes or less. We also like the Cook's Illustrated "Quick Recipes" book, which can also serve as a jumping off point for more elaborate dishes.

What about an old standby, the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook? It's certainly not flashy but it's a great resource for many things, and (the newer edition) has times listed next to each header about how long it takes to make.
It also has some nice reference listings, such as measurement equivalents and ingredient substitutions.

When she really gets going, Cook's Illustrated is wonderful for learning the "why" of cooking, which has really helped me over the past few years. Some of their recipes are time consuming, but teach such good skills & variations on each recipe, that the knowledge is well worth it.

It's so nice to hear about people learning something new and loving it!

sundevilpeg wrote:Snort if you must, but I am attached to "Martha Stewart's Quick Cook," which was published in 1983 (!), and is still in print. It's a good solid book of relatively fast but elegant recipes in a menu format, and is lavishly studded with photographs, some of which are a hoot, in that they feature a young(ish), apple-cheeked Martha. The incessant references to and foreword by the erstwhile Mr. Stewart, Andy, are fun, too. A lot of the recipes that probably seemed beyond the pale in 1982 - fresh sorrel? Chervil? Wha?? - are lead-pipe cinches now, given the wide availability of interesting ingredients. While not easy to find in stores, Amazon generally has it in stock, and for cheap.

Here's an ultra-fast Easter-y dinner, for example:

Martha.

I was surprised to stumble across this post 2 years later! I finally got this book a couple of weeks ago. This was Martha's second book, I believe. One menu features kielbasa. You're suppose to be able to cook all menus in 1 hour.

Yes, the menus are timeless but the cover photo is a hoot. Martha's wearing a pink Laura Ashley dress and even describes one of the soups as having Laura Ashley colors!

I'm looking for some cookbook ideas for the daughter of a family friend who is going to be graduating from college this fall and moving out on her own. She is always interested in cooking with me when I'm visiting my home state, but she doesn't have much experience. She can follow recipes well enough, but has trouble with meals involving too many dishes (timing, multi-tasking), and with any amount of improvising. She is at the level that she'll try most any spice, but only in the exact amounts and exact kinds mentioned in a recipe. I'd like to find some cookbooks that 1) give her some good basic recipes and meal ideas that don't involve too many dishes to time out, and 2) help her learn more about different spices so she doesn't always resort to spice-packets and lawry's seasoned salt.

Some of the above cookbooks look promising; does anyone have any other ideas or helpful tips? I'd love to just hang out with her in the kitchen and teach her myself, but unfortunately we live nearly 600 miles away from each other.

jandyle wrote:She is always interested in cooking with me when I'm visiting my home state, but she doesn't have much experience.

Sounds exactly like me and my little sister. She likes to cook, but doesn't have much experience. She wanted to learn tried and true technique and build up a stable of good, solid recipes to have in her repertoire.

Cooks Illustrated is the best solution for this. Their recipes are tested, not fussy, and well-written. I bought her a copy of "The New Best Recipe" and she absolutely loves it.

Best,
Michael

Thanks for the suggestion!

The thing I'm most stuck on teaching her is how to pick spices. She can handle the basic "cook meat X in a pan/on a grill/in the oven" type of stuff; but nearly everything seems to come with the instruction "add various spices". I can't tell you the number of calls I get asking "what spices are good on X?". How do you teach someone that from 500 miles away?