Dinners in a Dish or a Dash: 275 Easy One-Dish Meals Plus Tons of Time-Saving Tips
- Book Review,
by Jean Anderson
Amazon.com
Dinners in a Dish and/or a Dash helps today's cooks achieve that most timely of goals: to cook fast. The book's strategy? Use prepped homemade and store-bought food, cook dishes that require a single pot or pan only, and take advantage of the microwave for part of the cooking. The casseroles, stir-fries, skillet dinners, main-dish salads, and savory pies and tarts Anderson presents--250 one-pot recipes in all--exemplify this approach. Beginning with a list of pantry necessities and comprehensive storage tips (on the best ways to freeze food, for example), the book then offers recipes such as Pasta Shells with Sausage, Peas, and Portobellos, Tuscan Vegetable Ragout on Grilled Polenta, and Thai Shrimp with Snow Peas and Peanut Sauce. Recipes for more familiar fare are also present, such as Caesar Salad and Chicken Pot Pie. Anderson's main-dish salads, such as Curried Crab Salad and Tabbouleh with Toasted Walnuts and Feta, make particularly attractive everyday entrees. Throughout, Anderson's food notes and tips ("toasted pine nuts are a staple I always keep on hand" is one) are endlessly useful, as are her extensive dish variations. The comprehensiveness of Anderson's approach, as well as the accessibility and good taste of her recipes, assure the appeal of the book, which novice cooks and more practiced hands alike should find themselves consulting often. --Arthur Boehm
From Publishers Weekly
Anyone who's faced with preparing dinner night after night will welcome this newest from Anderson (The Food of Portugal, The New Doubleday Cookbook, etc.), who presents a thoughtful, discriminating collection of recipes that relies on technique and high-end convenience foods to cut the time it takes to get a meal on the table. Anderson is shameless when it comes to using prewashed salad mixes, broccoli florets and other ready-to-use fresh vegetables, packages of frozen peppers and chopped onions, refrigerator biscuits and pizza dough, and rotisserie chickens, not to mention prepared pasta sauces, salsas and tomatoes. Once she outlines what a well-stocked pantry looks like, she moves on to the recipes, which offer a variety of tastes and traditions. Selections show Chinese, Japanese, Thai influences as well as Mediterranean, French, Middle Eastern, traditional American, Eastern European and Hispanic. There are whole-meal salads like Middle Eastern Salad with Crackly Bread and Yogurt-Mint Dressing as well as kid-pleasing Taco Salad and a curry-scented Madras-Style Chicken. There are soups and stews such as Shortcut Cioppino ("the classic fish muddle") or Thai Coconut Milk Soup with Chicken, Lemongrass and Cilantro. And what could be more comforting than Chicken and Mushroom Soup with Cornbread Dumplings? Stir-fries feature interesting ingredients such as mango slices and soba noodles. With so many skillet dinners, casseroles, traditional pot pies, quiches and pasta selections to choose fromDnot to mention recipes specifically developed for the microwaveDthis book ought to be a pantry staple itself. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Anderson, author of more than a dozen other cookbooks, is also the former food editor of Ladies' Home Journal, and a monthly column of "short-order dinners" in that magazine inspired her latest title. Here she offers main-dish salads and soups, stews, casseroles, pot pies, and other one-dish meals; most are indeed easy, but many of them have long ingredient lists and are not necessarily quick to prepare. The recipes rely on convenience foods such as bell pepper stir-fry mix, frozen hash brown potatoes, and frozen snow peas (odd, since the fresh peas take only a minute or so to cook), even canned chicken and green beans, and a number of them seem pedestrian at best (Reuben Pie, tortilla soup made with barbecue and tomato sauces, Tuna Tetrazzini). Buy for demand. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Booklist
Anyone responsible for keeping a family fed day in and day out appreciates the value of that old standby, the one-dish meal. It combines components from several food groups, it ends up in a single pot, and it can often be prepared ahead, frozen, and reheated in either a microwave or a conventional oven. Noted cookbook author Anderson has brought together a number of one-dish meals: soups, casseroles, stir-fries, and skillet dinners. And given the popularity of Italian cooking, it's a help that pasta dishes also count as one-dish meals. Before presenting her recipes, Anderson gives lots of useful advice on how to keep one's pantry and refrigerator stocked in order to meet the challenge of preparing dinner in a hurry. In keeping with current nutritional concerns, Anderson includes a number of hearty salads. Helpful notes and tips in sidebars guide beginning cooks through these recipes. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Book Description
No time to cook? Got a hungry family to feed? In Dinners in a Dish or a Dash, award winning cookbook author Jean Anderson offers more than 275 great-tasting one-dish meals that are easy to prepare. Yet there's not one of yesteryear's "shelf magic" concoctions in the bunch, thank you.Her secret? Today's supermarkets brim with a new generation of quality convenience foods-frozen chopped onions, peppers, and stir-fry mixes, packaged salas greens and slaws, elegant pasta sauces, cooked shrimp and chicken, frozen puff pastry, zesty salsas, and other spicy condiments, just to name a few. Anderson combines the best of these innovative foods with her impeccable cooking sense to make flavorful food in a flash.Gone are the days of mystery "can of soup" casseroles. Dinners in a Dish or a Dash is filled with ides for modern, imaginative, and heathy diners. Those casseroles make a classy comeback in such dishes as Persian Lamb Pilaf with Mint, Lemon and Zucchini ans Scalloped Corn, Ham and Sweet Peppers. There's a group of simple sauces that can be prepared while the pasta water comes to a boil- try Fusili, Green Beans, and Tomatoes with Two Cheeses or Creamy Spinach Sauce. No punching up the seasonings, you can bring long-simmered flavor to favorite soups and stews such as Spanish Black Bean Soup and Zip-Quick Country Captain in a fraction of the time. Hot-weather blues? Whip up a cooling, no-cook Salmon and White Bean Salad with Tarragon Vinaigrette or Chicken and Rice Salad with Pesto Dressing.Dinners in a Dish or a Dash even shows how to equip your pantry, refrigerator , and freezer with the indipensable and "useful extra" groceries that make quick cooking a breeze. And taking a trip from busy restaurant kitchens, you'll learn how to "prep" chopped onions, minced garlic, chooped parsly, broccoli florets, and other essentials to have waiting in your refrigerator for impromptu meals.These one-dish time savers are so great, you'll enjoy making and eating them even when you're not cooking against the clock.
About the Author
Jean Anderson is the author of many cookbooks, including the award-winning The Foods of Portugal (Morrow) and The Doubleday Cookbook.
Excerpted from Dinners in a Dish And/or a Dash by Jean E. Anderson. Copyright © 2000. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved
Salmon and White Bean Salad with Tarragon Vinaigrette Makes 4 Servings Time permitting, let the salad stand at room temperature 20 to 30 minutes before serving. Ingredients 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 2 tablespoons tarragon vinegar 1 teaspoon dried tarragon, crumbled 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard 1/2 teaspoon sugar 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper 1 large scallion, trimmed and sliced very thin (include some green tops) 1 small celery rib, trimmed and sliced very thin 1 medium-size red-ripe tomato, cored, seeded, and diced One 15 1/2-ounce can navy or pea beans, rinsed and drained well One 6-ounce can salmon, drained and flaked Instructions 1. Combine oil, vinegar, tarragon, mustard, sugar, salt, and pepper in large salad bowl. 2. Add all remaining ingredients and toss well to mix. Serve at room temperature. Variation Tuna and Chickpea Salad with Dill Vinaigrette: Prepare as directed, substituting 2 teaspoons freshly snipped dill or 1 teaspoon dill weed for tarragon, 2 tablespoons white wine vinegar for tarragon vinegar, one 1-pound can chickpeas for navy beans, and one 6-ounce can solid white tuna for salmon. Also add 1 tablespoon welldrained small capers. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Linguine with Chicken and Cilantro-Peanut Sauce Makes 4 Servings For people who can't get enough Thai food, here's a recipe loaded with all the flavors of Bangkok. And it couldn't be easier to make, thanks to the carved, fully cooked chicken breast strips that have recently come to the supermarket. Ingredients 1 large garlic clove, finely minced 1 teaspoon finely grated lemon zest 1 cup bottled Thai peanut sauce 1/4 cup creamy peanut butter One 14-ounce can Thai coconut milk (use light, if you like) 2 tablespoons soy sauce 1 tablespoon fresh lime Juice 1/2 teaspoon hot red pepper sauce Two 10-ounce packages carved, fully cooked chicken breast strips (see Note) 1 pound linguine, cooked al dente by package directions and drained well 1/2 cup coarsely chopped fresh basil 1/2 cup coarsely chopped fresh cilantro 1 large firm-ripe tomato, cored, seeded, and diced but not peeled 1/2 cup coarsely chopped dry roasted peanuts Instructions 1. Bring garlic, lemon zest, peanut sauce, peanut butter, coconut milk, soy sauce, lime juice, and red pepper sauce to boiling in a large nonreactive skillet over moderate heat, then boil uncovered, stirring often, until reduced by about one-third, 5 to 8 minutes. 2. Add chicken and cook 3 minutes, stirring now and then. 3. Add linguine, basil, cilantro, and tomato. Toss lightly but thoroughly and serve, topping each portion with chopped peanuts. Note If you're unable to find the fresh carved, cooked chicken breast strips, substitute frozen cooked chicken strips or cubes. In this recipe, only fresh herbs, will do.
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