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The Sneaky Chef: How to Cheat on Your Man (In the Kitchen!): Hiding Healthy Foods in Hearty Meals Any Guy Will Love
by Missy Chase Lapine
from Running Press
Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen: Recipes from My Family to Yours
by Trisha Yearwood
from Clarkson Potter
She’s adored by fans as one of country music’s top stars, but among family and friends, Trisha Yearwood is best known for another talent: cooking.
Throughout her life–from her humble roots in Georgia to her triumphant recording years in Nashville and a fulfilling married life with husand Garth Brooks in Oklahoma–Trisha has always enjoyed feeding those she loves. Now she dishes up a collection of more than 120 of her go-to recipes in a tribute to both home-grown cooking and family traditions.
Trisha believes a recipe always tastes better when it has a memory attached to it. Here, she teams up with her mother and sister to share their family’s best-loved recipes. This is the kind of classic comfort food you’ll want at the heart of your own family’s mealtime memories. Inside is a full menu of Southern fare with a contemporary twist. But you don’t have to be a Southerner to enjoy Yearwood family favorites such as:
Trisha’s Chicken Tortilla Soup
Gwen’s Fried Chicken with Milk Gravy
Stuffed Pork Chops
Breakfast Sausage Casserole
Blackberry Cobbler
Banana Pudding
Along with the recipes for inviting soups, textural salads, home-style family entrées, colorful side dishes, and irresistible desserts, Trisha shares everything from charming personal anecdotes to practical advice, time-saving tips, and creative ingredient substitutions to accommodate all tastes.
With full-color photographs taken in and around Trisha’s homes and a foreword by Garth Brooks, this soul-warming slice of Southern life will delight country music fans and home cooks alike. Best of all, this is un-pretentious food that is easy to put together, satisfies even big country appetites, and tastes like home. Trisha’s warm evocations of pre-paring food for loved ones will transport you back to your own childhood. These are recipes you’ll enjoy with your family for years to come.
The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook Revised Edition: Featuring More Than 1,200 Kitchen-tested Recipes, 1,500 Photographs And No-nonsense Equipment And Ingredient Ratings
by America's Test Kitchen
from America's Test Kitchen
Over time, twin enterprises Cook's Illustrated magazine and America's Test Kitchen have published many books dedicated to providing exhaustively tested recipes--"best" versions of traditional dishes plus definitive takes on kitchen equipment and ingredients. Some series readers have complained of endlessly recycled or rejiggered recipes; others take each book at face value, finding the formulas and cooking insights good and helpful. America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook, which calls itself a cookbook, cooking school, and kitchen reference in one, offers over 1,200 approachable recipes for a very wide range of dishes--from "weekday" fare like Creamy Rice Casserole, Cheesy Nachos with Spicy Beef, and Skillet Lasagna, to dressier recipes, including Pan-Seared Lamb Chops with Red Wine Rosemary Sauce, Roasted Trout Stuffed with Bacon and Spinach, and Chocolate Marshmallow Mousse. There are "specialty" chapters devoted to sandwiches, drinks, and slow cooker and pressure cooker dishes; a grilling section is a tutorial in itself.
Unorthodox, "better-way" approaches abound. For example, a fried chicken formula instructs the cook to wet the bird's dry coating slightly before it's applied for an extra-crunchy crust. Predictably, side bars feature equipment and ingredient evaluations, on bottled salsa, for example; "good food/bad food" photographs show readers what to aim for when producing fare like holiday cookies; and there are tips, charts, and "Cooking 101" sidebars galore. Step-by-step photos offer more direction still.
Though the majority of recipes are sound and yield tempting results, readers poring through the book will note gaffes and curiosities. The recipe for poached eggs, for example, offers the option of extra cooking for "firm yolks" (hard-boiled poached eggs, anyone?) and hamburgers receive an indentation before cooking to avoid "puffy" domed burgers, a novel problem that could, in any case, be solved by proper shaping. The addition of sugar to some savory dishes--for example, a pan sauce for steak--is misguided. Readers should also know that the book, which comes in loose-leaf form, requires some assembly, and that the pages themselves are quite thin, making them vulnerable to spills and tearing in daily kitchen use.
These things said, the book delivers solid, family-friendly dishes with enough fully orchestrated "how- to" to make even novice cooks feel secure when tackling the basics or more ambitious fare.
What's New in the Revised Editon?
First out in 2005, America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook was praised for its recipe ease, inclusiveness, and wealth of helpful information, but was also criticized for its physical production. A loose-leaf book with its pages included separately, readers found it inconvenient to assemble and its paper impractically thin. The revised edition is printed on heavier stock, and arrives with its pages already on its rings (there are two more now, for sturdiness) with only chapter dividers to insert, a simple task.
In addition, new inside front and back covers provide information on emergency substitutions, roasting guidelines, equivalent measures, and more--and a "Light Recipes" chapter has been included. Without defining precisely what "light" means--fewer fats and carbs, or a combo?--the section offers attractive all-course recipes, such as turkey chili, veggie burgers, meat and cheese lasagna, and chocolate bundt cake. Some readers will welcome the "slimming" of familiar dishes while others will find some of the manipulations--using cornstarch to thicken the sauce in fettuccine alfredo or ricotta to add body to a reduced-fat pesto, for example--unappealing. The book, however, remains a valuable kitchen tool--and one with greater convenience and durability than before. --Arthur Boehm
Exclusive Recipe Excerpts from The America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook (Revised Edition)
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|  Light Chicken Parmesan |  Classic Apple Pie |
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|  Cook's Illustrated |  The Best 30-Minute Recipe |
Repackaged to be easier to use and expanded to include a whole new chapter of healthy, light recipes, this revised edition of one of last fall's bestselling cookbooks remains the one and only basic cookbook you will ever need. Beautiful step-by-step photos illuminate every conceivable technique from chopping shallots and skinning salmon to cutting up a chicken and tying a roast. In fact, just about anything you want to do in the kitchen is explained in these pages in America's most popular test kitchen's approachable, no-nonsense voice.
These recipes will keep you busy (and your friends and family happy) for years to come, since we've included hundreds of easy weeknight dishes (like Skillet Lasagna and One-Pot Chicken and Rice), company-worthy dinners (like Beef Burgundy, Roast Leg of Lamb, and Fresh Fruit Trifle), equipment ratings, shoppings tips, and more.
Ani's Raw Food Kitchen: Easy, Delectable Living Foods Recipes
by Ani Phyo
from Da Capo Press
Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany (Vintage)
by Bill Buford
from Vintage
Bill Buford's funny and engaging book Heat offers readers a rare glimpse behind the scenes in Mario Batali's kitchen. Who better to review the book for Amazon.com, than Anthony Bourdain, the man who first introduced readers to the wide array of lusty and colorful characters in the restaurant business? We asked Anthony Bourdain to read Heat and give us his take. We loved it. So did he. Check out his review below. --Daphne Durham
Guest Reviewer: Anthony Bourdain
Anthony Bourdain is host of the Discovery Channel's No Reservations, executive chef at Les Halles in Manhattan, and author of the bestselling and groundbreaking Kitchen Confidential, Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook, A Cook's Tour, Bone in the Throat, and many others. His latest book, The Nasty Bits will be released on May 16, 2006.Heat is a remarkable work on a number of fronts--and for a number of reasons. First, watching the author, an untrained, inexperienced and middle-aged desk jockey slowly transform into not just a useful line cook--but an extraordinarily knowledgable one is pure pleasure. That he chooses to do so primarily in the notoriously difficult, cramped kitchens of New York's three star Babbo provides further sado-masochistic fun. Buford not only accurately and hilariously describes the painfully acquired techniques of the professional cook (and his own humiations), but chronicles as well the mental changes--the "kitchen awareness" and peculiar world view necessary to the kitchen dweller. By end of book, he's even talking like a line cook.
Secondly, the book is a long overdue portrait of the real Mario Batali and of the real Marco Pierre White--two complicated and brilliant chefs whose coverage in the press--while appropriately fawning--has never described them in their fully debauched, delightful glory. Buford has--for the first time--managed to explain White's peculiar--almost freakish brilliance--while humanizing a man known for terrorizing cooks, customers (and Batali). As for Mario--he is finally revealed for the Falstaffian, larger than life, mercurial, frighteningly intelligent chef/enterpreneur he really is. No small accomplishment. Other cooks, chefs, butchers, artisans and restaurant lifers are described with similar insight.
Thirdly, Heat reveals a dead-on understanding--rare among non-chef writers--of the pleasures of "making" food; the real human cost, the real requirements and the real adrenelin-rush-inducing pleasures of cranking out hundreds of high quality meals. One is left with a truly unique appreciation of not only what is truly good about food--but as importantly, who cooks--and why. I can't think of another book which takes such an unsparing, uncompromising and ultimately thrilling look at the quest for culinary excellence. Heat brims with fascinating observations on cooking, incredible characters, useful discourse and argument-ending arcania. I read my copy and immediately started reading it again. It's going right in between Orwell's Down and Out in Paris and London and Zola's The Belly of Paris on my bookshelf. --Anthony Bourdain
A highly acclaimed writer and editor, Bill Buford left his job at The New Yorker for a most unlikely destination: the kitchen at Babbo, the revolutionary Italian restaurant created and ruled by superstar chef Mario Batali.
Finally realizing a long-held desire to learn first-hand the experience of restaurant cooking, Buford soon finds himself drowning in improperly cubed carrots and scalding pasta water on his quest to learn the tricks of the trade. His love of Italian food then propels him on journeys further afield: to Italy, to discover the secrets of pasta-making and, finally, how to properly slaughter a pig. Throughout, Buford stunningly details the complex aspects of Italian cooking and its long history, creating an engrossing and visceral narrative stuffed with insight and humor.
Cook Right 4 Your Type: The Practical Kitchen Companion to Eat Right 4 Your Type
by Peter J. D'Adamo
from Berkley Trade
Diet schemes come and go. Successful plans, backed by powerful media machines, become bestsellers with sequels and food-product lines. But with so many diet books on the market, how do you decide which plan is right for you? According to Peter D'Adamo, the answer depends on your blood type. In his first book, Eat Right 4 Your Type, D'Adamo, a naturopathic physician and researcher, makes interesting and unique connections between human evolution, blood type, diet, exercise, and health. Now, in Cook Right 4 Your Type: The Practical Kitchen Companion to Eat Right 4 Your Type, D'Adamo provides readers with:
- Road maps and charts for each of the four blood types, detailing which foods and beverages to consume and which to avoid
- Tips for starting and sticking with the diet and matching your menu to your blood type
- Thirty-day meal plans to help you stay healthy, live longer, and achieve your ideal weight
- More than 200 healthy and easy recipes keyed to blood type
Individualized for your blood type--more than 200 original recipes, as well as 30-day meal plans, for staying healthy, living longer, and achieving your ideal weight.
After nearly twenty years of research, Dr. Peter J. D'Adamo revealed the connection between blood type, diet, and health in Eat Right 4 Your Type. Now, with a team of chefs, he helps you design a total health program that's right for your blood type. Cook Right 4 Your Type is the essential guide for living with a sensible diet individualized for you that allows you to eat food that seems like a major indulgence. With possibilities ranging from lamb stew to lemon squares, and braised vegetables to delicious soups, you'll barely notice you've started a regimen designed to optimize your health, your weight, and your total well-being.
Cook Right 4 Your Type includes:
Individualized 30-day meal plans for each blood type
More than 200 great-tasting recipes
Food lists and shopping guides
An easy-to-follow food program
With Eat Right 4 Your Type, Dr. Peter J. D'Adamo started a diet revolution. Now, after establishing a connection between blood type and diet, he offers a practical guide for incorporating that knowledge into your lifestyle.
Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill Cookbook: Explosive Flavors from the Southwestern Kitchen
by Bobby Flay
from Clarkson Potter
You've got to hand it to Bobby Flay. He opened his first restaurant, the inventive "new southwestern" Mesa Grill, in 1991--and he's still celebrating the sweet, hot and spicy at that Manhattan outpost, not to mention on his TV shows and in other cookbooks like Boy Gets Grill and Bobby Flay's Bold American Food. Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill Cookbook offers 140-plus recipes for a wide range of new "signature dishes," such as BBQ Duck Filled Blue Corn Pancakes with Habañero Sauce; Chile Rubbed Short Ribs with Creamy Polenta and Cotija Cheese; and Grilled Red Snapper with Tomato-New Mexico Red Chile Sauce. He also includes idiosyncratic takes on old favorites, like Whipped Potatoes with Cilantro Pesto, and desserts including Milk Chocolate-Peanut Butter Crème Brûlée, and Caramel Apple Shortcakes. Even drinks get the Flay treatment.
His food (at least in moderation) is difficult not to like. Cooks will find the recipes eminently doable if they're willing to cull the necessary ingredients--there's a fine ingredients glossary--and put aside a bit of time. This is great "occasion cooking" and should appeal to dyed-in-the-grill Flay fans, as well as those whose curiosity has been tickled by his winning culinary hegemony. --Arthur Boehm
Smoky, earthy, fruity, and spicy, the flavors of the Southwest have intrigued Bobby Flay ever since he was a young chef, eventually serving as the inspiration for the menu at his first restaurant, Mesa Grill. Now sixteen years later, Bobby’s bold and vivacious take on this cuisine has made him a fixture on America’s culinary scene and turned Mesa Grill into a veritable institution. In Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill Cookbook, the celebrity chef invites you to join him in the kitchen of his famous restaurant to learn the secrets of his of his signature contemporary Southwestern cuisine.
Here are 150 recipes for the drinks, appetizers, soups, salads, main dishes, sides, sauces, desserts, and brunch dishes that have earned Bobby his reputation for creating innovative combinations and big, rich flavors, including:
- Grilled Asparagus and Goat Cheese Quesadillas with Tomato Jam and Cilantro Yogurt
- Queso Fundido with Roasted Poblano Vinaigrette
- Sweet Potato and Roasted Plantain Soup with Smoked Chile Crema
- Grilled Shrimp Brushed with Smoked Chile Butter and Tomatillo Salsa
- Seared Tuna Tostado with Black Bean Mango Salsa
- Coffee-Rubbed Filets Mignons with Ancho-Mushroom Sauce
- Spicy Coconut Tapioca with Mango and Blackberries
Complete with a guide no tequila lover should be without, a list of must-haves for the Southwestern pantry, menu suggestions for festive occasions with friends and family, Bobby's pointers on basic cooking techniques, and 100 full-color photographs, Bobby Flay’s Mesa Grill Cookbook helps you re-create the fun and flavors of Mesa Grill in your own kitchen.
Weight Watchers All-Time Favorites: Over 200 Best-Ever Recipes from the Weight Watchers Test Kitchens
by Weight Watchers
from Wiley
This full-color cookbook is an exciting collection of the best recipes ever developed by the experts at Weight Watchers—225 tempting dishes never before presented in book form. If you’re a fan of the Weight Watchers New Complete Cookbook but are looking even more recipe choices, this new Weight Watchers collection will be an irresistible new kitchen companion. It’s packed with recipes that you’ll love, whether you’re cooking for a weeknight family supper, a casual backyard get-together with neighbors, or a festive gathering with friends.
Mastering Knife Skills: The Essential Guide to the Most Important Tools in Your Kitchen (with DVD)
by Norman Weinstein
from Stewart, Tabori & Chang
Norman Weinstein has been teaching his knife skills workshop at New York City’s Institute of Culinary Education for more than a decade—and his classes always sell out. That’s because Weinstein focuses so squarely on the needs of the nonprofessional cook, providing basic instruction in knife techniques that maximize efficiency while placing the least possible stress on the user’s arm. Now, Mastering Knife Skills brings Weinstein’s well-honed knowledge to home cooks everywhere.
Whether you want to dice an onion with the speed and dexterity of a TV chef, carve a roast like an expert, bone a chicken quickly and neatly, or just learn how to hold a knife in the right way, Mastering Knife Skills will be your go-to manual. Each cutting, slicing, and chopping method is thoroughly explained—and illustrated with clear, step-by-step photographs. Extras include information on knife construction, knife makers and types, knife maintenance and safety, and cutting boards, as well as a 30-minute instructional DVD featuring Weinstein’s most important techniques.
Giada's Kitchen: New Italian Favorites
by Giada De Laurentiis
from Clarkson Potter
She’s taught us every facet of Italian cooking—from traditional and regional to seasonal and contemporary. She even made us fall in love with pasta again by opening us up to lighter, healthier versions that don’t weigh us down. Now the Food Network star and bestselling author of Everyday Pasta, Giada De Laurentiis, takes us down a new path, sharing her love of food with clean, vibrant, simple flavors and bursts of bright colors that look as beautiful on the plate as they are delicious.
Yes, you will still find those fabulous recipes she remembers so fondly from family meals, but you’ll also find updated twists on classic trattoria favorites—California-inflected, hearty but not overwhelming, and with the perfect balance of healthfulness and terrific flavor. Wouldn’t you love a faster, lighter take on osso buco (here made with turkey instead of veal), a salad with real substance (like one of cantaloupe, red onion, and walnuts), and fish that gets an Italian makeover by way of lots of fresh veggies and accents such as fennel and grapefruit salsa? And let’s not forget dessert. After all, what’s not to adore about little doughnuts dipped in chocolate sauce?
Ranging from soups and snacks to easy entrées and elegant dinner-party fare, Giada’s recipes are perfect for any day of the week. And for the first time, she includes a full section of dishes that the little ones will love making as much as they love eating (like mini chicken meatballs). With something to please everyone at your table, Giada’s Kitchen deliciously demonstrates why Giada De Laurentiis has become America’s best-loved Italian cook.
Italy meets California In Giada De Laurentiis’s collection of 100 new recipes, she focuses on fresh ingredients, simple preparation, and bright flavors. Anyone who wants to indulge in the pleasures of Italian food without feeling weighed down will find inspiration for delicious, hearty yet healthy weekday meals. Giada’s recipes satisfy both our desire to eat with gusto and to feel good about what we eat.
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