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Learn to COOK - How to Cook Without a Book: Recipes and Techniques Every Cook Should Know by Heart
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List Price: $26.00
Our Price: $17.16
Your Save: $ 8.84 ( 34% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Broadway
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.555
EAN: 9780767902793
ISBN: 0767902793
Label: Broadway
Manufacturer: Broadway
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 2000-04-04
Publisher: Broadway
Release Date: 2000-04-04
Studio: Broadway
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Editorial Reviews:
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Pam Anderson grew up watching her parents and grandparents make dinner every night by simply taking the ingredients on hand and cooking them with the techniques they knew.
Times have changed. Today we have an overwhelming array of ingredients and a fraction of the cooking time, but Anderson believes the secret to getting dinner on the table lies in the past. After a long day, who has the energy to look up a recipe and search for the right ingredients before ever starting to cook? To make dinner night after night, Anderson believes the first two steps--looking for a recipe, then scrambling for the exact ingredients--must be eliminated. Understanding that most recipes are simply "variations on a theme," she innovatively teaches technique, ultimately eliminating the need for recipes.
Once the technique or formula is mastered, Anderson encourages inexperienced as well as veteran cooks to spread their culinary wings. For example, after learning to sear a steak, it's understood that the same method works for scallops, tuna, hamburger, swordfish, salmon, pork tenderloin, and more. You never need to look at a recipe again. Vary the look and flavor of these dishes with interchangeable pan sauces, salsas, relishes, and butters.
Best of all, these recipes rise above the mundane Monday-through-Friday fare. Imagine homemade ravioli and lasagna for weeknight supper, or from-scratch tomato sauce before the pasta water has even boiled. Last-minute guests? Dress up simple tomato sauce with capers and olives or shrimp and red pepper flakes. Drizzle sautéed chicken breasts with a balsamic vinegar pan sauce. Anderson teaches you how to do it--without a recipe. Don't buy exotic ingredients and follow tedious instructions for making hors d'oeuvres. Forage through the pantry and refrigerator for quick appetizers. The ingredients are all there; the method is in your head. Master four simple potato dishes--a bake, a cake, a mash, and a roast--compatible with many meals. Learn how to make the five-minute dinner salad, easily changing its look and flavor depending on the season and occasion. Tuck a few dessert techniques in your back pocket and effortlessly turn any meal into a special occasion.
There's real rhyme and reason to Pam's method at the beginning of every chapter: To dress greens, "Drizzle salad with oil, salt, and pepper, then toss until just slick. Sprinkle in some vinegar to give it a little kick." To make a frittata, "Cook eggs without stirring until set around the edges. Bake until puffy, then cut it into wedges." Each chapter also contains a helpful at-a-glance chart that highlights the key points of every technique, and a master recipe with enough variations to keep you going until you've learned how to cook without a book.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating: 
Summary: I'm tempted to call it redundant, or at least mistitled
Comment: I mean, come on. Look at the title. It's too ironic to look at without laughing. And Cat Cora hadn't even written Cooking From the Hip yet; if there's anything that describes this book better than its own title, it's Cora's title.
It's not a bad book by any stretch of the imagination. As it happens, it borrows a technique that's been used very successfully by cooking teachers for years, the "master recipe", whereby the writer throws out a recipe that demonstrates a general principle and then presents similar recipes as variations on a theme. This approach was developed to a high art by Julia Child in particular (The Way to Cook uses master recipes almost exclusively); Escoffier relied on it heavily, possibly the only way to make his Guide Culinaire of a manageable size; and the technique is the backbone of a great many Chinese restaurants and breakfast restaurants, where the key ingredients go together like Legos. (Oddly enough, this is not necessarily a hallmark of Anderson's alma mater, Cook's Illustrated; their nitpicky approach to dishes, while phenomenally successful, limits their ability to present master-variation recipes.)
So ultimately, where this book fails is that it promises something that it makes no sense to deliver. Improvisational cooking is certainly a useful skill, and it has quite the romance to it. But ultimately, lacking a good cooking teacher over your shoulder at all times, there's no real way to do it except to practice and study; Anderson's slightly-fuzzy, grossly mistitled book is only a first step. In my cooking life, I've never felt the need to learn to cook instinctually; I can do it for certain things, but nine times out of ten it's something I've learned to do by rote. And I tweak it sometimes, just like this book tells its readers to do. But this book wants you to believe that you can learn to fly solo. I have never done that -- I have always had a book or two around to serve as a quick reference -- and I don't think I can reasonably expect anyone that is able to read to do so.
What is in here is good. The teaching technique is well-tested and sound, and you can certainly learn to cook or refine your techniques using this. And there are a lot of creative recipes for sauces and the like in here. The section at the beginning on how to stock a well-prepared kitchen is valuable, if not exactly hard to find in other books, and will get you a pantry that can get you out of the weeds in short order. If that's all this book wanted to be, it would be a solid four-star book. But it had to oversell itself with a silly title.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Must-have Cookbook
Comment: I admit to being a cookbook-aholic - some are fun to read yet I don't actually use them, some are the opposite. This one is both. It's one of those cookbooks that I end up tabbing so I can go back for a refresher. The recipes are imaginative and do-able, and range from ambitious to embarrassingly easy (best example of this is the Warm White Bean Spread that takes about 30 seconds to make and tastes heavenly).
I especially like the way the book is organized, which is by method. For example she goes through sautes ("If you've seen one saute, you've seen them all") with basic methods for sauteing various meats. Then she provides a basic method for pan sauces, followed by several variations that can be made using the basic method. If it sounds too dumbed down, think again - her recipes are delicious and make it possible to serve imaginative and delectable meals to my family even on weeknights.
I always prefer photos, but in this case, the descriptions and then successful outcomes far outweigh that consideration.
I first saw this book at a friend's house; I am guilty of sneaking peaks at bookshelves, trying to get an idea of what my good-cook friends are using. This one was food-stained and dog-eared, the best indicator of a well-used resource. Sure enough, it's starting to look the same on my bookshelf; it's like having a kindly aunty in my kitchen, giving me great ideas for meals and useful tips for success.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Pam makes it look easy--and it is!
Comment: How to Cook Without a Book: Recipes and Techniques Every Cook Should Know by Heart
By learning the basic techniques in this book, I'm able to sautee, for example, several different kinds of meats from my memory (and I don't have the greatest memory!) If I look anything up before sauteeing my meat, it's only to decide on a delicious sauce to accompany it. My family loves the Sauteed Boneless Pork Chops (cut from a boneless pork loin) with Orange-Dijon Pan Sauce with Rosemary.
The author covers everything from salads to side dishes to quick deserts. All of the chapters are fabulous, but I've personally gotten the most out of those dedicated to meat, chicken, and fish.
This book is wonderful and I'd recommend it as a starting point for novices as well as experienced cooks. I was an experienced cook looking for quick everyday meal ideas.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Must Have
Comment: This book is a must have and I have given it to several people as gifts and they agree. The recipes are straight forward, simple, and do not take much time or prep work. It is more of a "guide" to teach you how to use and expand on the basic recipes that she provides. I also love the "grocery list" that it provides telling you what to keep in your pantry to pull together a great dinner in minutes. She encourages you to bring in ingredients that you have or like and not to be afraid to experiment...within the guidelines that she provides.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Why Does This Book Contain Recipes?
Comment: This is a deceitful book. The "techniques" mentioned in the title are summarized in tiny -- and dreadful -- "poems." And the book contains recipes which the novice cook must read!
I have a suspicion that this is a "vanity press" book; that is, one which the AUTHOR pays to have published.
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