Almost from Scratch: 600 Recipes for the New Convenience Cuisine

Almost from Scratch: 600 Recipes for the New Convenience Cuisine

Jars of olive tapenade and capers, containers of hummus and ready-made sauces; these days, grocery stores are full of ingredients that are one step away from becoming a meal. With Almost from Scratch: 600 Recipes for the New Convenience Cuisine , you can transform those gourmet products into gourmet meals with a few simple steps. From Andrew Schloss, the author of Fifty Ways to Cook Most Everything , come 600 recipes for delicious and easy meals that use convenience foods without sacrificing taste. Using prepared salsas, pestos, high-quality baking mixes, and other packaged items, recipes that once took a whole afternoon can now be assembled quickly and easily. Almost from Scratch makes the most of prepackaged foods to streamline the way home cooks prepare everything from soup to dessert, whether you're making a weeknight dinner for the family or entertaining on a Saturday night. With recipes for appetizers, salads, soups, sauces, meat dishes, seafood, pasta, grains, stir-fries, vegetables, and desserts, Schloss shows you the never-ending possibilities of cooking with shortcuts. Sumptuous starters such as Herbed Artichoke Dip, Parmesan Shortbread, Blue Cheese Quiche with Potato Crust, and Tomato Tarragon Tart will be the perfect start to any evening. For a light meal, try Three Corn Chowder, Pizza Rustica, Mango Brie Quesadillas, or Smoked Turkey and Chickpea Chili. For a more substantial dinner, sample recipes such as Deep Dark Pot Roast, Mediterranean Vegetable Lasagna, Dutch Country Chicken and Potato Dumplings, Grilled Salmon with Olive Vinaigrette, and Lemon Pork Chops on Artichoke Bruschetta that will keep your family -- and your taste buds -- happy. Who knew that decadent, awe-inspiring desserts could be created in a flash using packaged ingredients? Dark Chocolate Soufflé, Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie, Blueberry Cornmeal Upside-Down Cake, and Chèvre Cheesecake with Fig Coulis are just some of the sweets that will wow your guests. Finally, a sophisticated, gourmet cookbook that allows home cooks to make great-tasting meals without spending all day in the kitchen. Serious cooks turn up their noses at recipes calling for a can of soup, usually a condensed cream soup, as an ingredient. Nevertheless, there are times when something from a can or jar efficiently saves time and energy. In Almost from Scratch , Andrew Schloss steers a careful course: each recipe calls for some pre-made ingredient: bottled mayonnaise, canned kidney beans, bottled Chinese hoisin sauce, a jar of curry sauce, pesto from a can, a container of yogurt, a box of frozen vegetables. As Schloss illustrates in hundreds of recipes, these convenience foods can combine with fresh ingredients to make all sorts of appetizers, main dishes, and desserts. Guests need never know that the apple-gingersnap stuffing in their pork chops started out as a box of frozen escalloped apples, boxed gingersnaps, and frozen chopped onions. Schloss gets a lot of mileage out of a can of chunky salsa, its flavorful essence serving as foundation for a host of dips and entrees. Salsas also form the bases for many a barbecue sauce, both spicy and mild. Desserts may start with a boxed cake mix, instant pudding, or frozen puff pastry. Using these shortcuts, as Schloss demonstrates, actually leads to more imaginative cooking, not less. Schloss' approach is also useful to help introduce youngsters to cooking by starting them out with simple combinations of prepared ingredients that require little or no chopping, mincing, or other more advanced food preparation techniques. Mark Knoblauch Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Andrew Schloss is the president of Culinary Generations, Inc., a product development company, and the author of seven cookbooks, including Fifty Ways to Cook Most Everything . He also serves as the current president of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP). He has written for The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post , Food & Wine magazine, and Family Circle , and is a frequent guest on QVC. He lives in Pennsylvania with his wife, three children, and their dog. 600 Recipes Convenience Cuisine Easy and tastes great English No illustrations- it's that easy.