Perfect Recipes for Having People Over Review

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(More customer reviews)Anderson's brief introduction emphasizes organization and planning, and the book's design is elegant - lots of full-page color pictures of finished dishes - and practical, with a tip guide at the bottom of each recipe.
She starts with the main course, grouped by occasion, from kitchen gatherings to barbecues, sit-down dinners and breakfast. "All the Rest" follows, from appetizers through dessert, including drinks and breads.
Anderson often offers a master recipe, which can be transformed with simple additions - quesadillas, for instance, or shish kebabs, which both come with a page of variations in spices and main ingredients. This is particularly true for the soups, like the Creamy Vegetable, which comes with 10 separate recipes and ideas for "hundreds" of variations.
Each recipe concludes with suggestions for when to serve and what to serve it with, variations, shortcuts, advance preparations and, my personal favorite, ideas for the leftovers.
For the dining room there's an Easy Baked Risotto which does away with much of the stirring and Beef Tenderloin with cracked pepper and a red wine pan sauce; more casual meals feature Oven-Barbecued Pork for sandwiches or carnitas and Lasagna made with both white and red sauce and no-boil noodles. Breakfast might be a savory baked strata, assembled the night before.
Side dishes are bright and imaginative, like Smoked Salmon and Watercress Salad with Red Onion-Caper Vinaigrette or Orange-Glazed Asparagus; desserts are simple and many are homey, like the Tender Yellow Cake and Five Variations. Drinks come by the pitcher.
There's nothing difficult here and there's plenty of range to suit every taste and every occasion. Anderson's fans ("The Perfect Recipe," "How to Cook Without a Book") will snap it up and anyone who entertains should find it a useful pleasure.
- Portsmouth Herald

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Perfect One-Dish Dinners: All You Need for Easy Get-Togethers Review

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(More customer reviews)Perfect One-Dish Dinners / 978-0-54719-595-7
I love cookbooks and I was excited to try this one when it came available on NetGalley. Several weeks later, I'm a little...confused.
Make no mistake about it - this is a breathtakingly lovely book. There's a lot of valuable recipes here, but they're definitely of the "advanced student" variety, so do be aware of that. Almost every recipe has at least a dozen ingredients, and almost everything in this book is made completely from scratch - anytime dumplings or biscuits are working into a recipe, for instance, you *will* be making those dumplings from floury scratch.
There's nothing wrong with an advanced-level cookbook, but it's just strange because the book is marketed as "easy" recipes, and there's really nothing easy about these. No prep times are estimated with the recipes, but I'd guess that most of them take over an hour to prepare. Adding to my confusion is the whole "one-dish" premise isn't kept to - the introduction states that "one-dish" dinners are easier, and thus was born this book... but every "one-dish" comes complete with an appetizer and dessert suggestion... as well as the occasional side. Don't get me wrong - it's great to have the suggestions of sides and desserts for when they are wanted or needed, but this is especially weird because everything is grouped together as one "meal", rather than the usual entrees, sides, appetizers, desserts layout of most cookbooks. The practical upshot of this is that if you want to make the "Blueberry Cheesecake Ice Cream", you'd better remember that it was listed with the "Lobster Dinner", because there's no Table of Contents to get you there. (In all fairness, there is an alphabetized index in the back.)
I'm also not sure about the "Get-Togethers" part - a lot of the recipes are very exotic and specialized, and maybe my family is different, but if you get more than 5 of us in a room together, someone is going to dislike (or worse, be allergic to) at least one of the ingredients in these dozen-ingredient extravaganzas.
So, ultimately, if you take out the "one-dish", the "easy", and the "get-togethers", we have "Perfect Dinners: All You Need". But, then, I don't know if this is ALL you need since the layout can still be a little wonky - there's no Table of Contents, the pictures aren't labeled (although they ARE lovely) and sometimes require a little guess work to match with the relevant recipe, there's no prep times listed, and there's no nutritional data summary (a nice touch in many of the Better Homes and Gardens books that I've come to like).
Really, if you have all the time in the world, love baking from scratch, are an advanced hand in the kitchen, and have a non-picky and open-minded group of friends and family, there are some really good three-course meals in this book. I just don't understand why they're not marketing it that way?
NOTE: This review is based on a free Advance Review Copy of this book provided through NetGalley.
~ Ana Mardoll

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How to Cook Without a Book: Recipes and Techniques Every Cook Should Know by Heart Review

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(More customer reviews)I already own a bookshelf of cookbooks, but Pam Anderson's is truly unlike any other out there. It explains, in a concise manner, the basis for the primary forms of cooking (from scratch!) that we all love, but never cook for lack of time: those hearty soups, salads, sauces to go with that ever-present chicken, and how to expand your menu way beyond chicken, and so much more. Unbelievable, she shows us that we *can* cook these on a weeknight (most within 30 minutes).
I love the concept behind this book because, while I enjoy cooking, I often don't have time for all of the recipes that are my family's favorites -- or at least I didn't think I did. This book teaches you that a soup, for example, is a few basic ingredients that you probably already have in your home, and that it can be prepared in 20 minutes! She shows you how this is true for a wide variety of meats, pasta dishes, appetizers, desserts, even stir-fry and pad thai dishes.
While there are also example recipes for every category of food in the book, after reading it, you will be inspired to create your own variations, even if you never thought you could. In addition, there are tips on how to make most of this food sophisticated enough for a dinner party, including example menus.
With the help of Pam Anderson's book, I now have the joy and the option of creating my own recipes, instead of constantly pulling a book from the shelf to find the answer to "What's for dinner?"
It's easy to read, thoroughly enjoyable and best of all, the ideas presented will help end the feeling that cooking the nightly dinner is such a chore!

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