[.ca] 1001 Four-Ingredient Recipes (ISBN 1579122078)

For those who absolutely must have a recipe:
This is a niche market cookbook excellent for those just learning to cook and for those who compulsively must have a recipe. Thus one gets such complex recipes as "Parsley Leaf Potatoes" (roast russet potatoes and top with flat leaf parsley) and "Parsley Potatoes" (steam new potatoes and top with snipped parsley) ... Well it does get the author to his 1001 recipes more quickly. One also gets recipes that you must be a kid to appreciate - fish sticks wrapped in crescent dinner rolls. But once one gets past some of the absurdities, the cookbook provides some very good introductions to basic home cooking flavors and mixtures: corn with bell peppers, fresh green peas with garlic, curried green beans, cucumbers in sour cream. It's strength, however, is that it moves beyond the standard pantry: dandelion greens, eggplant parmigiana, bamboo shoots with chili sauce, shallots, steamed taro with swiss chard. The recipes never exceed 4 ingredients plus pantry items. The instructions require only minimal cooking experience. Occasionally the recipe includes variations but the normal pattern is for variations to be separate recipes. The recipes are printed 3 to a page - a random sample pair of pages gives an idea of the breadth of the material: on the left "Pressed Lamb Loaf with Herbs", "Prosciutto with Pasta Sauce", "Quick Lamb Fricassee"; on the right "Quick Ham and Pineapple" "Red Flannel Hash" and "Rice and Cheese with Frankfurters". The odd juxtapositions provide entertainment when one scans for a recipe. Even an experienced cook will find some interesting recipes, but the real value of this cookbook is for those just learning what might go with what.