[.ca] Cooking 'Round the Clock: Rachael Ray's 30-Minute Meals (ISBN 1891105167)

A Great Cookbook for a Person Who's New to Cooking and Willing to Buy Lots of Ingredients:
In Cooking 'Round the Clock, the irrepressible Rachel Ray fills every hour with fun in the kitchen and joy in the eating. This woman is a whirlwind! She gets you off to a fast start on that conclusion when she relates how she didn't sleep as a child . . . but would sneak down to cook in the middle of the night. And she's still a night owl, often writing her many cookbooks while you and I are abed. True to her roots, everything in this book can be produced in 30 minutes or less. Don't let the long ingredient lists fool you on that point: Items are mostly mixed together and quickly prepared at that point. The book is organized around times of the day, mostly providing short menus, but sometimes varying that approach with a list of recipes. Here are the sections: 7-11 a.m. Rise & Shiners has sections on seven forms of scrambled eggs, a champagne menu, three kinds of hash, three sweet breakfast items, continental breakfast breads, and heavier dishes (oatmeal, ham steaks, and toast stacks with eggs and bacon) 11 a.m. - 4 p.m. Lunch delivers three brunch menus, seven lunch menus, two great heavy-duty salads, lots of sandwich recipes, three soups, a taste of Italian and French food 4-7 p.m. Early-Bird Specials covers 18 menus with a variety of classic American and ethnic (English, Chinese, Italian, and Mexican) dishes plus three hearty "stoups" 7-9 p.m. Sit-Down Suppers has eleven menus cover the range from steak to burgers while hitting turkey, chicken, and fish in between. There are four other recipes (chili, chicken and couscous, chicken salad, and polenta and mozzarella) 7-12 p.m. TV Dinners & Snacks is filled with the foods we all eat in from of the television (nachos, pizza, subs, popcorn, dips, appetizer munchies, and various wraps) 9-12 Bistro Meals takes you on a world tour of great eating menus (bourbon-orange chicken, tuna marinara, duck salad, Cuban-spiced pork, and French-style cod) 12-7 a.m. Late-Nite Bites is all recipes (7 kinds of tartines for the toaster oven, quick "gnocchi," pita-based pizzas for the toaster oven, more eggs dishes, Mexican coffee, cheese-based entrees like welsh rarebit, and pasta carbonara) Are you feeling full yet? Unlike her earlier cookbooks, I found the flavor experiences in most of these recipes to be less adventuresome. But there were quite a few recipes where I was intrigued by the combination of flavor and speed that she offers: Green Eggs and Ham (pp. 30-31) Oatmeal Cookie Pancakes (p. 43) Orange and Almond Scones (p. 45) Mixed Greens with Balsamic Vinegar and Strawberries (p. 64) Smoked Turkey Waldorf Salad (p. 65) Curried Cashew-Chicken Salad (p. 66) Shrimp on Chicken Caesar Romaine Lettuce Wraps (p. 69) Fruit Soup (p. 70) Bombay Brunch Wrap (p. 79) Cobb Sandwiches (p. 80) 30-Minute Shepherd's Pie (p. 94) Baked Stuffed Flounder (p. 108) Shrimp Newburg (p. 131) Mixed Green Salad with Gorgonzola Dressing (p. 137) Chicken, Chorizo, and Tortilla "Stroup" (p. 148) Gorgonzola and Sage Sirloin Burgers (p. 151) Chili Verde (p. 154) Roasted Red Pepper Hummus and Crudités (p. 167) Bittersweet Dijon-Dressed Salad (p. 183) Haddock with Bacon, Onions, and Tomatoes (p. 184) Gorgonzola and Walnut Spaghetti (p. 186) Cuban-Spiced Pork Tenderloin and Soffrito Rice (pp. 202-203) Veggie Scrambles with Pesto (p. 224) Green Ranch-Hand Eggs (p. 228) Rigatoni Carbonara (pp. 236-237) The rest of the dishes seemed potentially interesting, but seemed a bit too close to the standards to provide much excitement of variety. But these could easily be staples for those who don't yet know how to do the standards. If you love turkey-based items and lots of Italian sauces and cheeses, you'll be quite pleased with what you find here. But you won't save much time unless you look over the recipes you want to try and assemble the ingredients in advance. My cupboard and refrigerator don't have much in the way of items like fresh ginger root, scallions, cream, fresh parsley, brandy, nutmeg, garlic pickles, sausage, whole-berry cranberry sauce, pierogi, kielbasa, kale, sauerkraut, fresh chives, or fresh dill. These are just some of the ingredients listed on pages 92-100. I'm pretty sure I can buy all of these at my supermarket, but I would need to put a special shopping list to be able to launch into a 30-minute meal preparation. Enjoy!