Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'm a big fan of Mark Bittman and his crusade to get America cooking at home, and How to Cook Everything Fast is going to be a real help to get people doing just that. This isn't just a collection of recipes - it's an explanation of the process of cooking faster. All the little things that an experienced home cook does without even thinking about it, plus a lot of tricks and shortcuts that even experienced cooks aren't likely to know all of them. The title of the book might make you think that this is just another collection of quick recipes, but there's actually a lot more than that going on here. You see, an experienced home cook does a lot of things automatically without thinking about it. You rearrange steps, you prep this while that cooks, you do this while the water is coming to a boil, and so on. What's special about this book is that he writes up each recipe in a prep/cook format that builds the prep into the recipe for maximum efficiency. For a newer cook, I can see how this would really speed up the learning curve. Even for an experienced cook, he throws in some ideas that new (to me at least!), like using the broiler to heat oil on a pan for faster baking. I've made a few recipes from this already (a few have been available around the web for awhile). The Fast Chicken Parmesan was the first one I made. Most recipes for this take about an hour, this one took me 28 minutes, and probably would have been a few minutes less except I used fresh mozzarella so I couldn't grate it and had to cut it into slices, that probably added a couple minutes. My husband and family really liked it, I would probably use a little less oil in it next time but I liked it too. It’s not like a traditional chicken parmesan, this is layered with tomatoes, basil, cheese & bread crumbs instead of dredging it in egg and breading. The next recipe I made from this was the White Beans with Sausage, Greens, and Garlic, (you can find it in the Amazon preview if you want to try before you buy) and oh WOW this was really good and really fast - 22 minutes! I made it with spinach, and this made a delicious, brothy lunch dish. My 14 year old daughter ate it too, and when I said I liked it, she said, "Well, yeah, it's Mark Bittman, of course it's good." :-) Another thing to note - it said it made four servings, but with both this and the Fast Chicken Parm, I thought they were awfully big servings. The bean dish made six servings of the size we ate - about a cereal bowl full each. Men and teenagers may find the servings run true to size, but I think a lot of us will find the servings very large. One thing that may be different for a lot of people - you are moving all the time when you make these recipes. Because the prep steps are built in to the recipe instead of all done before hand, you have to hustle a bit. The trade-off here is that you work a bit, but then you get a good meal faster than you can get a bad one - seriously, I can't drive to the nearest fast-food place and get burgers in 22 minutes or less, and the homemade food is a LOT cheaper and healthier! I was also curious to see how this book would 'sync up' with Mark Bittman's recent VB6 idea, to eat less animal foods. I was pleased to see that there are a lot of 'less-meat' recipes and a lot of meatless recipes, but there is plenty here for the straight-up carnivore too. A lot of the meat recipes also use a good amount of veg - it looks like he went for a ratio of at least 1 pound (or more!) of veg to every 2 pounds of meat in a lot of the meat-heavy recipes, so you'll see things like Chicken with Creamed Spinach with 2 pounds chicken to 1 1/2 pounds spinach, or Five-Spice Pork Meatballs with Bok Choy with 1 pound ground pork to 1 1/2 pounds bok choy. A couple little warnings - no cookbook is for everyone, after all. If you are the kind of person who just CAN'T follow directions, this may be a bit tough for you. I learned this with the Fast Chicken Parm - my substitution of fresh mozzarella for regular definitely added some time to the cooking. I think you can tweak things once you kinda see what he is doing here, but I'd really recommend following the recipes as written at least the first time, especially if you are not a very experienced cook. I also find that he always uses more oil and fresh herbs than I can handle as a Midwestern gal - still getting used to EATING the parsley here, not just letting it sit on the side of the plate, so using handfuls of it in one recipe is more than I can handle, LOL!! But, we all have our preferences - you'll know your own, just adjust as you need to. I think this book will be most useful for busy people - working moms take note. The vast majority of the recipes are main dishes, always with suggestions of SIMPLE sides, suitable for a weeknight after work. For example - a lot of the time, he suggests very similar sides - Bruschetta, Warm Buttery Bread, simple noodles, a simple veg, a green salad. It's all about making it easy to come home and make something decent and wholesome without killing yourself, it's not about whipping up a gourmet feast that will impress your chef friends. Finally, for all of you who like to read cookbooks (and I know I'm not the only one!), there are a lot of sidebars and variations in this book, same as all of Bittman's other books. There are a number of Master Recipes, focus pages on one particular ingredient, explanations of technique scattered through - you won't find a list of these except in the BACK of the book, but I'd encourage you to seek them out! There's one for making your own deli-style meats that I really need to try some weekend. I'd recommend this to anyone who wants or needs to cook on a daily basis, this is bound to save you time and taste great!