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The Dinner Doctor [Hardcover]

Anne Byrn (Author)
4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)


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Book Description

October 21, 2003
A marriage of the fast and fantastic, The Dinner Doctor proves that it's possible to cook meals for your family that taste great—and require little time, preparation, or hassle.

This is cooking that's not only about coping, but about pleasure. The first and most important step is choosing ingredients wisely. For the Dinner Doctor, that means prepared foods, whether canned, frozen, jarred, dried, or fresh from the salad bar or deli counter. Then comes the doctoring.

Jarred roasted red peppers are puréed with canned chicken broth and sour cream, and garnished with fresh chives for a memorable chilled soup for a summer dinner party. Bagged coleslaw mix is dressed up with nuts, bottle ranch dressing and pre-crumbled cheese for a Blue Cheese, Walnut, and Apple Slaw. Jars of marinara turn into Linguine with Red Clam Sauce (just add a can of clams, dry white wine, and parsley) or a zingy Saturday Night Fever Pasta—with the help of black olive paste and capers.

Even deli potato salad, as tasty as it often is, can take on a variety of personalities—enhance it with crumbled cooked bacon, or prepared horseradish, or curry powder and chopped scallions and shredded carrots. And bland chicken tenders—those saviors of quick cooking—are reinvented as Chinese Chicken, Chicken Piccata, and Curried Chicken and Apple Stew.

Making excellent use of slow cookers, embracing myriad shortcuts, boosting flavor and freshness with hundreds of ideas and quick touches, The Dinner Doctor brings all the joy of serving from-scratch meals into harried lives.


Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

For her latest book, the Cake Mix Doctor Byrn turns her attention to doctoring other convenience foods to produce tasty home-style dishes. A QVC regular, Byrn tackles appetizers, salads, main dishes and her trademark desserts with her customary aplomb. The result is full of flavor and easy to produce in a minimum amount of time or supervision, a must for the busy homemaker in today's hectic world. Interspersed among the clearly laid out recipes are sidebars full of helpful tips, such as sizes of dishes to use and ways to doctor French bread. Scattered at intervals are her groups of "15 Ways to Doctor" which covers everything from spicing up canned tuna to putting a slow cooker to best use. From using coleslaw mix in the light sweet-and-sour Fast Asian Slaw to the microwave in the Micro-steamed Hoisin Fish and Vegetables, all the recipes are included for their ability to help cooks save time without giving up flavor. Although she overuses such staples as cream of chicken or celery soup, Byrn certainly shows that she's able to doctor more of the meal than just dessert. Nonetheless, the dessert recipes are the ones that really shine in this book. Whether it's luscious Triple-Decker Peanut Butter Cake or Slow-Cooker Chocolate Chip Pudding Cake, the desserts in this book will satisfy even the sweetest tooth. 16-page full color insert not seen by PW.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Book Description

The doctor's back, and now she's curing dinner woes! Anne Byrn, the award-winning food writer and author of The Cake Mix Doctor and Chocolate from the Cake Mix Doctor does for dinner what she did for dessert-shows how to take common, convenient supermarket ingredients and turn them into meals that taste like they're made from scratch.

Making excellent use of the Crock-Pot and other labor-saving appliances, incorporating hundreds of shortcuts and tips, and cooking from a pantry of prepared foods--whether canned, frozen, jarred, dried, or fresh from the salad bar--the Dinner Doctor shows how to make over 200 fast and kid-friendly appetizers, salads, soups, sides, and main courses. Take, for example, a can of tuna, and think outside the sandwich: Add beans, tomato, and a vinaigrette, and it becomes a Tuscan Tuna and White Bean Salad. Turn that healthy mixture into a pasta salad with the addition of cooked penne. And make a speedy pasta supper by tossing the salad with sauteed zucchini and a generous shower of shredded Parmesan. Or, whip up a Tuna Noodle Casserole like mom used to make-but faster and healthier by lightening the traditional cream of mushroom soup with lemon juice and lowfat milk and using precooked pasta and frozen peas. There are dozens of ways to doctor deli-counter basics into stunning hors d'oeuvres. Five quick casserole toppers. Five zippy garlic breads and 30 ways to dress up frozen peas and frozen spinach. And the 15s--15 cold pasta sauces, 15 ways to doctor deli chicken, 15 meals made from summer tomatoes, and more.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 544 pages
  • Publisher: Workman Publishing Company (October 21, 2003)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0761130705
  • ISBN-13: 978-0761130703
  • Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 7.1 x 1.7 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
  • Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (58 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,022,594 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Anne Byrn is known to millions of fans through her Cake Mix Doctor and Dinner Doctor cookbooks, which she's promoted in more than 200 television appearances on Good Morning America, Roker on the Road, QVC, and local stations. She is also a favorite subject for lifestyle editors in newspapers across the country. Anne lives in Nashville with her husband and three children. You can visit her online at www.cakemixdoctor.com.

 

Customer Reviews

58 Reviews
5 star:
 (34)
4 star:
 (10)
3 star:
 (2)
2 star:
 (9)
1 star:
 (3)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.1 out of 5 stars (58 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

110 of 111 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars The Doctor Does Dinner!, October 28, 2003
By 
Jimmy Donuts (Worcester, MA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Dinner Doctor (Paperback)
I am a huge fan of Anne's Cake Mix Doctors. The books got me into baking (which I was scared to do) and her recipes not only make cake mix GOOD they WORK. (Anne's Banana Cake in the first book made satisfied my nostalgic longing for a similar Sara Lee cake we used to have for family dinners in the 1970s.) So I was happy to give The Dinner Doctor a try if just for the memories (we had a lot of tuna casserole for those family dinners) but this book is not about nostalgia: It is perfect for the modern family to make some quick, easy, tasty meals using things I easily found in the supermarket. I am stuck right now on the deli roasted chicken recipes (we call them rotiserie chickens in NYC). For my money, these chix are tasty, easy, cheap, and abundant but after awhile they are just... well... roasted chickens. Anne must have at least 20 ideas and recipes for taking these chickens and just doctoring them with some fresh ingredients to make something different and, yes, BETTER. I plan on making more but we have tried and loved the Asian chicken salad and also liked the burrito bake. The brownie drops were great and the simple mushroom galette was perfect for the fall. I've only had the book for a week and already I can tell that at the very least I'll have lots of great ideas for meals to come (and a few new cakes to boot!).
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101 of 104 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Wow! Much better than the Cake Mix books!, October 30, 2003
This review is from: The Dinner Doctor (Paperback)
I had intended to get this out of the library before deciding whether to buy it or not. But I happened upon it at a bookstore and, after perusing it for a few minutes, decided that I just HAD to have it. It is CRAMMED with terrific recipes, ideas and hints, and has become one of my all-time favorites! Almost everything is quick and easy to make, with very precise instructions. Most things are not horrifically fattening, or at least they can be made successfully with low-fat substitutions. Standouts that have become staples in our house include the Nacho Cheese Soup, Mac & Cheese, Corn/Potato Chowder, Dun-buttered muffins, Asian Chicken Salad, Sour cream-cinnamon loaf and John's Summertime Slaw. I would say 98% of the recipes I've tried have worked beautifully.
One thing I like about this book is that there are not a lot of shameless repeats and recyclings, as there are in the cake books. In this book she gives you variations on the recipe in a small box or sidebar, rather than creating a "new" recipe simply by changing the name and one ingredient. And, like the other books, it's very well written in Anne's chatty and unpretentious style. Right on, Anne!
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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Indispensible - Utterly, July 2, 2005
This review is from: The Dinner Doctor (Paperback)
I'm not much of a cook, really. I'll heat things up, or maybe throw some meat or veggies on the grill, but other than that I'm fairly limited in the kitchen. Thus, my wife and I resort to eating out far too much - and that gets old fast.

Enter Anne Byrn's Dinner Doctor book. The appeal was immediate and lasting. Quick receipes made from simple ingredients resulting in unbelievably tasty dishes. I fell immediately under the spell of this book and have since produced many of the recipes at home.

Unlike so many cookbooks, the results of these recipes actually look and taste like they are supposed to, and the instructions are quick and to the point. What's more, Byrn includes numerous side notes explaining ways to doctor the recipes even further and she even encourages would-be chefs to experiment with her creations.

I don't give five stars very often, but this is actually a cookbook that lives up to its promise. I highly recommend it!
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Inside This Book (learn more)
Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
super sou, frozen phyllo shells, lasagna noodles side, etable oil cooking spray, cake saver, pasta presto, pound ground beef round, frozen diced potatoes, ceramic baking dish, increase the mixer speed, frozen biscuits, frozen mashed potatoes, avocado cubes, roasted red pepper strips, place one cake layer, crescent roll dough, water that might, pizza crust dough, sesame vinaigrette, thawed peas, refrigerated crescent rolls, biscuit mix, oven bag, coleslaw mix, crumbled cooked bacon
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Monterey Jack, Great Northern, Sweetened Cream, Cake Mix Doctor, Garlicky Cheese Grits Casserole, Tater Tots, Lightning Fast Breads, Angel Biscuits, Betty Crocker, Brownie Drops, Five-Minute Gazpacho, Fresh Peach Tart, Chilled Roasted Red Pepper Soup, Dun-Buttered Muffins, Eagle Brand, Lightning Breads, Lula's Coconut Tarts, Ore-Ida Just Add Milk, Ore-Ida Potatoes O'Brien, Spiced Plum Pastries, Warm White Bean Spread
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