Get Cooking: 150 Simple Recipes to Get You Started in the Kitchen [Paperback]

Mollie Katzen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 13, 2009

Do you want to eat really well—not just once in a while, but all the time—but you don't know where to begin?

Are you tired of pizza—as much as you like it—and broke from buying takeout?

Do you love good food—the straightforward, homemade kind—but feel challenged to set up a kitchen, shop for decent equipment and groceries, and tap into a few basic skills that can put a simple roast chicken or vegetarian entrÉe on your dinner table?

If you answer "yes" to these questions, then Get Cooking is for you. Get Cooking is the first book from bestselling cookbook author Mollie Katzen designed specifically for beginners, whether you are just starting to cook for yourself or trying to kick the restaurant habit. Unlike most cookbooks, the goal of Get Cooking is to get you in the kitchen, no matter what your experience level might be.

Illustrated throughout with color photographs of each dish, Get Cooking gives you clear, step-by-step instructions for making everything from classic mashed potatoes to Broccoli–Cheddar Cheese Calzones to Hot Fudge Sundaes (with homemade hot fudge!). With this book, anyone—you included—can make delicious, fresh food, with a lot less expense (and a lot more satisfaction) than ordering in.

You may know Mollie Katzen as the author of such famous cookbooks as Moosewood Cookbook or The Enchanted Broccoli Forest; Get Cooking has all of the accessibility and personal warmth of those beloved books, but it is Mollie's first cookbook for vegetarians and omnivores alike. You will learn how to make North African Red Lentil Soup, Linguine with Spinach and Peas, and Chickpea and Mango Curry—and also Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup, Spinach Lasagna, and Steak Fajitas.

With Get Cooking in hand, you'll be serving everything from salads (such as Wilted Spinach Salad with Hazelnuts, Goat Cheese, and Golden Raisins) to desserts (try the Cheesecake Bars), with stops along the way for party snacks, a full array of side dishes, and a brilliant assortment of handcrafted burgers (bean, tofu, and mushroom—as well as beef, turkey, and tuna). Here at last is the cookbook that will make a cook out of everyone.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. There's an inherent difficulty in encapsulating basic kitchen knowledge in a single book, but Katzen's latest is a fresh, contemporary entry in the 101 subgenre. This is likely because she has some experience—Katzen's The Moosewood Cookbook and Enchanted Broccoli Forest cookbooks have been unofficial required reading for cooking students for decades, and her latest speaks directly to a newer, more food-savvy generation of just-starting-out cooks. Launched in conjunction with a companion Web site and illustrated by Katzen's own photographs, this newest is divided into basic categories like soups, salads, pastas and desserts. Naturally, given her meatless pedigree, she gives vegetarian options with bright flavors (acorn squash stuffed with fruited basmati pilaf; mango curry) their own chapter. While the recipes cover the traditional home repertoire—spaghetti and meatballs, an excellent and simple roast chicken, apple crisp—Katzen also sneaks in some more intriguing flavors by way of a North African red lentil soup, cherry clafouti and Thai green curry along with explanations of more unusual ingredients like jicama and panko. Encouraging cooks to experiment with additions and flavor combinations, she suggests alternatives in a running Get Creative sidebar. Rounding out the training is a short primer on kitchen tools, pantry items and photos that illustrate vegetable chopping techniques. Katzen's enthusiasm for the subject and her ability to keep the proceedings truly simple makes for the rare beginner's book that accomplishes its mission. Photos. (Oct.)
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Review

“Katzen’s latest is a fresh, contemporary entry in the 101 subgenre...Her enthusiasm for the subject and her ability to keep the proceedings truly simple makes for the rare beginner’s book that accomplishes its mission.” (Publishers Weekly (starred review) )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks; Original edition (October 13, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0061732435
• ISBN-13: 978-0061732430
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #254,630 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

With more than six million books in print, Mollie Katzen is listed by the New York Times as one of the bestselling cookbook authors of all time. A 2007 inductee into the prestigious James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame, and largely credited with moving healthful food from the "fringe" to the center of the American dinner plate, Mollie has been named by Health magazine as one of the "Five Women Who Changed the Way We Eat."

In addition, she is a charter member of the Harvard School of Public Health Nutrition Roundtable and an inaugural honoree of the Natural Health Hall of Fame. An award-winning illustrator and designer as well as a bestselling cookbook author and popular public speaker, Mollie is best known as the creator of the groundbreaking classics Moosewood Cookbook and The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. Her other books include the children's trilogy Pretend Soup, Honest Pretzels, and Salad People (referred to as the "gold standard" of children's cookbooks by the New York Times), and a collaboration with Walter Willett, M.D., of Harvard, on Eat, Drink, and Weigh Less.

Since 2003, Mollie Katzen has been an adviser to Harvard University Dining Services, and cocreator of their new Food Literacy Project. This is the first volume of her new Get Cooking series, continuing Mollie's lifelong mission to spread cooking knowledge and food literacy as broadly as possible. Please visit the companion video-based website, www.get-cooking.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great introduction to cooking - straightforward recipes, tasty rewards!, December 18, 2009

By 

M. Lapus "@ Starting Fresh blog" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Get Cooking: 150 Simple Recipes to Get You Started in the Kitchen (Paperback)

Get Cooking takes the beginner through all the steps, clearly and briefly, from how to study a recipe to make sure that you have all the ingredients and tools and to understand the whole process of preparing the food to getting it on the table on time.

Each chapter begins with the essential facts about the type of food, the tools and ingredients that you will most often use, and even an assessment when the inexpensive or moderately priced tools and ingredients will suffice and the times when the added expense is worthwhile.

Katzen describes the cuisine as "'Big Tent,' accommodating a broad base of tastes and needs, vegetarian, meat-loving and everything in between." Most of the dishes are familiar - the items that you'd find at a party, picnic, or enjoy at home. We've made the teriyaki chicken thighs and the poached salmon - which were both easy and tasty! I am eager to try the recipes for carmelized balsamic-red onion soup with cheese-topped croutons, linguini with clam sauce, linguine with spinach and peas, green pea and feta quiche, and deeply roasted cauliflower.

The three bean salad, mac and cheese, spaghetti with meatballs, pasta with tuna, white beans, and artichoke hearts, chinese-style peanut noodles, chocolate-chip mint cookies and intensely chocolate brownies are sure to become regulars at our home.

Get Cooking would be excellent for someone just learning to cook - it gives you the essentials of cooking in simple steps and offers tasty rewards for your effort.

Publisher: HarperStudio (October 13, 2009), 288 pages.

Review copy provided by the publisher.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars perfect gift for the off-to-college kid, December 9, 2009

By 

M. Twain "rapacious reader" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Get Cooking: 150 Simple Recipes to Get You Started in the Kitchen (Paperback)

As a vegetarian, Mollie Katzen's cookbooks have been my bible, but my sons eat meat, and this book comes out just in time for one to graduate college and start his own household while the other moves off to college in an apartment with a kitchen for him to start cooking in. The recipes are of a wide variety, all easy and quick for the beginning cook. Since I have no idea how to cook or serve meat, this book is the perfect send-off for both my sons so that they'll eat well and healthily and learn the basic tools of the cooking trade. Coming from Mollie Katzen, I trust that the recipes are all nutritious and delicious, and that's a priceless gift!

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Cooking is my new passion!, November 29, 2009

By 

New Cook (NY, New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Get Cooking: 150 Simple Recipes to Get You Started in the Kitchen (Paperback)

I got this book as a gift when I moved into my first apartment, my cooking abilities had been limited to hot pockets and frozen pizza before I became interested in cooking. The first night in my apartment I tried the Salmon Burgers, delicious! I love this book and I can't wait to try more recipes.