Customer Reviews

Gourmet Every Day: Over 200 Quick and Easy Recipes for Dinner

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

When we recieved our book, my husband and I couldn't wait to get started. When we get home from long days at work, this book is ideal! The recipes are quick, simple and the dishes and complete,even including wine suggestions! The book is easy to follow with divisions such as grill, soup, pastas, salads and sandwiches and more. Highly recommended

'Gourmet Every Day' is 'Gourmet' magazine's entry into the '30 minute meal' / Rachael Ray domain of quick and easy cooking. This is not their first attempt, as they did a 'quick and easy entertaining' book a two or three years ago, which every reviewer correctly pointed out was neither quick nor easy. 'Gourmet' seems to have learned a few things with this book, as, at the very least, these recipes are all pretty easy (Quick depends on your level of kitchen skills).

While I have a lot of respect for Ms. Ray's style of recipe, I can appreciate that some people find her bubbly atypical style and frequent abbreviations and neologisms pretty annoying. This book is a remedy for those aggrivations.

Like Rachael, all these meals are done in one fell swoop. There is none of the planning ahead mode which is only a second best solution to being short on time. Unlike Rachael (although I suspect this is changing fast), these recipes are the product of a large professional recipe factory, with a corp of professional recipe testers, copy editors, and internal reviewers who make certain that anything upon which they put the 'Gourmet' imprimatur is worthy of the honor. In fact, most of the recipes come from the monthly column in 'Gourmet' dedicated to quick cooking, although a large number of recipes were done especially for this book.

I think it is no surprise that many of the recipes seem to speak with an Italian accent. The dish on the cover is an obviously Italian pasta salad with olives, basal, and tomatoes. In fact, it looks remarkably like my favorite Jamie Oliver pasta salad.

Thankfully, the book is organized by principle ingredient or style of dish, these being 'One Dish Dinners', 'Salads for Dinner', 'Stove Top Dishes', Grills, 'Soups', Sandwiches and Burgers', Pastas and Pizzas', Vegetables', 'Grains', Snacks', and 'Desserts'.

This is not an ideal organization, and if is further confused by listing the first two on a separate page from the other chapters in the Table of Contents. And, these first two sections are presented differently from the rest of the book, in that recipes in these sections are given with a full page picture.

This is mostly nitpicking, as I was genuinely pleased with almost all the recipes, and found almost all really quite easy, without selling out to using too much prepared ingredients. The pizza recipes are 'made at home' using store-bought pizza dough.

The only quibble I have with the ingredients is that every once in a while, I think the authors lost track of their audience and used obscure ingredients such as ramps. (Not only are ramps highly seasonal, many megamarts simply don't carry them, even if they could, as they loose money on them.)

And, since we are getting 200 good, true to their word recipes for under the common list price of $35, this is a worthy purchase, especially if you are not already fully stocked with Ms. Ray's publications.

Maximum taste and minimum prep time is what this book is all about! Beautifully illustrated - The photographs of dishes are great. I cooked a pasta recipe from this book using pasta, olive oil, garlic, capers and bread crumbs. It was delicious and took about 20 minutes to prepare. My husband couldn't stop raving about it! We love this book!

While I had great hopes for this book - I was disappointed when it arrived. The recipes are generally quick and easy but hardly gourmet. Most are very common and appear in many other cookbooks and publications. As a cookbook collector and avid cook, I look for unusual recipes or the use of unusual ingredients/combinations. None in here. While this might be good for beginning cooks - not enough to interest me.

The receipes are true to the time preperation and it has chef quality taste. I like the dinner options, be sure to have your salad ready to toss as the main course is ready stove to plate in no time.

I have owned this book since it was first published. There are some very nice recipes. There are also some wine recommendations, which, although they quickly became dated, point the way even now to the style of wine one should seek out to go with the particular dish. There are many recipes portioned for two, which is especially useful, including a recipe for chicken roasted with tomatoes, potatoes and olives. The "salads for dinner" section offers some simple but very tasty, imaginative combinations, e.g., Thai ground-pork salad with mint and cilantro, and stir-fried tuna "chop chop" salad, served over rice. The separate section on salad dressings includes not only a large "everyday" vinaigrette recipe that is delicious and keeps fine in the 'fridge, but a variety of low-fat dressings that are all quite good. There is a snacks section, too, with quickly made dips, spreads, and canapes.

The emphasis in this book is on fresh ingredients. A quick stop at a grocery store and a well-stocked pantry are all that is needed to take good advantage of this book. Although nothing rises to the "exotic" or "outstanding" categories, these are all readily do-able dishes to satisfy on a week-night.

This book "takes it up a notch" for those of us that don't have a lot of time to spend hunting for ingredients, following complex recipes, and spending over one hour cooking. Just what I needed.

I love this book. The recipies are very easy to follow. They make very yummy meals. I would order this book again.