Radically Simple: Brilliant Flavors with Breathtaking Ease: 325 Inspiring Recipes from Award-Winning Chef Rozanne Gold [Hardcover]

Rozanne Gold (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 26, 2010

Throughout her culinary career, chef Rozanne Gold has given much thought to the notions of simplicity and sophistication in cooking. Now, after years of experimentation, she has come to this conclusion: Simplicity is the art of combining a few essential ingredients with a minimum of effort in order to create food that neither looks or tastes like a shortcut; food that is authentic enough to serve with pride and savor with pleasure.

In Radically Simple, Gold demonstrates this art to its fullest, manipulating the interplay of time, technique, and number of ingredients to create bold, sophisticated dishes bursting with global flavors. She offers an entire chapter of elegant 10-minute salads; delectable soups that take less than 5 minutes to prepare and others with such depth of flavor they taste like they’ve been simmering all day. Her opinionated take on roast chicken yields a peerlessly moist and tender bird without so much as a sprinkling of salt and pepper, while her recipe for pineapple flan transforms sugar, eggs, and bottled juice into a creamy and decadent taste of the tropics. From a 1-minute mustard sauce for her last-minute gravlax to a “Peking” pork shoulder that slow-roasts under a savory blanket of hoisin and scallions, these dishes are truly stunning in their ease of preparation, yet never sacrifice on flavor or presentation. Even Gold’s procedures are revolutionary: All are conveyed in 140 words or less.
With hundreds of signature recipes that you will return to time and again, Radically Simple provides both the tools and the inspiration to make memorable meals on a nightly basis and rediscover the satisfaction that comes from time well spent in the kitchen.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

ROZANNE GOLD is the author of 11 acclaimed cookbooks, a four-time winner of the James Beard Foundation Award, and winner of the IACP/ Julia Child Award. Gold, who at 23 began her career as chef to New York Mayor Ed Koch, went on to become the chef-director of the restaurant consulting firm that has created some of the world’s most famous restaurants and lasting food trends. She is a frequent guest on national television and has written for the New York Times, Bon Appétit, Oprah, Cooking Light, and many other national publications.. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her husband and daughter.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: Rodale Books (October 26, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1605294705
• ISBN-13: 978-1605294704
• Product Dimensions: 10.1 x 8.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (62 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #26,467 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Rozanne Gold, renowned chef, author and international food and restaurant consultant, began her career at age 23 as first chef to New York Mayor Ed Koch. Considered one of the most prominent women in the food world, she is a four-time winner of the prestigious James Beard Award and winner of the IACP/Julia Child Cookbook Award.

As Chef-Director of the restaurant consulting group, the Joseph Baum & Michael Whiteman Co., she helped re-create New York's magical Rainbow Room atop Rockefeller Center (where she was co-owner and consulting chef for 15 years), the legendary Windows on the World, and three of New York's three-star restaurants.

The author of 12 acclaimed cookbooks, Ms. Gold has been the entertaining columnist for Bon Appetit magazine where her "Entertaining Made Easy" column was read by five million fans. She has written and produced stories for The New York Times (her work can be found on the Op-Ed page, the Dining Section, and Sunday Magazine), and has written for Oprah, Gourmet, Cooking Light, More, FoodArts, Modern Maturity and The Montessori Magazine.

As Chef to Mayor Koch, Ms. Gold cooked for President Jimmy Carter, Prime Minister Menachem Begin and dignitaries from all walks of life. Business Week named her a "Mover and Shaker"; Cooking Light magazine named her one of "America's Top 5 Enlightened Chefs"; Chef magazine nominated her "Innovator of the Year"; the Food & Beverage Association of America honored her as 'Hospitality Professional of the Year" and Drexel University deemed her Distinguished Visiting Professor.

Known as the "diva of simplicity", she has set the Gold Standard for a style of cooking that has inspired professional chefs and home cooks alike to "keep it simple" with: Little Meals: A Great New Way to Eat and Cook (1994), Recipes 1-2-3: Fabulous Food Using Only Three Ingredients (1996), published in four languages; Recipes 1-2-3 Menu Cookbook (1998), Entertaining 1-2-3 (1999) and Healthy 1-2-3 (2001). Desserts 1-2-3 (2002) landed on the L.A. Times "Hot List" and was chosen one of the year's best cookbooks by Food & Wine Magazine. Cooking 1-2-3 (2003) was chosen as one of the year's best 10 books on NBC's Today Show.

Gold's books have garnered starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly and chosen as Editor's Selections in the New York Times Book Review. Her seminal book, Healthy 1-2-3 won the coveted IACP award, was nominated for a James Beard award, and chosen as "one of the year's best books" by the San Francisco Chronicle.

Known as a food-trends pundit, Ms. Gold invents concepts that give restaurants and food companies their competitive edge. An early proponent of American regional cooking, she helped create American Spoon Foods, the first specialty food company to focus on regional ingredients. She invented Hudson River Cuisine, turning the idea into a three-star restaurant, the Hudson River Club; and was responsible for developing New York's first pan-Mediterranean restaurant (Café Greco), featuring "Med-Rim Cuisine".

Ms. Gold is a frequent guest on national television, including four recent appearances on the Today Show and is a regular guest on National Public Radio. A recent appearance on WNYC's "Leonard Lopate Show" won her a fourth James Beard Award.

A graduate of Tufts University with honors in psychology and education, Ms. Gold studied cooking in Italy and France. She is past President of Les Dames d'Escoffier, New York, and is a trustee of Arts Horizons, a nonprofit organization that brings the arts to city schools. She is a major proponent of the movement to help teens eat more healthfully and has just published her 11th book -- "Eat Fresh Food: Awesome Recipes for Teen Chefs" (Bloomsbury USA, October 2009.) Gold lives with her husband and teenage daughter in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Her son Jeremy Whiteman lives in Silicon Valley.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Terrific cookbook, October 28, 2010

By 

Mom of Sons (Buffalo, NY) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Radically Simple: Brilliant Flavors with Breathtaking Ease: 325 Inspiring Recipes from Award-Winning Chef Rozanne Gold (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

I am picky about cookbooks. Although I love reading them, a cookbook has to be not only beautiful, interesting and unique, it has to be useful for real people, real home cooks (like me) in real kitchens, feeding real families and friends. On all accounts, this beautiful book from accomplished chef and food writer Rozanne Gold is a winner.

First things first, the book itself--and this is so important for a cookbook--is easy to read and use. The binding is high quality and the typeface and layout are easy and comfortable to read, and there are beautiful photos for almost every recipe. The book will lie open flat so you can cook from it without fumbling.

The recipes are wonderful--innovative without that tedious "I'm trying too hard here to come up with something new and different!" feeling in so many newer cookbooks. The recipes are geared toward quick preparation (15 minutes, 30 minutes) using fresh and simple whole foods, and even a few simple convenience foods, like canned beans and chickpeas, frozen peas and Dijon mustard. Fabulous.

I cannot wait to try: "Almost Confit" Chicken with Melted Garlic, Pork Chops and Apples with Madeira-Bay Butter Sauce, A New Way to Cook Broccoli: Charred & Tossed With Chilies and Garlic, Spiced Salmon on a Moroccan Salad...oh, heck, I think I may just start at "Bloody" Shrimp Cocktail and work my through to Double Raspberry Sorbet.

Recommendation: Excellent addition to a home cook's bookshelf.

28 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wow!, October 28, 2010

By 

Sheri Fogarty (United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Radically Simple: Brilliant Flavors with Breathtaking Ease: 325 Inspiring Recipes from Award-Winning Chef Rozanne Gold (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

This is a terrific cookbook. Rozanne Gold is the author of 11 cookbooks and has won a number of awards. This is the first cookbook of hers that I've used, but it won't be the last.

There are over 300 recipes here and they are all simple, easy and from the one's I've tried so far, delicious.

The chapters are:

Brunch - which has a great variety of recipes from drinks to a number of beautiful egg dishes, frittata's and a great recipe for Smoked Salmon, Basil and Lemon Quesadillas - with many others.

10 minute salads - a number of great recipes here as well, running the gamut from Spiced Salmon on a Moroccan salad to Watermelon Salad with Feta and Black olives. There are a number of salad dressings as well.

Soups - everything from 5 minute soups to broths, Tortellini in Pesto Broth, Carrot Soup with Ginger and Crispy Carrot Tops, and accompaniments as well, like biscuits, muffins and crackers.

Pasta - also a number of recipes, many are 10 and 20 minutes, like Fettuccini with Smoked Salmon, Crème Fraiche and Lemon, Gemelli with Sausage, Leeks and barely wilted Snow Peas and Warm Sesame Noodles with Ginger and Snow Peas.

Fish - at least 30 recipes here from 3-minute Wasabi Salmon to Green Curry Swordfish with Shitakes and Basil and Crunchy Crumbed Cod with Frozen Peas.

Poultry - I loved this section as it groups the recipes by part: Chicken breasts, chicken thighs, cut-up chicken parts, whole chicken and turkey and has a great variety from Asian Chicken with Scallions to 'Radically Simple Chicken Parmesan'. I made the Almost Confit Chicken with Melted Garlic and it was a hit.

Meat - includes recipes using beef, lamb, pork and veal from cuts to some very interesting roast recipes like Pot Roast with Burnt Onions & Kimchee and Pork Loin in Cream with Tomatoes, Sage & Gin.

Vegetables - include two sections. The first is 10-20 minutes and includes recipes such as, Spinach, Ricotta and Basil Puree, Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Medjool Date and Carrot Nib Orzo and another section called Slow & Easy with Creamy Potato Gratin, Sweet Potato Puree with Fresh Ginger and Orange and many more.

Desserts - with some incredible recipes, also broken into section of: 10 minute Desserts, Tarts & Cakes, Cooked Fruit Desserts, Custards, Cooks & More and Sorbets & Ice Creams. I made the French Yogurt Cake with Nutella and it was amazing.

It's a great book, and my only con is that not all the recipes have pictures. But there are a lot of great recipes here and many of them do have picture. I will be cooking from this book for a long time, there are so many other recipes I want to try that look easy and wonderful. Highly recommended!

67 of 84 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars This one's clearly for cooks more adventuresome than I. So please take my star rating with the appropriate grain of salt., November 16, 2010

By 

Sharon Isch (Washington, DC USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Radically Simple: Brilliant Flavors with Breathtaking Ease: 325 Inspiring Recipes from Award-Winning Chef Rozanne Gold (Hardcover)

(What's this?)

Let me say straight off that this is not what I personally consider a bonafide cookbook review. For several years I helped out with the annual cookbook review section published between Thanksgiving and Christmas by the newspaper where I worked. Each of us would get a cookbook category: desserts, appetizers, ethnic, regional, etc. to test and review. The rules were that you would prepare a minimum of three diverse recipes from each book, serve them to an equally diverse bunch of eaters and get their feedback; meanwhile, other recipes in the book would be scrutinized to make sure the instructions and ingredients lists were clear and made sense; books by chefs would get even more scrutiny, because recipes from professional kitchens often don't adapt well for use in home kitchens. Those are still what I consider the essential ingredients for writing a cookbook review that's worth its salt. This isn't one of them, as I've yet to cook anything from this book and probably won't until next summer, when the ingredients I most want to experiment with here are again in season.

What I can tell you is that the chef who wrote this book is amazingly imaginative and clearly knows the ins and outs of cookbook writing. Her recipes are clear and well written, the book is beautifully designed and the pictures look appetizing.

Other than her offbeat and interesting new ideas for summer produce, the recipes that intrigue me most are ones I haven't the nerve to try myself but would be first in line to get a taste of if someone else did. For example: chicken roasted "stark naked" with no seasoning at all, not even salt...pasta cooked in a bottle of wine...a soup made solely from garlic, olive oil, cumin, chickpea flour, one scallion and an onion... and spinach leaves sprinkled with kosher salt and cooked on a sheet-pan in a 500 degree oven with two spritzes of water.

I'd also be interested in tasting some of her many recipes that contain ingredients I've never heard of or ingredients I've heard of but haven't a clue what they taste like, so can't tell whether I'd like and am therefore reluctant to go to the trouble to track down and spend money on, such as: sable, slivered kimchee, frisee, herring in wine sauce, hiyashi wakame, tahina, za'atar, Greek yogurt, large Medjool dates, chickpea flour, Thai fish sauce, black sesame seeds, garam masala, pomegranate molasses, wasabi powder, prepared wasabi paste, Sriracha, soppressata, calabaza, French breakfast radishes, gemelli, purple basil sprouts, lavash bread, white miso, little bird chilies, scotch bonnet pepper, Turkish figs, ground sumac, ras el hanout, date syrup, pistachio halva, oloroso sherry, unsweetened dessicated coconut and Nutella.

As it turns out, many of these ingredients would not be hard to find, as quite a few are available right here at Amazon grocery.

So, not a review. But perhaps something that'll help you decide if this is right for you or a cook on your gift list.