Customer Reviews

Real Simple: Meals Made Easy (Real Simple S.)

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I am a "been there, done that" cook. So I use very few cookbooks. If I am baking a cake, sure, I pull down "Joy of Cooking" or better yet, I am likely to make a genoise from "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." I have about 10 cookbooks, but those two plus "The New York Times Cookbook" are the only ones I refer to. Otherwise, I am making my standard fare most nights. For parties, I pull down my three or four tried-and-true recipes from my card box.

BUT...."Meals Made Easy" is a cookbook I think I will be adding to my slim pile of regulars. Wow! I found page after page of easy but elegant meals, from corn-scallop chowder (a variant on my standard crowd-pleasing corn-potato chowder), and a number of composed salads of great merit like tuna and white bean, Greek Salad. The Greek salad is not the usual romaine-and-feta-and-olive, either. This one has cherry tomatoes, pear tomatoes, cheese, pepperoncini and cucumber cubes. And there were sauces and variants on chops and steak that go from boring to glorified. And there are variations on meatballs, chops, steak strips, stir fry that are a twist on the usual but are absolutely easy. The pictures are appetizing and inspiring, which helps you decide, yes THAT'S what's for dinner.

The book is divided into the following sections:
1. One Pot Meals
2. No Shop Meals
3. 30 Minute Meals
4. No Cook Meals
5. Freezer Meals
6. Shortcut Meals
7. Reliable Sides

There are a few basics like lasagna and roast chicken. There are money saving ideas (from boning chicken breast to those no-shop meals that save a budget-busting takeout night or restaurant night.) There are no desserts. There is a section on suggested kitchen equipment, including the mandoline for fast slicing (I use a version attached to a bowl and I do agree, it speeds up salad and side dish cooking tremendously.)

I think this is a must-give for weddings and graduation-just-starting out. Anyone can enjoy this book (except the passionately vegan) and it's full of easy but beautiful ideas for fine meals whether you alone, you and yours, or with friends for entertaining. I highly recommend this book as a standard for any cookbook shelf.

Joanna Daneman

Real Simple dishes up "Real Simple Meals Made Easy" to offer "think fast" solutions for dinner.

The book includes One Pot Meals (use one pan), No-Shop Meals (use items in your pantry), 30 minute meals (take 1/2 hour or less), No Cook Meals (no need to turn on the stove), Freezer Meals (make ahead and store), Shortcut Meals (premade ingredients) and Reliable Sides (compliment your main dish).

Sample meals include: Beef and Beer Stew, Chicken Cacciatore, Cheddar French Toast with Sizzled Tomatoes, Spiced Lamb Chops with Chickpea Salad, Lasagna Style Baked Ziti and many more!

Directions and ingredients are clearly spelled out in this 10" by 10" oversized hardcover. As with all Chic Simple books that I have read it is beautifully designed with lovely pictures and easy to read text. The book includes a ribbon to easily book mark your page.

There is a lot of love in this book. Recipes are tasty and for the most part really simple. Yet they have an elegance about them that makes others feel like you must have spent hours in the kitchen. The lavish yet simple photoraphs are mouth watering and indusive to spending time in the kitchen!

There are several drawbacks to the book however. The recipes do not incude nutritional information. No calorie, protein, sodium or any of those type of counts. And the second drawback is finding the recipes. If you dont feel like cooking you could go to the No Cook Recipes section. Then you would have to look at each recipe and see if you have the ingredients. A simple list of No Cook Recipes to start the section or at the beginning of the book would have been a tremendous help. You can go to the index and look under No Cook Meals or chicken for example but I feel this could have been done in a more effective manner where it was easier to locate and use.

Overall lots of mouthwatering recipes, great ideas and yummy visuals - a nice complement to your kitchen!

`meals made easy' by Renee Schettler and the staff of `Real Simple' magazine is their first culinary book, which reflects the editorial philosophy of the magazine, especially since everything in the book is reprinted from the magazine's pages.

It is not surprising that this book has a strong similarity to `Martha Stewart Living', as `Real Simple' magazine came out shortly after Martha created her own company by buying her way out of her contract with Time-Life. Both magazines have a very clean look about them, strongly distinguishing themselves from the rather dowdy `Better Homes and Gardens' and `Good Housekeeping' aesthetic which seem to be stuck somewhere in the 1950's. `Real Simple', as it should be easy to guess, distinguishes itself from `Martha Stewart Living' by focusing on the interests and resources of the energetic young professional couple where both partners work and have relatively little time for elaborate techniques for window treatments or even novel new techniques for decorating Easter eggs.

The design of this book reflects everything I like about the `Real Simple' aesthetic. Layout is clean and sparse, allowing you to focus on the essentials. I am somewhat impressed by the cleverer than average cover picture, where a logical sequence is depicted by the front and back photographs. For an especially reasonable list price of under $25, I am also impressed by the book designers' including a built-in bookmark ribbon (I'm certain there is a really good technical term for these little devices, but I don't know what it is. I only know that very few cookbooks come with them, and more should include them, especially those that will find their way to the kitchen table after a quick browse in your favorite armchair to find an attractive recipe). I am also impressed by the excellent tip index in the back of the book, although I sense that the index is more useful than many of the tips (more on this below).

As I am a real stickler for books' delivering on the promise of their titles, subtitles, and other `trailer' material, I'm just a bit disappointed with this book's subtitle which promises `quick' recipes. Of the seven chapters in this book, only one promises '30 minute meals'. Another chapter does promise `shortcut meals' based on prepared ingredients, but even some of these recipes require over 90 minutes of total time, even though `hands on' time may be much less. And, many of the one pot meals unashamedly state that they take over 14 hours (baked beans) to complete. I also found the `No Shop' meals chapter to be a bit misleading. I cook dinner four to five times a week and I bake often, yet almost all these dishes had at least one ingredient I do NOT stock on a regular basis. These include goat cheese, fresh chives, pita bread, chicken cutlets, Boston lettuce, Jalapeno chilis, fresh thyme, tomatoes, and fresh basil, among others. I suspect someone who is less involved with home cooking carries even fewer of these recipes' ingredients in their pantry, if they even have a well-defined pantry to begin with.

I'm compelled to warn you of these little teases, but I still find this book an excellent source of recipes for the typical `Real Simple' reader described above. The book does well not to stay exclusively in `Rachael Ray' country, since limiting yourself to fast cooking runs afowl of Marold's first law of quick cooking, which says that the faster the procedure, the more expensive the ingredients (on average). While it does not tout this fact, the book includes many dishes, especially the single pot braises, which use very reasonably priced materials.

I also find this book a confirmation of Marold's second law of quick cooking, that you can only accomplish both speed and good results in cooking if you have a firm grasp of good cooking techniques. I suspect the `hands on' times on these recipes do not take ingredients prep time into account, or at least ingredients prep time as done by someone with poor to nonexistent knife skills. I suspect finely chopping a shallot, zesting a lemon, squeezing juice from a lemon, thinly slicing a garlic clove, pitting a cup of Kalamata olives, dealing with a teaspoon of honey, and dissecting a cauliflower head into florets can easily take all 25 hands on minutes of the roast chicken with olives and thyme recipe. And that's allowing that the fresh herbs will have been cleaned and prepped in advance and the cook will use the tip to buy chicken parts instead of dealing with a whole chicken! But that doesn't deny the fact that this looks like a darned tasty recipe which is indeed relatively easy to make.

My biggest objection to this generally excellent book is that it suffers from being just a collection of recipes rather than a truly in depth treatment of `real simple' cooking. I believe that true culinary simplicity comes at the cost of sound culinary knowledge and experience. I believe it is much better to encourage owning a great, sharp chef's knife and teaching good knife skills rather than giving tips on easy shortcuts such as cheap mandolines. The knife will do 10 times as many jobs as the mandoline, and take up less space. The book is similarly obtuse in glossing over the fine points of making an omelet and cooking en papillote (In Paper). The omelet recipe instruction is a crude cross between a French omelet and the Italian frittata. An omelet is the ultimate in elegance from simple ingredients handled with skill. Simplicity does come at a price, usually in knowledge. The steaming in paper method is even worse, in that it avoids some of the finer points of creating a paper envelope for steaming fish, thereby actually making the technique more complicated than it really is.

`Real Simple' still has much to learn from Martha Stewart's excellent culinary books, but it seems to be on the right track.

I should admit up front that I can't stand most of "Real Simple" magazine - it uses a pleasing, clean layout and design aesthetic to mask the fact that it is just another "Woman's Day" tabloid - aimed at yuppies - in disguise. But there is one exception to my distaste, and that is their cooking articles and recipes, which invariably contain at least one or two real winners per issue. So I end up buying each new issue, tearing out the recipes and food articles, and tossing the rest.

Therefore it should come as no surprise that I was very pleased to see a collection of recipes from "Real Simple" published in hardback with their usual outstanding food photography and book layout. (Please note that I just saw a "magazine format" version of the book at the checkout stands of a local megamart, for less than 1/2 the hardcover price, so you may want to save some money and find that version. I am satisfied with the hardcover, though).

I have several quibbles with the book. First of all, despite the name, this book is only "real simple" if you compare it to gourmet level work by someone like Jacques Pepin or Joyce Goldstein ("Solo Suppers) or high level bistro fare. Many of the reciples feature ingredients that may not be easily found at a local grocery store. I am fortunate enough to live near a Whole Foods outlet, or some of the recipes would be out of my reach. Similarly, cooking out of this book is not inexpensive. The emphasis on semi-exotic foodstuffs and fresh herbs will (again) make many of these recipes impractical for large families or young grads just starting out. I only have to cook for myself, and I live fairly simply, but shopping to fill these ingredient lists is a definite strain on my working class budget.

Similarly, I like it better if a cookbook has a more of an ethnic theme or an better, more organic organizing principle than just "simple food" - especially if the recipes ingredients(see above) are not all that simple. The recipes in this book are all over the place in terms of cuisine and ingredients - which is no surprise considering their origin. So a book like this isn't really educational in terms of furthering a reader's knowledge of ethnic and cultural flavors and lore, cooking principles, etc. This really is just a batch of recipes.

But they are very useful recipes and I have gotten a lot of mileage out of them in the 3 months since I purchased the book. I've made and compared "Real Simple"'s version of panzanella, risotto, shrimp dia vola, etc. to their counterparts in other cookbooks, and I've found RS's version to be consistently more appealing and tasty...once I had the appropriate skill set and tools needed to make the dish or used common sense instead of their recommended technique (only twice, though).

In any case, the book itself is a pleasure to look and and browse through while looking for new ideas and variations of old ones. I am very pleased with this book and am glad I got it.

I have just read most of the reviews so far from Amazon customers, and unfortunately, NONE OF THE PEOPLE have made any of the recipes!!! They are just telling you how pretty the photographs are and how the book is divided into categories. How do you give anything a review without trying it first? I agree with the other reviewer, I am not a fan of the magazine, too much like Martha Stewart Living, but occasionally, I like their weeknight recipes. So, I bought the book.

This book is not only easy to read and pretty, but I have made 6 of the recipes so far, and they are all delicious and simple, using fresh ingredients! The easy ravioli lasagne, a nice change, the scallop corn chowder, the stuffed chicken breast w/ salsa, the lamb tagine, and others. It's a great weeknight meal cookbook, when you don't want to spend a fortune on ingredients or 2 hours preparing dinner. It's a nice gift for newlyweds or anyone who is a beginner cook. I recommend it because I HAVE MADE SOME OF THE RECIPES! Tried and True!

I have been subscribing to Real Simple for a few years and was disappointed that the recipes and tips weren't among their best. The "meals" weren't well balanced either; not enough vegetables or fruits included. I suppose you should serve a side salad with many of the main courses in order to complete (and lighten) the meal. I would not recommend this book for experienced cooks or dieters (ground beef and french fry casserole?). I do recommend the magazine for better recipes, balance, and clever tips.

I am a fan of Real Simple magazine and the publications always include some great recipes, so when I saw that they made a cookbook I was estatic and eager to buy. It is easy to follow and the recipes are great... My favorite section is the One Pot Meals and inparticular the recipe for the Halibut in Parchment Paper. I've made it three times since buying the book.... Oh my God, to die for. This year I am buying this book as gifts for all my friends. :)

This cookbook is just as the title implies - "real simple". The recipes are interesting and tasty, plus there are great photos of the prepared foods. This is a good go-to cookbook when you dont have a lot of time.

I had a few reservations when purchasing this cookbook, I wasn't sure that I could actually prepare a decent meal without having to go to the store. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find myself well equipped to make dinner on a moment's notice last week using only what I had in the house. Despite my mediocre cooking skills and reluctance to obey all directions (from stubbornness, not expertise) the meal still turned out well and even looked like the picture in the cookbook! I must admit that all of the pictures looked fantastic; I may begin cooking more out of a desire to make good-looking dinners rather than just hunger. This was a good purchase for a beginning cook with little spare time to shop for exotic ingredients.

Most of the cookbooks I see lately try to fit in too much information, too many little shortcuts, and scads of esoteric ingredients just for the sake of trying to be different.

But there is something to be said for doing one thing, and doing it not just well, but above and beyond what you would expect out of a cookbook. The recipes in this book may be simple and fresh, but they are extremely refined in a way that reaches to the very esssence of the dish.

One of the highlights of the Real Simple book is the photogaphy by Anna Williams. This could very easily be the coffee table book that chefs keep in their living room. The culinary arts are made up of not just taste and texture but poise and presentation; 'Meals Made Easy' excels in this regard as well.

Having tried some of the other tired cookbooks that seem to fall off the truck every week, I must say that this book and these recipes emphasize the beauty in simplicity, night after night, in cuisine that is as easy as it is delightful.