Amazon.com Review
Busy cooks seeking fussless, intensely flavored dishes will embrace Rozanne Gold's
Recipes 1-2-3 Menu Cookbook: Morning, Noon and Night, the sequel to her award-winning
Recipes 1-2-3. In that ingenious book, Gold showed how recipes could be pared down to three ingredients each (salt and pepper aside) to achieve dishes that were more than the sum of their parts. In this book, she presents over 60 menus of three-ingredient dishes, 260 recipes in all, for breakfast, lunch, and dinner--course after course of simple, healthful food based on easy-to-find ingredients inventively treated.
Want a lovely weekend breakfast? Try Gold's "Room Service" menu of Poached Eggs with Lime Hollandaise, Smoked Salmon Quesadillas, and Fresh Strawberries with Gingered Yogurt--nine ingredients, total. Hungry Guests, a menu for streamlined entertaining, features Frisée and Beet Salad with Goat Cheese Dressing; Chicken Fricassee with Pearl Onions and Lardons; Celery Root Gratin; and Warm Banana Tarts--a 12-ingredient feast. Other menus present equally satisfying few-ingredient recipes that even novice cooks can prepare. Throughout, Gold provides useful strategies for time-saving cooking; her "Grapenotes" offers wine suggestions to complement the dishes and "Menus from the Healthy Kitchen" lists recipes that are fat-free, low-fat, and low-calorie. You'll find yourself mixing and matching dishes to create your own few-ingredient menus--a tribute to Gold's unique approach and enticing recipes. --Arthur Boehm
From Publishers Weekly
Following up on her 1996 James Beard Award-winning Recipes 1-2-3, Gold assembles new flavor-focused recipes into complementary menus. There's no arguing with the principle that a few fresh ingredients, attentively combined, yield a clean, often surprising taste. In Gold's handling, this idea is exponentially enhanced: among the morning menus is the delicately balanced Poached Eggs with Lime Hollandaise; Smoked Salmon Quesadillas, and Fresh Strawberries, Gingered Yogurt. Midday offerings include Lemony Tuna Salad with Tuna Tahina Dressing, Sweet Pepper Green Beans, with black olives, and Fruit Salad Vino Cotta (grapefruit sections and strawberries in reduced white grape juice). A sample dinner embraces Jumbo Lump Crab, Avocado Sauce; Chicken Paillards, Adobo Style; Smoky Pink Beans and Rice, and Coconut Ice Cream with Blue Curacao. Noting that these menus often break with tradition?scanting starches, eschewing breads?Gold encourages cooks to mix and match, practicing their own ingenuity. Many of the recipes rely on reductions of fruit juices or wine; cream and cheeses contribute depth to others. Eggs appear often and desserts make ample use of fruits. Some readers may object to precious menu titles (A Poem for the Table; Med-Rim Mosaic), but aside from that minor cavil, Gold's latest collection offers beautifully constructed, economically prepared recipes and menus.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.