Customer Reviews

Rocco's Five Minute Flavor: Fabulous Meals with 5 Ingredients in 5 Minutes

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I agree with the other reviews that this cookbook is nothing more than creative marketing. As a new mom, I was enticed to buy because of the five min cooking time. I can prep holding a baby, but I can't cook with her in my arms. So the less time over heat, the better. However, the recipes consist of a lot of fondue (not a meal, but more of an appetizer), "ideas" (brownies w/ sauce on top) rather than real recipes, and too many processed or prepared foods that simply are not widely available (and I live in a metro area!) After reaading other reviews that refer to Rachel Ray I think I'm going to check out her books! At least she uses ingredients that I can find in a grocery store. I've tried several of our specialty grocers and still have not been able to find the majority of the Rocco ingredients. I asked for this book as a birthday gift, and I'm truely saddened to have wasted my mother's money on it!

`Rocco's 5 Minute Flavor' by famous culinary `personality', Rocco DiSpirito is the type of book I typically avoid reviewing, except for the fact that it answers the question I asked myself just a week or so ago. It tells us what former NY restaurateur / Food Network star / Reality Show martyr Rocco is doing nowadays. While the quick cooking theme is pretty much owned by the current queen of the Food Network, Rachael Ray, it has been appropriated by just about every major chef / author with good name recognition. But Rocco is promising us, to borrow a phrase from Emeril, `to kick it up a notch' by reducing the window to it's bare minimum of five minute cooking with five key ingredients or less for $5 per serving or less.

My overall impression of the book is that there are many, many gotchas with this book's premise and many weaknesses, but the skills of a very talented chef to this task does have its rewards which make the book worth reading and studying. I'll start with the many caveats and end with my overall impression of why the book still works.

My overriding impression is that the book is a perfect illustration of Marold's Two Laws of Fast Cooking which state that `Fast Cooking requires a firm grasp of good cooking techniques, above and beyond what the written recipe tells you.' and `Fast cooking requires more expensive or more highly processed ingredients than slow cooking.'.

As I read each recipe, I sense that each and every one requires some special culinary knowledge without which you may be fumbling with the prep long after your perceived `quick result' time expires.

The very first recipe assumes you can peel and chop garlic, grate Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and chop basil promptly, before leaf blackening sets in. The second recipe assumes you know how to grate zest from a lemon and find tough ends of asparagus. Another early recipe calls for 2½ cucumbers, 1½ being peeled and diced, with one left unpeeled, followed by food processing all the cukes, with no explanation for the difference in treatment. Now this is not a bad thing. In fact, I welcome a cookbook that assumes you know what you are doing around the kitchen. The problem is that if you do not, you may not get satisfactory results. There are a few points at which the assumption of Kitchen Kompetance (sic) can lead to trouble, as when Rocco instructs us to heat up a non-stick pan, do a few other things, then add butter to the pan. Every cooking guru from Alton Brown to Sara Moulton makes a point of NOT leaving a Teflon coated pan on the heat with no oil or other contents to keep the coating down to a reasonable 350 degrees Fahrenheit, so it doesn't get so hot as to give off toxic gases. This concern is especially worrisome as one of Rocco's linchpins to fast cooking is to get pots very, very hot. Put his advice together with ignorance of Teflon's Achilles heel and you could be getting into troubled waters.

A second concern may be that the headliner `5 minutes' means only the time it takes to actually `cook' the dish and not including the prep time and certainly not including the shopping time or what Tony Bourdain calls the pre-prep time for cleaning produce, filleting meat, and whatever. It certainly does not include the time it takes to read and understand the recipe. It you take three of Rocco's recipes and add in the prep time, I am willing to bet you will come very close to what Rachael Ray does in 30 minutes, including almost all prep time. Another little shorthand is that the `five ingredients' condition leaves out a pretty large number of pantry items and that many of those five ingredients may be pretty highly processed products. A last little caveat is that the $5 is per serving for a single dish. That means that four servings of four dishes may run to $80. This is not much, but not to be sneezed at either!

A third concern is that Rocco uses a lot of supermarket preparations and commercially packaged products. Looking through his pantry list, I spot close to 20% of his items may be available in his New York, but may not be available outside the New York metropolitan area under the same name. There are other product recommendations such as Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and Jell-O Gelatin snacks where my first reaction is that I don't appreciate a highly trained chef's suggesting I eat junk food.

There are some other oddities that annoy me, such as chapters labeled `Sandwiches' and `Panini' when `panini' is simply Italian for `sandwich'. Another is the assortment of rather drab black and white photographs, several of what appears to be dirty dishes, produce, or kitchen counter. While many have something of an artsy feel to them, they are not exactly up to the standards of Man Ray or Annie Lebowitz. A third annoyance is that while the title and introduction to this book makes sly reference to the author's James Beard award winning first book, `Flavor', there is really nothing about the recipes which make any reference at all to the good things done in that book.

The irony of all this is that in spite of all those annoyances and gotchas, I am very likely to refer to this book more often than many others when I need to make something quick, but where I don't want to fall back on all my familiar recipes or a can of Campbell's soup.

My favorite things about the book is that like Rachael, this is `all at once' cooking rather than part of the `cook ahead on the weekend' school and, like Jamie Oliver, it embodies cooking as part of a `joie-de-vivre' where preparing food becomes a celebration rather than a chore.

I hesitated purchasing this book until I browsed through it at a local book shop because I feared that 5 minutes and 5 ingredients meant bland flavor. Not true at all. While the name and premise of the book are somewhat misleading, i.e., 5 minutes refers to the COOKING and not the time it takes to prepare the meal (as Rachael Ray says) "from start to finish." Nevertheless, the recipes that I have tried or reviewed require easy preparation (a little chopping here, a little grating there), and they contain minimal ingredients with big flavors that result in enjoyable dishes. The flavor combinations are often more complex than the simplistic nature of the cookbook might suggest, and these are certainly meals that you can make for yourself on a busy week night, or for friends on lazy weekends. They'll never have to know that you made the dish in "5 minutes," and you'll have more time to spend socializing rather than slaving away in the kitchen.

Rocco hopes (and he expressly states this in the book) that 5 minutes will become the new cooking catch-phrase, leaving Rachael Ray's 30-minute meals in the dust. I'm not sure that this will happen (nor do I want it to because I'm a loyal RR fan), but this book and concept will certainly be a welcome addition to anyone's cookbook library. If you're a kitchen novice, hey, here are some recipes too impress that won't break the bank or your back. If you're a foodie, these recipes will serve as tasty additions to your repertoire when you just don't have time to make a more complex meal. Sure, Rocco uses prepared, pre-packaged ingredients in a number of the recipes, but you couldn't have a 5-minute book by avoiding them completely, and overall he balances these quite nicely with fresh and healthy ingredients.

So, for the overall concept - quick, easy and flavorful - the quality of the recipes and the layout of the book, I rate Rocco's new cookbook 5 stars.

I can only believe that people who left a 5 star review are friends or family of Rocco's.

The reason people are into quick cuisine is because they're busy, they have children, they work long hours, etc. His recipes promise 5 ingredients, 5 minutes, under $5.00. Ah! It's at least 30 minutes prep time on even the quickest recipes and some are up to 60 minutes and most are not family friendly. There is a recipe for scallops with lemon butter and the recipe never calls for cooking the scallops. Well yeah, I guess you could prepare it in 5 minutes when it's raw. Then you're suppose to get a teflon skillet as hot as humanly possible (which I've always read is a no no) and brown some butter with lemon zest then pour over the uncooked scallops. Gross! Then his 5 ingredients does not count for herbs, spices, oil, vinegars, flour, sugar, salt, pepper, butter, etc etc so there's another 5-10 ingredients per recipe that are not included in his "5" ingredients. And many of the 5 ingredients are packaged jello, canned cheese whiz, etc. Gross!

Most of the pictures are black and white and just absolutely horrible photography. There's a B&W picture taking up both pages of what appears to be a stock pot filled with who knows what. They picture is so dark and undefineable that the contents actually look gross. There are a few color, glossy pictures near the back of the book, not enough to give you a feel for the dishes.

And then to say thanks to your partner for putting out for you? Isn't that an open sexual innuendo? Gross.

Overall, don't bother. Book is poorly designed, recipes are so-so, and the photography is just horrible. How embarrasing for Rocco who I'm sure is a nice person, he seems to have a nice personality and I love his shows but forget this cookbook. He should be suing his publisher for putting this to print.

I haven't met many cookbooks in which there were so few unspirited or untantalizing recipes. Even worse, the book was peppered with recipes containing but no limited to "sliced deli roast beef" or "hot dog ruebens!!!" Excuse my surprise but this was not a grade school competition on how to make a sandwich for lunch.

This was also not labeled as a photo journalism book on Rocco DiSpirito's family. There were a full 16 color pages of food and 80 black and white pages of people, dishes, stoves, napkins, a can of tomatoes, and stuff I can't even make out. When there is an actual reciipe, I need to see photos.

The 5 in 5 gimmick did attract me. I did not fully expect a total of only 5 ingredients. Nor did I expect prep to eating in 5 minutes. This part came true. Cleaning and deveining 1 1/2 # shrimp and shredding 2# turkey breast, cutting 2 large eggplants and 1 duck into 1 inch chunks. Minimum of a half an hour more.

But given all of my gripes, the absolute number one disturbing complaint is that this new cookbook used so few fresh ingredients. The best parallel is that it reminded me of the old Minnesota casseroles where you could open 5 cans and dump them into a 9 x 13 pan, throw it into the oven and let it go. Those were easier and about as healthy.

Definitely not worth the time or the money.

I saw Rocco on the Tony Danza Show hyping his book, so I bought it. With the exception of the Panini, every recipe I made was really gross. They use so many processed foods that it just tastes way too salty. Skip this one.

While the recipes claim to be quick and simple, I haven't even tried a single one. There is no nutritional information, and most recipes appear to me to be unhealthy. (I am into healthy cooking.) Some ingredients are hard to find. (I live in a city of about 200,000.) The recipes do not appeal to me. How about chicken with canned Alfredo sauce and cocktail onions? Many ingredients are prepared rather than fresh, which I prefer.

The day I received the book I was lost in the kitchen as usual. I had alot of ingredients around, but I didnt know what to do with them. When I started quickly going over the book I found two things to make immediately.I am a single mother of two, and making them happy at dinner time is always difficult,they would rather eat fast food.But that evening they loved the tomato and mozzarella salad, and toasted hot dog reuben.And I made it in 5 minutes each,unbelievable but true.Now they ask me to make something different every night.And with this great cookbook I now can.Thanks, Rocco. Cynthia M.

I've thoroughly enjoyed this book. The recipes deliver on flavor and although the "5-minute" promise is way too idealistic unless you are manic, the spirit-of-the-law, rather than the letter, is true on this point-- these recipes are indeed efficient to prepare. The secret's in the use of supplemental ingredients that are common, store-buyable and pre-prepared, which is extremely helpful. So far, only one ingredient I could not find in my Midwest USA grocery store. But, I looked it up on the internet and improvised with what I thought would be a comparable ingredient. However, unlike his first book Flavor, the ingredients herein are not esoteric and not only available in some ethnic village of New York City.

I must say, I felt so naughty using some store-bought, pre-prepared ingredients and then taking credit for cooking a flavorful dish...but, then I got over it, because at least I'm cooking for my family, right?

A word about the photographs. While there are 16 color photos of the finished products in the center of the book, the remainder of the book is interspersed with ocassional black and white pictures-- I cannot stress enough how I feel that the photographer missed the mark on artfulness. I was trying to give the photographer credit and imagine that he was attempting to create subtle, clever plays on light and dark (like classic b&w movies), but the photographs are insipid: One large b&w photo shows us a white bowl with black liquid "stuff" in it and a wisk obviously in blurry motion. Later, I see a very large close-up of chopped cabbage. Huh? We are also entertained by a 2-page, b&w, photo-spread of Rocco's apartment kitchen counter, I presume. Yawn.

So, why the big deal on the aesthetics? Because, let's face it, we like to see helpful photos of the finished dish.

Photos aside, these recipes are easy to create; the use of store-bought ingredients makes them much easier to create quickly after a long day at work; the flavor delivers.

.Restaurant chef, TV chef, and winner of a James Beard Award for his book "Flavor," Rocco's latest is strictly for the harried home cook whose first concern is getting a respectable dinner on the table at a decent hour without killing herself, though 5 and 5 is a slight exaggeration.

The five ingredients are not really five. Most dishes also call for "pantry" ingredients - oil, vinegar, flour, sugar, etc. And some recipes, well, no way they take five minutes. For one thing, as Rocco tells you right up front, prep time is not included! But prep time is minimal and chances are most everyone can get these meals on the table in less than half an hour.

Some dishes are naturally quick - salads like Tomato and Mozzarella, or Charred Mackerel with Pears and Caesar Dressing, or Shrimp with Red Onion, Mango and Cilantro - and entrees like Hot Italian Sausage with Fresh Beans and Beets, or Handkerchief Pasta with Lobster, Bok Choy, and Lemon Cream Sauce, or Shrimp and Scallion Frittata.

Others make use of as many as three or four prepared ingredients. Beef and Broccoli-Coleslaw Stir Fry, for instance, uses instant rice, packaged broccoli coleslaw and bottled stir-fry sauce. Pretzelized Chicken with Cheddar Horseradish Sauce uses mini pretzels and horseradish cheese spread. Sautéed Pork with Snow Peas, Walnuts and Beets calls for pickled beets and hot dog relish.

The best-sounding recipes, surprise, surprise, are those using the freshest ingredients and taking the longest. Grilled Lamb with Sweet-and-Sour Cranberry Sauce for instance, or Honey-Glazed Salmon with Cinnamon, Carrots and Chicory.

In addition to salads, entrees and desserts, there are also chapters on sandwiches, paninis, sides and vegetarian dishes. He makes generous use of canned broth and bottled sauces, and starts off the book with a list of his top 100 "shortcut" products, from Dole Classic Cole Slaw Mix to Patak's Hot Curry Paste to Pepperidge Farms Puff Pastry. This is a practical book and most cooks will find some tasty, quick inspiration for the daily table.

--Portsmouth Herald