Cool Kitchen: No Oven, No Stove, No Sweat! 125 Delicious, No-Work Recipes For Summertime Or Anytime (Hardcover)

~ (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Cool Kitchen offers 125 recipes that are enjoyable even when the weather is not overheated. Lauren Chattman has an inventive way with familiar uncooked foods like pesto, slaws, sandwiches, and fruit desserts. The brief section on pantry staples is a useful guide that will surely spark other no-cook ideas. She cheats occasionally by using store-bought smoked turkey and smoked salmon and purchased or leftover roast beef and chicken. Menus help you assemble 15 meals for various occasions almost without cooking. (One wonders who cooks the pasta for two of Chattman's dinners or the chicken for her barbecue.) Sure-fire recipes are Curried Chickpea Spread in a Pita, White Gazpacho, and the Rum Raisin Sundae. --Dana Jacobi

From Publishers Weekly

Chattman, formerly pastry chef at Nick and Toni's restaurant in East Hampton, Long Island, does what she promises in this sunny book, delivering 150 recipes that don't require a stove or oven. She sometimes gets by, however, on a technicality, as when she tells you how to make Perfect Scrambled Eggs and How to Poach Boneless, Skinless Chicken Breasts by enclosing those instructions in boxes rather than setting them up as recipes. The recipes themselves are reliable and full of fresh ingredients, most giving their ingredients in their titles. Five-Spice Nuts are nuts tossed with five-spice powder, and Vodka-Spiked Cherry Tomatoes with Cumin-Cilantro Dipping Salt says it all. Some offerings may seem hardly recipes, e.g., Herbed Goat Cheese and Sun-Dried Tomatoes on a Bagel, but succeed by their reminding readers of new, unexpected combinations. Fresh Tuna Nicoise Salad cleverly incorporates uncooked, sushi-quality tuna; Fresh Figs, Walnuts, and Mascarpone is certainly a tasty combination. Meal prep without cooking has a necessarily limited scope, but Chattman, offering upbeat headers and a useful glossary, brings welcome fresh air to the prospect of summer in the kitchen.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow Cookbooks; 1st edition (April 22, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688155138
• ISBN-13: 978-0688155131
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 8.2 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,988,382 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars simple reference for when it's too hot to cook, July 11, 1998

By	Wels Musgrave (Kingman, Arizona) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This source is a good reference for those who hate to cook when it's too hot to do anything. The recipes can be adapted to whatever region you are living in, northwest versus southwest, east coast versus west coast. The book is a good reference for those familiar with cooking when it's hot and need an occasional inspiration.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I love this book!, May 28, 2006

By	S. Magel "Princrayon" (NY) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Cool Kitchen: No Oven, No Stove, No Sweat 125 Delicious, No-Work Recipes for Summertime or Anytime (Paperback)

This is one of my favorite cookbooks! The recipes are simple yet elegant. The salads, sandwiches, dips and appetizers contain interesting flavors, yet barely take any time to prepare. This is such a great book to use for throwing spur of the moment get- togethers.

4.0 out of 5 stars Lots of things to cook with heat in this book, July 3, 2007

By	V. Stevens (Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Cool Kitchen: No Oven, No Stove, No Sweat 125 Delicious, No-Work Recipes for Summertime or Anytime (Paperback)

The majority of recipes in this book are no-cook, but there are several that require cooking with some form of heat - boiling, frying, scrambling, poaching, grilling, toasting, some of which are the main ingredients for the uncooked sauces and salads (recipes for poached fish and poultry, pasta and couscous, scrambled eggs, steamed vegetables, grilled bread, etc.), or required cooked ingredients that you're bound to want to cook yourself (like hard boiled eggs, overpriced to buy them cooked, and who knows how fresh they are, if you can find them). Many of the basic ingredients can be purchased pre-cooked. This is not a 'raw foods' cookbook, and the 'No-Work Recipes' as claimed on the cover are going to require someone's work to make them, with all the peeling and chopping of the fresh ingredients (and the actual cooking with heat!). Otherwise, there are many nice ideas for heat-free cooking, but the book isn't 100% no-cook.