The Weeknight Dinner Cookbook: Simple Family-Friendly Recipes for Everyday Home Cooking
Let’s cut to the chase: I ** really ** like this book. There are at least a dozen recipes that I will be making over the next few months, and most lend themselves to quantity modification (cutting servings in half or doubling recipe to serve more).
The main dishes are divided into three sections: 15-25-Minute Meals, 30-45-Minute Meals, and 5-10-Minute Prep (Meals Cook on Their Own). Then there are chapters for side dishes, condiments, and stress-free desserts. There is great variety (including Asian, Mexican, Mediterranean, and US Regional), and most use ingredients that are easy to find in most supermarkets. Each recipe includes a photo to introduce the recipe. Instructions are clear and easy to follow.
I purchased the Kindle version of this, and noticed none of the formatting issues that sometimes plague Kindle editions of printed cookbooks.
My usual process when I review a cookbook is to prepare three recipes to check on accuracy, editing, and clarity. Here are my three from this book:
1. 15-25-Minute Meals —
Sweet and Spicy Salmon with Broccoli
There’s nothing easier than baking-sheet dinners, and this is a particularly good example of one. I started with a side of salmon from our local Lummi Island fishery and cut it into 4 servings. The sauce for this is a yummy combination of oil, soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, apricot jam, garlic, red pepper flakes and cayenne pepper. Sweet and spicy is right! The salmon is cooked on the sheet pan with broccoli florets, drizzled with the sauce and popped under the broiler for a total of about 10 minutes. The result is perfectly cooked fish with a nicely balanced sweet/spicy sauce, and broccoli that still has a bit of a “crunch” to it. I served this with jasmine rice. Perfection! Super easy, super tasty, definitely a keeper.
2. 30-45-Minute Meals —
Green Chile and Cheese Stuffed Chicken
Another easy-to-put-together supper dish. This one uses chicken breasts, with a stuffing of pepper Jack cheese and chopped green chiles (yes, that’s all, and it’s really enough). The stuffed breast is breaded with crushed pretzels, some more of the pepper Jack cheese, and taco seasoning. Assemble everything, coat the chicken with the breading, spritz with a little olive oil cooking spray and bake until cooked through (20-25 minutes). I served this with a corn/black bean/red bell pepper salad. Another winner!
3. Stress-Free Desserts
Lemon Curd Mini Cheesecakes
These light lemony cheesecake miniatures are baked in a standard muffin tin, which decreases the baking time. Fairly standard graham cracker crust, fairly standard cream cheese filling that is topped and swirled with lemon curd. This recipe depends to a great degree on the quality of your lemon curd. I’ve made this recipe twice now, once with my own homemade lemon curd, and once with a “good” jarred curd. Both were good, but the version made with my own curd was noticeable better according to two friends who tried both in a blind tasting. Making your own curd will add to the time and effort involved in this, so going for a store-bought curd is perfectly acceptable — just make sure you get a really good quality one. I’m not sure this is special enough to replace another recipe I like to use for mini cheesecakes, but it’s a good recipe.
So there it is. As I said, I really really like this book. There are so many tempting recipes here that I plan to make over the next few months (e.g., Pan-Fried Pork Medallions with Creamy Wine Sauce, Bow-Tie Pasta with Bacon and Brussels Sprouts, Crispy Breaded White Fish with Sriracha Aioli — all of these are from the 15-25-Minute chapter, plus another 10 or so from the 30-45-Minute chapter, sides, and desserts). This one is going into my kitchen bookshelf (I keep 5-10 books in my kitchen; the rest of my collection is split among bookcases several rooms).
Solid 5 stars — I love it.
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This was a fantastic purchase. I don't cook a whole lot but when I do I like to be in the kitchen for about a half hour and then I'm done. The recipes in here are easy to execute and don't require a whole lot of extra grocery shopping to make it happen. It's important for me to have pictures in a recipe book and this one has pictures for almost every single one. Oh and the food tastes delicious! It tastes like something that took hours to make. It is almost so simple it feels like you're cheating but it is all from scratch. Love love love!
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