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	Wednesday, September 15, 2004

Bill Cosby.

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody."

[Quotes of the Day]
10:10:11 PM    comments [] trackback []
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Here's one of the recipes that accompanies the article mentioned below:

Adapted from "Readers Digest 30 Minute Cookbook"

Time: 30 minutes

1 pound button or pickling onions
1/2 to 1 teaspoon dried rosemary
1 1/2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon dark (blackstrap) molasses
2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon soy sauce.

1. Bring a saucepan of water to a simmer, and add onions. Simmer for 5 minutes, drain, and rinse with cold water. Drain again. Peel off skins; set aside.

2. Using a mortar and pestle or rolling pin, finely crush rosemary; set aside. Place a large skillet over medium-low heat, and add butter. When butter has melted, add rosemary, molasses, mustard and soy sauce. Mix well.

3. Add onions, and reduce heat to low. Cook gently, stirring frequently, until glaze has thickened and onions are tender and golden brown, 10 to 15 minutes. Serve hot.

Yield: 4 servings.


7:29:38 PM    comments [] trackback []
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An excerpt from an article in today's New York Times, I'm Cooking as Fast as I Can, by food critic William Grimes. It outlines his search for "respectable one-star dinners" that can be made by the home chef in 30 minutes or less.

I breezed right by 30-Minute Meals for Dummies on the theory that when you get right down to it, all 30-minute recipes are recipes for dummies. It is built into the concept. Usually, if you can turn on a burner, you can handle the recipe. Better Homes and Gardens, although chock-full of sensible, middle-of-the-road recipes, lost me when it called for grated American cheese in its recipe for corn chowder.

With Fast, Food & Wine's collection of quick meals, I found my comfort level. The book, indistinguishable in size and feel from an issue of the magazine, looks as if it were thrown together in the time it takes to make one of its appetizers, but the recipe writers include the likes of Marcella Hazan, Daniel Boulud and Terrance Brennan.

I found a disarmingly simple way to serve peppered steak, a dish I have to have at least twice a month. I had grown tired of Bordelaise sauce, and the nice brandy and cream sauce I ran across in The New Joy of Cooking was beginning to pall. The Food & Wine alternative was to make a simple red wine and butter sauce and then serve the steak with watercress that has been sautéed in the same pan. Like the most successful 30-minute dishes, this one relies on one simple twist or one unexpected flavor to make it distinctive.

Reader's Digest, as homey as it gets, took me by surprise with an international lineup of recipes in its 30-Minute Cookbook. Dishes like egg-topped kedgeree, leek and Cheddar cheese tart and venison sausages with Stilton mash, as well as a large chapter devoted to vegetarian main dishes, reflect a strong English accent, although a healthy percentage of the recipes are also Asian.

I gave its recipe for salmon with lime-herb butter a try, partly because keeping compound butters in the refrigerator is a terrific time saver and partly because I was intrigued by a suggested side dish of glazed onions [see recipe above]. That recipe called for rosemary, molasses and Dijon mustard, a combination that sounded on the face of it a little strange but turned out to be a hands-down winner, spicy, sweet and aromatic. It does not go well with grouper, the fish I had on hand the first time around, but it fits salmon to a T. ...

I knew I was onto a good thing in my quest for the 30-minute meal when Jacques Pépin [Fast Food My Way] turned up on the scene. Mr. Pépin knows a few things about fast food, having flipped hamburgers at a Howard Johnson in Queens when he first came to America, but his approach combines simplicity with originality. ...

His stir-fry of chorizo sausages, fresh asparagus, croutons and almonds takes almost no time to prepare, but the result looks more impressive than a lot of dishes requiring triple the time and effort.

Grimes is at first mystified by Pépin's (good) dessert using canned peaches, but later he figures out why Pepin doesn't call for fresh ones.

6:49:51 PM    comments [] trackback []
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