Guide to Canning, Freezing, Curing and Smoking Meat, Fish and Game
Author: Wilbur F Eastman
Join the generations of cooks who have learned to can, freeze, cure, and smoke meat, fish, and game with this book's simple, safety-conscious instructions. You'll also find complete descriptions of pickling methods for meat and fish; a discussion of the pros and cons of home preserving; and many tips and shortcuts. Whether you want to preserve meat at home to save money or to avoid the hormones and other additives in commercial products, this book is for you.
Book review: Comparative Higher Education or Linking Theory to Practice
How to Cook without a Book: Recipes and Techniques Every Cook Should Know by Heart
Author: Pam Anderson
Pam Anderson grew up watching her parents and grandparents make dinner every night by simply taking the ingredients on hand and cooking them with the techniques they knew.
Times have changed. Today we have an overwhelming array of ingredients and a fraction of the cooking time, but Anderson believes the secret to getting dinner on the table lies in the past. After a long day, who has the energy to look up a recipe and search for the right ingredients before ever starting to cook? To make dinner night after night, Anderson believes the first two steps—looking for a recipe, then scrambling for the exact ingredients—must be eliminated. Understanding that most recipes are simply "variations on a theme," she innovatively teaches technique, ultimately eliminating the need for recipes.
Once the technique or formula is mastered, Anderson encourages inexperienced as well as veteran cooks to spread their culinary wings. For example, after learning to sear a steak, it's understood that the same method works for scallops, tuna, hamburger, swordfish, salmon, pork tenderloin, and more. You never need to look at a recipe again. Vary the look and flavor of these dishes with interchangeable pan sauces, salsas, relishes, and butters.
Best of all, these recipes rise above the mundane Monday-through-Friday fare. Imagine homemade ravioli and lasagna for weeknight supper, or from-scratch tomato sauce before the pasta water has even boiled. Last-minute guests? Dress up simple tomato sauce with capers and olives or shrimp and red pepper flakes. Drizzle sautéed chicken breasts with a balsamic vinegar pan sauce. Anderson teaches you how to do it—without arecipe. Don't buy exotic ingredients and follow tedious instructions for making hors d'oeuvres. Forage through the pantry and refrigerator for quick appetizers. The ingredients are all there; the method is in your head. Master four simple potato dishes—a bake, a cake, a mash, and a roast—compatible with many meals. Learn how to make the five-minute dinner salad, easily changing its look and flavor depending on the season and occasion. Tuck a few dessert techniques in your back pocket and effortlessly turn any meal into a special occasion.
There's real rhyme and reason to Pam's method at the beginning of every chapter: To dress greens, "Drizzle salad with oil, salt, and pepper, then toss until just slick. Sprinkle in some vinegar to give it a little kick." To make a frittata, "Cook eggs without stirring until set around the edges. Bake until puffy, then cut it into wedges." Each chapter also contains a helpful at-a-glance chart that highlights the key points of every technique, and a master recipe with enough variations to keep you going until you've learned how to cook without a book.
Publishers Weekly
Former executive editor of Cook's magazine and author of The Perfect Recipe, Anderson wants to teach Americans a new way to cook--without relying on recipes. It's somewhat surprising, then, to discover that this book is full of recipes. However, readers may cotton to Anderson's method: each chapter consists of a simple technique, basic recipe, variations, key points and a little mnemonic device used to recall the technique. The techniques are, for the most part, terrific time-savers, such as cutting out the back before roasting a whole chicken or making one giant omelet to serve four people so that everyone can eat together. Variations are good, too, although many are so similar to one another that it seems a little repetitious to include a recipe for each (in turn, many of the recipes refer back to the original, resulting in a lot of page-flipping). A chapter on tomato sauces, for example, includes the basic Simple Tomato Sauce, as well as Tomato Sauce with Dried Porcini, Tomato Sauce with Sweet Onions and Thyme, Tomato Sauce with Shrimp and Red Pepper Flakes and many others. A chapter on pan sauces is a winner, encompassing Red Wine-Dijon Pan Sauce, Port Wine Pan Sauce with Dried Cranberries and Balsamic Pan Sauce with Pine Nuts and Raisins. In the end, this cookbook is a solid collection of simple, quick recipes, but with its sometimes scattered format, it is unlikely to free everyday cooks from the tyranny of recipes. (Mar.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|
The New York Times - Amanda Hesser
Selling a book called How to Cook Without a Book seems like the publishing equivalent of shooting oneself in the foot. Yet there couldn't be a better title for Pam Anderson's new book. She attempts heroically to give cooks the clues they need to get a meal on the table without dizzying themselves between book and stove...After a day of cooking, I felt a sense of momentum and empowerment, not just sore feet. What I liked most, though, was acknowledging that cooking is often about getting a meal on the table. And that should involve instinct and improvisation, not directions on a page.
Table of Contents:
| Introduction | 1 | |
| The Right Stuff: Stocking the Refrigerator, Freezer, and Pantry | 7 | |
| Whack and Toss Salads | 13 | |
| Paired Salads: Hold the Lettuce | 25 | |
| Vinaigrette: The Single Vegetable's Best Bet | 29 | |
| One Easy Formula, Many Supper Soups | 35 | |
| Quick in a Cup, Pureed Vegetable Soups | 48 | |
| The Big Fat Omelet | 53 | |
| The Big and Bigger Frittata | 65 | |
| Simple Tomato Sauce, Scores of Possibilities | 76 | |
| Pasta With Vegetables | 90 | |
| Firm Vegetables | 92 | |
| Leafy Greens | 97 | |
| Tender Vegetables | 101 | |
| Weeknight Ravioli and Lasagna | 106 | |
| Quick Ravioli | 107 | |
| Quick Lasagna | 113 | |
| Weeknight Stir-Fries | 121 | |
| More Asian Fast Food: Lo Mein, Fried Rice, and Pad Thai | 134 | |
| If You've Made One Saute, You've Made Them all | 144 | |
| Chicken Cutlets | 145 | |
| Turkey Cutlets | 146 | |
| Boneless Pork Chops | 149 | |
| Fish Fillets | 151 | |
| Duck Breasts | 155 | |
| Pan Sauces | 158 | |
| Relishes | 171 | |
| If You Can Saute, You Can Sear | 174 | |
| Steak | 177 | |
| Hamburger | 180 | |
| Pork Tenderloin | 182 | |
| Salmon | 184 | |
| Fish Steaks | 186 | |
| Scallops | 188 | |
| Flavored Butters | 191 | |
| The No-Hassle Roast Chicken Dinner: ... and Quick Chicken Salad | 193 | |
| Steam/Sauteed Vegetables | 202 | |
| Steam/Sauteed Tender Greens | 215 | |
| One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato, Four | 220 | |
| The Cake | 221 | |
| The Bake | 224 | |
| The Mash | 225 | |
| The Roast | 227 | |
| Simple Ways With Simple Sides | 229 | |
| Rice | 230 | |
| Orzo | 236 | |
| Polenta | 240 | |
| Couscous | 243 | |
| Spur-of-the-Moment Appetizers | 246 | |
| The Simplest | 247 | |
| Fruit and Vegetable Bases | 260 | |
| A Little Something More | 264 | |
| Just Desserts | 270 | |
| Puff Pastry: Your New Best Friend | 271 | |
| Assemble-and-Serve Desserts | 276 | |
| Menus At-a-Glance | 281 | |
| Index | 283 |
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