How to Cook Without a Book: Recipes and Techniques Every Cook Should Know by Heart
Learn what makes a recipe tick, saysHow to Cook Without a Bookauthor Pam  Anderson, and you'll serve great food fast. Recognizing that most cooks feel  challenged in the face of daily meal making, Anderson provides a game plan:  prepare dishes based on available ingredients and simple cooking techniques  you've mastered--not on recipes you've got to look up and ingredients you'll need to shop for--and you maximize the potential of kitchen ease. Cooks  looking for a way to address the what-will-we-have-tonight quandary  definitively, or those who feel they lack the energy or know-how to tackle cooking every night, should find the book essential.  In chapters such as "Simple Stir-Frys" or "Weeknight Ravioli and Lasagna,"  Anderson presents a particular cooking procedure, provides a recipe that embodies it in its basic form (the protein-adaptable Weeknight Stir-Fry, for  example), then offers simple variations (such as Stir-Fried Chicken with Asparagus and Mushrooms or Stir-Fried Shrimp with Pepper and Scallions).  Chapters conclude with an at-a-glance review of key technique points.  Following Anderson's tips and innovations, lasagna, for example, becomes a  weeknight option (use egg-roll wrappers for the pasta, Anderson advises, and  forgo the baking); she also shows how, once mastered, her Big Fat Omelet,  which serves four, can become the basis for a wide range of lunch and dinner  entrées. With a comprehensive pantry section and a dessert chapter that puts  frozen puff pastry to work in imaginative ways, the book is a trove of  information that cooks can use and depend on.--Arthur Boehm