Pages

Sunday, June 3, 2012

The Instant Cook


Customer Rating :
Rating: 4.5

List Price : $34.95 Price : $17.87
The Instant Cook

Product Description

Donna Hay is swiftly becoming the source American cooks go to when they ask themselves, "What should we have for dinner tonight?" She has garnered a passionate global following for her fresh and modern approach to food -- bringing out clean, sparkling flavors with simple techniques and streamlined instructions. In The Instant Cook, she offers more than a compendium of flexible recipes; it is an elegantly simple philosophy of cooking, and of eating.

Donna Hay pulls together flavor combinations and cooking skills from the Mediterranean and the Pacific Rim - two of the most luscious and quick-cooking cuisines on the planet - to create delicious meals with a handful of ingredients in a few minutes. She gives home cooks the confidence to cook with instinct and with style.

Exquisite full color photographs on every page illustrate Donna’s signature look -- chic yet never fussy. It reminds you that cooking is a pleasure. Pour a glass of wine and catch up with family as you cook; shop without waste or confusion; host a weeknight dinner party with little planning and less effort. The Instant Cook is destined to be the cookbook that is never put back on the shelf.




    The Instant Cook Reviews


    The Instant Cook Reviews


    Amazon.com
    Customer Reviews
    Average Customer Review
    20 Reviews
    5 star:
     (16)
    4 star:
     (1)
    3 star:
     (2)
    2 star:    (0)
    1 star:
     (1)
     
     
     

    26 of 26 people found the following review helpful
    5.0 out of 5 stars Instant Cook! Instant Joy!, August 2, 2005
    By 
    Richard Orlin (Centreville, VA USA) - See all my reviews
    (REAL NAME)   
    Amazon Verified Purchase( What's this?)
    This review is from: The Instant Cook (Hardcover)
    I can't understand why Marianne Hagan hated this book. Nowhere in the introduction does it say it's for beginners. The recipes are simple and easy, but you DO have to have be able to do more than boil water. I tried around a dozen recipes and had no problems whatsoever. All the ingrediaents are listed and what's especially helpful is the fact that the author lists different variations for some of the recipes. For example: her recipe for Carmelized Lime Fish suggest using scallops, or salmon, or even shrimp; four for the price of one!

    The recipes are simple and the pictures are yummy. Buy this book without hesitation.
    Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
    Was this review helpful to you?  Yes No


    19 of 19 people found the following review helpful
    5.0 out of 5 stars gorgeous with great recipes, May 26, 2005
    By 
    This review is from: The Instant Cook (Hardcover)
    Donna Hay is a best-selling cookbook author from Australia whose signature style is beautiful, close-up, simply presented photos of food, plus easy, quick recipes. Her whole thing is the food--it should be easy to make (she likes Asian and Mediterranean flavors and a minimum of ingredients) and you should be able to see what it looks like without all the distraction of fussy napkins, utensils, flowers and stuff. Her books are over-sized so the photos are easy to see and the recipes easy to read. And her recipes are great; I've tried at least a dozen and they all work and all taste delicious. Thai Sticky Chicken was a huge hit in my house, and so easy.
    Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
    Was this review helpful to you?  Yes No


    16 of 16 people found the following review helpful
    5.0 out of 5 stars Glad I found Donna Hay!, December 15, 2005
    By 
    M. Vance "delta reader" (mississippi delta) - See all my reviews
    (REAL NAME)   
    This review is from: The Instant Cook (Hardcover)
    I first saw this cookbook while browsing in a bookstore. It was a beautiful book. Once I opened it, I knew I liked it visually due to so many color photographs and it's beautiful design.

    This book is not only visually beautiful and thoughtfully designed, but every single recipe has a photograph! I really liked that. And the focus is completely on the food - nothing else!

    The recipes are straight forward and don't call for many ingredients that I don't already keep in stock regularly. They are easy to prepare and full of flavor. The presentation is outstanding, too.

    I'm not a plan ahead, casserole type cook at night. I like to whip it up an hour or less before eating. This book does the trick and the reviews from my family are fantastic; even my 13 year old daughter loves them.

    I have even entertained at a dinner party using her recipes. The salads are really outstanding. Overall, although her recipes are simple, the effect is... Read more
    Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
    Was this review helpful to you?  Yes No


    Share your thoughts with other customers:
      See all 20 customer reviews...

    The Best 30-Minute Recipe


    Customer Rating :
    Rating: 4.7

    List Price : $35.00 Price : $14.49
    The Best 30-Minute Recipe

    Product Description

    300 Fast and Flavorful Recipes from America’s Most Trusted Test Kitchen

    Tired of quick recipes that aren’t really quick or don’t taste very good? While some cookbooks promise 30-minute meals, America’s Test Kitchen delivers. The Best 30-Minute Recipe is packed with more than 300 great-tasting recipes, along with time-saving techniques that will help you become more efficient in the kitchen. You’ll also find honest evaluations of ingredients important to quick cooking, such as chicken broth, preshredded cheese, instant rice, and more. And because the type of equipment you use is important to the success of any recipe—made in 30 minutes or not—we tell you which brands are worth buying.

    The Best 30-Minute Recipe features a surprisingly wide range of recipes. You get not only the very best versions of naturally quick dishes like salads and stir-fries, but also quick and easy recipes for typically long-cooking dishes that you’d never even think of making on a weeknight—including meatloaf, lasagna, beef pot pie, and a pad thai so easy that you may never call for takeout again. With efficiency and good taste, The Best 30-Minute Recipe is the time-pressed cook’s guide to getting dinner on the table, night after night.


    • Product Details: Hardcover: 278 pages
    • Publisher: America's Test Kitchen; 1st edition (September 30, 2006) 1st Edition
    • Language: English, ISBN-10: 0936184981, ISBN-13: 978-0936184982
    • Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 8.6 x 1.1 inches, Shipping Weight: 2.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
    • Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (71 customer reviews), Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,796 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)


    The Best 30-Minute Recipe Reviews


    The Best 30-Minute Recipe Reviews


    Amazon.com
    Customer Reviews
    Average Customer Review
    83 Reviews
    5 star:
     (67)
    4 star:
     (10)
    3 star:
     (4)
    2 star:    (0)
    1 star:
     (2)
     
     
     

    371 of 374 people found the following review helpful
    4.0 out of 5 stars Great as a standalone cookbook, problematic for anyone with other ATK material, February 4, 2007
    By 
    Lemon Magic (Omaha, NE USA) - See all my reviews
    This review is from: The Best 30-Minute Recipe (Hardcover)
    If this is your first cookbook from the ATK/Cook's Illustrated crew, I can almost guarantee you will be very happy with it. It's a very thorough and accessible approach to some cracking good recipes. The prose style is entertaining and informative and helps a less experienced cook get some insight into the tastes and textures that make a "good" recipe.

    But if you want to learn more or get further into the style, you may find that you get less geniunely new material with each subsequent purchase. While any one of their books is very much worth having, they tend to endlessly repackage and reissue their recipes in various formats. That's a little problematic for someone who is a fan of the ATK approach, but also is in no way a collector of cook books. If a cook book has 3 or 4 recipes that I haven't seen before and genuinely want to try, I'll be satisfied, and each new ATK issue just barely satisfies that criterion. But the relatively high cost of acquiring these new recipes... Read more
    Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
    Was this review helpful to you?  Yes No


    110 of 110 people found the following review helpful
    5.0 out of 5 stars Another Great Cookbook By Cook's Illustrated!, April 21, 2007
    By 
    Renee Gleason (New York) - See all my reviews
    (REAL NAME)   
    This review is from: The Best 30-Minute Recipe (Hardcover)
    This is my eighth book in my Cook's Illustrated (CI) collection and I have really enjoyed it. While it is true that many of CI's cookbooks are packed with repeat and/or repackaged recipes as other reviewers have pointed out, this book stands out from the pack in that it offers techniques in streamlining recipes so that you can get a delicious meal on the table in 30 minutes or less. And yes, every recipe I have tried has lived up to that promise (unlike other famed 30 minute cookbooks!). For people familiar with CI, this is quite a change in pace. My only real complaint with other CI books has been that the recipes can be involved and time consuming and leave your kitchen looking like a disaster area when you're finished. The good people at America's Test Kitchen didn't seem to be aware with how much kitchen equipment they had you dirtying with their recipes! This hardly made CI recipes very appealing on those weekdays when you needed a fast and easy meal on the table. This book... Read more
    Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
    Was this review helpful to you?  Yes No


    71 of 72 people found the following review helpful
    5.0 out of 5 stars Fabulously fast fantastic food!, March 25, 2007
    Amazon Verified Purchase( What's this?)
    This review is from: The Best 30-Minute Recipe (Hardcover)
    I love all my cookbooks from the Cook's Illustrated line. This one is great, too! The recipes truly are doable in under 30 minutes. And when they say 30 minutes, they mean thirty minutes from start to finish- NOT 30 minutes of prep time and another hour of cooking!

    My family loves the teriyaki recipes! I've never had better teriyaki- fast, light and fresh. We also have made some of the braised chicken dishes and they were very good.

    This book is in a similar format to many of their others: there is a discussion of ingredients and methods leading up to the recipe and then usually several variations on the actual recipe itself. I like this because it allows for some flexibility if you don;t have certain ingredients on hand. This cookbook gives tips for how to prepare the recipes in the most efficient manner (for example, it says "While meat is browning, chop the onions"). I usually find that when I've cooked a recipe several times, I'm much faster at it... Read more
    Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
    Was this review helpful to you?  Yes No


    Share your thoughts with other customers:
      See all 83 customer reviews...

    Instant Home Cooking (Jewel Case)


    Customer Rating :
    Rating: 2.0

    List Price : $9.99 Price : $3.95
    Instant Home Cooking (Jewel Case)

    Product Description

    With over 600 recipes and access to 100,000 more, Instant Home Cooking is a complete reference source and nutritional guide for delicious recipes. This 2 CD-ROM suite includes the Food Lover's Encyclopedia and RecipeCenter Software. A must have for anyone who loves cooking and great recipes!

    Amazon.com Product Description

    With over 23,600 recipes and access to over 100,000 more, Instant Home Cooking is your complete reference source and organizational tool for delicious recipes. This two-CD-ROM suite includes the Food Lover's Encyclopedia, Home Cookin', RecipeCenter Software, and BarBack.

    With a staggering variety of main courses, appetizers, desserts, light cooking dishes, foreign cuisine, seafood meals, beverage recipes, and over 1,000 preparation ideas, you'll always have the option of a five-star meal at home. Planning guides, shopping lists, automatic recipe scaling, and nutritional analysis will make you a well-educated, well-managed, and successful cook.

    RecipeCenter Software lets you access all the recipes you need from one source and store it for easy retrieval. Including 200 recipes and nearly 50 pictures, this fantastic storage tool also lets you download and save any of the 100,000-plus recipes found at RecipeCenter.com.

    BarBack gives you over 10,400 drink recipes, and the Advanced Search option lets you can combine up to five search criteria including name, ingredient, category, glassware, marked recipes, cost, and price.

    Home Cookin' delivers over 12,400 recipes, providing everything you need to organize your recipes in a simple, alphabetical format. This software uses free-form text entry so you can add or edit a recipe simply by typing. And you can store up to two billion entries and pictures in a single database.

    The Food Lover's Encyclopedia is rich with interesting historical facts for over 2,000 foods and contains more than 1,000 preparation ideas. With the aid of 600 recipes, 60 demonstration videos on cooking techniques, tips on buying and storing food, and valuable nutritional guides, you'll be a master chef in your own home.


    • A Must for Anyone Who Loves Cooking and GreatRecipes!Product Information With over 600 recipes and access to 100,000 more, Instant Home Cooking is acomplete reference source and nutritional guide for delicious recipes. This 2CD-ROM suite includes the Food Lover's Encyclopedia and RecipeCenter Software.With a wide variety of main course, appetizers, desserts, seafood meals, andover 1,000 prepara


    Instant Home Cooking (Jewel Case) Reviews


    Instant Home Cooking (Jewel Case) Reviews


    Amazon.com
    Customer Reviews
    Average Customer Review
    1 Review
    5 star:    (0)
    4 star:    (0)
    3 star:    (0)
    2 star:
     (1)
    1 star:    (0)
     
     
     

    1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
    2.0 out of 5 stars Buy a Cookbook Insead, December 13, 2010
    Amazon Verified Purchase( What's this?)
    This review is from: Instant Home Cooking (Jewel Case) (CD-ROM)
    Though not completely useless, this item has done little to improve my cooking. I like how the technology allows you to change the proportion of your measurements. However, I don't like the recipes and the look and feel of the product is quite dated.
    Help other customers find the most helpful reviews 
    Was this review helpful to you?  Yes No


    Share your thoughts with other customers:
      See the customer review...