Get Cooking_ 150 Simple Recipes to Get You Started in the Kitchen - Mollie Katzen [1]
For starters, I’m exceedingly happy to present you with 150 delicious, doable recipes that even the most inexperienced person can walk into any kitchen right now and make for dinner tonight. The “cuisine” is what I like to call “Big Tent,” accommodating a broad base of tastes and needs, vegetarian and meat-loving and everything in between. I’m talking about soup-from-scratch, pastas that are light and well seasoned, salads you can make quickly and well, classic meat dishes with vegetable and potato sides to round them out, and plenty of vegetarian recipes (many of them vegan) that will please just about everyone. You’ll find this food to be boldly seasoned—there’s absolutely no need for “beginning” to mean “bland”—with lots of ethnic influences and flavors to keep things interesting.
These recipes are written in a way that I hope you can grasp in a single read-through, with a list of ingredients that isn’t overwhelming and step-by-step instructions that really walk you through the process. The key phrase is “read-through,” which I hope you’ll take literally, as a thorough grasp of the tasks at hand will make all the difference between driving the boat and drifting around at sea. I want to stand beside you (in spirit and in information, if not in person) as you cook, letting you know what to expect and what things should look like as your meal goes from idea to reality.
Along with the recipes, I have also included many handy skills for learning how to cook the food you love in your own (possibly first) kitchen—in your own way and often. I hope these recipes and advice will give you both the knowledge and the confidence to find the link between your appreciation of food and your ability to prepare it with your own two hands. Joy and pleasure and fun (and a newborn sense of accomplishment) can be yours all along the learning curve.
IS THIS YOU?
Does this sound familiar? You find yourself eating pizza or fast food more nights a week than you wish. Higher-end takeout is an occasional option, but it’s expensive. You regularly crave a home-cooked meal at the end of the day instead of that slab of pizza. You’d really rather be eating a healthier, tastier, and more balanced diet. You’re curious about flavor combinations and interesting cuisines (ethnic and otherwise), and you’d like to experiment. You’d also like to know what the heck you’re doing in the process. And most of all, you’d like to have what you really enjoy, rather than settling for someone else’s idea of what’s good.
You’d like to think of yourself (and have your friends and family think of you) as someone who knows how to cook.
You’d like to share the pleasure of food and drink with your friends, without spending a ton of money at a restaurant. You fantasize about everyone getting together to shop, cook, eat, and hang out till all hours at your place without using up your entire month’s entertainment budget in a single evening.
But you’re not sure where to begin. You leaf through cookbooks, surf the web, pick up a food magazine at the grocery store—and end up reading it in bed rather than cooking from it (or not reading it at all because it’s too slick, and you’re sure it’s been written for someone else).
YOUR NEW COOKING LIFE
Having taught many people how to make a lot of good food in the course of my life, I can tell you that, if any or all of the above sounds like you, what you need are three things: good, reliable recipes for the kind of dishes you actually like; just enough advice on how to navigate them; and most important, the desire and confidence to get cooking. Not someday, not when you move into that place with the nice kitchen. Tonight.