High Flavor, Low Labor_ Reinventing Weeknight Cooking - J. M. Hirsch [0]
All photographs, except copyright page photograph, copyright © 2010 by Matthew Mead
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
BALLANTINE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Copyright page photograph by Holly Ramer.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Hirsch, J. M.
High flavor, low labor : reinventing weeknight cooking / J. M. Hirsch.
p. cm.
Includes index.
eISBN: 978-0-345-53006-6
1. Quick and easy cookery. 2. Cookery, International. I. Title.
TX833.5.H585 2010
641.5’55—dc22 2010014951
www.ballantinebooks.com
v3.1
To Parker, my son.
You are my world.
CONTENTS
The Initial Stuff
The Philosophical Stuff
The Basic Stuff
The Stuff to Buy
First Up
Tossed Around
Souped Up
Mainly Speaking
Punched-Up Pasta
Sandwiched
To the Side
Sugar Rush
Acknowledgments
Index
THE INITIAL STUFF
Weeknight cooking is no time for nuance. Meals must stand and be noticed. They must cut through the clutter of weekday chaos. And they must do it quickly and without fuss, mess, or toil.
It requires what I call blunt force cooking, a brash approach to cooking that cranks the flavor and rolls its eyes at bashful ingredients. It balances my desire for real and satisfying food with the demands of my real and overscheduled life.
It’s a simple premise. Let high-flavor ingredients do most of the work. Foods that taste great going into the pot need less work from you to taste great when they come out. I’m talking about the Parmesan cheeses, balsamic vinegars, jalapeños, chorizos, and wasabis of the world.
A ham and cheese, for example. Fine as is, but swap out the provolone with manchego or aged gouda and put prosciutto in place of the ham, and fine becomes fantastic. Ditch the sliced bread for baguette smeared with chutney, pop the whole thing in the oven, and you have something seriously special. And all for about the same effort as a ham and cheese.
Spaghetti and meatballs are good, but spike the sauce with balsamic vinegar and finely chopped sun-dried tomatoes, and you get mouth-puckering greatness. Or lose the sauce altogether, pop some crumbled blue cheese into your meatballs, and toss the whole thing with melted butter and minced garlic.
Cooking this way requires no particular genius or skill, and certainly not much time. I lack all of these. It takes just a bit of thought about which ingredients can best ramp up the flavors of a dish.
As food editor for The Associated Press, it’s my job to help Americans sit down to great meals. That means creating recipes for flavorful, beautiful food that don’t infringe on the rest of our lives. It means showing that real food and real flavors can be convenient and satisfying.
My expertise is the same as yours. I’m not a chef. I’m just a dad with a six-year-old in constant need of feeding, cleaning, and ferrying; a journalist wife forever on deadline; and a demanding job with the pressure of a nation watching over my shoulder every time I stand in front of the stove. What I don’t have is time to fuss over dinner. Meals must be fast, flavorful, easy, and real.
For many families, “real” is the stickler. We all need to nuke dinner now and again. But for the health of our bodies, our families, and our communities, it is better to prepare and enjoy food with our loved ones. This is how we connect, how we teach our children the value of family and food.
Not that I can spare much time for this. And no one has to. Grocers today are jammed with flavorful ingredients. What follows are nearly 150 of my favorite weeknight recipes that draw on those foods.
Blunt force cooking is an easy way to embrace family meals, a hectic lifestyle, and satisfying food. And despite the name, kitchen trauma is kept to a minimum.
THE PHILOSOPHICAL STUFF
Too many cookbooks kill off too many trees trying to micromanage your kitchen, instructing you on everything from the best time of day