The subtitle says it all: 100 low-prep, no-mess recipes for your skillet, sheet pan, pressure cooker and more!
The Grumpy Part
I review cookbooks. It’s fun, my kids sometimes like the change of pace of the dishes I put on the dinner table, and every now and again, a winner shines through. I typically plan a week or so of meals from a cookbook I’m reviewing, ticking off a recipe from each chapter to serve throughout the week. As I planned the cooking for The “I Don’t Want to Cook” Book by Seattle-based author Alyssa Brantley, my oven broke. The recipes I prepared came from little more than a cast iron pan on the stovetop and my toaster, which I jerry-rigged to hold two shelves.
The pain of cooking is compounded when your primary cooking tool does not work. Yet these recipes were easy enough that, even without a proper oven, I could make most of them work. Phew! While I planned to make recipes from the Convenient Casseroles and Dutch Oven Dinners chapters, I did not have the proper cookware to execute Dutch Oven Beef and Bean Tamale Pie (p. 69) or Cabbage Roll Casserole (p. 102) using only a toaster oven.
Recipes I Made
I started with Creamy Sun-Dried Tomato, Shrimp and Gnocchi Skillet (p. 35). My family can’t stand gluten-free gnocchi, so I made ta wheatfull version. The recipe relies on butter and heavy cream to drive the flavor – nothing wrong with that – but the slivered sun-dried tomato flavor was too much for all eaters. I also heard complaints that the gnocchi should be boiled then fried to add texture. Not a win.
While I would not necessarily call Za’atar-Spiced Chicken Salad Pita Pocket (p. 84) “dinner,” I did make it for weekend lunch. Using the pre-cooked chicken from my local supermarket salad bar ($12.99/pound versus $5.99/lb for chicken I could poach myself), my main quibble with this dish was the pre-cooked meat and its additional cost. I liked the zippy flavor of the za’atar. My kids would not touch it.
Spicy Sausage with Cabbage Wedges and Butter Potatoes (p. 119) is a variation on a dish I make often. The seasoned potatoes were a huge hit – crisp-edged and flavorful. Big win. Ditto Tandoori-spiced Pork Tenderloin with Asparagus and Naan (p. 131). I seared the pork in cast iron before roasting it in the toaster with the asparagus. I placed the naan on top of the toaster to warm it while everything else cooked. Huge toaster oven hit.
Who Would Like This Cookbook
Like me, the book’s author has two sons. I imagine her days are as cramped as mine, with cooking dinner smushed between drop-off for basketball for one child and finishing your work day. Many of the short cuts Brantley uses I have employed myself. As I cooked, I made a list in my head of people who would like this book – couple friends with two working and commuting parents, for example. But more than that, this feels like an introduction to cooking. I suspect that anyone cooking for themselves or others for the first time can learn quite a bit from this book.
Yes, there are still dishes to clean at the end of the meal – no getting around that! When you mix and cook in the same container, that’s one less bowl to wash.
Short-cuts don’t always add up to big flavor but sometimes, the time saved means happy faces with less fuss.
There’s no rocket science here. There are familiar recipes tweaked a bit to speed up making an almost homemade dinner. Next time, I’ll make the chicken myself.
I was provided a preview copy of The “I Don’t Want to Cook” Book.