One Dish Meals [Hardcover]

This beautiful book, filled with more than 150 recipes and 100 color photographs, is not your typical casserole cookbook. It takes one dish meals to a whole new level. The recipes prove that one dish meals aren't only for cold weather. They range from long simmering rich and savory winter-type meals to light fare for hot summer days. They also run the gamut from dishes that take hours to cook to ones that take 15 minutes to prepare on those busy days, though casseroles and baked dishes predominate.

Chapters include soups, stews, braises, pastas and baked dishes, sautes and stir fries and light fare. The recipes are very well-written and easy to follow, often with tips and suggestions. If you want to try something unusual and different, you'll surely find it here. In addition to deliciously updated standards such as Shepherd's Pie, Eggplant Parmesan, and Braised Beef Short Ribs, you'll find recipes for Stir-fried Squid with Basil, and Cockles with Chorizo in a Garlic, Wine and Parsley Sauce, and Saigon Subs - offerings from Brazil, Korea, Japan and the Mediterranean.

The one negative in my opinion is the number of ingredients called for that are unlikely to be available in most areas, some of which will be sending you to a food dictionary, such as galangal (an essential ingredient in its dish), duck confit, farro, Korean glass noodles, or wild lime leaves. In most instances, however, substitutions are offered.

Although it's not a book for beginners, the recipes are laid out in great detail and it's an excellent book.

When you get a new cookbook and it falls open to crawfish etouffee, it's got to be a pretty great cookbook. Maybe that's because where I grew up in South Louisiana this was a standard in every restaurant. (In every small Louisiana town, back then at least, there was a small, locally owned, family style restaurant that anywhere else would have ranked among the very best - great food wasn't just a New Orleans tradition.)

What this says is that the CIA (not that CIA, but the Culinary Institute of America) has selected recipies from everywhere in the country to feature in this rather special book. Here are dishes that can be prepared to be the whole meal rather than just part of a cooking.

Some of the other dishes Japanese meat and potatoes, Vietnamese beef stew, Italian veal stew with polenta (that's grits to us southern boys), jambalays (cajun again), Mexican seafood with coconut water, Basque lamb shanks and on and on.

Basically there's not a recipie in this book that doesn't look great. I haven't tried them all yet, but I'm working on it.

Lynn Gigliotti is a lecturing instructor in Culinary Arts at the famous Culinary Institute of America and draws upon her many years of experience and expertise to put together "One Dish Meals: Flavorful Single-Dish meals From The world's Premier Culinary College". One-dish meals are designed for kitchen cooks who are under limitations of time but want to grace their family's dinner table with nutritious, delicious, and interesting meals that would please the palate even as they satisfied the appetite. Beautifully illustrated throughout with color photography of finished dishes, the "kitchen cook friendly" recipes comprising "One Dish Meals" range from 'Vegetable Soup with Radish Salsa'; 'Saigon Beef Stew'; 'Veal Braised in Asti Spumante'; and Frittata with Bacon, Corn and Pasta'; to 'Mushroom-Cauliflower Cury'; 'Potato Salad with Tuna, Olives, and Red Peppers'; and 'Gyro with Tsatziki Sauce'. A wonderfully imaginative cookbook, "One Dish Meals" is especially recommended to novice chefs needing easy to prepare and inspiringly served meals for any occasion from daily family fare to special occasion dining!