Sara Moulton's Everyday Family Dinners

March 15, 2010
Moulton, famed Food Network and public television star and author of Sara's Secrets for Weeknight Meals
, shares 200 recipes for busy home cooks. While many cookbooks offer quick recipes for weeknight meals, Moulton takes the concept several steps further by creating dishes that reflect the way Americans truly eat at home. Inspired by the recession, she creates meals that are inexpensive yet flavorful and offers suggestions for variations, such as making the dish lighter, vegetarian, or with different ingredients. She offers two-for-one dishes, where a second new meal is created with leftovers from the first meal as well as five-ingredient main dishes. She also devotes entire chapters to vegetarian dishes and whole grain meals, and her poultry section includes turkey meatballs. She not only condones but advocates appetizers for dinner and dedicating a night for sandwiches and another to soup. Recipe highlights include black bean soup with quesadillas, Peking duck wraps, Thai-style beef stir-fry with chilis and mint, sautéed beer-batter shrimp with tartar sauce, and three-ingredient apple crisp. This refreshing, accessible, and tasty collection more than lives up to the promise of its title and will delight the legions of Moulton fans, earning her more than a few new ones.

March 15, 2010
Moulton ("Sara's Secrets for Weeknight Meals"), a former Food Network star and "Good Morning America"'s food editor, provides shortcuts for great family meals, like Really Quick Borscht, which can be made in fewer than 40 minutes. Cooks will find helpful ideas (how to choose the right balsamic vinegar, for example) and can expect to discover new favorites such as Korean Burgers, made with kimchi, ginger, rice vinegar, and scallions. Library marketing. Expect demand.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2010
Moulton is a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, former executive chef of the now-defunct Gourmet magazine, a TV host, and a cookbook author (Saras Secrets for Weeknight Meals, 2005). Despite these credentials, dont expect lengthy recipes demanding weekends in the kitchen, exotic and hard-to-find ingredients, and complicated new wave cooking techniques (sous vide, anyone?). No, the authors 200 recipes are accessible and span all major cuisines, from Korea, South America, and Britain to down-home U.S.A. There is also an educational component packed into almost every single page; sidebars explain, for instance, the selection of a good soy sauce, the difference between hamburger and ground beef, and the best place to store eggs. The recipes, each prefaced with a personal narrative, are seductive, and include individual huevos rancheros, Peking duck wraps, speedy moussaka, vegetarian paprikash, deviled bones, Peruvian baked chicken thighs, and fruit pot stickers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)