Dinner Doctor
Author: Anne Byrn
The doctor's at it again—and never has a deli chicken tasted so good.
Serve Wow! for dinner tonight. Sharing hundreds of inventive ideas and tips, the Dinner Doctor shows how to transform convenient supermarket foods, Cinderella-like, into meals that are downright delicious. Coastal Shrimp and Tomato Rice, Five-Minute Gazpacho, Asian Chicken Salad, Savory Pork Carnitas, Frozen Mud Pie, and a baker's dozen of brand-new Cake Mix Doctor cakes—in all, over 230 kid-pleasing, plate-cleaning, ask-for-seconds appetizers, soups, salads, main courses, sides, and desserts.
Library Journal
Byrn's two Cake Doctor books-recipes based on cake mixes doctored with various additions, fillings, and other garnishes-have sold more than 1.5 million copies. Now she provides easy recipes for the rest of the meal, using prepared convenience foods of all types. Andrew Schloss's recent Almost from Scratch also offers "convenience cuisine" recipes, but though there are certainly some combinations here that will make purists blanch, overall Byrn's recipes seem fresher and more imaginative. In addition, many of them are super-quick, taking no more than ten minutes to put together. There are also dozens of ideas for other dishes, such as "15 Ways To Doctor a Deli Roast Chicken," along with hundreds of timesaving tips and helpful hints. Some fans may be disappointed that Byrn has tackled savory dishes rather than sweets this time, but this book is sure to be in demand. Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
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Comfort Me with Apples: More Adventures at the Table
Author: Ruth Reichl
In Ruth Reichl’s latest book — one that will delight her fans and convert those as yet uninitiated to her charming tales — the author brings to life her adventures in pursuit of good meals and good company. Picking up where Tender at the Bone leaves off, Comfort Me with Apples recounts Reichl’s transformation from chef to food writer, a process that led her through restaurants from Bangkok to Paris to Los Angeles and brought lessons in life, love, and food.
It is an apprenticeship by turns delightful and daunting, one told in the most winning and engaging of voices. Reichl’s anecdotes from a summer lunch with M.F.K. Fisher, a mad dash through the produce market with Wolfgang Puck, and a garlic feast with Alice Waters are priceless. She is unafraid — even eager — to poke holes in the pretensions of food critics, making each meal a hilarious and instructive occasion for novices and experts alike. The New York Times has said, “While all good food critics are humorous .. few are so riotously, effortlessly entertaining as Ruth Reichl.” In Comfort Me with Apples Reichl once again demonstrates her inimitable ability to combine food writing, humor, and memoir into an art form.
Entertainment Weekly - Lisa Schwarzbaum
Two courses of Reichl's literary cooking will leave still ravenous readers hoping for a third serving soon.
New York Times - Jenny Lyn Bader
Anyone who thinks that sometimes a dacquoise is just a dacquoise hasn't experienced the rapture of reading this book. Comfort Me With Apples shows us that even at life's most painful moments, eating and cooking can offer redemption. A great meal has the power to summon memory, to invoke romance, to mend a broken heart. When her personal life falls apart, Ms. Reichl invents a dish called "Swiss pumpkin" to make herself feel better, and it somehow helps. Not only inventing foods but inventing the words describing foods helps her through difficult times.
Publishers Weekly
In this follow-up to the excellent memoir Tender at the Bone, Reichl (editor-in-chief at Gourmet) displays a sure hand, an open heart and a highly developed palate. As one might expect of a celebrated food writer, Reichl maps her past with delicacies: her introduction to a Dacquoise by a lover on a trip to Paris; the Dry-Fried Shrimp she learned to make on a trip to China, every moment of which was shared with her adventurous father, ill back home, in letters; the Apricot Pie she made for her first husband as their bittersweet marriage slowly crumbled; the Big Chocolate Cake she made for the man who would become her second, on his birthday. Recipes are included, but the text is far from fluffy food writing. Never shying from difficult subjects, Reichl grapples masterfully with the difficulty of ending her first marriage to a man she still loved, but from whom she had grown distant. Perhaps the most beautifully written passages here are those describing Reichl and her second husband's adoption and then loss of a baby whose biological mother handed over her daughter, then recanted before the adoption was final. This is no rueful read, however. Reichl is funny when describing how the members of her Berkeley commune reacted to the news that she was going to become a restaurant reviewer ("You're going to spend your life telling spoiled, rich people where to eat too much obscene food?"), and funnier still when pointing out the pompousness of fellow food insiders. Like a good meal, this has a bit of everything, and all its parts work together to satisfy. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
This delightful memoir, written by the editor of Gourmet and former restaurant critic at the New York Times and Los Angeles Times, picks up where her first best-selling work, Tender at the Bone, left off. Readers and fans who hankered to learn the details of her coveted career now get them and then some. This book reads like a well-edited and quite romantic film, full of hard work, good luck, love, joy, pain, travel, celebrity chefs, and always fine cuisine. The recipes (for the most part, quite replicable) are reminiscent of flashbacks in a movie, loaded with visual memory. Elegant description captures the imagination, tempts the palate, and illustrates Reichl's well-deserved reputation as a food writer. Highly recommended for all public libraries and culinary collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/00.] Wendy Miller, Lexington P.L., KY Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
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