Scarbrough Mark - The kitchen shortcut bible: more than 200 recipes to make real food fast

Lets just get this out of the way up front:

Work with sharp knives.

Chop two onions, not one, and freeze the rest.

Cook once but eat twice, repurposing leftovers.

Start with a clean kitchen and clean as you cook.

Work with a garbage bowl on the counter.

You might be able to recite those in your sleep. All of these rules are tried-and-true advice for quick cooking, repeated in hundreds of books and on zillions of websites.

Theyre not what this book is about. Instead, The Kitchen Shortcut Bible is about making the food you lovebut preparing it faster, using common kitchen tools in ways you might not have imagined or working with standard ingredients that are long overdue for an updated approach. The book is also about rethinking recipes in unexpected ways: using the flavor punch of a jar of store-bought caponata for ratatouille, or the convenience of a package of wonton wrappers for crisp cookies, all while eating real food thats healthy and inexpensive. Whats more, this cookbook is not about absurd gimmicks no one will ever use: making punch bowl ice rings in a Bundt pan or dicing hard-cooked eggs by passing them through a wire-mesh rack. Ever seen the mashed-up edges of that egg afterward? Ever tried to clean the rack? Blech.

In fact, this is a book of recipes, not hacks. Yes, there are plenty of tips and tricks throughout, some a little nerdy, some very cheffy. But its important to realize from the get-go that these inspirational flashes and real-world solutions have been made subservient to the recipes themselves. Theres no chapter called More from Your Wok or Small Gadget Hacks. Rather, the recipes are arranged in chapters about the way they are in most cookbooks: breakfast, snacks, bigger meals, desserts. In the end, we believe that the best shortcuts deliver dishes, condiments, sauces, and the like, not just clever cooking ideas: a flavorful, quick applesauce with a potato ricer, or a complex sauce that magically tastes as if you let it simmer all day just by adding a few tablespoons of peanut butter, or rich and irresistible pudding from your microwave when you need a mug full of instant comfort.

After making a few of these recipes, we hope youll adapt the techniques to make even more meals to fit your taste. Take our pasta colander suppers. Youll put most of the ingredients in a colander and boil the pasta in a saucepan, then pour the pasta and its hot water over those ingredients, blanching or softening them and turning the whole thing into a no-mess, one-pot dinner. The variations you can create from this technique are endless.

But dont jump out on your own at first. Some of these techniques are unconventional, so follow the recipe until you nail it downthen give it a twist. Such advice sounds schoolmarmish, but its a good strategy when youre reinventing the layer cake (using just a food processor) or even preparing something as simple as bacon and eggs (using a single baking sheet).

Some recipes are one-offs. And some are presented in groups that show the many uses for a single kitchen tool, an unusual technique, or a too-often overlooked ingredient. Some recipes are designed to make weeknight fare (chicken cooked right out of the freezer) and some are admittedly fancier (a better way to roast a whole duck). Throughout, there are small, informal, narrative recipes tucked among the larger ones. All of our recipes show off a little Yankee ingenuity.

All this on-and-on about the recipes brings up a bigger question: What constitutes a shortcut? Well, sure, it should save time, that modern scarcity. If a new way through a classic recipe shaves off a few minutes, it countsalthough this book is not just a book about cooking faster. Weve also created shortcuts that simplify techniques to yield better results. Better without more effort isnt the usual way quick-cooking books judge their results; but again, quick isnt the only way to judge the value of a shortcut. If you veer off the crowded main road and take a back road through more beautiful countryside to arrive at the same place at the same time, youll probably take that smaller road again and again. And youll probably call it a shortcut, as in that shortcut I take. Its value is not just in time saved.