Jean-Francois Mallet has a best seller on his hands with Simple: The Easiest Cookbook in the World. The concept is…well, simple. None of the 200 recipes in this cookbook has more than four steps or more than six ingredients! And, this is one of the best designed cookbooks I’ve ever seen! Gorgeous photos of mouth-watering food! But…there’s more! AMAZON has this beautiful hardcover cookbook for the Bargain price of $10! Incredible! I liked “Macaroni Gratin,” “Bow Tie Pasta with Green Vegetables,” and “Fried Rice with Shrimp and Pork.” And there are still a dozen more recipes I want to try. If you’re looking for a no-nonsense cookbook with delicious recopies, give Simple: The Easiest Cookbook in the World a try. Check out the sample recipes below. GRADE: A
If I look at the two examples I don’t want to think even about the number of calories contained in each portion …
Re calories:
My wife defines them as those little animals living in your wardrobe that cause your clothes to tighten …
Wolf, your wife has a great sense of humor! Those “little animals” in my wardrobe attack me all the time!
I love to cook and have shelves full of cookbooks, but Nutella? Cornflakes? This book may be aimed at a different demographic.
Somewhat O/T: in a belated nod to St. Patrick’s Day, I made corned beef & cabbage for dinner last night. I cooked it all day in the crockpot with onions, carrots, and potatoes (the house smelled amazing!), adding the cabbage for the last two hours. Delicious!
Deb, that corned beef and cabbage you made sounds delicious! Yes, SIMPLE is aimed at people who want to make food fast…and easy. No fuss!
The cabbage for 2 hours?? Was there anything left of it? I usually only put it in the last 30 minutes.
Actually, Rick, the cabbage still had a bit of “bite” to it when I served it. I cut the raw cabbage into about eight large wedges and put them into the crockpot like that–on top of the corned beef and veggies which had already been cooking for eight hours. Then I left everything for another two hours. Everything was beautifully cooked and delicious–nothing overlooked. Crockpots are also called “slow cookers” for a good reason!
Ah, I do my corned beef in a cast iron Dutch Oven, so you can see that 2 hours would be a huge difference that way.
Sounds yummy, Deb. I haven’t had that in years.
Simple and easy is good, George, but we don’t cook much these days. (And yes, Nutella and corn flakes is a no.)
Jeff, Nutella is one of Katie’s favorite foods!
George, I often look up simple or easy-to-cook recipes online but they’re never really simple to cook.
Prashant, SIMPLE focuses on very simple recipes and simple preparation. You would find SIMPLE useful. It’s an international best seller because of its approach.
OK, sometimes ways of simple or essentially fast cooking are needed. We always have some Bolognese sauce in the freezer e g where you only have to ad noodles and cheese …
Or some mixture of meat and vegetables Mexican style – which you heat and put on tortillas.
That came in very handy when the teenagers from the USA (grandchildren of my wife’s sister came for a visit after touring Europe by rail …) – they were really hungry.
But vegetables are a conditio sine qua non!
Just meat, carbohydrates and sauce (with lots of sugar) is plain wrong!
Luckily my wife and me agree totally here.
An alternative when guests arrive unexpectedly is my Schwab/Swiss sausage salad with cheese and a vinegar/oil based sauce – no cooking needed!
Wolf, I’m a proponent of simple cooking. I use our crockpot frequently to make applesauce and stews. And I make homemade pizza on a regular basis. I don’t like long, complicated recipes.
Phil probably would be with Deb here. When I gave him a recipe by Jacques Pepin that used instant mashed potatoes, he was very disbelieving. Mind, I gave him the recipe not the dish.
Patti, for those of us with minimal cooking talent, cookbooks like SIMPLE are very appealing! Great chefs like Deb don’t need cookbooks!
George, I’m not so sure – especially as you get older, it’s good to have written down the proportions eg for your recipes (my wife told me so) – how many cups of flour and sugar or spoons of some extra etc, either in a cookbook or your own recipe collection.
And I totally agree with Patti re “instant” anything.
Wolf, I “approximate” everything when I cook. For example, it a recipe calls for a half a cup of walnuts, I throw in a whole cup!
My husband might disagree with the “great chef” label…but I appreciate it!
I don’t need no steenkin’ cookbook! Everything I make is simple!
Bob, you could have published your “simple” recipes and made a ton of money like Jean-Franois Mallet!
I don’t use no steenkin’ recipes! I don’t even use ingredients!
Bob, you have to lay off those IVs!