Sara Moulton: Sara's Secrets

By JULIETTE ROSSANT Sara's Secrets for Weeknight Meals: Featuring 200 Recipes for Quick and Easy Dinners (Broadway Books 2005) is focused, smart, and useable. It is one of those books to keep not on the shelf but in the kitchen. If you, like many home cooks, are in the rut cooking and eating the same things each week, trust Gourmet's chef and Food Network star Sara Moulton to provide 200 recipes for dinner will take you a long, long way out of it. Sara is a teacher first and foremost, and that comes out in her well-written recipes and head notes that explain her reasoning and how to use the dish to build a meal. Sara is full of good sense in the broadest definition. She knows how to cook complicated restaurant dishes, and she has the good sense to realize that few people have the time to do so at home on weeknights. In the introduction she acknowledges her mentor: In fact, I can't help but think of Julia Child, who was stricktly anti-fad and anti-rush-rush-rush. She advised us to cook dinner, dine with friends and family, and eat everything you want. (But no seconds!) This was her recipe for a long, sane, pleasurable life. Given that she didn't die until she was two days short of her ninety-seond birthday, I can't see any reason to argue with her. (p.4) Sara dedicated this cookbook to her mother, however, who led her family in Kennedy-style dinner table talks: "...if the dinner conversation with my own husband and kids never quite reaches Kennedyesque heights, well, there we all are, together, chatting about our daily adventures and eating well." (p. 5) There are chapters like "Soups for Supper" (p. 43) that includes a restorative Chinese Chicken Soup (p. 52) and an Escarole and White Bean Soup with Large Meat Balls (p. 58) which, she explains, are easier to make than the traditional small ones. It still takes 30 minutes to make but is well worth it as the winter chill descends on us. Sara roams around world cuisines and American classics in the Breakfast for Dinner chapter (p.99) with Egg, Canadian Bacon and Cheddar Biscuit Sandwiches (p. 103) which she distances from the McDonald's version by using homemade cream biscuits and good bacon. Then there is Egg Foo Young (p. 105), the 1950s and 60s Chinese restaurant cliche, here created in lighter form with light sauce. Sara uses food processors to speed up work. She has a terrific recipe for Middle Eastern Pizza (p. 188-9) easy to make using her Food Processor Pizza Dough (p. 29). She gives it a Lebanese name sfeeha, but in Turkey and elsewhere in the Eastern Mediterranean (in fact, even in Lebanon) it is called lahmajun: a minced lamb and spices topping on thin crust. The same dough appears later on in the book (or supermarket frozen pizza dough) in Ratatouille Pizza (p. 243) that are pizzas topped with ratatouille vegetables and various cheeses. It is a simple idea: so often, simple ideas are the best. Towards the end of the book is the "Cooking Ahead" chapter (p. 268), full of recipes that are best tasting when reheated the next day. These recipes largely using braising as the main technique to bring out flavor like Braised Lamb Shanks (p. 288) or Brisket Braised in Barbecue Sauce (p. 284-5) which takes only 25 minutes of active cooking and 5-6 hours in the oven. Sara explains the different cuts of brisket in her helpful notes. This book is filled with good, simple and not-so-simple ideas that are fast enough for a weekday dinner instead of take out or the same old spagetti and burgers. It is a thoughtful present for anyone in this country suffering from a generation of fast-food eaters who have forgotten the secrets that make cooking every day easier and more joyful. If you have enjoyed having Sara in your home via television on ABC Good Morning America or the Food Network, here is a more tangible piece of her you can own and cherish -- daily. Previous articles: Cris Comerford: A Chef's Discriminating Toque Profile: Sara Moulton for White House Chef Julia Child: The Queen is Dead [complete Cookbook Reviews] Book details: Publisher Amazon.com Sara Moulton's book tour schedule Technorati Tags: superchefblog, Juliette Rossant, super chef, celebrities, chefs, food, restaurants, cooking, branding, cuisine, cookbooks --> back to superchefblog