Product Description

Even your favorite dinner can lose its appeal when it’s in constant rotation, so mix it up! With her largest collection of recipes yet, Food Network’s indefatigable cook Rachael Ray guarantees you’ll be able to put something fresh and exciting on your dinner table every night for a full year... without a single repeat!

Based on the original 30-Minute Meal cooking classes that started it all, these recipes prove that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every night. Rachael offers dozens of recipes that, once mastered, can become entirely new dishes with just a few ingredient swaps. Learn how to make a Southwestern Pasta Bake and you’ll be able to make a Smoky Chipotle Chili Con Queso Mac the next time. Try your hand at Spring Chicken with Leeks and Peas and you’re all set to turn out a rib-sticking Rice and Chicken Stoup that looks and tastes like an entirely different dish.

As a best-selling cookbook author and host of three top-rated Food Network shows, Rachael Ray believes that both cooking and eating should be fun. Drawing from her own favorite dishes as well as those of her family, friends, and celebrities, she covers the flavor spectrum from Asian to Italian and dozens of delicious stops in between. Best of all, these flavor-packed dishes will satisfy your every craving and renew your taste for cooking. With so many delicious entrees to choose from you’ll never have an excuse for being in a cooking rut again.

How about a brand-new 30-minute dinner every night for an entire year?

Tired of making the same old same old, week after week after week?

With Rachael’s most varied and comprehensive collection of 30-minute recipes ever, you’ll have everyone at your table saying “Yummo!” all year long.

It’s amazing what a half hour can do for your tastebuds … 365 days a year!

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #441 in Books
• Published on: 2005-11-01
• Released on: 2005-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Food Network darling Ray wants home cooks to become more "instinctual," and this assortment of quick meals is expansive enough to encourage even novices to wing it. The author hopes readers cook their way through the entire book; to that end, she organizes the recipes not by course or main ingredient (though there are indexes), but by number. The organization takes some getting used to. Helpful but occasionally jarring "tidbits" pop up everywhere, and many "recipes" make more than one dish, so cooking just one requires a fair amount of reading. For example, number 16 encompasses "Oregon-Style Pork Chops with Pinot Noir and Cranberries; Oregon Hash with Wild Mushrooms, Greens, Beets, Hazelnuts, and Blue Cheese; [and] Charred Whole-Grain Bread with Butter and Chives." Readers making just the hash must read around the instructions for the other two dishes. Still, the recipes are great. They vary in technique and ethnicity, and many give instructions on expanding the dish (after making Spicy Shrimp and Penne with Puttanesca Sauce, for example, "now try" omitting the olives and capers, swapping linguine for the penne, reducing the number of shrimp, and adding lump crab meat and mussels to make Frutti di Mare and Linguine). As Ray would say, "Yummo." (Nov.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author
Rachael Ray appears daily on the Food Network as host of 30-Minute Meals, $40 a Day, and Inside Dish. She is the author of nine best-selling cookbooks, most recently 30–Minute Get Real Meals. Rachael lives in the Adirondacks.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Balsamic-Glazed Pork Chops with Arugula-Basil Rice Pilaf
Serves 4

• 3 tablespoons cold unsalted butter
• 1 6-ounce box rice pilaf mix, such as Near East brand
• 3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (EVOO)
• 4 1-inch-thick center-cut pork loin chops
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 small onion, chopped
• 1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves (from a couple of sprigs), chopped
• 1 sprig of fresh rosemary, chopped
• 3 garlic cloves, chopped
• 1⁄4 cup balsamic vinegar (eyeball it)
• 2 tablespoons honey
• 1 cup chicken stock or broth
• 2 cups trimmed and chopped arugula (from 1 bunch)

15 to 20 fresh basil leaves, shredded or torn

In a medium pot over high heat, combine 1 tablespoon of the butter and 1 and 3⁄4 cups water. Cover and bring to a simmer. Add the rice and flavor packet to the water. Stir to combine, reduce the heat, and cook for 18 minutes, covered.

While the rice is cooking, heat a large skillet over medium-high heat for the chops. Add 2 tablespoons of the EVOO (twice around the pan). Season the chops with salt and pepper, then add to the hot skillet. Cook the chops for 5 minutes on each side.

Transfer the chops to a platter and cover with foil. Return the pan to the heat and add the remaining tablespoon of EVOO and the onions, thyme, rosemary, and garlic, then sauté for 4 to 5 minutes. Add the balsamic vinegar, honey, and chicken stock. Cook until the liquids have reduced by half.

While the glaze is reducing, finish the rice pilaf. Add the arugula and basil to the cooked rice, stirring with a fork to fluff the rice and combine the greens at the same time.

Once the balsamic glaze has reduced by half, turn off the heat and add the remaining 2 tablespoons of cold butter. Stir and shake the pan until the butter melts. Add the chops to the pan and coat them in the balsamic glaze. Serve the glazed chops alongside the arugula-basil rice pilaf.


TIDBIT
The chicken with tomato, basil, and smoked mozzarella can be served cold as well, making this dish perfect for lunch or dinner buffet entertaining.


NOW TRY... Balsamic-Glazed Chicken with Smoked Mozzarella and Garlic Rice Pilaf
Seves 4

Swap
• 4 6-ounce chicken breast halves for the pork chops

Add
• 2 minced garlic cloves
• 2 vine-ripe tomatoes, sliced
• 8 thin slices fresh smoked mozzarella, cut from a 1-pound ball
• Extra EVOO, for drizzling

Omit
• Arugula

Do not chop or tear all the basil. Keep 8 leaves whole, then shred or tear the rest.

Prepare just as for the first recipe, but when you start the rice, melt the butter in the saucepan and sauté the minced garlic for a minute or so, before adding the water. Finish as before.

Prepare the chicken exactly as you would the pork, giving an extra minute on each side. After you’ve glazed the chicken breasts top with alternating layers of tomato, whole basil, and smoked mozzarella, using 2 slices of each per breast. Drizzle EVOO over the tomato, basil, and cheese and season with salt and pepper.




or TRY... Balsamic-Glazed Swordfish with Capers and Grape Tomato—Arugula Rice
Serves 4

Swap
• 4 1-inch-thick swordfish steaks for the pork chops

Add
• 2 minced garlic cloves
• 1⁄2 pint grape tomatoes, red or yellow, halved
• 3 tablespoons capers, drained and coarsely chopped
• 2 to 3 tablespoons chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley (a handful)

Prepare just as for the first recipe, but when you begin the rice, melt the butter in the saucepan, sauté the garlic for 1 minute before adding the water. Cook as directed. Add the grape tomatoes to the rice when tossing the rice with the arugula and basil.

Cook the swordfish as you would the chops but cook for 1 minute less on each side. When you remove the sauce from the heat and add the butter, add the capers and parsley, too.

Customer Reviews

Lots of fun recipes
I'm finding this cookbook useful to kickstart me in a new direction and out of my cooking rut. I'm excited about trying ingredients I never have cooked with, and love all the soup and burger ideas. Everything I've tried so far has tasted good!

365 what
I bought this book because everyone kept telling me how great Rachel Ray is. There were 365 recipes. It did appear they would be fairly quick to make. The problem was most of them were things my husband would never eat and several of them had ingredients we don't have nor could we find them when we asked in our local store. It may be good for someone else but for our meat and potato family it wasn't a hit.

Great cookbook
I have picky kids and with a new baby it's easy to find meals that are planned out so easily and quick. Great book!!