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: #1589 in Books
• Brand: Rachael Ray
• Published on: 2005-11-01
• Released on: 2005-11-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 352 pages

Features

• ISBN13: 9781400082544
• Condition: NEW
• Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
• Click here to view our Condition Guide and Shipping Prices

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

Delish!
Love this book! I have all of Ray's previous books, and I often watch her show when I am cooking my own family dinner. We are huge fans of her Cooking Round the Clock book and her Cooking Rocks (for kids) books. On average, I use recipes from those books at least twice a week.

Her first book that I purchased was her 30 Minute Get Togethers and the first couple menus that I used were NOT 30 minute meals for me. However over the years I have learned to adapt. I have gotten quicker at chopping veggies and will use already prepared things if necessary. Ok, on to the new book.

This is her biggest book by far. I got it the day it came out and spent at least two hours pouring over the recipes and marking ones I want to try. For the most part I was thinking I would be anal here. I would start with recipe number one and go from there, making every single recipe and not skipping a one. But I husband really wanted to try #37-Warm Lemon Chicken Sandwich with Arugula and Pears. Not something I would normally make, but it sounded intriguing. WONDERFUL! Even my picky eaters (I have two) gobbled it up. We then went on to #38-Grilled Flank Steak Sandwich again we were not disappointed.

If you are looking for a cookbook that offers quick, but unique and tasty meals, this is the one.

Huge Variety
I agree that this is Rachael's best and most diverse collection of recipes to date. I actually did a rough count of the recipes by the protein or main ingredient. This is approximately how the recipes stack up: 53 meatless (many do contain cheese, however), 11 lamb, 4 egg, 8 ground turkey, 21 ground beef, 80 chicken, 21 beef (steaks, London broil, etc.), 5 ground pork, 16 pork (chops, tenderloin), 9 turkey (cutlets), 10 ground chicken, 29 fish (halibut, cod, swordfish, salmon, tuna), 11 veal (ground, cutlets, etc.), 30 shellfish (shrimp, crab, mussels, scallops, calamari), and 48 sausage, etc. (ham, prosciutto, chorizo, Italian sausage, breakfast sausage, bacon, salami, pancetta, etc). According to the listings in the front of the book, there are 48 pasta dishes, 33 soups and 20 burgers. I may have miscounted a few, but I think these numbers are fairly close. Perhaps some reviewers got the impression that the ingredients were repetitive because of the technique Rachael sometimes (but not always) uses of providing a master recipe with variations by swapping out ingredients. For instance, there is a master macaroni and cheese with broccoli recipe, followed by macaroni and smoked gouda with cauliflower, Tex-Mex mac and cheddar (with ground beef) and a chipotle mac and cheddar with chorizo and tomato.

While many of the recipes are Italian or Italian influenced, reflecting Rachael's heritage, with Tex-Mex following closely behind, there are also Spanish, Cuban, Indian, Chinese, Thai, Japanese, French, Cajun, Greek, German, and Carribbean influenced recipes as well. There is also plenty of "American" fare as well, although there are fewer traditional "comfort food" dishes in this book than there are in some of her other collections. The subtitle of the book is a hint at that. It truly is "a year of deliciously different dinners." And, after several years of watching Rachael's show regularly and making many, many of her recipes, I find that I can come close to the 30 minute mark in completing the meals, especially after the first time making a particular recipe.

As for pictures, if you are familiar with buying cookbooks, you realize that you trade off photographs for affordability. If this book were full of glossy photos of the food, it would probably have a list price of at least $40. I don't know of anywhere else you can find such a large and diverse collection of recipes for so little money.

Okay, not great
I bought this cookbook with no prior knowledge of Rachel Ray or her other cookbooks. The idea of 365 30-minute meals is appealing, but unfortunately, many of the recipes included take far more than 30 minutes if you include prep time. This is a useful cookbook for families as the yields are fairly large and it covers a variety of flavors. However, the flavors aren't always great; they are often combined in unappetizing mixtures that just don't work. The method of substituting ingredients to change up a dish is not terribly useful either. Most often, you will have to change half the recipe to get a new dish. The worst part, though, is the lack of a useful index. It's extremely difficult to find your way around the book. Just try looking for a "chicken" dish. If you don't know the title, chances are you won't find it fast.