Product Description

No one epitomizes the pursuit of healthy pleasures more than Martha Stewart. And nowhere is this
clearer than at home in her kitchen. Now, the millions of fans who seek her guidance can prepare the food that gives Martha her remarkable energy and vitality. Martha Stewart's Healthy Quick Cook presents an all-new collection of 52 quick, easy menus--with more than 175 sensibly lightened recipes--for the kind of food we want to eat today.
Over the years, almost effortlessly, Martha has changed the way she cooks and eats. With unparalleled style and good sense, she has trimmed the fat and intensified the flavor of her favorite recipes to create meals that are unfailingly delicious, absolutely healthy, and strictly no-nonsense. A wonderfully filling frittata, flavored with sage, "enlightened" with egg whites, and paired with herb-infused garlicky stove-top potatoes, is a terrific low-fat, nutrient-rich meal to begin--or end--the day. Simple, yet no less special, sandwiches and incredible salads of brilliantly matched ingredients--seared tuna burgers splashed with soy sauce and swabbed with fiery wasabi mayonnaise, sugar snap peas mixed with whole mint leaves, and delicate shavings of baby golden beets tossed with fresh basil--reflect Martha's genius for casual yet sophisticated cooking.
Instead of concentrating on calorie counts, fat grams, and sodium content, Martha teaches how to eat well intuitively: how to make a variety of grains, fruits, and vegetables a delicious part of everyday eating; how to create menus that are supremely satisfying and nutritionally sound; even how to indulge a sweet tooth properly by enjoying small portions of such
classic desserts as whisper-thin lemon tarts, ginger cookies, and fruit crisps. And her recipes come from all over the world, making healthy meals as exciting as they are fulfilling.
In her chapters of spring, summer, fall, and winter menus, Martha explains how to use simple low-fat cooking techniques to transform the freshest ingredients of each season into fabulous dishes. You'll find quick grills and sautés of such light delicacies as butterfish, softshell crabs, woodsy portobello mushrooms, and mangoes. There are high-heat roasts of winter root vegetables, succulent poussin, pomegranate-lacquered rack of venison, red snapper--even juicy plums. She uses flavor-raising steam for Brussels sprouts, baby spinach, and halibut packaged in grape leaves--and there's an easy stove-top smoked salmon, too.
This is inspiring food, presented as only Martha Stewart can. This book will change the way you think about healthy cooking--and what you create in your kitchen every day.

Martha Stewart is the author of 12 best-selling books on food, entertaining, gardening, and home renovation. She is chairman and chief executive
officer of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Martha Stewart lives in Connecticut and on Long Island.

Martha Stewart presents a collection of brand-new recipes for the healthful foods that energize her every day. These 52 quick, easy menus represent the effortless style and practicality we have come to expect from Martha. The more than 175 sensibly lightened recipes--all exquisitely prepared and photographed--will change the way you think about healthy cooking and what you create in your kitchen every day.


Japanese Risotto
Grilled Scallops with Spring Greens
Roasted Root Vegetable Ragout
Seared Beef and Oranges with Arugula
Sage Egg-White Frittata
Mussels and Baby Artichokes Barigoule
Wine-Poached Chicken with Charmoula
Poached Salmon Trout with Poppy Seed Vinaigrette
Seared Tuna Burger with Wasabi Mayonnaise
Farmstand Salad with Grilled Turkey Sausage
Vegetable Handrolls

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #83440 in Books
• Published on: 1997-10-28
• Released on: 1997-10-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Amazon.com Review
Our favorite Doyenne of the Dainty serves a delicate and oh-so-tasty blend of low-fat elegance in this handsomely designed cookbook. No calorie counter, Martha proves how a lush variety of grains, fruits, and veggies can be a delicious alternative to fatty dishes. She offers more than 170 recipes, showing how to transform the freshest seasonal ingredients into scrumptious treats guaranteed to delight both the palate and the eye. From Grilled Portobello Pizza to a luscious Lime Soufflé, Martha will change the way you think about healthy eating.

From Library Journal
"Healthy," "quick," and "Martha Stewart"?what more is there to say? Here are 52 menus arranged by season, with dozens of artful color photographs of the food and its presentation. Martha's "quick" is not always the same as most people's (e.g., "an informal supper" calls for homemade tortillas, not quite the thing for a busy weeknight), and not everyone has "feather-edge creamware platters" and "two-color Depression-glass stemware" for serving, but to her fans, that's all part of her appeal. Most libraries will want at least one copy of her latest book.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author
Martha Stewart is the author of 12 best-selling books on food, entertaining, gardening, and home renovation. She is chairman and chief executive officer of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia. Martha Stewart lives in Connecticut and on Long Island.

Customer Reviews

Beautiful But Flawed
Typical to a Martha enterprise, this book is well-conceived, thoughtful, and gorgeously produced. It contains a wide variety of meals, arranged according to season. This concept allows the cook to find recipes for foods that are fresh in the market and make the most of what is in peak flavor. The recipes include familiar dishes with new twists and unique dishes that tempt. Unfortunately, the recipes seem not to have been tested adequately, as sometimes the amounts were off or the cooking times were wrong. This seems to be a problem in some of the recipes presented in the Martha Stewart Living magazine. Also, ... not all of these dishes are exactly quick. The criticism about underseasoning in the dishes is valid; final products were at times quite bland. In a cookbook de-emphasizing fats, use of herbs, spices, and seasonings becomes important. For an experienced cook with a critical eye, this may be a source for ideas. ...

This Delivers
Most people think it is impossible to deliver on a weeknight a dinner that is elegant, healthy and quick. This book makes the impossible quite possible.

The only reason I've nicked it a star is that for some, a cookbook titled "healthy" requires nutritional data, which this does not have, and quick in this instance sometimes means more simple than last-minute preparation. MS makes a case for not including the read-outs, about learning to fly without training wheels (sorry about the mixed metaphors). As for the simple vs. last-minute, a case in point: the wild rice pilaf with dried fruit is elegant and very easy to prepare, but it does require cooking the wild rice ahead and setting it aside. If you start an hour before dinner is to be served, no problem; in fact, starting the wild rice that early leaves you quite a bit of time to throw in a load of laundry or complete other chores before you pull together the rest of the recipe in the last 10 minutes.

I've never had a problem with a MS recipe. Things always cook up in the allotted time, they always make the proposed quantity, they brown as they're supposed to, rise as they're supposed to . . . The charge has been made by another reviewer that dishes are underseasoned or bland. I suspect that is because the MS style is to emphasize the natural flavor of the basic ingredients. A lot depends, then, on the integrity of the ingredient.

Pretty? Yes. Tasty? Not Really
The foods are beautifully presented and the ingredients are interesting and upscale enough that you can serve some of this stuff to guests with pride. Unfortunately, in general the recipes are under-seasoned (bland and one-dimensional) and don't taste nearly as good as the pictures might imply. Some of the recipes--fruit sushi and grilled fruit panini come to mind--are downright silly in addition to being time-consuming and not very appetizing. Overall, a good book to learn about presentation, but disappointing recipes.