Product Description

Perfection has never been so convenient. Pam Anderson's infallible renditions of favorite dishes have made her America's most trusted cook. In COOKSMART, she returns with can't-fail recipes for everyday meals we all love, from spaghetti and meatballs, oven-fried chicken, and fajitas to foods for special occasions like crab cakes and vegetable lasagna. Pam knows today's cooks are too busy to tolerate less than superb results. She has tested and retested every recipe dozens of times so each one works flawlessly in real cooking and entertaining situations. Cooking smart is about cooking sensibly. It means reducing the time and effort that go into a dish while delivering every bit of the flavor. You'll find oven-cooked ribs as succulent as those barbecued all day over a fire, a voluptuous chocolate cake as easy as a boxed mix, and cinnamon buns as fragrant and pillowy as they are convenient. Cooking smart also means creating dishes the whole family can enjoy, such as turkey burgers as juicy as the best all-beef burgers but much lower in fat and cholesterol, and a crisp and creamy Caesar salad that isn't made with raw eggs. COOKSMART recipes eliminate the unnecessary steps and troublesome quirks that keep you from making your favorite dishes. You'll learn how to prepare a pot roast as juicy and tender as the old-fashioned kind in just ninety minutes. You won't need special equipment for the meals in this book. Every ingredient used can be found in your local supermarket. In COOKSMART, you'll be able to choose from dozens of holiday standbys: fresh shrimp cocktail, stuffed mushrooms, beef tenderloin for a crowd, silky pumpkin pie, and perfect pecan pie. And you'll find just as many effortless family-pleasing meals to rely on during the week, such as chicken Parmesan and Pork Tenderloin with Curried Apple Crust, which comes with many flavor variations. In every case, cooking smart means making a dish the very best it can be: a gazpacho chock full of summer-vegetable flavor, a pasta salad that -- for once! -- tastes as good as it looks, and a peach pie with a crisp crust and a fruity flavor that slices to perfection. In COOKSMART, you'll not only get more than a hundred impeccable dishes that will become part of your cherished repertoire, but you'll acquire a wealth of culinary knowledge that you can apply to other recipes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #368375 in Books
• Published on: 2002-04-12
• Original language: English
• Binding: Hardcover
• 348 pages

From Amazon.com
Pam Anderson's CookSmart: Perfect Recipes for Every Day is a collection of comfort-food favorites that she's perfected through a long process of trial and error. From her own experience as a chef, cookbook author (The Perfect Recipe), and food columnist for USA Weekend, Anderson has created a rigorous approach for selecting the best possible recipe for any given dish, winnowing out weaker, less satisfactory recipes in several stages. She starts by reviewing several recipes for the same dish. For example, Anderson noted that the conventional method of making fajitas included marinating the meat before it is cooked, which, in her opinion, masks the rich flavor of steak. In her version, the fajita meat gets a spice rub before cooking and then a brief, post-cooking sauna-like repose in a simple mixture of lime juice and garlic. The resulting fajitas have the relaxed subtle flavor of garlic, lime, and cumin that complement rather than overpower the tender steak.

This book provides good instruction for the beginning chef, demonstrating how to use the basic techniques to perfect one's own recipe. But there is a lot to read, so be warned. This book is a time commitment if attempting to read cover to cover, and it doesn't necessarily work in the real-time experience of looking and cooking. However, if you're searching for a collection of great, gourmet-style recipes for home-cooked favorites, CookSmart is a pretty wise choice. --Teresa Simanton

From Publishers Weekly
Anderson (The Perfect Recipe; How to Cook Without a Book) brings her wide experience and easy style to this latest offering. She takes the recipes one step further, explaining the testing method of each, much in the style of Cook's Illustrated where she was the former executive editor. Highlighting such dishes as Oven-Fried Chicken That's as Good as Fried, 90-Minute Pot Roast with Rich Red Wine and Onion Gravy, and Pasta Salad, Anderson caters to cravings for comfort food. Once the principles of pasta salad have been explained, for example, a number of versions are put forward, from Greek-Style Pasta Salad with its creamy vinaigrette, through Pasta Salad with Smoked Salmon and Asparagus, to Asian-Style Pasta Salad with Chicken, Baby Corn and Snow Peas. The home cook will feel at ease with the recipes, which have been designed for simplicity; the more advanced cook, interested in the whys and hows, will be able to apply the principles learned to other areas of food preparation. By combining both audiences so successfully, Anderson has once again produced a winner.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Anderson's The Perfect Recipe presented foolproof recipes for classics from roasted turkey to strawberry shortcake. This time, she focuses especially on favorite family-style dishes, from cream of mushroom soup to spaghetti and meatballs to chicken and dumplings. Each master recipe (many include variations) is prefaced by an essay detailing the testing process that led to the final recipe (… la Cook's magazine, where Anderson was executive editor for many years); she notes that for Perfect Peach Pie, for example, she conducted 31 different tests of thickeners alone. There are also informative sidebars, as well as step-by-step illustrations of various techniques. Anderson's previous books have been popular, and she now writes a weekly column for USA Weekend, which has no doubt gained her new fans; for most collections.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

You Can Trust Pam--Every Time!
I am someone who does a lot of having people over. Because I feed guests so often, I do not always have time to do a trial run with my menu. Pam Anderson's cookbooks are wonderful because I have complete confidence that her recipes will turn out as promised, every time. Cook Smart is similar to her other cookbooks: ultra-perfected versions of familar standards. If you are looking for innovation, novelty, or inspiration, this book will probably disappoint. If, however, you want to cook the things you already love in the best possible way, this will become your new go-to book. My favorites from this book: Big Beautiful Cinnamon Buns and Blue-Ribbon Chili.

A Chemist in the Kitchen
I loved CookSmart. As a chemist, I enjoy doing experiments at home in the kitchen as well as at work. The way that Pam described the process that she went through to find the ideal conditions for each recipe mirrors the careful manipulation and recordkeeping that accompanies a scientific experiment. I like knowing why each ingredient was chosen and what happened with other ingredients to make them less than perfect. Even if you don't appreciate the detailed dialogue that precedes each recipe, you will appreciate the results of using each perfected recipe. I tried the Chicken Parmesan, Oven-Fried Chicken, Turkey Burgers and some of the hints for perfect pie crust. All of the food turned out wonderfully and satisfied my need to occasionally prepare gourmet type food for my family. I am looking forward to trying more of the recipes!

So many favorites!
This book reads like a novel. I love the essay that prefaces each recipe. Very entertaining reading. As for the recipes, I love the pot roast. That has become a favorite. The cinnamon rolls are fabulous. And the waffles recipe is the best I've ever tried. They really do stay crispy like she promises. The only flaw is the pumpkin pie recipe. The filling was way too much for the 9" pan size recommended. If overflowed in my oven causing a HUGE mess. I live at a pretty high altitude, so maybe that was the problem too.