cover image Sara's Everyday Family Dinners

Sara's Everyday Family Dinners

Sara Moulton, . . Simon & Schuster, $35 (385pp) ISBN 978-1-439-10251-0

Moulton, famed Food Network and public television star and author of Sara's Secrets for Weeknight Meals , shares 200 recipes for busy home cooks. While many cookbooks offer quick recipes for weeknight meals, Moulton takes the concept several steps further by creating dishes that reflect the way Americans truly eat at home. Inspired by the recession, she creates meals that are inexpensive yet flavorful and offers suggestions for variations, such as making the dish lighter, vegetarian, or with different ingredients. She offers two-for-one dishes, where a second new meal is created with leftovers from the first meal as well as five-ingredient main dishes. She also devotes entire chapters to vegetarian dishes and whole grain meals, and her poultry section includes turkey meatballs. She not only condones but advocates appetizers for dinner and dedicating a night for sandwiches and another to soup. Recipe highlights include black bean soup with quesadillas, Peking duck wraps, Thai-style beef stir-fry with chilis and mint, sautéed beer-batter shrimp with tartar sauce, and three-ingredient apple crisp. This refreshing, accessible, and tasty collection more than lives up to the promise of its title and will delight the legions of Moulton fans, earning her more than a few new ones. (Apr.)