cover image Dinners in a Dish or a Dash: 275 easy one-dish meals plus tons of time-saving tips

Dinners in a Dish or a Dash: 275 easy one-dish meals plus tons of time-saving tips

Jean E. Anderson. Morrow Cookbooks, $25 (384pp) ISBN 978-0-688-14572-9

Anyone who's faced with preparing dinner night after night will welcome this newest from Anderson (The Food of Portugal, The New Doubleday Cookbook, etc.), who presents a thoughtful, discriminating collection of recipes that relies on technique and high-end convenience foods to cut the time it takes to get a meal on the table. Anderson is shameless when it comes to using prewashed salad mixes, broccoli florets and other ready-to-use fresh vegetables, packages of frozen peppers and chopped onions, refrigerator biscuits and pizza dough, and rotisserie chickens, not to mention prepared pasta sauces, salsas and tomatoes. Once she outlines what a well-stocked pantry looks like, she moves on to the recipes, which offer a variety of tastes and traditions. Selections show Chinese, Japanese, Thai influences as well as Mediterranean, French, Middle Eastern, traditional American, Eastern European and Hispanic. There are whole-meal salads like Middle Eastern Salad with Crackly Bread and Yogurt-Mint Dressing as well as kid-pleasing Taco Salad and a curry-scented Madras-Style Chicken. There are soups and stews such as Shortcut Cioppino (""the classic fish muddle"") or Thai Coconut Milk Soup with Chicken, Lemongrass and Cilantro. And what could be more comforting than Chicken and Mushroom Soup with Cornbread Dumplings? Stir-fries feature interesting ingredients such as mango slices and soba noodles. With so many skillet dinners, casseroles, traditional pot pies, quiches and pasta selections to choose fromDnot to mention recipes specifically developed for the microwaveDthis book ought to be a pantry staple itself.