Cookbooks: Quick meal favorites? - Page 2

Honestly, on nights that I have school, I just eat out because I'm not home till 11 and I can't wait till then to eat dinner. Aside from that, I'm more like Manton than matt and I spend a lot of time in the kitchen.

One dish I enjoy that's easy and fast to make and very tasty is spaghetti carbonara. Cut your mushrooms and either pancetta or salt pork (I prefer the salt pork), and then start your pasta. Start frying the salt pork. When the pasta is almost done, fry the mushrooms. Drain the pasta. Transfer it to a big bowl with the mushrooms and salt pork, and then add butter, an egg, parmesan, and pepper. Toss the pasta and you're done.

Agree. Three course meals are for weekends (or days when StyleForum is broked). More often than not on weekdays we will have two separate dishes, but sometimes we will do one or three. Tsk, tsk, tsk. There are no mushrooms in Carbonara. Heathen.

I make a three course meal on roughly three out of five weeknights. Sometimes (rarely) more, often a bit less. Saturday and Sunday, I go all out. Sunday especially.

There is a staple of quick dishes that I make when I don't feel like slaving away: Pork tenderloin. I put slivers of garlic in a tenderloin, then season it with cumin, salt & pepper. It goes into a ovenproof pan for browning for a few minutes. When the meat is golden brown (actually, I like it a bit burnt), I deglaze the pan with some dry white wine, then add some chicken stock. I then add sliced baby bella mushrooms into the pan, and it goes into a 400 degree oven for 8-10 min, or until done. I usually eat this with steamed rice, and sometimes a bit of sauteed asparagus on the side. The whole thing takes less than 30 min, including prep time. Another recipe is roasted chicken, seasoned with sea salt, pepper, and thyme. It goes in the oven and I don't touch it until it's done. The cooking time is more or less an hour, but it requires very little prep work. As a bonus, the potatoes underneath the chicken absorb all the flavor from the fat and is themselves a nice dish. Not for the faint of heart though. They're loaded. There are a few quick Chinese/Japanese stirfry dishes that I make at least once a week: Chinese broccoli in oyster sauce (this dish is so simple that a 10 year old can make it in 10 minutes). Spicy salted fried shrimp, yet another simple dish. Eggplant in oyster sauce. Soy sauce beef & potatoes, another favorite of mine. Etc. A good rice cooker will make 4-5 cups of steamy jasmine rice in about 10-12 min. I can't live without one. As for pasta dishes, pasta puttanesca is a quick and easy meal that's also tasty. There're a million different recipes for this, but the key to a good one is plenty of fresh garlic, fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, and good anchovies. I made chicken cacciatore last night that didn't take long (~45 min, including prep and cooking time). I used boneless, skinless thigh meat for the dish. This alone saves a good 10-15 min of prep time. Also, use pre-sliced mushrooms if you're pressed for time. First, season and then brown the chicken in olive oil (if you have time, dust it with flour). Second, sautee some chopped (or thinly sliced) onions, garlic, and bell peppers. Then deglaze with a dry red wine, then add stock. Let simmer for a few minutes, then add canned tomatoes and season it with salt, pepper, tons of fresh garlic, and dried parley and oregano. Let cook for a few minutes, then add back in the chicken. Another 10 min and you should be done. Serve with rice or pasta. It tastes even better the next day (which is today for me). When I have time on the weekends, then I try to make more elaborate 2-3 dishes meals.

Maybe not, but that's how my dad taught me to make it and I like mushrooms.

I think its easy to do a lot of great 3 course meals in about an hour.. some under an hour. Most make heavy use of the grill or pasta, but they taste good to me and are easy to make with relatively easy cleanup. One of my favorites is very easy.. Pasta with grilled veggies and sausage. 1) Chop up a few cloves of garlic and toss it in a pan with some good olive oil 2) Let that soak while you boil the water and chop up the veggies (no heat on the oil) 3) Chop up any veggies you like (brocoli, rapini, red or green peppers, zuchini, squash, etc.. whatever you want) 3) Get the heat going on the oil (med) and Uncase a some italian sausages into the pan (regulate the amount of oil based on how fatty the meat is. I usually use spicy turkey italian sausage, so I need a bit more fat from the olive oil. With regular pork sausage, you can almost skip the OO, or add it with the veggies) 4) By now the pasta water is boiling, so dump the pasta in the pot 5) Brown the sausage so it is cooked through and then add the veggies to the pan 6) When the pasta is done (I usually cook it for 1 minute less than the box says), drain and add it to the oil 7) Cook everything together, add some fresh cracked pepper, toss well, then plate. Grate some good parmesan and serve. This can all be done, start to finish, in 30 minutes. I do the garlic before starting the water since that is really the longest prep step, and this seems to make everything else fall right into schedule. It's really delicious. Depending on the meat you add, you can change the spicing around. Add some red pepper flake or whatever you desire. Also, depending on the veg, sometimes I'll blanch or steam some of the veggies before adding them to the pan. It takes some experimenting, but it results in a very tasty and quick dish. You can work with whole wheat (my gf prefers flax seed and bulgar pastas, but I usually stick with traditional) and do other tweaks to make it healthier, but its really not a terrible dish. You can also skip the meat, which I do often. I have a bag of frozen soy sausage crumbles (italian sausage spiced, though), that I substitute as well, and that comes out just fine. I have more. I've got an amazing blackened chicken with grilled veggies. Everything is cooked on the grill and the prep is very simple. Off the top of my head for the chicken rub, its cumin, paprika, ground red pepper, garlic powder, salt, a pinch of sugar, generously rubbed over the chicken. And a simple olive oil, salt, and pepper mixture tossed over all the veggies (squash, zuchini, asparagas, peppers, onions, carrots, potatoes, etc). Thats it. put it all on the grill and cook until finished. A nice roll on the side doesn't hurt. This is definitely around 30 minutes. The chicken takes the longest, so you can chop some veggies while its cooking. The key is to slide everything at the right thickness so everything is finished at the same time. Potatoes being the thinnest and squash being the thickest. One tweak I've made to this recipe recently is to first pound the chicken down to about half an inch, the rub it down and let it rest. You can then start adding some heftier veggies to the grill first, even before the chicken goes on. This really speeds up the whole process since the cooking time on the chicken goes from 15-20 minutes to 8-10 and it allows for more sizable veggie pieces to cook through, which means less cutting, and less prep. The key to all of cooking is proper preparation and timing. Getting everything to be finished at the same time is key. Plan it out in your head first.

Multi-level steamers are your friend, both for ease of use and general nutrition from vegetables. Depending on how overcooked you like your vegetables, I can do a salmon pasta with vegetables in 20-30 minutes, and my preparation speed is laborious at best.

Asides from Italian, if you're organised with putting your rice in the steamer whilst you shower or whatever, there's a whole world of healthy and balanced Asian meals you can cook in 15 minutes... there's a whole world of stir-fryable vegetables naturally, but between egg, chicken, prawns and cashew nuts there's no way you shouldn't be able to get a decent amount of protein down you.

Indian... not so much. Curries are a labour of love for me and take an hour at the fastest.