One Dish Meals: Flavorful Single-Dish Meals from the World's Premier Culinary College

I've got several CIA cookbooks and they are all great. This one is no exception. The recipes are clear, well written, and very doable. And my wife really likes anything that is "one dish" because I make less of a mess in the kitchen. Although, not every recipe in this book is truly "one dish", some do suggest sides, usually a rice, pasta, polenta type thing to serve the main entree on. Still in all, another hit by the CIA.

My husband bought this book for me and since I received it, two days ago, I cooked from it, following the recipe for "osso buco milanese" and the flavor was great. I am used to cook since I was fourteen, learned to cook with wine from my mother, and back then, we didn't rush the cooking of the food, but I have noticed that lately I have been missing a lot of flavor from my own cooking because I was rushing through it; this book really tells you the minutes or hours that the ingredients should be saute or cooked (a really important detail for anyone who wants a flavorful meal). I am going back to my own method of slow cooking instead of trying to do a stew in a flash! This is one detail that is a big plus in this cookbook. When I read some recipes from other sources I get surprised when they say that carrots cook in seven or eight minutes, or saute onion in five minutes (to get a mellow, flavorful caramelized onionflavor it takes usually longer than twenty minutes depending on the quantity of onions needed and the purpose of the dish). Well, my daughter came over and she loved the book, so my husband bought a couple more books for her from the Culinary Institute of America.

I'm going one by one through the book. I'm cooking with ingredients I've never worked with, shopping in stores I've never shopped. Each reciepe is a big surprise. Rarely am I disappointed. I've done all the soups and am nearing the stew section. I get asked for reciepes a lot with this book. I even tried quail meat - now I know - I don't like quail. :)

When you get a new cookbook and it falls open to crawfish etouffee, it's got to be a pretty great cookbook. Maybe that's because where I grew up in South Louisiana this was a standard in every restaurant. (In every small Louisiana town, back then at least, there was a small, locally owned, family style restaurant that anywhere else would have ranked among the very best - great food wasn't just a New Orleans tradition.) What this says is that the CIA (not that CIA, but the Culinary Institute of America) has selected recipies from everywhere in the country to feature in this rather special book. Here are dishes that can be prepared to be the whole meal rather than just part of a cooking. Some of the other dishes Japanese meat and potatoes, Vietnamese beef stew, Italian veal stew with polenta (that's grits to us southern boys), jambalays (cajun again), Mexican seafood with coconut water, Basque lamb shanks and on and on. Basically there's not a recipie in this book that doesn't look great. I haven't tried them all yet, but I'm working on it.

Lynn Gigliotti is a lecturing instructor in Culinary Arts at the famous Culinary Institute of America and draws upon her many years of experience and expertise to put together "One Dish Meals: Flavorful Single-Dish meals From The world's Premier Culinary College". One-dish meals are designed for kitchen cooks who are under limitations of time but want to grace their family's dinner table with nutritious, delicious, and interesting meals that would please the palate even as they satisfied the appetite. Beautifully illustrated throughout with color photography of finished dishes, the "kitchen cook friendly" recipes comprising "One Dish Meals" range from 'Vegetable Soup with Radish Salsa'; 'Saigon Beef Stew'; 'Veal Braised in Asti Spumante'; and Frittata with Bacon, Corn and Pasta'; to 'Mushroom-Cauliflower Cury'; 'Potato Salad with Tuna, Olives, and Red Peppers'; and 'Gyro with Tsatziki Sauce'. A wonderfully imaginative cookbook, "One Dish Meals" is especially recommended to novice chefs needing easy to prepare and inspiringly served meals for any occasion from daily family fare to special occasion dining!