Rocco's 5 Minute Flavor: Fabulous Meals with 5 Ingredients in 5 Minutes

I hesitated purchasing this book until I browsed through it at a local book shop because I feared that 5 minutes and 5 ingredients meant bland flavor. Not true at all. While the name and premise of the book are somewhat misleading, i.e., 5 minutes refers to the COOKING and not the time it takes to prepare the meal (as Rachael Ray says) "from start to finish." Nevertheless, the recipes that I have tried or reviewed require easy preparation (a little chopping here, a little grating there), and they contain minimal ingredients with big flavors that result in enjoyable dishes. The flavor combinations are often more complex than the simplistic nature of the cookbook might suggest, and these are certainly meals that you can make for yourself on a busy week night, or for friends on lazy weekends. They'll never have to know that you made the dish in "5 minutes," and you'll have more time to spend socializing rather than slaving away in the kitchen. Rocco hopes (and he expressly states this in the book) that 5 minutes will become the new cooking catch-phrase, leaving Rachael Ray's 30-minute meals in the dust. I'm not sure that this will happen (nor do I want it to because I'm a loyal RR fan), but this book and concept will certainly be a welcome addition to anyone's cookbook library. If you're a kitchen novice, hey, here are some recipes too impress that won't break the bank or your back. If you're a foodie, these recipes will serve as tasty additions to your repertoire when you just don't have time to make a more complex meal. Sure, Rocco uses prepared, pre-packaged ingredients in a number of the recipes, but you couldn't have a 5-minute book by avoiding them completely, and overall he balances these quite nicely with fresh and healthy ingredients. So, for the overall concept - quick, easy and flavorful - the quality of the recipes and the layout of the book, I rate Rocco's new cookbook 5 stars.

Rocco's new book is beyond perfect for innovative, quick and economical inspiration for any level of cook. It's the perfect complement to "Flavor" (which I also highly recommend for more complex menus), making you think to use common ingredients in new ways to expand your repertoire. His effervescent charm and passion for both food and life shine through, making for an entertaining read as well as worthy, usable cookbook. Dishes like the shrimp sate saute make you wonder how restaurants get away with charging $30 for a similar dish, while Rocco gives it to you for under 5 bucks. I have yet to try many more of his recipes (I just got the book!) but I can't wait to get into some more of his sizzle.

Rocco really did it with this book. It delivers exactly what's promised: delicious meals in 5 minutes prepared with 5 ingredients. It's really great! After buying the book, I immediately went and made Rocco's "Gnocci with toasted garlic, walnuts, and bitter greens" and within 5 minutes of my water boiling, I was moaning as I ate. IT'S SO DELICIOUS! My girlfriend and I literally make it once a week now, it's that good. And SO SIMPLE too! A few other dishes that we love, are the "goat cheese, radish, and dried cranberry salad", [the creaminess of the goat cheese and the sweet tartiness of the cranberries is wonderful], and also the "handkerchief pasta with lobster, bok choy, and lemon cream sauce". Make this dish for guests and they'll swear you just came back from Grandes Chaines des Rotisseurs! The recipes are really easy to follow, the design of the book is great, as are the photos. This book is a must for anyone who likes to cook, but particularly for single guys, or moms who don't want to spend all day in the kitchen. Highly recommended!

`Rocco's 5 Minute Flavor' by famous culinary `personality', Rocco DiSpirito is the type of book I typically avoid reviewing, except for the fact that it answers the question I asked myself just a week or so ago. It tells us what former NY restaurateur / Food Network star / Reality Show martyr Rocco is doing nowadays. While the quick cooking theme is pretty much owned by the current queen of the Food Network, Rachael Ray, it has been appropriated by just about every major chef / author with good name recognition. But Rocco is promising us, to borrow a phrase from Emeril, `to kick it up a notch' by reducing the window to it's bare minimum of five minute cooking with five key ingredients or less for $5 per serving or less. My overall impression of the book is that there are many, many gotchas with this book's premise and many weaknesses, but the skills of a very talented chef to this task does have its rewards which make the book worth reading and studying. I'll start with the many caveats and end with my overall impression of why the book still works. My overriding impression is that the book is a perfect illustration of Marold's Two Laws of Fast Cooking which state that `Fast Cooking requires a firm grasp of good cooking techniques, above and beyond what the written recipe tells you.' and `Fast cooking requires more expensive or more highly processed ingredients than slow cooking.'. As I read each recipe, I sense that each and every one requires some special culinary knowledge without which you may be fumbling with the prep long after your perceived `quick result' time expires. The very first recipe assumes you can peel and chop garlic, grate Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and chop basil promptly, before leaf blackening sets in. The second recipe assumes you know how to grate zest from a lemon and find tough ends of asparagus. Another early recipe calls for 2½ cucumbers, 1½ being peeled and diced, with one left unpeeled, followed by food processing all the cukes, with no explanation for the difference in treatment. Now this is not a bad thing. In fact, I welcome a cookbook that assumes you know what you are doing around the kitchen. The problem is that if you do not, you may not get satisfactory results. There are a few points at which the assumption of Kitchen Kompetance (sic) can lead to trouble, as when Rocco instructs us to heat up a non-stick pan, do a few other things, then add butter to the pan. Every cooking guru from Alton Brown to Sara Moulton makes a point of NOT leaving a Teflon coated pan on the heat with no oil or other contents to keep the coating down to a reasonable 350 degrees Fahrenheit, so it doesn't get so hot as to give off toxic gases. This concern is especially worrisome as one of Rocco's linchpins to fast cooking is to get pots very, very hot. Put his advice together with ignorance of Teflon's Achilles heel and you could be getting into troubled waters. A second concern may be that the headliner `5 minutes' means only th

The day I received the book I was lost in the kitchen as usual. I had alot of ingredients around, but I didnt know what to do with them. When I started quickly going over the book I found two things to make immediately.I am a single mother of two, and making them happy at dinner time is always difficult,they would rather eat fast food.But that evening they loved the tomato and mozzarella salad, and toasted hot dog reuben.And I made it in 5 minutes each,unbelievable but true.Now they ask me to make something different every night.And with this great cookbook I now can.Thanks, Rocco. Cynthia M.