Cooking Light Fresh Food Fast: Over 280 Incredibly Flavorful 5-Ingredient 15-Minute Recipes

by Cooking Light

Book Overview

With over 280 incredibly delicious flavorful 5-ingredient, 150 minute recipes at your fingertips, you'll discover how simple it is to serve a healthful home-cooked meal on a busy weeknight. Our Test Kitchens experts have paired easy side dishes and desserts with superfast entr es to create over 160 mouthwatering menus. Organized by easy-to-use food categories, including Soups, Sandwiches, Salads, Meatless Main Dishes, Fish and Shellfish, Meats, and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0848732642
• ISBN13: 9780848732646
• Release Date: March 2009
• Publisher: Cooking Light
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 2.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.3" x 9.2"
• Age Range: 17 to 22 years
• Grade Range: Grade 12 to Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

One of the Best Cookbooks I've Ever Used....Really

I'm a collector of cookbooks, and let me tell you............I've got some good ones too. Not just a collector of cookbooks, but I use the bejabbers out of them. I've been told I'm a great cook. I can pretty much so recreate anything I've ever eaten and I know the anatomy of most dishes, most of the time I tweak the recipes that come out of my books, but in this book, I NEVER DO. Frankly that alone astonishes me. What I love about this book is the way they've put together the ingredients. The flavors are layered perfectly and the receipes are nearly fool proof. I also like the fact you don't have to bring out the entire pantry to prepare the dishes. This has become my favorite cookbook, my only problem now is trying to keep the book together. As to the 15 minutes part.....no so much. LOL.

Best Cookbook Ever

The least you need to know: Finally, a cookbook for a health-conscious newbie cook! Full Review: I was actually excited about this book. I'm trying to lose weight (who isn't, these days, except for you thin [...]) and Cooking Light Fresh Food Fast seems a godsend. The boast on the title is alluring, 15 minutes using just 5 ingredients? No way! Well, the proof of the pudding, as they say ... I have so far cooked three meals and wow. The book itself is sturdy yet pleasant to use. Clear, bright pictures of what your food should look like is an important part of any cookbook I'd use and this one's super. The recipes were easy to follow and really did take as long as promised although some of the side dishes added more time overall. The best compliment I can give and the reason this book is getting its full complement of stars is that I actually cooked dinner for my wife and me. She tentatively tasted and went into rave mode. I'd never done anything like this, and believe me, the instructions are clear enough that anyone can as well. Highly recommended.

LOVE this cookbook ....

I've had this book for a little over a month, and I've had the opportunity to try several recipes. So far, every recipe has been very tasty, and fast and easy to prepare. Yes, some of the recipes do call for "convenience" products: canned diced tomatoes with Italian flavorings; pre-chopped fresh onions/carrots/celery; bottled minced garlic; and so on. And yes, you could make your own versions of these -- but the additional prep time would extend the total preparation time well beyond the 15 minutes (and yes, a number of recipes already exceed that limit, although not by a huge amount). But for me, these recipes work. AND they taste good. AND they're generally lower in fat and calories. As someone with minimal spare time who wants to eat as sensibly as possible, this book is a great addition to my cookbook collection. Each recipe includes a full color photo, and most include a "serve with" side dish, beverage, or dessert. Most recipes make 4 servings, so if you're single, you'll have some leftovers, or you can reduce the amount of ingredients. A few of my favorites: Pork Tenderloin with Balsamic Onion-Fig Relish (uses prechopped onions, available in my small-town local supermarket produce section, along with dried figs, soy sauce, and balsamic vinegar), served with Acorn Squash with Butter Sauce (total yum!) -- total per serving calories for the combination: 376. Five-Spice Grilled Chicken Thighs with Blackberry Glaze (incredible flavor!) served with Yellow Rice with Spring Peas (uses frozen petite peas) -- total per serving calories for the combination: 339 Smoked Sausage and Corn Frittata served with Sweet Lemon-Splashed Melon -- total per serving calories for the combination: 228 Beefy Corn and Black Bean Chili (uses frozen corn and black beans, and canned seasoned tomato sauce) served with Cheesy Cheddar Corn Bread (I now make this a LOT) -- total per serving calories for the combination: 344 I've made all of these along with at least a dozen more, and I haven't found a dud in the bunch. I don't think anyone would guess that these dishes are "light" unless you tell them. This book is now on my "most used" shelf.

Nice Book For Quick Meals

If you are in need of a book for quick meals, Fresh Food Fast by Cooking Light is a nice choice. I am going to give a quick overview of this book for anyone interested in knowing what to expect from it to help you decide if you want to look into FRESH FOOD FAST by COOKING LIGHT. The sections are: SOUPS LOTS of choices from unique cold soups like Creamy Avocado Soup with Tomato Lump Crab Relish to Sweet Potato Leek and Ham Soup. All soups have a salad recipe with them that the authors suggest serving with it on the same page- I found this handy. SANDWICHES Unique ideas like Pear Walnut Sandwiches and Grilled Grouper Sandwiches with Tartar sauce are nice in this section. There are also some standbys like Sloppy Beef Skillet Sandwiches and Grilled Pork Sliders with BBQ Sauce. Many sandwich recipes in this book have an accompanying recipe on the same page for a soup or salad to go with the sandwich you are preparing. Examples of these recipes are Sweet Broccoli Slaw with Cranberries and Minted Pea Hummus SALADS Some examples are Taco Salad with Cilantro Lime Vinagarette, Cous cous, Sweet Potato and Black Bean Salad, and Grilled Salmon and Grapefruit with Blood Orange Vinagarette. Again in this section many salad recipe also have recipes on the same page you can make to go with it, such as Tomato Basil Soup, Greek Style Pita chips. Most recipes, though, have just the dressing recipes on the same page. This is my favorite section of this book. MEATLESS MAIN Examples from this section are Grape, Blue Cheese, and Walnut Pizza, Mediterranean Style Frittata, Creamy Butternut Squash Risotto, and Southwestern Rice and Veggie Cakes. In this section, some of the recipes have side dishes appearing on the same page with them to make with the main meal.......such as....Spicy Tricolor Pepper Stir Fry, Creamy Chipolte Wedge Salad, Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Balsamic Glaze, and Lemon Balsamic Broccoli. MEATLESS MAIN is my second favorite section of the book (well, tied with Fish). FISH AND SHELLFISH Look at some of these recipes- Catfish with Cilantro- Chipolte Rice, Baked Flounder with Dill and Caper Cream, Pistachio Crusted Grouper with Lavender Honey Sauce, Lemon Artichoke Halibut en Papillote and Sunflower Seed-Crusted Orange Roughy. A few side dishes appear with the entrees to accompany them (on the same page again) such as Minted Sweet Snap Peas and Balsamic Grilled Peaches (made to go with Peach-Glazed Salmon with Raspberries). This is actually tied with Meatless Main as my 2nd favorite section. There are many different fish recipes in here which I enjoy very much. MEATS Smothered Pepper Steak, Ginger Lime Beef Stir Fry, and Mustard Molasses Flank Steak are some examples of the beef recipes in this section. Lemon Herb Skillet Pork Chops, Curried Pork and Chai Rice, and Asiago Crusted Pork Chops are some pork recipes in the MEAT section. There is only one ham and two lamb recipes in this book, which was disappointing to me. I woul

Fresh Food Fast and Very Good

I've only had this cookbook for three days, but I can tell it's a keeper as I've made dishes from it the day before yesterday and yesterday. When I got the book, too late in the day to go shopping, I starting sifting through it to see if there was something I could prepare with what I had on hand. Luckily I had shrimp. I was going to do a tequila lime shrimp dish for company, but instead I did the Skillet Barbecue Shrimp from this book and it came out great. And since I was on that page and had some bananas and rum in the house (seems like I always have rum in the house). I made the Bananas in Warm Rum Sauce for desert. My company love both dinner and desert. Yesterday my mom and aunt came over and since I had time to shop I did the Speared Pork Chops with Spicy Roasted Pepper Sauce and they loved it. I did too. So even though this book is about cooking light and fast, it would be useless if the meals sucked. They don't. I will be using this book for years to come.