Cookbook Review: 500 recipes with (mostly) 3 ingredients

"You come home from work tired, hungry and with no idea of what to make for dinner. You don't even crack open a cookbook during these daily crises, because you know that somewhere in every recipe's list of ingredients is something you do not have.

Instead, you make that tried-and-true grilled chicken breast with an improvised mustard sauce. But you could use more ideas for meals whose ingredients will, without fail, be in your head and at your fingertips.

That's where the brother-and-sister team Robert Hildebrand and Carol Hildebrand come in, with 500 3-Ingredient Recipes (Fair Winds, $19.95). It sounds like the answer to your prayers. And it can be, as long as you read the recipes carefully."

Read more: 500 recipes with (mostly) 3 ingredients

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Food News: Cookbooks Prove Profitable for Non-Profits

"Cookbooks sell. It doesn't seem to matter how many cookbooks people have - they love buying new ones. This is especially true when the recipes come from local people. That is why so many non-profits have decided to print and sell their own cookbooks. It makes money for them.

Ask The Junior League of Northern Virginia (JNLV). It has raised over $150,000 selling its cookbook, "What Can I Bring?"
According to Bernice Porrazzo, chair of cookbook sales, the spiral-bound book is user friendly - it opens flat on the table.
"It is an inexpensive way to entertain, containing innovative menus with heartwarming anecdotes," she said."

Includes recipes for:

• CLIFTON DAY PASTA


• MAPLE BROWNIES


• COCK-A-LEEKIE SOUP


• PAINKILLER


• GRILLED SALMON

Read more: Cookbooks Prove Profitable for Non-Profits
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Book Review: Understanding a wine's complicated past

"It all started, according to author Mike Weiss, when his wife asked him as they were drinking a California red wine, ''Did you ever think about all that goes into a bottle of wine?"

It turns out that making a wine is a complex dance. Many elements can careen out of control: the weather, the vine-pruning, the quality of the oak barrel in which the wine is stored, the exact moment to harvest the grapes, and even the kind of cork.

Weiss, a writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, tells a compelling story. He chooses a medium-sized winemaker, the Ferrari-Carano Vineyards in California's Sonoma County, and a 2002 Fume Blanc wine that sells at retail for about $14 a bottle. He says, ''I wanted to write about a bottle of wine that I might buy."

Weiss shows us the people who make up the wine industry, especially proprietor Don Carano, a Reno casino developer."

Purchase A Very Good Year : The Journey of a California Wine from Vine to Table from Amazon.com.

Read more: Understanding a wine's complicated past (Free subscription required)

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Cookbook News: Don't tell and they won't know

"Sometimes you just need to be sneaky.

If you let your family -- or your guests -- know that you've prepared a low-fat entree, they'll start to worry that they'll be eating something bland and disappointing. So don't...

The recipe is from a new cookbook by former U.S. Department of Agriculture official Ellen Haas, founder of foodfit.com, a 5-year-old website providing healthy recipes and cooking tips."

Includes recipe for Chicken and asparagus with creamy Dijon sauce (Free subscription required for recipe)

Read more: Don't tell and they won't know

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Discount News: Amazon offers KitchenAid Mixer for 44% off

In What has to be the best sale I've ever seen on one of my favorite kitchen tools, the great KitchenAid standing mixer, Amazon.com is currently offering the 4 1/2 Quart model for only $139.99 with FREE shipping! Get it while it's hot.

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Book Review: Following a trail of Old West recipes

"Listen up, buckaroos. There's a new cookbook you might want to take a gander at - 'specially if you like to grill, grew up on a diet of Gunsmoke and Rawhide, and every now and then get a hankerin' for some cowboy food.

Yessir, if you love Westerns and don't mind the kind of writin' in which all the "g's" are dropped, The All-American Cowboy Grill is for you.

Corny? Sure it is. And beany, too, with 15 of its more than 200 recipes - all gathered from famous cowboy and cowgirl stars - devoted to that humble staple of the Old West, from Annie Oakley's Baked Beans to Slim Pickens' Cowboy Beans.

But the cookbook - from the same people who brought you Granny's Beverly Hillbillies Cookbook and Aunt Bee's Mayberry Cookbook - is about much more than beans. Whether you want to "rustle up" a meal on the grill, over an open fire or even indoors, the book invites you to 'hit the trail to yesteryear and rendezvous with the world's greatest cowboys.'"

Includes recipe: Rhonda Fleming's Cowboy Caviar

Purchase The All-American Cowboy Grill from Amazon.com

Read more: Following a trail of Old West recipes

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Cookbook Review: Cookbook's recipes bring out flavor of dining al fresco

"Jeremy Jackson has done it again.

Trouble is, I can't decide whether that's good.

Jackson, a quirky young writer from Iowa who dabbles equally in food and fiction, has a penchant for picking intriguing (if somewhat narrow) subjects for his cookbooks."

Includes recipes:

• Crostini With Peaches and Blue Cheese


• Noodles With Walnut and Blue Cheese Pesto

Order Good Day for a Picnic : Simple Food That Travels Well from Amazon.com.

Read more: Cookbook's recipes bring out flavor of dining al fresco

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Review: Cooking Up Recipes Online

"I had six pounds of rhubarb, 40-plus cookbooks and a computer. Where to look for a recipe? Despite the cookbooks, I find the Web is often the best place to satisfy a food craving or help me figure out what's for dinner.

The Fannie Farmer cookbook has six rhubarb recipes; Epicurious.com has 84. Fannie Farmer is in my kitchen, but I can send an Epicurious recipe from my office computer to my cell phone."

Read more: Cooking Up Recipes Online

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Reviews: Books provide angles on 'the best' recipes

"Deciding what's "the best" is a tricky challenge, since such definitions are clearly subjective - especially with recipes and food. De gustibus, and all that.

A smart first move for the seeker of perfection is to tap into the experience of others reliably qualified to make a preliminary selection for you. Then, what's left is the pleasure of testing and tasting to pinpoint your own winners.

Happily, from time to time editors at distinguished culinary establishments do the research, make their choices and publish helpful opinions in books such as the following."

Books reviewed:

• The Best of Gourmet - 20th Anniversary Edition


• Food & Wine Annual Cookbook 2005


• The New Best Recipe


• Best American Side Dishes


• Best of the Best


• The Best American Recipes 2004-2005: The Year's Top Picks from Books, Magazines, Newspapers, and the Internet

Read more: Books provide angles on 'the best' recipes

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