`365: No Repeats' is the title of this book, however author Rachael Ray has reached the name over the title status about five books ago, which is not that long, as Ms. Ray seems to churn them out at the rate of about one every six months. While this book is titled over the '30 Minute Meal' rubric, it's primary premise is that it solves the problem of `what do we eat tonight' for a full (leap) year. The subtitle is `A Year of Deliciously Different Dinners'. One problem is that Rachael's secondary objective seems, on the face of it to soften the force of the `different dinners' claim.
To me, Rachel's secondary message of providing several master recipes with variations, where each variation counts as one of the 365 recipes, is more interesting than the objective of providing you with something different every day of the year. In fact, my typical five stars for most of Rachael's books is based on this secondary objective rather than the culinary plenum year.
The master recipe concept and the corresponding objective to make you more comfortable and more adept at cooking is really important to Rachael's message. One of her most important tactics is to minimize measuring to speed up cooking and simply make it less tedious and more fun. The problem is that you simply cannot estimate amounts effectively without a fair amount of experience. And, while Rachael gives us a few useful methods for estimating, they are probably less help than pulling out the old measuring spoons and using them until you have a good personal sense of how much a tablespoon or cup is. I find her equating a tablespoon with a palmfull and a quarter of a cup with a handful to be totally unhelpful on their own, without a picture to go along with the words. You may not feel this lack of sense if you watch Rachael daily or if you are already an accomplished amateur cook, but it definitely makes me think twice about recommending Ms. Ray's books to someone who must cook, but does not yet have cooking experience. If Ms. Rachael or her minions ever happen to read this review, I would suggest to them that they bite the bullet and go metric. There is no better method for estimating than to know off the top of your head that a teaspoon is 1/3 of a tablespoon and that a quarter of a cup is almost exactly four tablespoons and so on.
One can wonder how Mrs. Rachael (she finally married her sweetie!) comes up with enough recipes to fill two books a year plus, now, to do a periodical under her brand name. She has left several hints here and there on how she manages to do this. In this book she clearly states that what she writes herself are usually loosely constructed notes which an editorial assistant (or Food Network culinary professional) turns into full-blown recipe. In an early '30 Minute Meal' show, I heard her say that she is an avid reader of old cookbooks, and I even recognize some of her dishes from some classic, and not very well known dishes, such as a Paula Wolfert standard of string beans and tomatoes.
My first question about this book was whether or not Mrs. Ray repeated many recipes from her earlier books. I did find one where she stated that she borrowed from an earlier work, but I decided to check for myself and compared index entries in this book for chicken and burgers with indexes from her other books, where available, and I found virtually no repeats. There were a lot of similarities, but no exact copies. I am especially happy to see this, as there have been cookbook authors who have put out books which are simply nothing but reprints of earlier books.
I rarely cook from Mrs. Ray's books myself, although I have been known to borrow some ideas from her shows in doing my own ad hoc recipe. Rachael is the culinary ambassador to the world of people who cook because they have to and do not necessarily want to take up cooking as a hobby, so they need someone to lay things out for them in simple, snappy terms. My only argument with her recipe write-ups is that she often puts a Teflon coated pan on a hot burner to heat up without adding any oil for several minutes. She does this on the show too, so I'm sure she is simply ignoring the dangers of doing this, in spite of frequent warnings from sometime mentor, Sara Moulton.
So, if you have no Rachael Ray books and you fit the demographics of her audience, this is by far the best one to start with. And, if you own all her earlier titles, this will not be a rehash of what you have. The only regret you may have is that this book does not do full meals in 30 minutes like her earliest books, although I do believe the recipe writing is better in this book than it is in her '30 Minute Meal' book.
Otherwise, many of the good things I have said about her earlier books is true of this title as well.
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Have not read or used the cook book just in ...
Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2015
Have not read or used the cook book just in my kitchen for decoration.
Reviewed in the United States on October 24, 2015
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Noha
The book contains plenty or recipes and a good variety of quick meals and more elaborate comfort foods
Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on April 1, 2015Amazon Customer
To many ingredients that most don't have at home.
Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on June 3, 2020
