Milk Street Tuesday Nights

Kimball—owner of Milk Street, a Boston-based cooking school and media company that he founded after leaving Cooks Illustrated —harvests zingy flavors from across the globe to craft flavorful dishes that do not require long cooking times: Suya is spiced flatiron steak eaten as street food in Nigeria and takes 45 minutes from start to finish; Indian-inspired beef and peas is pepped up with garam masala and is ready in 40 minutes. Recipes are impeccable and basic, such as a 20-minute cacio e pepe, which calls for only black pepper, corn starch, pasta, and pecorino Romano cheese (though Kimball advises using only freshly grated cheese). Lightning-quick dishes fall into three categories: fast (Palestinian chicken with sumac), faster (sautéed shrimp with coconut and macadamia nuts), and fastest (kale soup with canned cannellini beans). Salads appear throughout—as sides (tomato salad and a chickpea salad) as well as mains (fattoush, Korean chicken salad). There is also a section on family favorites, including pizza, tacos, and burgers. Book organization, however, can become fuzzy at times (a chapter on one-pot meals includes a rigatoni carbonara with ricotta that could have been a variation on an earlier spaghetti carbonara found in the “fastest” section). Kimball concludes with quick desserts, such as maple-whiskey cakes baked in ramekins and sherry-soaked French toast. This is a handy, wide-ranging collection of pleasingly efficient recipes. (Oct.)