20-Minute Menus: Time-Wise Recipes and Strategic Plans for Freshly Cooked Meals Every Day

For those who like to eat well but can't stand the heat of long hours in the kitchen, Burros, New York Times food columnist, advances reliable methods for ever-faster meal preparation; her 20-minute menus (for two to three people, without dessert) are practical, healthful alternatives to take-out or frozen dinners. Burros explains how to trim shopping time to 10 minutes per day (by keeping staples on hand, shopping daily for each menu, buying hard-to-find food through mail order) and suggests buying pre-cut vegetables at salad bars and meats and fish in trimmed and packaged form. Following current diet trends, low-fat chicken and fish dishes are emphasized; cream sauces are made with ricotta and yogurt. Salt is decreased by seasoning food with herbs, ethnic condiments and flavored oils and vinegars. Sensibly, menus often combine the required starch, protein and vegetable components of a meal into one or two dishes, but leafy greens are lacking, and white sugar is used unnecessarily in dressings and tomato sauces. Each menu includes simple recipe instructions and shopping lists. BOMC Home Style main selection, QPBC alternate, Better Homes & Gardens Book Club alternate. (Mar.)