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A Twist of the Wrist: Quick Flavorful Meals with Ingredients from Jars, Cans, Bags, and Boxes
Knopf Product Details - Ratings and reviews for a twist of the wrist: quick flavorful meals with ingredients from jars, cans, bags, and boxes. |
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by: Nancy Silverton
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Sales Rank: 252082
Knopf
Released: 2007-03-27 |
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Product Description
Award-winning chef Nancy Silverton has conquered the gourmet world as the original dessert chef at Spago and founder of the celebrated La Brea Bakery. Her recipes are legendary, innovative, and delicious. However, in the last few years, there has been a great shift in cooking toward the Home Meal Replacement (HMR), better known as “takeout.” It’s impossible to spend hours in the kitchen after a hard day’s work, so more people are buying prepared foods and frozen meals, compromising taste for convenience. Realizing that people’s hectic workdays don’t afford everyone the time to re-create her epicurean triumphs, Nancy has come up with the perfect solution . . .
Enter, the jar!
Compiling a list of her favorite products that come in jars—and cans, bags, and boxes—Nancy has created easy-to-follow recipes that require less than thirty minutes to prepare. With this book there’s no need to sacrifice flavor, sophistication, and taste just because you’re spending less time chopping, cleaning, cooking, or baking. Nancy’s shortcuts not only allow us to produce quick and easy meals at home, they let us bring back the pride and the joy of creating gourmet meals for our family and friends.
A Twist of the Wrist contains 137 quick and delicious gourmet recipes from salads to pasta to meats and desserts, such as:
Cumin Shrimp and Chickpea Salad with Roasted Carrots
Creamy Corn Soup with Bacon and Cheddar Crostini
Orzo with Dried Porcini Mushrooms, Radicchio, and Aged Balsamic Vinegar
Boneless Pork Chops, with Creamy Polenta and Fennel Pollen
Seared Rare Tuna with Tomato-Olive Salsa
Dulce de Leche Ice Cream Pie with Hot Fudge Sauce, Cajeta, and Salty Spanish Peanuts
In addition to Nancy’s own creations, she includes recipes concocted with prepared ingredients from some of her chef friends, including Sara Foster, Tom Colicchio, Charlie Trotter, Mario Batali, Suzanne Goin, Ruth Reichl, and Jean-Georges Vongerichten.
There is also a pantry section, telling us where to get—by the Internet and mail order—the best of all things canned, jarred, and bottled.
This charming and utterly indispensable cookbook is suited for any type of cook, whether you’re an on-the-go gourmand or you just love flavorful, accessible meals at home. A Twist of the Wrist fits perfectly into today’s modern lifestyle and is a must-have for the contemporary kitchen.
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A Twist of the Wrist: Quick Flavorful Meals with Ingredients from Jars, Cans, Bags, and Boxes
- Hardcover: 272 pages (2007-03-27)
- Publisher: Knopf; 2007-03-27
- Label: Knopf
- Studio: Knopf
- ISBN: 1400044073
- Average Customer Review: based on 19 reviews
- Sales Rank in Books: #252082
Avg. Customer Review:
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Pretty Pics - Eh Taste 2008-12-18
Comment: A little background. I like Nancy Silverton's cookbooks. I own her LaBrea's pastry book and it is divine. I am a good, experienced home cook.
The pros: Lovely pictures... drool inducing. Her conversational style and no nonsense straightforwardness lives on in this book.
The cons:
The biggest is that quite a few of the recipes are just not that good. A lot are just not practical for those seeking meals on the fly. That is the audience. Quick, easy and delicious. Maybe all of the ingredients she uses are available near her, but some I had to struggle to find quite a few things even on the net. Some items I just made things myself (like garam masala paste, pickled veggies, infusions...) defeating the purpose, but I was curious.
When I made the recipe my victims sometimes were not all atwitter with delight. The exceptions are the crostini section. LOVED the Crostini with Soft Scramled Egg, Black Olive and Caper Stuffed Anchovy. Made it a meal with a simple salad. But then there is the Roasted Tomato and Red Pepper Soup with Pesto Croutons. Ya know what that is? BUYING the soup boxed up (like you get at costco - adding the croutons that you slather with premade pesto and roasting some super sweet tomatoes. The combo - the tomatoes seemed wrong in the soup. I picked them out. So better just left alone. ICK. And that is NOT a recipe to me. How would you like Campbells cream of mushroom - add tobasco, jarred mushrooms and put some obscure cheese on top? Is that what you would pay for?
Chicken breast seared - slapped on cress and topped with prepared demi glace. Yawn and a little ick. Fried oysters with pickled veggies and chipotle mayo. Wow never seen that before. My husband refused to finish the recipe with white asparagus in brown butter topped with caper and a fried in olive oil egg. Spaghettini with Tuna and V-8 got "What are you doing to me? Have you had a stroke?". Sigh. Love her, the book - not so much.
You get the picture. Who does not love fast and scrumptious? I know I adore it.
This ain't it. I just do not think her heart was in it. Blech!
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating:
Summary: Not just a twist of the wrist, not quick 2008-12-07
Comment: I just received the book in the mail today. I bought it as a gift for my sister because she loves to try out new recipes but, she is in law school, is married, and has a 1 year old.
Each recipe does contain at least 1 ingredient from a can, box, etc. However, they are extremely complicated and exotic. A vast amount of ingredients would need to be bought at a specialty food store. Many contained ingredients such as sardines, anchovies, capers, and fiery peppers, which are not for everyone's taste. There are also only a few pictures in the 250+ page book, about 1 for every 7-10 pages. so if you are used to seeing pictures of what it is supposed to look like, you will just have to use your imagination here.
Here are a few examples of the names of recipes:
Polenta with quattro formaggi and cheese condimenti
Crostini with ventresca, Piquillo Peppers, and Caper Mayonnaise
Bombay Bhel Poori
Although I would love to make several of these recipes, my sister would not even like to smell them. They are all designed for a very specific taste and lifestyle. They are definitely NOT simple or quick! Only purchase this product if you have a taste for ethnic foods, love to cook, and have access to specialty foods.
I bought Fats Fixes with Mixes for my mother in law and it looks like I will be buying another one for my sister to replace this book.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating:
Summary: Complicated shopping makes these recipes time consuming 2007-11-15
Comment: I'm very disappointed in this book. I enjoy the quick and tasty recipes of the Dinner Doctor and other cookbook authors like her, and I also like the more adventuresome cooking offered by chef-authored writers like Silverton herself in her earlier Campanile cookbook. This book is an annoying blend of the two. The recipes in Twist of the Wrist are complicated; the ingredient lists are long; the canned and jarred items featured are expensive, and for the most part, I cannot find them in the big city grocery stores of the major metropolitan area where I live. I'd rather cook from scratch than mail order ingredients or fruitlessly search for ingredients in stores all over town.
0 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: cookbook 2007-10-24
Comment: I'm very disappointed in this cookbook. I purchased a second one to give as a gift, but cannot give it to anyone.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Customer Rating: 
Summary: A 'must' for any public lending library catering to busy - but gourmet - home cooks. 2007-07-26
Comment: Chef Nancy Silterson is the original dessert chef at Spago and founder of the La Brea Bakery, but here shifts her attention to compiling a list of favorite products that come in convenience jars, cans, and boxes, along with recipes which need less than 30 minutes to prepare. From a Cream Corn Soup with Bacon and Cheddar Crostini to Seared Lamb Chops with Ratatouille, mouth-watering color photos of finished products accompany tips on how to blend quick ingredients with fresh for optimum home cooking. A 'must' for any public lending library catering to busy - but gourmet - home cooks.
Diane C. Donovan
California Bookwatch
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A Twist of the Wrist: Quick Flavorful Meals with Ingredients from Jars, Cans, Bags, and Boxes
