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The New Elegant But Easy Cookbook
A completely revised and updated edition of the cookbook that set thestandard for entertaining, featuring new recipes and old favorites with allthe great taste, convenience, and ease of preparation that has made itthe entertaining bible for more than 500,000 cooks.We all know that stirring risotto in the kitchen while your guests are gossiping in the living room is no fun. That's why the recipes in The New Elegant but Easy Cookbook can be prepared in advance and refrigerated or frozen until your party. While sharing all-new recipes for delectable dishes like Chicken Breasts Stuffed with Goat Cheese, Mediterranean Couscous Salad, Michele's Corn Pudding, or an astonishing Prepare-Ahead Chocolate Soufflé, Burros and Levine have also included fifty favorites from the original cookbook, like Sherley's Parmesan Puffs, Baked Imperial Chicken, Green and Gold Squash, and Lois's Original Plum Torte (the most requested recipe ever reprinted in The New York Times).To make your life even easier, the book has an ingredients list with mail-order sources and lists of recipes for specific needs and occasions. Best of all, there are ten foolproof menus, from an Old-Fashioned Casual Dinner for 6 to a Brunch for 16 to a Cocktail Party for 24, each with a shopping list and a two-week "countdown game plan" that will take the fear out of entertaining for even the first-time host.
- GenresCookbooksNonfiction
352 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1998
15 people are currently reading
37 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 28, 2021
I have adored Marian Burros since reading her Pure & Simple: Delicious recipes for additive-free cooking : an elegant & easy cookbook with up-to-date advice on avoiding ingredients that contain chemicals & preservatives back in the 1980s. I still swear by two Burros cookbooks, which remain my forever favorites: 20-Minute Menus: Time-Wise Recipes and Strategic Plans for Freshly Cooked Meals Every Day and Eating Well is the Best Revenge: Everyday Strategies for Delicious, Healthful Food in 30 Minutes or Less. I have lost count of how many times I have given those two cookbooks as gifts — which is the highest praise possible.
But I didn’t love The New Elegant But Easy Cookbook. Burros and co-author Lois Levine revised this cookbook in 1998, noting that the original 1960 edition had too many canned soups and processed foods, and too much red meat, MSG, gelatin salads, Velveeta, and the like. The newer version contains ingredients that, surprisingly to younger cooks, were difficult to procure in the 1960s or completely unavailable, items that are ubiquitous now: cumin, fresh herbs, bok choy, couscous, fennel bulbs, cruelty-free veal, bulgar. Cooking had changed so much in 30 years that the old cookbook was no longer useful.
But the 1998 book has suffered the same fate in an even shorter amount of time. Does anyone have dinner parties with four and five courses? Except for Super Bowl parties and, occasionally, Thanksgiving and/or Christmas, how often does anyone serve up canapés, trifles or intricate desserts? Already in 1998, 60 percent of women were working outside the home; they’re the wives and mothers, like me, who devoured 20 Minute Menus and its 30-minute companion, Eating Well Is the Best Revenge. Today get-togethers aren’t 12 seated around a dining-room table; in fact, the National Association of Homebuilders says that 43 percent of Millennials don’t want a dining room at all. My home has one; in the 13 years we’ve lived here, we have used it to eat in exactly zero times.
I liked some of the recipes in this cookbook, but most were too dated or too much trouble for me.
Burros must be somewhere in her 80s at least, but, if you’re still up for it, please, please, please, PLEASE update this treasure one more time.
But I didn’t love The New Elegant But Easy Cookbook. Burros and co-author Lois Levine revised this cookbook in 1998, noting that the original 1960 edition had too many canned soups and processed foods, and too much red meat, MSG, gelatin salads, Velveeta, and the like. The newer version contains ingredients that, surprisingly to younger cooks, were difficult to procure in the 1960s or completely unavailable, items that are ubiquitous now: cumin, fresh herbs, bok choy, couscous, fennel bulbs, cruelty-free veal, bulgar. Cooking had changed so much in 30 years that the old cookbook was no longer useful.
But the 1998 book has suffered the same fate in an even shorter amount of time. Does anyone have dinner parties with four and five courses? Except for Super Bowl parties and, occasionally, Thanksgiving and/or Christmas, how often does anyone serve up canapés, trifles or intricate desserts? Already in 1998, 60 percent of women were working outside the home; they’re the wives and mothers, like me, who devoured 20 Minute Menus and its 30-minute companion, Eating Well Is the Best Revenge. Today get-togethers aren’t 12 seated around a dining-room table; in fact, the National Association of Homebuilders says that 43 percent of Millennials don’t want a dining room at all. My home has one; in the 13 years we’ve lived here, we have used it to eat in exactly zero times.
I liked some of the recipes in this cookbook, but most were too dated or too much trouble for me.
Burros must be somewhere in her 80s at least, but, if you’re still up for it, please, please, please, PLEASE update this treasure one more time.
July 13, 2009
Prepared two recipes for a recent dinner party and got great reviews. Using a library copy, so I just might have to get my own.
December 9, 2023
Fun to Read
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews