Chef on a Shoestring: More Than 120 Inexpensive Recipes for Great Meals from America's Best Known Chefs

by Andrew Friedman, Rita Maas (Photographer)

You Don't Have to Break the Bank to Cook Restaurant-Quality Meals

Cooking great meals doesn't require spending a fortune on ingredients. Each week on the CBS Saturday Early Show , a prominent chef is given thirty dollars to create a three-course meal for four. Chef on a Shoestring collects some of the best of those culinary delights to benefit Share Our Strength, one of the nation's leading antihunger, antipoverty organizations. These recipes, created by some of the most celebrated chefs in the country, are produced on a budget but are rich in every other way.

The recipes are organized into convenient categories to allow you to mix and match various courses from different chefs. You can begin a meal with Sara Moulton's Miniature Pumpkin Soup, serve Bobby Flay's Saffron Risotto with Sautéed Shrimp as your main course, and finish with Don Pintabona's Polenta Lemon Cake with Fresh Berries. Or try the Asparagus and Bean Sprout Salad with Dill Pesto from Aquavit's Marcus Samuelsson, Crispy Fried Snapper with Chili Ponzu from Tom Douglas, and Coconut Rice Pudding with Fresh Mango from John Villa, chef of Dominic Restaurant & Social Club in New York City. These and other delectable recipes from Mario Batali, Terrance Brennan, and Waldy Malouf are sure to liven up your weekday or weekend dinners.

Filled with advice on stocking your pantry, buying in season, shopping on a budget, and avoiding the temptation to be too frugal, Chef on a Shoestring is a unique culinary adventure for taste- and budget-conscious home cooks.

Genres: Cookbooks

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 10, 2001

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.

Andrew Friedman is the author of Chefs, Drugs and Rock & Roll: How Food Lovers, Free Spirits, Misfits and Wanderers Created a New American Profession (2018), and producer and host of the independent podcast Andrew Talks to Chefs, currently in its sixth year. He is also the author of Knives at Dawn: America’s Quest for Culinary Glory at the Legendary Bocuse d’Or Competition (2009), co-editor of the internationally popular anthology Don’t Try This at Home: Culinary Catastrophes from the World’s Greatest Chefs, and co-author of more than twenty-five cookbooks, memoirs, and other projects with some of the United States’ finest and most well-known chefs. Additionally, he is an adjunct professor within the School of Graduate and Professional Studies at the Culinary Institute of America. An avid tennis player, he co- authored American tennis star James Blake’s New York Times bestselling memoir Breaking Back: How I Lost Everything and Won Back My Life (2007), and was for several years a TENNIS magazine editor-at-large. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Reviews

[elissa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The recipes are simple enough but it does make the assumption that you're working with a well-stocked kitchen. So for that reason I'd say it isn't a good starter cookbook. Gave it 5 stars 'cause the recipes aren't boring. Just because you're a little broke doesn't mean you have to eat simple pastas everyday! Only complaint is that text is hard to read when you're going back and forth between chopping, looking-at-book, stirring, and then looking-at-book. You get the idea. I also want to complain that the layout of the recipes are not easy to manage while cooking; some recipes continue onto the back page...a pet peeve of mine! Madison public has this book...but you'll have to wait until I return it.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good. Lots of fresh ideas for tasty meals that are inexpensive. We tried two this week and everyone was pleased (including the kids 8,11, 13, & 14).
We tried p. 92 a type of Mexican Lasagne (I made it in an 8" square pan - MUCH too small, it was inhaled in seconds! Will have again soon, in a 9x13" pan)
Also tried p.122 an Italian sausage and white bean soup. It was very good as well, perfect for January!

[Melissa Massello · Rating 4 out of 5]

Featured in 35 Budget Living Picks for National Book Lovers Day on ShoestringMag.com :

"My girlfriend Lauren bought this book for me as a Christmas gift the year I started designing this Shoestring, and despite its priceless sentimental value to me it's also an elegant compendium of 120 of the best "easy on the budget" recipes from the CBS Saturday Early Show segment by the same name and its original cheap-chic gourmet: Andrew Friedman."

[The Cute Little Brown-haired girl]

cooking and doing it inexpensively ....that's my kind of book!!