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Two Dudes, One Pan: Maximum Flavor from a Minimalist Kitchen: A Cookbook

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Just one pan? No problem! You’ll need only a single skillet,a roasting pan, or a Dutch oven to make any of the 100 knockout recipes that have made this team the hottest culinary duo west of the Rockies.

Today their restaurants  are the toast of Los Angeles, but Jon and Vinny still remember what it was like to cook with a minimum of space, time, and equipment. And they know that it is the feel-good, homestyle favorites that win raves from their clients and will make any home cook’ s reputation. In Two Dudes, One Pan they show you how to prepare a surprising array of dishes—from finger foods to sweets and everything in between—using a few simple pieces of equipment and never more than one at a time.

Just as Jon and Vinny depend on fewer kitchen tools and gadgets than most cooks, they also believe it’s possible to eat well without spending a fortune, and their varied, deeply flavored food won’ t send you running to the gourmet shop in search of an obscure ingredient. For them, it’s all about what you can do with food from the local grocery store. Pick up your favorite pan and try your hand at dishes

Curried Chicken Nuggets with Honey Mustard and Red Onion Slaw * Sake-Soy Sea Bass with Baby Bok Choy * Spicy Roasted Cauliflower, Capers, and Parm * Sherried Salmon and Cipollini Onions * Five-Spice Cornish Hens * Pistachio Tiramisù with Sweet Cherry Sauce * Pumpkin Pie Bars

With full-color photographs, ingredient alternatives, helpful tips and shortcuts, and dozens of straightforward, down-and-dirty recipes that pack a wallop of flavor, Two Dudes, One Pan will inspire you to use less—and cook more.

240 pages, Paperback

First published August 26, 2008

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Jon Shook

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5 stars
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46 (32%)
3 stars
33 (23%)
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9 (6%)
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3 (2%)
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
Profile Image for Jessica.
569 reviews19 followers
February 11, 2017
The premise is a one pan cookbook from a minimalist kitchen (minimal time, space, and equipment). The introduction talks a lot about budget cooking.
But frankly quite a few of the ingredients are not something I can pick up at my local grocery store in a Midwestern town. Things like lamb and the various types of fish (fluke, branzino, swordfish) are not available let alone harissa paste, dandelion greens, broccolini, or burrata cheese. That's far from minimalist.
Profile Image for Michael.
53 reviews5 followers
July 30, 2014
Decent little cookbook for someone who has a small kitchen / hates cleaning dishes. I most enjoyed reading their dialogues leading into each recipe... Picked up a lot of good kitchen / shopping tricks from them.

I've only made a single recipe from this book, which was good, but far too salty. I'd wager it needed less than half the salt they put in, and I love me some salt... Had me a bit worried about other recipes.

Kind of neat that they split the book into pot or pan type rather than protein or vegetable type. It's kind of the way I think about cooking... Some days you're in the mood for something from the dutch oven... ya know? So you hop into the dutch oven section, and you find a tasty recipe.

Their instructions are pretty clear, but could be improved upon; I much prefer a bulleted list of tasks rather than reading what I'm supposed to do in paragraph form.

They also tend to utilize some rare / expensive ingredients, which stinks... I hate searching all over the place for an oddity... In many cases, however, they'll give you a low-cost alternative.

Overall, a cookbook I'm happy to have in my collection. Tasty recipes, good pictures, and all with simple cleanup.
Profile Image for Cat.
8 reviews1 follower
December 21, 2008
If you like reading little stories that go along with each recipe, you'll like this cookbook. Some recipes use more expensive ingredients so it's definitely not a book for a person just learning how to cook or someone living on a tight budget. The one pan concept is great though and there is an explanation of how to purchase your cookware and which pieces can be on the cheaper side but still effective. Also, the entire book is in color photographs so you can see what the dish looks like.
Profile Image for PVLD Reads.
426 reviews27 followers
November 27, 2019
If you're still looking for some holiday recipes to impress family and friends, look no further! Some of my personal favorite recipes from this book are the Creamy Tarragon-Dressed Butter Lettuce salad and the Creamed Brussels Sprouts with Bacon. They're fairly simple to put together, and are packed with flavor!

Reviewed by Laura I., Librarian.

Find it in the library, here.
Profile Image for James.
504 reviews19 followers
April 6, 2015
First, let me say that a cookbook title that alludes to Two Girls, One Cup is pure evil genius. Fruit of the Devil .
In my thirties, I worked as a line cook. I had ambitions at the time to open a restaurant with my sister. I thought I was following a personal passion (it was the 90s - people loved that word then), but it turns out I was just on the leading edge of the foodie fad. I didn't have the talent, the capacity for hard work, and, most particularly, the single-minded devotion (to make it as a restaurateur, it has to be everything to you) I would have needed in order to succeed in the industry, but I stayed with it for several years after I came to this realization because I was in love with fine-dining kitchen culture. To this day, no one, not even a rock star or a fighter pilot, is quite as cool to me as someone who can handle his (or her, nowadays) business on the hot line.
I love this book, the first cookbook I have ever read cover-to-cover, because it is written by real line cooks. While it is ostensibly for a general audience, Shook and Dottolo frequently assume a level of skill that is beyond the capacity of, I think, the average home cook. When I was a lunchtime grill cook at Arnaud's, it was a professional watershed for me when, one day, my sous chef handed me a recipe for Matamoros rice made up of nothing but a list of ingredients - no quantities, no directions. He assumed (more or less correctly) that I would know how much of each item I needed and what to do with it. While these recipes aren't quite that lean on instruction, there is a bare-bones quality to them that, as an initiate, I found bracing but that I might find a little intimidating if I hadn't once done this for a living.
I had one of the best meals of my life at Shook and Dotolo's Los Angeles restaurant Animal. The entree I remember most vividly from that meal, a version of the Hawaiian plate lunch favorite loco moco that incorporated both foie gras (it was, in fact, the last week you could legally eat it in California) and spam, perfectly embodied the impeccably crafted, sophisto-trashy aesthetic of that restaurant and this book.
I suppose the best thing I can say about Two Dudes, One Pan is that it made me want to get busy in the kitchen.
Profile Image for Phloe.
44 reviews1 follower
June 18, 2012
Yes, this is a cookbook for folks to use one pan - if one is already familiar with the type of cooking these two guys do. Quite understandably elicits a different reaction from anyone who's used to Paula Deen, or what the Kraft.com website tells you can easily make a meal in minutes.

Lovely book. Really great for folks who don't want to necessarily deal with the headache of reservations at Animal or Son of Gun in Los Angeles.
Profile Image for Cyndi.
4 reviews
March 12, 2010
One of the best cookbooks I have ever bought. Everything I have made out of it has been spectacular. I'm not sure what other people are talking about when they say the ingredients are hard to find or the recipes are too complicated. Most of the ingredients I have on hand or I can obtain at Whole Foods and I haven't found any recipe hard to make.
Profile Image for Scottsdale Public Library.
3,533 reviews486 followers
Read
May 16, 2017
This cookbook is such a fun companion in the kitchen, complete with menus, conversations between the two eponymous dudes, and one-pan recipes. Recipes and menus are simple yet interesting, and feature a lovely combination of ingredients. A must-read for chefs looking for some inspiration in the kitchen.

-- Meagan
Profile Image for Christiana.
1,590 reviews27 followers
September 7, 2011
This is too high level for a fool in the kitchen like myself. When I see "one pan" I think "easy". However, when there are (lots of) ingredients I have to look up just to know what they are, I have to just say no to this cook book.
Profile Image for Shannon.
277 reviews16 followers
October 20, 2008
Unusual recipes and excellent photographs. Most were too difficult to replicate but worth a look. Somewhat recommended.
Profile Image for Vicky.
20 reviews
July 30, 2009
I liked this cookbook and will be looking at it again. Great ideas for really interesting food with minimal clean up.
Profile Image for Alexis Coe.
Author 26 books459 followers
Read
January 6, 2009
NPR doesn't lie -- it's a solid cookbook -- but the book title does: the bolognese called for two pans.
9 reviews1 follower
November 3, 2010
Awesome cook book!! It wasn't overly complicated and it added new flavors to my kitchen :] my husband is happy I found this one.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews

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