Sara Moulton's Everyday Family Dinners

by Sara Moulton

Overview

Sara Moulton may be a professional chef and television personality, but she’s also a working mother who has to get dinner on the table for her husband and kids every night. In Sara Moulton’s Everyday Family Dinners, she shares more than two hundred new family-tested, family-pleasing recipes—whether you’re new to the kitchen or just looking for a way to spice up your recipe repertoire, Sara’s carefully tested recipes are a great place to start.

Chicken Saltimbocca with Artichoke Sauce is a welcome change of pace, while Oven-Fried Fish Sticks are a lighter update of a kid-friendly classic. If you’re looking to experiment with new ingredients and cuisines without venturing beyond your local grocery, the Korean-inspired Clay Pot Vegetable Stew and Sara’s take on Vietnamese Bahn Mi make it easy to try global flavors.

For a quick, pulled-from-the-pantry meal, try Polenta Lasagna or BLT and Egg Pie. Shake things up and serve appetizers like Pork Sliders, Asian Style, and Manchego-Stuffed Figs Wrapped in Bacon for dinner, or declare Sandwich Night and serve Picadillo Sloppy Joes. If you have a vegetarian in the family or you’re just trying to economize, flip to the chapter on vegetarian mains for recipes for delicious and nutritious fare like Tortilla Pizza or Rustic Potato and Greens Pie. For dessert there’s Butterscotch Pudding Cake, Warm Chocolate Cheesecake, and much more. And finally, on Sunday, when you have a little more time to cook, there is a chapter for comfort food that will cure the end-of-the-weekend blues and get the week started right.

Perhaps most important to the overscheduled home cook, Sara’s recipes help you cook smarter, faster, and cleaner. Each recipe lists cooking and preparation times, and easy-to-follow instructions streamline the process by integrating prep and cleanup into each step. Sidebars on shopping, storing, preparing, and serving share the tips Sara has collected over many years of answering questions from home cooks across the country. Creative, crowd-pleasing, and fuss free, the recipes in Sara Moulton’s Everyday Family Dinners make family dinner a pleasure for everyone.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439102510
Publisher:	Simon & Schuster
Publication date:	04/06/2010
Pages:	385
Sales rank:	919,817
Product dimensions:	9.44(w) x 7.70(h) x 1.28(d)

About the Author

Admired by millions as the host of Cooking Live, Cooking Live Primetime, and Sara’s Secrets, Sara Moulton was one of the Food Network’s defining personalities during its first decade. In addition, the energetic Moulton was the executive chef of Gourmet magazine for twenty-three years. She is the food editor of ABC-TV’s Good Morning America, and the author of Sara’s Secrets for Weeknight Meals and Sara Moulton Cooks at Home. In April 2008, Moulton launched a new twenty-episode television series on public television, Sara’s Weeknight Meals. She lives in New York City with her husband and two children.

Editorial Reviews

Moulton, famed Food Network and public television star and author of Sara's Secrets for Weeknight Meals, shares 200 recipes for busy home cooks. While many cookbooks offer quick recipes for weeknight meals, Moulton takes the concept several steps further by creating dishes that reflect the way Americans truly eat at home. Inspired by the recession, she creates meals that are inexpensive yet flavorful and offers suggestions for variations, such as making the dish lighter, vegetarian, or with different ingredients. She offers two-for-one dishes, where a second new meal is created with leftovers from the first meal as well as five-ingredient main dishes. She also devotes entire chapters to vegetarian dishes and whole grain meals, and her poultry section includes turkey meatballs. She not only condones but advocates appetizers for dinner and dedicating a night for sandwiches and another to soup. Recipe highlights include black bean soup with quesadillas, Peking duck wraps, Thai-style beef stir-fry with chilis and mint, sautéed beer-batter shrimp with tartar sauce, and three-ingredient apple crisp. This refreshing, accessible, and tasty collection more than lives up to the promise of its title and will delight the legions of Moulton fans, earning her more than a few new ones. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Winner of a 2011 International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) Cookbook Award

“Sara Moulton’s recipes bring the diverse international flavors that make up American cuisine straight to the dinner table. Home cooking in America has never been more fun, and Sara captures the feel of what makes it valuable to families.”—Marcus Samuelsson, award-winning chef & cookbook author

"One thing about Sara Moulton: She cooks what we all want to eat. Plus she has the clearest, most easy-going way of explaining how we can cook it. Which is great, because just reading her recipes for Eggs with Crispy Kimchi Rice, Fried Catfish BLTs, Warm Steak House Salad with Blue Cheese Dressing, and Farfalle with Mushrooms and Bacon has made me very hungry, and ready to put some delicious food a la Sara on my family’s table. Everyday Family Dinners also includes loads of practical advice, and a ‘Two For One’ chapter that’s worth the price of the book."—Rick Bayless, chef-owner of Chicago's Frontera Grill & host of public television's Mexico: One Plate at a Time

“You could spend hours combing the web for dinner ideas, or you could just buy Sara Moulton’s Everyday Family Dinners. Veteran food pro and savvy mom, she knows exactly what you want and how much time you’ve got to pull it off. Not many books get to live in my kitchen—this one will. And I’m giving a copy to each of my daughters too."—Pam Anderson, USA Weekend Food Columnist and blogger at threemanycooks.com

"Sara's recipes are the best! They're delicious, versatile, and fool-proof. I've even claimed some of them as my own."—Isaac Mizrahi, designer

"A dream of mine is to find quick, fool-proof, gourmet recipes. This book is a dream come true. It takes great, easy twists on many classic, famous recipes and revises them so the chicken can't be overcooked, so the sauce tastes bold and creamy, so the noodles aren't mushy, and so sweet and savory flavors are balanced. In addition to these great fool-proof insights, Sara Moulton’s Everyday Family Dinners makes me feel like I could be an everyday gourmet."—Brian Wansink, PhD, author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think

"The author’s 200 recipes are accessible and span all major cuisines, from Korea, South America, and Britain to down-home U.S.A. There is also an educational component packed into almost every single page; side bars explain, for instance, the selection of a good soy sauce, the difference between hamburger and ground beef, and the best place to store eggs. The recipes, each prefaced with a personal narrative, are seductive . . . "—Barbara Jacobs, Booklist

"Cooks will find helpful ideas (how to choose the right balsamic vinegar, for example) and can expect to discover new favorites such as Korean Burgers, made with kimchi, ginger, rice vinegar, and scallions."—Library Journal


"While many cookbooks offers quick recipes for weeknight meals, Moulton takes the concept several steps further by creating dishes that reflect the way Americans truly eat at home. Inspired by the recession, she creates meals that are inexpensive yet flavorful....This refreshing, accessible, and tasty collection more than lives up to the promise of its title and will delight the legions of Moulton fans, earning her more than a few new ones."—Publishers Weekly

From the Publisher

Moulton (Sara's Secrets for Weeknight Meals), a former Food Network star and Good Morning America's food editor, provides shortcuts for great family meals, like Really Quick Borscht, which can be made in fewer than 40 minutes. Cooks will find helpful ideas (how to choose the right balsamic vinegar, for example) and can expect to discover new favorites such as Korean Burgers, made with kimchi, ginger, rice vinegar, and scallions. Library marketing. Expect demand.

Library Journal