Pasta Pronto (Fresh and Simple)

Rating:
Summary: Truly A Winning Formula
Review: Better Homes and Gardens really hit on a winning formula with the "Fresh & Simple" series. When I saw this one, I picked it up and was back home before I even thought to open it. Having owned their "Quick-Simmering Soups" title for a few years, I knew this one would have the same wonderful photographs, the same restful layout using multi-coloured fonts, the same excellent index and, most importantly, the same sort of inspired simple recipes.

Leafing through it for this review, I start to salivate like a Pavlovian dog. I'm going to be doing much gushing here so I should mention at the outset the one real flaw: every recipe has an estimated time to completion (rarely more than 30 minutes), and I find almost all hilariously optimistic. Oh, perhaps if someone had already done the mise en place for me...

Unlike the "Soups" title, this book has a few near-duds in it. Most of the duds are adaptations of popular recipes that just suffer by comparison. The Vegetable Minestrone struck me as not just light but also thin, a pale imitation of one of the world's great soups. The Indian Chicken soup is not something that I would serve to an Indian, but on the other hand, I would serve the Curried Ham & Pasta salad, though I would hope I wasn't asked for the recipe, because it achieves its wonderful result by cheating audaciously.

Actually, "Cheating Audaciously" would be a good alternate title for the book. Most of the cheating works just fine, but I take exception to a couple of practices. An otherwise wonderful-looking Teriyaki Chicken Noodle salad actually uses the little envelope of MSG-loaded "flavouring" that ramen noodles come with. When I open a package of ramen noodles, the first thing I do is throw away that envelope. Let's get the rest of the flaws out of the way so we can move on to more pleasant things. It's just a matter of personal taste, but I found the pairing of salmon with strawberries to be odd in the extreme. Finally, the Spaghetti alla Carbonara and the Thai Pork & Vegetable Curry both have the "suffering by comparison" problem.

So, why does it still get five stars, when I have found fault with six of the recipes? Easy, because that leaves exactly 60 recipes that I find no fault with at all! I've only had this book for a few months, so I've only made about twenty of the recipes, but the other forty are on my to-do list, and they are all recipes that I would happily make for the first time with guests arriving. Standouts? To quote the Mediterranean Mostaccioli recipe: "The mix of chunky vegetables, fresh basil, feta cheese and ground lamb is country cooking at its simple best." The Tuna & Pasta Alfredo, while not one of my personal favourites, is an astonishingly easy way to get broccoli into small children. That recipe is also one of the few that I am able to make within the 25 minute time estimate. There is a wonderful recipe for asparagus with pasta in a light cream-cheese sauce, but my two favourites are both soups. The Crab & Pasta Gazpacho is another 25 minute recipe with guaranteed-wonderful results, and finally, I completely agree with the blurb for the Spring Green Pasta Soup: "Thin strips of cooked egg, exquisite spring vegetables, and wispy threads of angel-hair pasta compose a delicate soup with the airy lightness of a heavenly omelet."

There go those saliva glands again...