Cooking to Beat the Clock

Cooking to Beat the Clock:
Delicious, Inspired Meals in 15 Minutes

By Sam Gugino

Ready, set, go. From the moment the alarm clock sounds in the morning until you close your eyes at night, life seems like a big race. Whether you are running from one meeting to the next or driving the kids to yet another soccer game, there just never seems to be enough time in the day. Most of us don't have the time and energy to spend even 30 minutes preparing dinner, but a satisfying meal is a pleasure that's a shame to miss.

In Cooking to Beat the Clock: Delicious, Inspired Meals in 15 Minutes, Sam Gugino has created the perfect kitchen companion for today's busy lifestyle. The book offers dozens of mouth-watering recipes that let frenzied folks put a casually elegant dinner on the table in just fifteen minutes--including the time it takes to chop vegetables, peel potatoes, and boil water! and that's not all. Sticking to his four basic principles of Flavor, Organization, Focus, and Creativity, Gugino shares his secrets of working efficiently in the kitchen and stocking a pantry with the essentials that make fast meals possible. He explains how to get organized in a hurry, and his brilliant time-saving tips drastically cut the preparation time for delicious meals. He also encourages readers to think beyond recipes, so they can exercise a bit of creativity if they do not have all of the listed ingredients.

Divided into sections on meat, poultry, seafood, pasta and grains, eggs, soups, vegetarian, and salads and cold platters, Cooking to Beat the Clock has a meal for every taste. Middle Eastern Lamb with Cucumber Salad makes a savory midweek Middle Eastern feast, and Chicken Fajitas with Mango Salsa is a perfect meal for kids and adults alike. Other delectable dishes include Steak Diane with Parslied Potatoes, Fifteen-Minute Bouillabaisse, Shrimp and Goat Cheese Quesadillas with Avocado Salsa, Huevos Rancheros with Spicy Black Beans, Moroccan Chicken Soup, and Provencal Mushroom Ragout with Polenta. with Cooking to Beat the Clock, dishes that would be right at home on a restaurant menu can be on the kitchen table in practically no time at all.

Sam Gugino is a former restaurateur turned food journalist. He has been the restaurant critic at The Philadelphia Daily News and food editor of The San Jose Mercury News, where his columns were voted best in the nation by the Association of Food Journalists. A frequent guest on radio and television food shows, he is the "Tastes" columnist for Wine Spectator and has written for many other publications, including The New York Times and Cooking Light. His previous books are Eat Fresh, Stay Healthy, and Matthew Kenney's Mediterranean Cooking, written with Matthew Kenney.

Visit Gugino's Web site at www.samcooks.com and Chronicle Books' Web site at www.chroniclebooks.com.

Cooking to Beat the Clock:
Delicious, Inspired Meals in 15 Minutes
By Sam Gugino
Photographs by Dawn Smith
Chronicle Books
Paperback, $16.95
40 full-color photographs
Publication Date: January 1999
ISBN: 0-8118-1860-8
Information provided by the publisher.