Almost from Scratch - 600 Recipes for the New Convenience Cuisine

This book will quickly find a prominent place in the kitchen of home cooks who are short on time, but believe in using primarily fresh, quality ingredients.

Until I recently attended one of Andrew Schloss's cooking classes, I didn't think it was possible to make fresh tasting food using convenience products. I've been following the current trends in shortcut cooking where authors tell us to toss together a box of this and a jar of that to come up with a home-cooked meal. In my opinion, that's not homecooking - that's just one step removed from adding water to a can of condensed soup.

Schloss finally turned me into a believer by proving how I've been taking shortcuts for years, without recognizing them for what they are. I've used flavored olive oils, frozen vegetables, and spice blends, without sacrificing freshness or flavor. These and many other quality products are part of the "new convenience cuisine."

Schloss teaches us to look at convenience products in a new way. Instead of seeing salsa as a Mexican product, he urges us to look at the ingredients of salsa - tomato-peppers-onions - and see where we could substitute this basic trio of ingredients for the fresh. We should look upon the manufacturers of these quality convenience foods as the sous chefs Schloss has used in his restaurant kitchens. According to Schloss, these pre-made ingredients are not a compromise, but something that puts us ahead of the game while hustling to get dinner on the table.

If convenience cooking means having a pantry full of sous chefs to help expedite dinner, and doesn't mean trying to pass off a packaged mix as my own, I can live with that.