Ready When You Are: A Compendium of Comforting One-Dish Meals

by Martha Rose Shulman

Pressed for time but still searching for comfort from your kitchen? Ready When You Are offers more than 200 recipes for dishes that are easy on the cook and a joy for eaters.

Drawing on her many years of cooking for friends and family, Martha Rose Shulman shares her favorite recipes for simple yet sophisticated, hearty but not heavy one-dish meals. Most can be made hours or even days in advance and, because they are cooked and brought to the table in the same dish, serving, cleanup, and storing leftovers is no trouble at all.

Based on traditional home cooking from around the world, this is comfort food at its best—Tuscan White Beans with Sage and Sausage, Chicken Pot Pie, Vietnamese Beef and Noodle Soup, savory gratins and ragouts, creamy risottos, and “The Easiest Chocolate Mousse in the World.” Many of the most flavorful and satisfying dishes in the book are vegetarian, including Turkish Summer Vegetable Stew and Zucchini, Potato, and Artichoke Moussaka. Each of the recipes includes information about how long leftovers will keep, along with ideas and companion recipes for transforming them into something new. Yesterday’s bouillabaisse, for example, becomes today’s pilaf, while diced beef from a pot-au-feu forms the base for a delicious salad for the next day’s lunch.

Whether you’re cooking a hearty family meal, planning a dinner party, or making a simple after-work supper, Ready When You Are is filled with exceptional, undemanding recipes and strategies for getting the most satisfaction from your time in the kitchen.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking

416 pages, Hardcover

First published November 18, 2003

Reviews

[Karen Witzler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reread as part of my major bean fixation. I find Martha Rose Shulman's writing style as comforting and homey as her healthy make-from-scratch Hippie/Provencal/Mexican recipes. Like Mildred in Pym's Excellent Women, a good cookery book is always on my nightstand.

[Dayna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I went through this cookbook from cover to cover after picking it up at the library. Loved it, and wanted to try quite a few of the recipes. Unfortunately, the book was due back before I got around to cooking out of it. I was looking for a collection of hearty one-dish meals with a focus on rice/beans and/or veggie/grains, and a couple years ago this was closest to what I wanted...since then I have found some cookbooks that better represent what I was looking for. I did love Shulman's tips for preparing ahead and how to use leftovers. But seeing as I no longer have an interest in or need for this cookbook, I won't be going back to it.

[Amanda · Rating 2 out of 5]

I don't think this cookbook is for me. While looking for some new recipes, I read through all of them, and only the chocolate mousse shouted at me to make it. Even then, after two hours of chilling, it still wasn't set. As for the main dishes, they're just not the style that we eat, plus the recipes called for some exotic ingredients that are not readily available in my area.

This is also one of those make-ahead cook books. While I'm all for that, I'm not going to saute ingredients at 10 in the morning for use the next day. That's just not how I roll, however, I could see this as being helpful of getting ideas about how to adjust for time constraints.

[Pia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like to spend Sunday afternoons cooking up a giant pot of something divinely satisfying for the week. This book fits the bill for lots of great, simple and delicious recipes; I especially appreciate that there is a minimum of hard-to-find ingredients. Most of these dishes simply require some chopping and assembly, from there they basically cook themselves.