Instant Gourmet: Delicious Meals in 20 Minutes or Less

by Melissa Clark

This invaluable resource offers painless ways to create impressive and delectable meals in minutes. Featuring more than 200 recipes for appetizers, salads, entrees, desserts, and more, The Instant Gourmet shows cooks how to prepare exciting meals that will appeal to the eye, the budget, the schedule and, best of all, the palate. Line art.

Genres: Cookbooks

256 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1995

About the author

Melissa Clark is an American food writer and cookbook author. Since 2007, she has been a food columnist for The New York Times. She has written more than 40 cookbooks and in 2018 won a James Beard Award.

Reviews

[Beka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Though the recipes seem fine, this is one of her earliest cookbooks and doesn't have any pictures.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this most useful for appetizers, salads and dressings. She's got some really good ideas for pulling together different taste combinations quickly (like if you have last minute company). The entree chapters were OK, but to meet the time constraint she's generally using the same cooking methods and exotic-ish ingredients. Not a bad idea, but I don't have ground wild mushroom powder on hand when I'm trying to put dinner together in 20 minutes.

In general, she expects you to have a pretty well-stocked pantry (which I do, to a degree). And there's no nutritional information, though you have a pretty good idea what's healthy here.

A good reference for ideas.