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| The Food You Want to Eat: 100 Smart, Simple Recipes | 
 enlarge | Author: Ted Allen
Publisher: Clarkson Potter
Category: Book
List Price: $27.50
Buy New: $15.48
You Save: $12.02 (44%)
New (21) Used (17) Collectible (2) from $10.30
Avg. Customer Rating:  25 reviews
Sales Rank: 44548
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 192
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.8
Dimensions (in): 10.1 x 7.6 x 0.9
ISBN: 1400080908
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.5
EAN: 9781400080908
ASIN: 1400080908
Publication Date: October 11, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new item. Over 3.5 million customers served. Order now. Selling online since 1995. Order with confidence. Code: B20080904214033T
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Ted Allen, the food-and-wine expert from Bravo's Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, has written a cookbook for those seeking a solid dish repertoire for everyday cooking and entertaining alike. The Food You Want to Eat offers 100 recipes for the likes of Old School Caesar Salad; Crispy Oven-Fried Crabcakes; Paella with Seafood, Chicken and Chorizo; and Mustardy Barbecued Spareribs. These favorites that live up to the book's title, but Allen also provides some repertoire-stretching dishes like Pan-Roasted Salmon with Tomato Vinaigrette and Thai Green Chicken Curry with Vegetables. In his role as cooking tutor, and in asides like The Essentials of Steak, Allen also helps readers to understand how dishes work, and therefore how to cook more easily. A whole chapter that imparts cookout smarts, plus a short selection of easy-to-do meal-finales, which includes Chocolate-Glazed Almond Butter Cake, Warm Spiced Apple Tart, and New Age Floats, round out this useful, photo-illustrated collection. --Arthur Boehm
Product Description
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy’s food-and-wine connoisseur, Ted Allen, presents a quick-reference cookbook—giving you the food you really want to cook and eat, and the know-how to pull it off with ease.
"With most cookbooks, you could plow through 134 pages of complicated hors d’oeuvres, salads, and the author’s philosophical musings about food before you get to the stuff you actually want to eat. Not here. I’m going to save you the trouble and get to the point right up front.” These first sentences of the book sum up what Ted Allen’s The Food You Want to Eat is all about—the tempting, delicious, satisfying fare you really want on your dinner table tonight, without the fuss and the formalities. Chapters include:
•I Know What You Want to Eat: the essentials of steak, chicken both fried and roasted, warm caramel brownie sundaes, and a luscious mac and cheese that will have you thinking outside the box—way outside.
•Happy Hour: for the kind of parties real people actually throw; no engraved invitations or seating charts, just easy, delicious recipes like crostini, a simple tuna tartare that kicks, the crowd-pleasing spicy Cajun “pigs” in much nicer “blankets” than you’re used to, four incredible pizzas (one for each season), and of course ten perfect cocktails.
•The Cookout: fulfilling everyone’s desire for great barbecued ribs, plus the more adventurous (but even easier) rosemary grilled leg of lamb, and Ted’s secret to the ultimate hamburger.
•Poultry: whether baked, braised, or sauteed, chicken is often what’s for weeknight dinner, and here’s everything from soy-and-honey-glazed roast chicken to “around the world on a chicken breast” with superb ways to liven up those boneless, skinless, tasteless cutlets. Plus a simple (really!) duck, and a turkey that doesn’t demand the traditional Thanksgiving heroics.
Ted also delves into chapters on an array of fantastic salads that are a far cry from rabbit food; pastas featuring Italian classics like a great ziti with sausage and your basic pasta with red sauce, as well as easy Asian adventures such as cold soba noodles with sesame-peanut sauce; seafood for everyone who’s afraid to cook fish; meats that range from an amazing marinated grilled pork tenderloin and killer chili to a classic pot roast and osso buco; vegetable recipes that will make you love broccoli in a whole new way; and desserts for after dinner—and breakfasts for after after dinner.
This is the debut cookbook from one of the most engaging, most entertaining people ever to wield a spatula, filled with the incredibly simple, delicious real-life recipes for The Food You Want to Eat. In a word, mmmm.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 20 more reviews...
 Excellent Cookbook / Wine Suggestions for non-foodie. Buy It. May 31, 2006
71 out of 87 found this review helpful
`The Food You Want to Eat (100 Smart, Simple Recipes) by foodie `Queer Eye', Ted Allen fits the mold of several other `celebrity non-chef' cookbooks where fame rests more on culinary journalism or TV presence or both. Never having seen a `Queer Eye for the Straight Guy' all the way through, my best exposure to Mr. Allen's culinary acumen has been as a judge on the Food Network's `Iron Chef America', and Mr. Allen gives much thanks to his fellow judge, Jeffrey Steingarten, Iron Chefs Bobby Flay and Mario Batali, and culinary commentator extraordinare, Alton Brown. Flay, Batali, and Brown have returned the favor by providing laudatory blurbs to adorn the cover of this book.
Speaking of covers, this book has the distinction of sporting a clear vinyl protective cover over its usual trade paperback. This gimmick encourages us to think of the book as less pervious to foody smudges on the book's pages as we make the luscious recipes contained herein. I'm sorry to say I believe the effort may be wasted, as it makes it more difficult to have the book lay flat, open to a particular page, which is a far more useful physical attribute of a cookbook. Well, the thought was there. At least it does seem as if the paper on which the pages are printed are just a bit more robust than your average trade paperback meant for nothing more strenuous than reading.
The titles of the book sets us up to expect a book of recipes for comfort food, trendy food, and easy to make food. My hero Alton's blurb offers the opinion that Mr. Allen has succeeded in both offering recipes for desirable dishes and in telling us the proper way to make these recipes. To a great extent, I have to agree with AB, with the comment that while Alton Brown gives us some of the ultimate foodie books, Allen's book is specifically NOT a foodie book. In that regard, it is much closer to what I understand his role on the `Queer Eye' show, where he and his colleagues give advice on living to people who are neither foodies, fashionistas, or any other flavor of obsessive / compulsive behavior.
I am happy to say that in fact, Ted Allen's book is better than several recent efforts by Food Network faves such as Giada De Laurentiis or Dave Lieberman. I agree completely with Alton in that these are indeed the kinds of recipes the average person will like to make on Saturday or Sunday or a holiday on the grill. He opens with a few `top ten' recipes for macaroni and cheese, roast chicken, grilled steak, braised short ribs, fried chicken, and caramel brownie sundaes. His procedures for these and all his other recipes are thoughtful and not necessarily `quick' versions, but then he didn't promise us fast, he only promised simple. For example, the fried chicken recipe calls for an overnight marinade in buttermilk. This is a step used by all the best southern cookery writers I've read, so he is off to a very good start. He also recommends frying in shallow oil rather than deep oil, exactly as recommended by our mutual mentor, Herr Brown.
Allen's next chapter is on antipasto, which he mistranslates as `before the meal' (I told you this wasn't a foodie book). The recipes come almost entirely from the Italian cuisine, and I am certain Allen is betting on the fact that you don't already own a good Italian cookbook (I told you this wasn't a foodie book). The very best thing about this chapter is the recipe for four seasonal and very respectable 100% made at home pizzas. Allen seems to make no mistakes and even gets the amount of yeast right, plus good advice on adjusting the amount of yeast and instructions on kneading the dough. The pizza recipes alone are worth the price of the book.
The chapter on drinks is a bit less impressive in that he provides recipes for both old standards and `new' drinks. If the drink recipes are `new', how do we know we really want these? I would have been happier with all old standards.
The third chapter is on pasta and rice. Very nice. The fourth chapter is on grilling. This will save your buying a 500 page Steve Raichlen `bible'. The fifth chapter has a few seafood recipes, but true to the book's title, they are all, like crab cakes, high on the hit parade. The sixth chapter is on poultry and has one of the more interesting sidebar sections on how to buy chicken. This chapter ends with one duck [...] and one turkey [...]. Both items are nearly as common as chicken nowadays. The meat chapter stays true to form with recipes for meat loaf, rack of lamb, chili, and osso buco. The chili recipe is typical in that while it is a very common dish, the procedure is better than average in calling for diced rather than ground beef. A+ on that one Ted. The vegetable chapter has a very nice range of techniques, including my favorite style of veggie dish, the potato gratin. The last chapter offers extra points I always give for a general recipe book that includes breakfast dishes. These recipes are excellent, except that they simplify the omelet just a bit too much and they make us go out and buy challah for French toast, when the whole object of French toast is to use up things we already have. Tsk, Tsk.
One thing the book does share with Giada's weaker book is that we get a slew of pics of luscious Mr. Allen rather than his luscious dishes. I don't think these were aimed at the straight guys.
Overall, this is an excellent first or only cookbook for the occasional cook. The recipes are easy to understand, the sidebars are all useful, and the choice of recipes fits the book's objective. Well done, Ted.
Fast and easy food that's delicious--and that looks cool, too November 7, 2005
34 out of 34 found this review helpful
I'm kinda new at cooking, and I don't have a lot of time to do it, so I really appreciate cookbooks with recipes that aren't too difficult. At the same time, especially when I'm having friends (or dates!) to dinner, I want to serve food that's interesting and real--the microwave is fine, but not for company! I've tried the prime rib, one of the pizzas, the salmon with tomato vinaigrette, and the creme brulee so far, and everything has come out AMAZING!
Fun, User Friendly, and Delicious October 14, 2005
21 out of 22 found this review helpful
From someone who is somewhat behind the cooking curve, this book makes it all look so simple and fun. Complete with colorful photos and full of useful tips on cooking in general.
Great buy for anyone who loves to cook, or wants to learn more about it!
Simple and Delicious October 19, 2005
17 out of 18 found this review helpful
With 3 small children it is often hard to find simple yet delicious meals to cook that satisfy everyone. This book offers both easy and delicious meals to choose from. I would recommend it to everyone of all ages.
Cool, easy cooking, and WINE PAIRINGS--I love it! Let's make dinner! December 28, 2005
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
From the steak 101 section to the veggie stuff, I've loved everything I've cooked out of this book so far! But I'm especially psyched about the suggested wine pairings for every dish--that is such a great way for a new cook to get into the (not neccessarily) scary world of wine. And there's a salmon recipe that Ted made on the Today Show that has totally won over my non-fish-loving household, so that makes him heroic in my book!
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