Suzen and I know Pam Anderson well. We’ve cooked with her and relished each of her eight cookbooks. She is, to use Suzen’s phrase, one of the cookbooks authors you can trust.
Trust? Yes. Sadly, many of today’s cookbooks are filled with recipes that have not been written for the home cook or even tested. So, you pick one of those recipes, make it, have a total kitchen disaster that you cannot even eat, and you blame yourself. Tears fall on that pizza you had to order. The smell of disaster lingers in the kitchen for days.
It’s not you. It’s the author, the publisher. It’s not you.
Over the years, Suzen and I have found a list of cookbook authors that you can trust. Say, Michelle Scicolone, Marie Simmons, and surely Pam Anderson. Pick any recipe from any of Pam’s books, head to the kitchen and be prepared for recipe success. Disaster does not await. She’s a real writer, a professional writer.
This Throwback Thursday book from Pam is ten years old and very distinctive. This is a book filled with recipes but it is really a book about entertaining, particularly for those who haven’t a clue about how to do a dinner party. You can be newlyweds and have that problem. You can be thirty years into marriage and still be terrified of “having people over.”
When you are about to entertain guests and you think you might have a main dish, the questions begin to flood in, perhaps overwhelm you:
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Is this the right dish for my setting and time of year?
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Any shortcuts to making it?
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Can I vary this recipe at all?
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What do I serve with it — what drinks, apps, salads, sides, desserts best pair with this dish?
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How far ahead can I make it?
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What about leftovers?
Those are natural questions. And for the principal recipes in this book, Pam asks and answers those questions. So, for a casual meal of Buttermilk-Honey Fried Chicken Fingers, Pam suggests five ways to change the recipes, four different beverages, two apps, five soups or salads, a half dozen side dishes and three matching desserts. She offers ideas on how to make preparation super easy — by looking for chicken already cut into same-sized strips, let you know you can begin the dish the night before by soaking the chicken in buttermilk to enhance tenderness, and suggests that any leftovers can be warmed up and combined for a superior chicken salad the next day.
In a nutshell, Pam plans your entertainment experience. Oh, the drinks and apps and sides and desserts are all in the book too. Every recipe you need is here.
If entertaining sends shivers up your body, then Perfect Recipes is total relief. Just exhale and move on.
The only major decision Pam leaves to you is where the meal will occur: in your kitchen around the island, outdoors near the barbecue, in the dining room, or at a breakfast table? When Suzen and I entertain, we do have a dining room but often people just linger around the kitchen island and the whole meal is offered there. Pam thinks that, particularly for a low-cost and informal affair, breakfast can be ideal.
For each of those four venues, Pam has many suggestion for main dishes. For example, if you do want to cluster in the kitchen, you can offer:
Chicken Soup with Asian Flavoring
Chicken Chile
Oven-Barbecued Pork in Sandwiches or Carnitas
The Buttermilk-Honey Fried Chicken Finger
Boneless Coq au Vin
Simple Cassoulet
The recipes take you by the hand. The main dishes have been simplified so that you can have a great cassoulet with her Simple Cassoulet — a year in a Parisian cooking school is not a necessity [but it is a terrific idea!]. The apps, soups, salads, and side dishes are similarly poised for a beginner. There is a faux Caesar salad with a dressing based on mayonnaise, for example.
For baked beans, Pam suggests something that perhaps you have already tried — Suzen and I do this all the time. Rather than cook from scratch for hours, start with store-bought baked beans and doctor the heck out of them by adding bacon, onion, peppers, sugar, vinegar, dried mustard and some barbeque sauce or molasses. It’s really, sticky-finger good.
Going to a wedding and not sure what to give? Give Perfect Recipes. Get lots of copies and go to lots of weddings and make lots of people very happy over the course of their kitchen experiences.
Oh, even if you are an experienced foodie, get one for yourself, too. It’s entertaining.
