Dinner Tonight: 200 Fast and Fresh Mealtime Solutions

Barbara Robertson is the author of Wilfrid Laurier: The Great
Conciliator and the co-author of The Well-Filled Cupboard.

Lucy Waverman, an experienced journalist, generally delivers what she
promises in this, her fourth cookbook. Her tastes are eclectic (and why
not, for she operates in that most multicultural of cities, Toronto) and
she shows considerable skill in providing recipes of various ethnic
persuasions that are relatively quick and easy to make. However, some of
the time saved in the kitchen will be spent looking for stores that
offer such ingredients as Asian chili sauce, Kaffir lime leaves, Mirin,
and Mascarpone, to name a few. Although Waverman does suggest
substitutes in many cases, her recipes will be easier to achieve in
Toronto than in more ethnically challenged parts of the country.

A couple of points must be questioned. Pullets are not old laying hens,
but rather young ones just starting out, which is why pullets’ eggs
are so small. As for Swiss chard (the recipe for which looks quite
good), surely it is necessary to separate leaves from stems, cut the
stems finely, and cook the stems a bit longer than the leaves; if you
don’t, either the stems will be undercooked or the leaves overcooked.
And since when has cooked chard had more flavor than cooked spinach? Is
this another miracle of agribusiness, making the flavor of spinach weak
and the stems of chard tender?

For the most part, however, this is a very pleasing and lucid cookbook,
one that makes accessible types of cooking that might otherwise seem too
formidable. In addition to offering many helpful definitions, Waverman
identifies various kinds of ingredients (such as rice, Japanese noodles,
and chili powder) and suggests the appropriate use of the different
forms of each. I particularly enjoyed the quotation from Shirley Conran
that introduces the chapter entitled “Light Dishes”: “Life is too
short to stuff mushrooms.”