My cookbook's name is I DREAM OF DINNER (SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO): Low-Effort, High-Reward Recipes. It was nominated for a James Beard Award! Can you believe it? I can't.
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150 fast and flexible recipes to use what you have and make what you want, from New York Times contributor Ali Slagle
ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR: Bon Appétit, Eater, The Boston Globe, Food & Wine, Food52, Saveur, Mother Jones, Delish, Epicurious, Simply Recipes, Salon
With minimal ingredients and maximum joy in mind, Ali Slagle's no-nonsense, completely delicious recipes are ideal for dinner tonight—and every single night. Like she does with her instantly beloved recipes in the New York Times, Ali combines readily available, inexpensive ingredients in clever, uncomplicated ways for meals that spark everyday magic. Maybe it’s Fish & Chips Tacos tonight, a bowl of Olive Oil-Braised Chickpeas tomorrow, and Farro Carbonara forever and ever. All come together with fewer than eight ingredients and forty-five minutes, using one or two pots and pans. Half the recipes are plant-based, too.
Organized by main ingredients like eggs, noodles, beans, and chicken, chapters include quick tricks for riffable cooking methods and flavor combinations so that dinner bends to your life, not the other way around (no meal-planning required!). Whether in need of comfort and calm, fire and fun—directions to cling to, or the inspiration to wing it—I Dream of Dinner (so You Don't Have To) is the only phone-a-friend you need. That’s because Ali, a home cook turned recipe developer, guides with a reassuring calm, puckish curiosity, and desire for everyone, everywhere, to make great food—and fast. (Phew!)
“Slagle is generous with permission to break the rules in service of minimizing effort or maximizing pleasure, ideally both.” —The New Yorker
"I DREAM OF DINNER, brilliantly designed, clearly written, and filled with a ton of quick, simple recipes to help get a happy dinner on the table at the end of a long day” —Samin Nosrat, author of Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat
""[Ali's] recipes are so unpretentious and cookable...and always somehow exactly the thing you feel like eating." —Jenny Rosenstrach, author of The Weekday Vegetarians
"[Ali Slagle is] a super smart cook and recipe writer who’s also damn funny. Her humor + ideas will get you through making dinner in ~ 45 minutes." —Andrea Nguyen, author of Vietnamese Food Any Day and The Pho Cookbook
“As you can imagine there is a lot of talk of cookbooks in our proverbial halls (a.k.a. Zoom calls), and occasionally it seems everyone is in love with the same one. This month the brilliantly titled I Dream of Dinner (so You Don’t Have To) by Ali Slagle is a house favorite.”—Dawn Davis, editor in chief of Bon Appétit
“Ali has pulled off the near-impossible with a collection of delicious, doable, recipes that don’t just tell you how to make a specific dish, but how to expand your way of thinking so you can cook with a flexible pantry. Let’s face it, it’s tough to organize your life around recipes with specific ingredients. Instead, I Dream of Dinner makes room for your life.”—Sohla El-Waylly, chef and all-around awesome person
“Finally, a recipe creator who understands what a realistic end-of-week pantry looks like!”—Eater
"Many books purport to offer easy weeknight meals but disguise cooking time with hidden prep and other complications—not Slagle’s. She hits it out of the park with her first cookbook, collecting recipes that take 45 minutes or less and use 10 or fewer ingredients." —Library Journal
“This makes the task of cooking feel like a celebration.”—Publishers Weekly
“The recipes are unique, easy to follow, and even easier to commit to memory. It’s exciting to think of a whole cookbook worth of them.”—Food52
"Her recipes carry the comforting pragmatism of an impatient home cook: she maps out the smoothest way to get from ingredients to dinner, and maximizes flavor wherever possible." —Marian Bull, food writer
Thank you to all the home cooks and homebodies who've let my recipes into their kitchens and made them even better with tweaks, riffs, and substitutions. It is because of your stories and feedback that made me think this book would do some good; I'm smiling just imagining you cooking from it.