Shortcuts to Gourmet Cooking Encore.

I received a DIGITAL Advance Reader Copy of this book from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. From the publisher --- Enjoy cooking from scratch on almost any diet. A winner in cookbook category at the 2016 Los Angeles Book Festival, this second cookbook from Fran focuses on healthful foods without artificial additives and recipes using white whole wheat flour, unbleached and gluten-free flours. She emphasizes how cooking from scratch is easy, saves you time and money and is healthier for you and your family. Many of the recipes in this book can be used for any type of diet, and icons are used throughout to indicate a recipe or its options are gluten-free, low cholesterol, all natural, or include honey. Healthful Hints provide tips on how to make a dish more healthful and Helpful Hints will help make your cooking and baking easier. The end product is a timely book. More and more articles in all types of the media from newspaper and magazine to television and the internet are touting all-natural cooking, and more healthful supermarkets are becoming accessible to consumers. Many have specialty sections dedicated to all-natural, organic and gluten-free foods. This book is a sequel to her first cookbook, Shortcuts to Gourmet Cooking and Family Favorites, and has the rest of the recipes from her restaurant, Nonna's Palazzo, that she was unable to include in the first book. Another addition to the book is color, healthful hints, and God's Pharmacy. Enjoy this timely personal cookbook.

I love Fran’s total honesty – her preface to the book started off with explaining that her family was on the Feingold Diet (which I had to google) --- it removes food additives for ADHD symptoms --- and that her first cookbook “Family Favourites” followed that guideline. She went on to say that with so many of the diets/food plans of today (Gluten Free, Paleo, etc.) can use her recipes. REFRESHING! So many cookbook authors are rigid in their statements of how ONLY their book and recipes will work but Fran’s admission that choosing a similar ingredient that you can tolerate (or permit per your food plan) made me love her to the moon and back.

The book starts with pantry staples and then digresses into Italian pantry staples and stories about growing up Italian in a time when the KKK considered being Italian (or Greek or Mexican) a sin worthy of burning a cross. The recipes start using the following descriptors: N – all-natural ingredients LC – low cholesterol GF – gluten free H – honey used in recipe (for vegans??? Because it is natural? Not sure why honey needs an indicator. The recipes are clear and well written/described along with family photos and stories fill up the 400+ pages of this cookbook. These are simple, yummy recipes that any cook could accomplish - will I only use white whole-wheat flour as it is milder for the sake of it needing less “sweetening “? No: it is hard/next to impossible to source for me at a reasonable price point but hey, it is only the colour of the flour IMHO for me…then again, I would never make chicken stock in a microwave either!) A good addition to any cookbook lover’s shelf - shortcuts, if you want them, abound - I generally do not but that would not stop me from using the cookbook.

p.s. - the cover totally confuses me as I expected it to be either a Southern Gothic Novel or a NOLA/Cajun-inspired cookbook.