Rachael Ray 2, 4, 6, 8: Great Meals for Couples or Crowds 
asked by orla on November 9, 2006 9:01 AM
If you’re like Rachael Ray, mealtime is a time to hang out and reconnect with family and friends. That means you could be making a late dinner for you and your sweetie one night and making brunch for your entire family the next day. No matter how many people join the party, Rachael firmly believes that cooking should be fun, easy–and done in 30 minutes or less.
Transforming recipes for four into recipes for two or eight can be a tricky guessing game. If you use twice the amount of chicken will you have to cook it twice as long? Is it possible to make a satisfying pot of soup for two without having to eat leftovers for a week? What’s the best–and most economical–way to feed a crowd of eight? With Rachael Ray: 2, 4, 6, 8 there’s no need to guess, because Rachael has designed right-sized menus for every occasion, with perfect meals for two, four, six, or eight.
For date night you don’t want tons of food, so Rachael’s Croque Madame sandwich with a Strawberry Balsamic Vinaigrette salad and a killer vodka cocktail strike just the right note. For family dinners, double dates, or those who love leftovers, Rachael whips up classic meals for four like Wingless Buffalo Chicken Pizza or Grilled Shrimp with Chorizo Skewers. For poker night with your buddies, Rachael knows exactly which ingredients stretch into a 30-minute meal for six, like Uptown Sweet and Spicy Sausage Hoagies. Throwing a dinner party is a pleasure when you’re armed with stress-free meals for eight like Italian Chicken Pot Pie and Boozy Berries and Biscuits. With complete menus for family dinners as well as easy and impressive meals for entertaining plus lots of super simple desserts that taste like a million, no matter what the occasion, the perfect meal for your crowd is never more 30 minutes away.
Transforming recipes for four into recipes for two or eight can be a tricky guessing game. If you use twice the amount of chicken will you have to cook it twice as long? Is it possible to make a satisfying pot of soup for two without having to eat leftovers for a week? What’s the best–and most economical–way to feed a crowd of eight? With Rachael Ray: 2, 4, 6, 8 there’s no need to guess, because Rachael has designed right-sized menus for every occasion, with perfect meals for two, four, six, or eight.
For date night you don’t want tons of food, so Rachael’s Croque Madame sandwich with a Strawberry Balsamic Vinaigrette salad and a killer vodka cocktail strike just the right note. For family dinners, double dates, or those who love leftovers, Rachael whips up classic meals for four like Wingless Buffalo Chicken Pizza or Grilled Shrimp with Chorizo Skewers. For poker night with your buddies, Rachael knows exactly which ingredients stretch into a 30-minute meal for six, like Uptown Sweet and Spicy Sausage Hoagies. Throwing a dinner party is a pleasure when you’re armed with stress-free meals for eight like Italian Chicken Pot Pie and Boozy Berries and Biscuits. With complete menus for family dinners as well as easy and impressive meals for entertaining plus lots of super simple desserts that taste like a million, no matter what the occasion, the perfect meal for your crowd is never more 30 minutes away.
Reviews
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Overall I'm a big fan of Rachael Ray. Every once in a while, after a weekend spent in front of the tv watching Food Network shows, I get tired of her, but after a break I remember why I like her so much. Her cookbooks rarely let me down, for one thing. No one's claiming that 30 Minute Meals is any kind of gourmet, fancy-schmancy food, or even health food for that matter. But when you want something better for you than takeout, and fast enough to keep you from giving up and going out anyway, Rachael's cookbooks are the ones to turn to.
At first I was a teeny bit disappointed with this one, because I thought it was going to be a manual on making every recipe in the book suit your needs--one recipe, four different amounts in other words. Instead it's divided into sections: one for meals serving 2, one for meals serving 4, one for meals serving 6...you get the idea. And it works, with many new meals in each section and very little repetition either within the book or using recipes from Rachael's previous cookbooks.
So why four stars instead of five? Because Rachael commits the unpardonable sin on page 30 of calling a menu "Bollywood Night" and then recommending not a Bollywood movie, but Monsoon Wedding. Come on, Rachael! If you're going to talk about Bollywood at least get it right! An irrelevant point, maybe, but important enough to bug me.
At first I was a teeny bit disappointed with this one, because I thought it was going to be a manual on making every recipe in the book suit your needs--one recipe, four different amounts in other words. Instead it's divided into sections: one for meals serving 2, one for meals serving 4, one for meals serving 6...you get the idea. And it works, with many new meals in each section and very little repetition either within the book or using recipes from Rachael's previous cookbooks.
So why four stars instead of five? Because Rachael commits the unpardonable sin on page 30 of calling a menu "Bollywood Night" and then recommending not a Bollywood movie, but Monsoon Wedding. Come on, Rachael! If you're going to talk about Bollywood at least get it right! An irrelevant point, maybe, but important enough to bug me.
reviewed by mattisboss on November 12, 2006 1:35 AM
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I am usually a fan of Rachael Ray's books, however I actually returned this one. For one thing, many of the recipes are not very appetizing. I think Rachael is very good at the basics (as seen in her first two cookbooks), however I feel like she's attempting to be too creative now and it's not working. I also feel like she's repeating the same recipes I've seen a few times in her latest books. I went through the entire cookbook and couldn't even find 10 recipes I wanted to make. Sorry, Rachael, I usually enjoy your books. Perhaps you should either expand your repetoire by attending some cooking classes or just stick to the basics.
reviewed by daddyadd on November 19, 2006 1:50 AM
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`2, 4, 6, 8 Great Meals for Couples or Crowds' by `name above the title' Rachael Ray is the latest twist on her probably copyrighted `30-Minute Meal' cookbook rubric. I rarely use Ms. Ray's recipes; however, I have an enduring respect for the quality of her presentation to her audience who wants to cook at home, but not make either a hobby or a career of it.
The broad audience for this book, as announced in the title, is couples, small families, and larger families / entertaining occasions. My first impression is that Ms. Ray and her colleagues would have done better to make this into two books; one for couples only and one for large group entertaining. But then, each audience would have been smaller than these two audiences combined.
The very best thing about this book is that it brings back a presentation of recipes which matches the format of her '30 Minute Meals' show, where work on three or more different dishes is interwoven to reach the end of the half hour with a complete meal. The absence of this pattern has been a complaint by many reviewers. Its return clearly adds value to the presentation in this book.
A second important value to this book is that it does not simply do the same 25 or so menus with the four different serving numbers. That is not to say that such a book would not be a good idea. It's just likely that in many recipes, multiplying quantities could invalidate the 30-minute time limit. Also, the level of detail needed to get all this math straight would likely ruin Ms. Ray's patently breezy style. Another value to having 100 or so different menus is that each menu has a theme that may strike a chord when you browse the book for entertaining ideas. And, if a two (2) or four (4) person menu appeals to you as the basis for a party, you can always do the math yourself and bump it up to eight or more seats.
The ability to do this math is part and parcel of something I've always said about Rachael's cooking. You will succeed in coming close to her 30 minutes only if you have some basic skills in the kitchen. That is, you need to know how to cook. And, buying one of Rachael's Santoku knives will not instantly impart good knife skills to your digits. You need to practice and be able to dissect your mirepoix (onions, carrots, and celery) in a few minutes in order to get the full benefit of Miss Rachael's cooking fast with mostly fresh, basic ingredients instead of using a lot of prepared produce.
One new observation I can make about Rachael's books is that it simply does not fuss with non-essentials. There is no Martha Stewart or Ina Garten or even `semi-homemade' Sandra Lee fussing with table settings or decorations or centerpiece ephemera. Rachael is all about the food, and matching the food to the mood.
Rachael as much as says that her recipe write-ups are literally ghost-written for her by scribe, Pam Krauss, from, I suspect, a collection of notes and recordings on a pocket Dictaphone. This professional wordsmithing may account for the fact that these recipes are all very nicely written, with just enough detail to guide a modestly experienced cook. Ms. Krauss does keep all those famous Rayspeak expressions such as EVOO, sammies, stoups, and scrambles. As I detect a slight improvement over the years in Ms. R's recipe writing, these neologisms have ceased to annoy me, and I suspect her audience would miss them if they went away.
Regarding how much this book overlaps her earlier volumes, I'm sure there is some, but I believe the added value of the complete menu format by size of table makes up for any burger, soup, or salad recipes which may have appeared in earlier books. Another big saving grace is Rachael's traditional lower than usual list price. How can you argue with 200 well-organized recipes for under $20 list price!
Thank goodness Ms. Rachael's audience is fairly young, because one irritation I continue to find in her books is the poorly coordinated pastel type on a similarly hued, but darker background, making this text hard to read. Even the excellent index is done in a dark Robin's egg blue and sans serif font which I simply find harder to read than a solid black Times New Roman font. Rachael, in the next book, please loose the pastel palette!
Otherwise, a proud addition to a worthy line of books for people who want to cook, but not make a career of it!
The broad audience for this book, as announced in the title, is couples, small families, and larger families / entertaining occasions. My first impression is that Ms. Ray and her colleagues would have done better to make this into two books; one for couples only and one for large group entertaining. But then, each audience would have been smaller than these two audiences combined.
The very best thing about this book is that it brings back a presentation of recipes which matches the format of her '30 Minute Meals' show, where work on three or more different dishes is interwoven to reach the end of the half hour with a complete meal. The absence of this pattern has been a complaint by many reviewers. Its return clearly adds value to the presentation in this book.
A second important value to this book is that it does not simply do the same 25 or so menus with the four different serving numbers. That is not to say that such a book would not be a good idea. It's just likely that in many recipes, multiplying quantities could invalidate the 30-minute time limit. Also, the level of detail needed to get all this math straight would likely ruin Ms. Ray's patently breezy style. Another value to having 100 or so different menus is that each menu has a theme that may strike a chord when you browse the book for entertaining ideas. And, if a two (2) or four (4) person menu appeals to you as the basis for a party, you can always do the math yourself and bump it up to eight or more seats.
The ability to do this math is part and parcel of something I've always said about Rachael's cooking. You will succeed in coming close to her 30 minutes only if you have some basic skills in the kitchen. That is, you need to know how to cook. And, buying one of Rachael's Santoku knives will not instantly impart good knife skills to your digits. You need to practice and be able to dissect your mirepoix (onions, carrots, and celery) in a few minutes in order to get the full benefit of Miss Rachael's cooking fast with mostly fresh, basic ingredients instead of using a lot of prepared produce.
One new observation I can make about Rachael's books is that it simply does not fuss with non-essentials. There is no Martha Stewart or Ina Garten or even `semi-homemade' Sandra Lee fussing with table settings or decorations or centerpiece ephemera. Rachael is all about the food, and matching the food to the mood.
Rachael as much as says that her recipe write-ups are literally ghost-written for her by scribe, Pam Krauss, from, I suspect, a collection of notes and recordings on a pocket Dictaphone. This professional wordsmithing may account for the fact that these recipes are all very nicely written, with just enough detail to guide a modestly experienced cook. Ms. Krauss does keep all those famous Rayspeak expressions such as EVOO, sammies, stoups, and scrambles. As I detect a slight improvement over the years in Ms. R's recipe writing, these neologisms have ceased to annoy me, and I suspect her audience would miss them if they went away.
Regarding how much this book overlaps her earlier volumes, I'm sure there is some, but I believe the added value of the complete menu format by size of table makes up for any burger, soup, or salad recipes which may have appeared in earlier books. Another big saving grace is Rachael's traditional lower than usual list price. How can you argue with 200 well-organized recipes for under $20 list price!
Thank goodness Ms. Rachael's audience is fairly young, because one irritation I continue to find in her books is the poorly coordinated pastel type on a similarly hued, but darker background, making this text hard to read. Even the excellent index is done in a dark Robin's egg blue and sans serif font which I simply find harder to read than a solid black Times New Roman font. Rachael, in the next book, please loose the pastel palette!
Otherwise, a proud addition to a worthy line of books for people who want to cook, but not make a career of it!
reviewed by sandi on November 19, 2006 8:08 PM