texasmesquite

Cookbook Showcase: Indulge taste for takeout at home

By Pam Miller-Jenkins
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
Source: Omaha.com

In a nutshell: Rachael Ray's latest release comes not in a book but in the form of a deck of recipe cards. This deck is composed of “Make Your Own Take Out” (M.Y.O.T.O.) recipes from some of her more recent cookbooks. “Make Your Own Take Out” — a staple feature in most of her cookbooks — is pretty self-explanatory; if you're a fan of the types of meals you can take out from a favorite restaurant, then these recipes are for you.

Features: Asian recipes, Tex-Mex, burgers and sandwiches (or “sammies” as Ray calls them) and pizza.
Pluses: I love the recipe card approach. I've long been frustrated with the binding on many of Ray's cookbooks: To follow a recipe near the front or the back of a book, you need a large binder clip or some kind of heavy object to hold down the page to keep the book from flipping closed. With this deck, I pulled out a card, put it on a magnetic clip and placed it on the hood of the stove to make following the recipe easy.
Her Asian recipes are mildly spiced (although she encourages cooks to adjust the spices and heat on her recipes as desired), which allows me to make dishes my whole family can enjoy while indulging my yearnings for Chinese, Indian and Thai food.
Minuses: More than 50 recipes? I counted only 42 cards, which with variations made 46 dishes. And the flip side of a recipe card deck is that it can be easy to misplace or lose a recipe card. Some of Ray's fans may be disappointed that these aren't new recipes, but I've been hoping for a compilation of just takeout recipes. Her later cookbooks have M.Y.O.T.O. recipes sprinkled throughout. (Some of her earlier cookbooks had chapters solely devoted to takeout-style dishes, which made finding those types of recipes easier. )
We tried: Thai Chicken Noodle Soup and Indian Spiced Chickpea and Fire-roasted Tomato Soup.
The verdict: The flavor on the tomato soup was a little too mild for the adults, but the kids loved it. But the Thai Chicken Noodle Soup was a big winner with the entire family. My husband has mentioned repeatedly that we should prepare that dish again.
As has been noted numerous times, it's pretty difficult to make Ray's recipes in 30 minutes, but the preparation times were not unreasonably long, either.

Thai Chicken Noodle Soup/

2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 medium yellow onion, quartered and thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 poblano or Anaheim peppers, seeded and thinly sliced
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup shredded carrots
6 cups chicken stock
2 pounds chicken tenders, cut into bite-size chunks
1 small bundle from a 3.75-ounce package of bean thread noodles (there are usually 3 bundles in a package)
3 tablespoons fresh cilantro leaves, chopped
15 fresh basil leaves, roughly chopped
Juice of 1 lime

Heat a large, heavy-bottomed soup pot with the vegetable oil over high heat. Once you see the oil ripple, add the onions, garlic and sliced peppers. Season the vegetables with salt and pepper and cook, stirring frequently, for two minutes.
Add the carrots and chicken stock. Cover with a lid and bring up to a simmer. Once the stock is simmering, add the chicken and noodles and simmer for 10 minutes more. Remove the soup from the heat and add the cilantro, basil and lime juice.
Makes four servings.