The Everyday Gourmet – Making Great Meals in Less Time – Bill Briwa

We’d all love to create the same wholesome, delicious meals that professional chefs make. But the one thing that often prevents us from doing so: lack of time.

While a lot of TV shows and cookbooks out there focus on quick and simple meals, what they tend to skip is teaching you the actual time-saving techniques themselves. It’s not the 5-minute breakfast or the 30-minute dinner that matters; it’s being able to use the same skills, strategies, and tricks that chefs use so you can make every meal you cook not just great tasting—but an efficient use of your personal time.

The secrets to making great meals in less time are simple and easy to learn. And once you’ve mastered them, you’ll be able to

• use your time more effectively in the kitchen,
• enhance your cooking skills with a range of everyday items,
• avoid giving in to the temptation—and poor nutrition—of fast food, and
• discover just how enriching and rewarding the experience of cooking can be.

And the best part: These techniques can be applied to every meal and almost every dish imaginable, whether you’re cooking for yourself or for that next big dinner party.

In The Everyday Gourmet: Making Great Meals in Less Time, award-winning Chef-Instructor Bill Briwa of the prestigious Culinary Institute of America gets you off the fast-food treadmill to learn tips, techniques, recipes, and simple ingredients to keep on hand for quick, healthy meals that will delight your family and friends. These six innovative and practical lessons, filmed on location at the CIA’s Greystone campus in Napa Valley, are your chance to learn the time-saving secrets of chefs so you can make tasty and rewarding dishes—from appetizers to main courses to desserts—whenever you’re strapped for time.

Time-Saving Insights to Cook Smarter

As Chef Briwa demonstrates throughout this course, the secret to making great meals in less time is learning how to cook and think about kitchen tools and ingredients as professional chefs do working in their own kitchens, where time is always of the essence. His goal is not just to teach you how to cook faster, but how to cook smarter. And by cooking smarter, you’ll turn out better-quality food and enjoy your efforts more, meal after meal.

Every lesson of Making Great Meals in Less Time is filled with insights you can return to again and again whenever you crave a home-cooked meal but are pressed for time.

• Divide kitchen time into parts: Mentally separate your time into three parts to help make cooking more manageable. The first part should be for prepping ingredients and getting things started; the second for keeping up with different tasks; and the third for finishing your dishes—putting the focus on the details of seasoning and presentation, where it belongs.
• Use what you already have: There is an untapped wealth of cooking ideas right in your pantry or fridge. Chef Briwa suggests getting creative (and economical) by using what’s already around you, such as leftovers and canned or jarred items. Then, all you need to do is incorporate a single fresh ingredient to elevate your meal into something spectacular.
• It’s OK to buy dessert: Keep dinner parties simple by ending the meal with store-bought desserts such as small pastries or ice cream with a spectacular sauce and favorite cookies. That way, you can focus your time and effort on cooking a spectacular main course—while still giving guests something sweet afterward.

Delicious Recipes from an Expert Chef

Of course, a highlight of this course is the recipes themselves. In Making Great Meals in Less Time, Chef Briwa provides you with many recipes that you can add to your collection or enhance with your own personal touches.

Some of the dishes and meals you’ll learn how to make include

• breakfast fried rice, complete with eggs and mushrooms;
• hearty clam chowder, with variations featuring corn and fish; and
• panzanella, an Italian bread salad tossed with tomatoes and fresh herbs.

Making Great Meals in Less Time allows you to follow Chef Briwa step by step as he prepares, cooks, and plates these and many other magnificent, good-for-you dishes and meals. And the course comes complete with a guidebook featuring recipes, techniques, and full-color photos.

As soon as you start the first lesson, you’ll immediately learn why so many lifelong learners have praised Chef Briwa’s ability to make cooking look engaging, exciting, and easy for any interested home cook. And he brings his more than 30 years of cooking and instruction experience into every minute of this series.

So whether you’re cooking for an everyday meal or a special occasion, take the stress out of your kitchen and discover just how rewarding it can be to make delicious home-cooked meals in less time.

6 Lectures

Average 33 minutes each

1. Into the Mind of a Chef
2. Launching the Day
3. One Fresh Thing
4. Evolution of a Quick Dish
5. What Makes a Meal?
6. A Chef Entertains