Rating: 
Summary: Reliable recipes requiring little time
Review: Five of the six recipes I have prepared have been excellent. The one that did not work may have been because I use bleached rather than the unbleached flour called for. Five good meals out of six is a far better track record than I have ever had before. I am a novice who sees value in having home-cooked meals. This is not easy since I work full time and have to travel at times. I find this book very easy to use - can find recipes that are appealing, use a reasonable number of ingredients, and have a prep time of less than an hour - half of which is usually baking time. The one complication with the recipes is that they sometimes call for ingredients not readily available standard grocery stores, such as red lentils or garam masala. This problem can be addressed if you have ready access to a large health or specialty food store. I feel confident that my time will be well spent and that meals will be enjoyable when I use this book.
Rating: 
Summary: Long format for a quick recipe - not what I expected
Review: I bought this book because I love the Best Recipe series and the Cook's Illustrated magazine. This book was not what I expected. I was expecting to find recipes that are delicious, a trademark of the series, but would be very fast. I assume that a 'quick' recipe is 1/2 hour. This book uses an hour as its limit. In many cases this may include the cooking time. I was expecting to find good meals that I could prepare very quickly. Apparently my definition of 'very quickly' is too fast. I also found it ironic that the editors stayed with their usual format -- a lengthy description of all the experiments that they tried to come up with a perfect recipe. This may be appropriate for the rest of their scholarly series, but I don't want to spend a long time reading the background of how this quick recipe was developed. I am here to save time. The recipes included are very good. They also cover a variety of topics, including breads and desserts. However, I did not find them 'quick' enough to warrant a separate cookbook. There also was not enough full meals in here . If I have to make 3 quick recipes at an hour apiece for one meal, then the entire meal is far from quick.
Rating: 
Summary: Very good book from Cook's Illustrated team.
Review: I understand where another reviewer got confused: you might assume that this book would consist of quick little recipes--fast reading and fast prep. For the Cook's staff these are quick recipes, but compared to the recent success of Rachael Ray's books these recipes aren't that quick!I should say that I really like this collection. I turn to it often for ideas. I may have spent half a day preparing an entree only to remember that I forgot to prepare a vegetable--out comes the book! The same goes for starches, salads, dessert, etc. If I need an idea fast I pull out this book along with Joy of Cooking and possibly Bittman (though don't get me started on his shortcomings). Let me remind potential consumers here that this is indeed a collection. You will see overlap if you have read the magazine for years. Though, strangely, they will update certain things in the book without making that crystal clear to magazine subscribers. In other words, you may think that Cook's favors a certain brand of unsalted butter based on magazine reviews. In the book you may find that they have switched brands on you! Here are a few recipes I have tried that work:
Chinese chicken salad
Broiled asparagus
Glazed carrots
Warm spinach salad
Roasted potatoes (memorize this one)
Pan-seared salmon (high heat saute of fish will smell up your pan and your kitchen)
Quick chicken noodle soup
Stuffed chicken breasts
All forms of stir-fry
Cinnamon rolls
There are others I have tried, but suffice it to say that I really use this book. If you have an expanded definition of "quick," and you respect the Cook's Illustrated methods then you will find this to be one of their better tomes.
Rating:
Summary: Very good book from Cook's Illustrated team.
Review: I understand where another reviewer got confused: you might assume that this book would consist of quick little recipes--fast reading and fast prep. For the Cook's staff these are quick recipes, but compared to the recent success of Rachael Ray's books these recipes aren't that quick! I should say that I really like this collection. I turn to it often for ideas. I may have spent half a day preparing an entree only to remember that I forgot to prepare a vegetable--out comes the book! The same goes for starches, salads, dessert, etc. If I need an idea fast I pull out this book along with Joy of Cooking and possibly Bittman (though don't get me started on his shortcomings). Let me remind potential consumers here that this is indeed a collection. You will see overlap if you have read the magazine for years. Though, strangely, they will update certain things in the book without making that crystal clear to magazine subscribers. In other words, you may think that Cook's favors a certain brand of unsalted butter based on magazine reviews. In the book you may find that they have switched brands on you! Here are a few recipes I have tried that work:
Chinese chicken salad
Broiled asparagus
Glazed carrots
Warm spinach salad
Roasted potatoes (memorize this one)
Pan-seared salmon (high heat saute of fish will smell up your pan and your kitchen)
Quick chicken noodle soup
Stuffed chicken breasts
All forms of stir-fry
Cinnamon rolls
There are others I have tried, but suffice it to say that I really use this book. If you have an expanded definition of "quick," and you respect the Cook's Illustrated methods then you will find this to be one of their better tomes.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but maybe not great . . .
Review: Ideally I'd give this cookbook 3.5 stars because I don't think I have made enough of the recipes to really know how good the cookbook is. I love to cook and normally average 90 minutes cooking dinner. I bought the book becuase I enjoy Cook's Illustrated and I wanted to add some quicker meals to my repertoire. I have made five dishes and only one would I not do again (the cinnamon buns that look so tasty on the cover). Another I would modify. Besides the fact that the recipes really do take 60 minutes or less from start to finish, I appreciate that the ingredients lists are basic and fairly short. You don't have to stock your pantry with all sorts of crazy items that you use only once in a while. These are fairly basic recipes--the kind you get the gist of after making once or twice and then add your own embellishments if you are in a creative mood.
Rating:
Summary: More goodness from Cook's Illustrated
Review: If you aren't already familiar with Cook's Illustrated or the Best Recipe series, and you realize that cooking involves more than a microwave, you absolutely need to get familiar with both. The combination of real-world cooking, detailed research, clear goals, and well designed recipes makes any of the series (or magazine) well worth seeking out. In The Quick Recipe, the focus is on dishes that can be made from start to finish in 30-60 minutes. My mouth was watering going through this book for the first time, you'd be amazed at what Cook's has managed to keep under the hour mark, without resorting to low quality short-cuts... Even Jambalaya appears in this volume!
Rating:
Summary: More goodness from Cook's Illustrated
Review: If you aren't already familiar with Cook's Illustrated or the Best Recipe series, and you realize that cooking involves more than a microwave, you absolutely need to get familiar with both. The combination of real-world cooking, detailed research, clear goals, and well designed recipes makes any of the series (or magazine) well worth seeking out. In The Quick Recipe, the focus is on dishes that can be made from start to finish in 30-60 minutes. My mouth was watering going through this book for the first time, you'd be amazed at what Cook's has managed to keep under the hour mark, without resorting to low quality short-cuts... Even Jambalaya appears in this volume!
Rating: 
Summary: Not so well tested?
Review: The format of this book is pretty nice. The discussions are interesting, the recipes easy to follow, and the time estimates just slightly conservative. However, the seasoning is too tame and, ironically, the recipes don't seem to have been tested all that well.
The red lentils in coconut milk were underseasoned, even after doubling the garam masala and adding the optional cayenne pepper. The accompanying rice pillau was acceptable, but nothing special.
A tasty sounding recipe for polenta with roasted tomatoes and mozarella cheese was bland and the tomatoes, which were supposed to stay in the oven for 22 to 25 minutes, were burnt after only 15 min.
The chicken-under-brick *was* tasty and the skin came out crisp and flavorful, BUT it wasn't cooked all the way through. I tried this one twice, thinking that the first chicken was too large, and even cooked to a higher temperature the second time, but the chicken was still raw on the bottom. In retrospect, the bottom of the chicken only cooks in the oven for 10 minutes resting on raw potatoes. How could it possibly cook through?
Two stars for style and good ideas, but I probably won't be cooking directly from this book any more.
Rating:
Summary: Great for time-challenged novice chefs
Review: There are few recipes here that are very inspired. This anthology seems very hastily put together (perhaps that's the real quickness) and again like the previous reviewed said a quick review of their magazine with all that why this recipe is sooo good. Problem is the recipes are often bland and when you read why you can often see what they did wrong. That was helpful ;-)
but still there are other books out here in this space and I'd recommend giving them a try instead.
Rating:
Summary: Not very tasty
Review: There are few recipes here that are very inspired. This anthology seems very hastily put together (perhaps that's the real quickness) and again like the previous reviewed said a quick review of their magazine with all that why this recipe is sooo good. Problem is the recipes are often bland and when you read why you can often see what they did wrong. That was helpful ;-)
but still there are other books out here in this space and I'd recommend giving them a try instead.
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