Make great food fast, and pretty, too

NEW YORK -- On one of the first real days of spring in the city, it's already Thanksgiving in the surprisingly small test kitchen for Everyday Food magazine.

The room smells of pumpkin and onions, and a half-dozen aproned cooks are gathered around the kitchen island, forks in hand, sampling a potato gratin, the latest entry for the November 2007 issue.

Sure, it tastes good -- any test kitchen's goal. But this is what the group asks associate food editor Charlyne Mattox: How much effort did it take?

"How long does this take to cook?" "What if the cheese just went on top? Or not at all?" "Does it need to be that dense?"

In the end, the cheese and some onions are in doubt, and Mattox will make a new, quicker version the next day -- something deputy food editor Allie Lewis thinks will surprise readers with its simplicity.

"It's pretty revolutionary to put cream and potatoes into a casserole and get that," says Lewis.

This is the ethos behind Martha Stewart's by-all-counts successful Everyday Food magazine and its new best-of cookbook, "Great Food Fast": Use just a few ingredients, but make sure they're fresh and healthy. Use as few steps as possible, but make sure the dish packs a taste punch and looks good on the plate.

The book is one of many "quick-prep" collections new on the market this spring, as ever time-pressed Americans continue their quest to shave minutes off dinner hour labor. But it's not enough to be quick anymore. To succeed, these books must celebrate the "wow" factor.

The category's hottest entries focus on fresh and healthy ingredients, with nary a can of condensed soup in sight. Maybe even more importantly, they emphasize stunning visuals that appeal to cooks raised in the age of the Food Network, and look like books you'd be proud to display in your kitchen.

"There are at least six or seven new releases in that category this month, and they all have a really nice presence as a cookbook," says Brad Parsons, a senior editor at Amazon.com. "There's nothing disposable about them."

The Everyday Food brand is arguably among the sharpest purveyors of these philosophies today, industry watchers say.

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia produced its first test issue of Everyday Food magazine in January 2003, and announced it would expand to 10 issues a year just six months later, right after Stewart was indicted on charges that she lied to federal investigators about a personal stock trade.

Much was made of the move, as the magazine's simple recipes departed from the aspirational, complex projects often found in the company's flagship title. Additionally, the magazine put forth its staff as food experts rather than focusing on Stewart; it was the company's first magazine without her name in the title.

Each digest-sized magazine includes vivid photography of every dish. Sections such as "On the Side," feature easy recipes like roasted carrots and shallots that could add interest to even the plainest broiled chicken.

The magazine hit profitability in 2006, according to the company. Ad pages were up 40 percent in 2006 from the previous year, and paid circulation has grown by 38 percent to 933,307 since 2004, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. Its PBS food series is in its third season.

The success of the magazine exemplifies Martha Stewart at her best, tapping into the way Americans are thinking now, says Melissa Pordy, director of media investment solutions for Cheil Communications America, which buys advertising for clients across all media.

"She provides efficiency and effectiveness without sacrificing aesthetic appeal," she says of the magazine.

On April 1, "Great Food Fast" hit the top of The New York Times paperback advice best-seller list. (The last cookbook in that spot came in January, "Rachael Ray 2,4,6,8," another book promising meals in 30 minutes.)

"Great Food Fast" includes about 250 recipes, arranged by season. There's plenty of pasta and chicken breast dishes -- busy home cook standbys -- but also a Korean dish called beef bulgogi; fish tacos; Indian-spiced chicken burgers (on the test kitchen lunch menu on this day); a party-worthy mushroom tart and desserts such as strawberry shortcakes.

Lewis says each recipe is vetted for taste, health quotient and ease. Her personal test: "Is this something I'd want to go home and cook on a Tuesday night?"

The make-it-fast field of cookbooks and magazines is crowded these days, but the concept is well over 50 years old, says Laura Shapiro, a culinary historian and author of "Julia Child," a new biography of one of America's best-known cookbook authors.

Packaged food companies "manufactured" the idea of the time-crunched family cook to encourage women to buy prepared foods as ingredients for dinner dishes after World War II, Shapiro says. With the growth of two-career homes and a more mobile society, time constraints are much more real today, she said, giving the books a natural market.

Seasonal and healthy ingredients began to play a bigger role in the 1980s, and in recent years moved to the center of things, she said. Now the important thing is for the books to also look good, she says.

Loving photos of finished dishes just a decade ago were more likely to be found only in "the great, glorious" high-end gourmet books, she said. Now quick-prep books feature them, too.

"People want minimal ingredients, they want a real 'wow' factor and they want to see what it's going to look like when its finished," said Alice Dasher, a saleswoman who specializes in cookbooks at Savannah, Ga.'s E. Shaver bookseller, and says "Great Food Fast" epitomizes that ideal.

Parsons traces the change in tone to Mark Bittman's cookbooks that hit in the late 1990s, and approached quick-prep cooking as a more serious culinary pursuit. Today's books take that category to a "new level," particularly with their photography, he says.

Photos of dishes finished and in progress are a big part of Everyday Food's appeal for Eliot Wilson, 37, a New York computer engineer who started subscribing to the magazine two years ago.

"You know what you're getting," said Wilson.

The editors say visuals are always front of mind.

The food staff takes their own photographs of every dish to storyboard each issue long before the dishes are professionally shot. They try to avoid having too many dishes with the same dominant colors, or ingredients, and study how the dishes come across in sequence, says Sandy Gluck, food editor.

They claim a minimum of food styling for their final photographs, attempting to make them look just as they might on readers' dining room tables.

"Everything made on the photo shoot is eaten," Gluck says.

And that's pretty much how they hope it will be when readers try the food at home.

"More than anything," Lewis says, "we want people to be successful in the kitchen."

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On the Net: http://www.marthastewart.com