Diane Phillips

There must have been considerable pressure on Diane Phillips to get Cooking Under Pressure: Top 51 Quick & Easy One Pot Recipes To Get A Dinner In Record Time into print. For one, “to get a dinner in record time” sounds pretty clunky, and no one had time to finesse that clause, nor point out that take-out is faster than even pressure-cooker meals.

But mostly, I deduce the pressure because Phillips didn’t have time to come up with any recipes of her own: All of them come from online show more blogs, so she serves more as a compiler than author. Or maybe she thought it was a way to make an easy buck. You’d have to ask non-author Phillips which. But the fact that, while she was — ahem — borrowing recipes from across the Internet, she was also swiping the title of a better-known and much better cookbook by Lorna J. Sass kind of gives you the answer.

The cookbook, which exists only in the Kindle format, is worth getting if you have a Kindle Unlimited account and can borrow it for free. If not, you’ll do better visiting Laura Pazzaglia’s inestimable blog Hip Pressure Cooking or buying Bob Warden’s fabulous Great Food Fast. show less

Diane Phillip's "Slow Cooker: The Best Cookbook Ever" is a comprehensive, easy to use, crock pot cookbook. The book's approach is to help sophisticated cooks with a crockpot use this convenient kitchen tool to prepare regular meals. Not crockpot specific meals, per se, but things that you might usually cook on the stove top or in the oven, done in the crockpot instead.

After a few weeks of using the cookbook I'm impressed. Unlike most crockpot cookbooks that I've seen, this cookbook helps show more you to cook everything--from vegetable sides to whole huge pies of meat like lamb shoulder to desserts and appetizers--in the crockpot. The cookbook has a TON of recipes broken into different categories like soups, risotto and pasta, meats, party items, etc. Almost everything is made totally from scratch, making this book ideal for someone like me who tries to eat minimally processed foods or for someone who is turned off by the copious amount of canned soups and frozen vegetable called for in most crockpot recipes. The book also has a comprehensive index, which makes it easy to find a recipe for any random item that you might have in the house--for example, I just used the book to make a lovely roast beet salad.

If you're a moderately experienced cook with a crockpot who is looking to expand your use of this helpful tool, this is a good book for you. The recipes aren't the easiest, but they are very good and worth the effort. If you are a crockpot beginner though, this may not be the cookbook for you. show less

My first reaction to pot pies: Comfort Food Under Cover by Diane Phillips was quite positive, in fact, so positive that I wrote the following even before I settled down to take a closer look. “Most pot pies feature a flour-cased crust, which sometimes contains a bit of flavoring. Indeed, this book’s cover depicts a pot pie that appears to have a puff-pastry top crust. Therefore, it came as a pleasant surprise to see that the crusts in this book are quite unusual and planned to complement show more the fillings.”

More careful scrutiny altered my opinion. First, what is the definition of pot pie? I don’t know how a stir-fry topped with a noodle pancake just before serving can be called a pot pie. And is meatloaf topped with mashed potatoes a pot pie? How about a mixture that is topped with mixture of crumbs and cheese? I don’t think so. The more I looked at the recipes, the more bizarre the title seemed. Yes, the combinations are usually tasty, but many are not pot pies.

It also occurs to me that many of these recipes are a lot of work. Not only does one have to create the filling, but one has to create a special mixture for the top “crust”. So, instead of having the filling mixture with a relatively simple side dish, one has to cook two special mixtures.

In addition, there are editorial glitches. One pervasive one is that the directions for topping the fillings are not in the same place from recipe to recipe. It may be in the directions for the filling, or it may be in the directions for the topping, or it may be in both. I often had to deliberately look for the instruction. But that is not the only editorial issue. Another example” “[f] in the whipping cream” instead of “fold in the whipped cream”. show less

nonfiction/cooking - rice cooker as crockpot, many gluten-free friendly recipes

probably not one you would buy (and it evidently didn't circulate that much at my public library), but if you pick it up cheap at a used booksale, the tips and tricks make for interesting reading (if you are, like me, interested in rice-y things). I thought I wouldn't find this that useful, but it does provide some inspiration for crockpot/slow cooker-type meals, so I'll keep it on my shelf for now.