Cat Cora's Classics With A Twist: Fresh Takes on Favorite Dishes

By Cat Cora and Ann Kruegar Spivack

On the wildly popular show Iron Chef America, Cat Cora uses her instincts to transform random ingredients into exciting creations on a moment’s notice. In this book, she turns her eye to some of our most popular dishes to make them faster, fresher, and lighter. These are the swift meals that Cat relies on when she comes home from work to cook for her own family: Greek-Style Nachos, Grilled Chili-Lime Flank Steak Soft Tacos, Crispy Baked Fish Stix with Mustard Dipping Sauce, Quick Chicken Curry with Peas, and Sour-Cherry-Filled Chocolate Cupcakes.  In dishes like Baked “Fried” Calamari with Marinara Dipping Sauce and Tex-Mex Tuna Casserole, Cat puts a new spin on old favorites. She updates others, tossing chipotle-spiced croutons into a Caesar salad, or replacing the usual beef in stroganoff with chicken and adding fresh tarragon. Each recipe illustrates Cat’s motto: just because a dish is a classic doesn’t mean it can’t be improved upon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jun 2, 2010
• ISBN: 9780547487496

Cat Cora

Cat Cora grew up in Jackson, Mississippi, and attended the Culinary Institute of America and worked in New York City before travelling overseas to apprentice in Europe with world-renowned French chefs Georges Blanc and Roger Vergé. She settled in Napa Valley in her first job as a chef. After The Food Network discovered her in 1999, she went on to become the first female Iron Chef for the Network. She is the founder of the charitable organization Chefs for Humanity, a grassroots organization that mobilizes chefs to lend their skills to communities in need, and she has built a brand that includes two food lines, cookware a shoe line, cookbooks and restaurants, in Orlando, Costa Mesa, Houston, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Atlanta, and Singapore. She lives in Santa Barbara.

Reviews for Cat Cora's Classics With A Twist

[etoiline_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

What a wonderful cookbook! I can't wait to try out the recipes. Some of these look somewhat overly complicated and some of the twists aren't up my alley, but the recipes for the classics are well written and intriguing. There were some recipes that I'd never come across before and others that I was very happy to see. Cora is an engaging chef, with notes or tips on nearly every recipe that make it that much better. I only have one gripe: there is no nutritional information for the recipes. But the recipes themselves more than make up for that. Thank you for producing this book!