Review
Title: 20-40-60 Minute Dinners Meals To Match The Time You Have
Author: Kate Otterstrom
Publisher: Shadow Mountain Publishing
Genre: Quick and Easy Cooking, Gluten-free cooking
Year Published: 2023
Number of Pages: 162
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-63993-109-5
Price: $22.99
Reviewed by Elizabeth J. White for the Association of Mormon Letters
Kate Otterstrom is a working mother. It’s a fact because every mother I know is a working mother. Kate’s family is made up of her and her husband and their three little people. On her popular blog, Dinner in Real Time, she has posted ideas and recipes for years to help others create family dinnertime, which is a happy time that doesn’t have to be expensive, unhealthy, or delivered. To achieve this miracle of organization, she has sorted her family’s go-to recipes by the time required to bring them to the table, not by ingredient or cooking method. This is pure genius. How many times have I thought, driving home from after-school pickup or from work, what can I make for dinner tonight that I don’t need to shop for and won’t have me in the kitchen for an hour?
20-40-60 Minute Dinners is divided into chapters for the ultra-quick, early-in-the-day meal prep, slow cooker, make ahead freezer meals, extra add-ons like vegetable side dishes, breakfast, special occasion treats, and pull out all the stops to impress the in-laws at the holiday potluck.
The recipe selection is quite broad, including nostalgic family favorites from her childhood, like Hawaiian Haystacks and her favorite Christmas candy from years ago. Otterstrom includes several heartwarming recollections throughout the book that underline her love of her family, grandparents and bring home the idea that consistent family dinners contribute to overall well-being and establish ties that bind generations together. She also has current recipes for popular items like preserved lemons and sushi. An extra bonus is that since Otterstrom was diagnosed with celiac as an adult, she has included gluten-free options, recipes, and substitutions for almost every dinner idea. Appetizer Plate is one of the many quick and easy dinner ideas. I have done a similar dinner for my family on a movie or fun night; they thought it was a version of “Favorite restaurant food at home” when I did it for “Clean out the odds and ends out of the freezer.” I did find out if I went out intentionally to get several frozen appetizer choices just to have a dinner like this, that this is not a budget dinner choice, it could end up costing more than a delivery pizza.
Several of these dinner ideas should come with a carb warning. When I saw the chicken noodle soup with potatoes and peas all served together, I thought, “This woman must still have a metabolism! I remember having a metabolism!” then I was feeling all nostalgic for the good old days as well. The tortilla soup description caught me off guard. I was skimming pretty quickly, and I thought I read “homemade guacamole icing for soup'” which pulled me up short and not in a good way. The whole sentence actually was, “Homemade guacamole is the icing on the cake for this fantastic soup.” I happen to like both homemade guacamole and tortilla soup, so I counted that as a win-win.
There was a mix of homemade and convenience choices that seemed to reflect our everyday reality: grownup lunchables: charcuterie board, deli-bought soup served as a dinner, breakfast for dinner. I had a few personal reservations with some of the pairings – pancakes with homemade syrup sounded great, but paired with smoked baby carrots just had me wondering Why? If I wanted my children to eat carrots and pancakes together, I would have grated the carrots and turned the pancakes into carrot cake muffins. To be fair, I passed on the smoked carrot recipe and the candied sausage recipe (again, why?), so I cannot give a personal reaction to those recipes. I did try several, which were all very, very good.
I was especially interested in tasty gluten-free recipes since that is part of our family profile’ and I want to make sure I have great recipes when I need to have them. I tested them all on non-restricted eaters, figuring if the omnivores would eat the recipes; I had a double win for the gluten-free eaters. All of them are keepers that I am using instead of the ones jammed in my junk drawer. I made homemade GF noodles for the first time ever, and instead of using them in the chicken noodle soup, I just added some browned butter and grated Parmesan on the top. It was very successful and tasty.
I made the Peanut Butter brittle, also a first. The peanut butter brittle recipe made a lot, which was good since I overcooked it a tad, and about a third stuck to the pan and refused to move. It took soaking the pan in hot water overnight to get it clean, but the candy that did cooperate was very tasty. The GF baguette only survived a few hours and was rated “very good” by a teenage male; the GF pastry framed a chocolate peanut butter silk pie topped with some of the peanut butter brittle, and the leftover pastry bits became pie crust cookies with cinnamon sugar sprinkled on top. I will happily take both of those recipes to all kinds of events. The carb count was climbing by this point, so I made a half recipe of the GF almond Texas sheet cake and baked it in a 9 x 13″ pan. That was delicious. I wanted it to be delicious, as I am a big fan of Texas sheet cake and have never seen an almond version, let alone a GF cake that I would want to eat. I do have to say that it was not a health win for me though, because if you keep going back for just one more bite until half the cake is gone, even GF carbs add up. The neighbors were promised some of the cake, but alas, they never got any. I will only be making that recipe again to be taken to large gatherings because it is guaranteed that no crumbs will be left.
With the GF waffle recipe, I kind of went off script so I could use up the extra egg white and some cinnamon sugar from pie crust cookies, but the waffles were just great as well. I understand the author spent years painstakingly perfecting these recipes, and I just grabbed one and started making changes to it willy-nilly, but that is how my reality works. It is outrageously hard for me to follow a printed recipe – even my own. So the biggest improvement from this adventure was the cookbook motivated me to get into the kitchen and try some brand new things, like the preserved lemons, as well as some standbys, like the GF waffles, that I will use again and again. I actually spent some time cooking intentionally; my family and friends loved the recipes, it was enjoyable, and so I did experience some happiness that comes from bringing loved ones together to break bread. I have missed that.
I was also impressed by the book formatting itself. Otterstrom thoughtfully provides and encourages the use of her margins for notes and personal touches so the cookbook truly becomes “ours” over time. The recipe formatting lists the ingredients to the left and then the preparation to the right in a side-by-side chart. This made it very easy to work on a step or two, run off to take care of a few distractions and drop right back into the recipe at the right step when I made it back to the kitchen. That made the recipes very easy to follow.
I would try out the recipe format for the last few honorable mentions. Here goes:
Kudos: Finishing a book with kids in the house. Grandma Great must be very proud of you.
Concept: great idea, everyone has their own style, and this is a great way to organize recipes and dinners.
Ingredients: fresh and accessible, most are pantry staples, relatively few per dish, no complicated spices
Color photos: an absolute must for a cookbook. Beautiful! My daughter won’t try a recipe without color photos as “evidence,” so this is wonderful.
Recipe selection: broad: nostalgic, homemade, no canned soups or prepackaged mixes anywhere – that is a huge thank you from me, sorted so you can pick your desired time commitment or stress level
Personal stories: parents’ dinner group – what a wonderful tradition; kiddoes are adorable; you and Mr. Kent are lucky to have each other.
This would be the cookbook I would expect to find at my mother-in-law’s that I would browse through at some family gathering and say, “Hey, this sounds fun; why don’t we make this together sometime?” This is a cookbook I would buy for my sister, ex-roommate, and friend when they have their second (or third) baby. This is a cookbook I would buy for myself when I finally get tired of having all my favorite recipes on my phone to scroll through or scratched in hieroglyphics on random sticky notes and stuck on the inside of kitchen cabinet doors or jammed by the handful in the junk drawer for me to sort through every time, I want to find that favorite brownie recipe. So even though I thought some of the recipes were on the quirky side, every last one I did try was a 100% winner, so that tells me, I might have to show those smoked carrots some grace and try them out with the pancakes…someday.