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Short Ingredient list, simple directions, and a few shortcuts are all you need.

A Cookbook for the Time Challenged
Do you like to cook, but find it difficult to cook from scratch on a weeknight? So many cookbooks assume a larger pantry and an earlier start-time than I usually have during the week. The Quick Six Fix by Stuart O’Keefe might be just the thing you need to avoid that box of Mac-n-Cheese and make something delicious in no time at all.

The cover says it all: 6 ingredients, 6 minutes prep, 6 minutes cleanup. Now, truth be told, most recipes in the book don’t conform to 6/6/6. However, the instructions are cleverly laid out to minimize time start to finish, including cleanup.

The dinner came together quickly and was delicious!

Test Drive a Recipe: Speedy Cioppino
The first recipe I tried was for Speedy Cioppino, a fresh fish stew. I had most of the pantry ingredients on hand, so I just stopped to pick up a mix of seafood and a fresh baguette on my way home from work. Basil from the garden did allow me to drop the grocery ingredients by one!  The recipe claimed 6 minutes of prep, 35 minutes of cooking, and 6 minutes of cleanup.  I timed myself and we sat down to dinner 40 minutes after the seafood hit the kitchen counter. Not bad! Paired with a glass of Fino sherry, the cioppino was delicious.

Thoughts on the Quick Six Fix
The recipes are well thought out and they concentrate on a low number of ingredients outside of pantry staples. They wisely balance prepped food from the grocery store such as pre-washed greens, or already peeled shrimp with fresh ingredients. To keep things simple, sometimes steps are combined which an experienced cook may want to separate.  In our cioppino, all the seafood was added at once, when I might have added the clams, shrimp and fish at slightly different times, a minor complaint.

Almost every recipe is accompanied by a beautiful full page photo to help entice you to try making the dish. All in all, a nice addition to the bookshelf, especially for those time challenged weeknights!

One page ingredient list and instructions, and a facing page with a beautiful photo.

The publisher provided the cookbook with a request for a review if I liked the book, but no expectations beyond the request. All opinions expressed are my own.