The host of Food Network's Dinner: Impossible shows busy people how to keep food simple but delicious

Chef Robert Irvine goes where few chefs dare. As the host of Food Network's Dinner: Impossible, he has cooked on a desert island, in an eighteenth-century kitchen, inside an ice hotel, and even for cowpunchers on a cattle drive. In Impossible to Easy, he converts the classical and improvisational kitchen skills he's learned during the past twenty-five years under some of the most challenging conditions into advice to help the home cook achieve mastery in his or her own kitchen.

Irvine shows how to approach ingredients in new and familiar ways, how to plan and execute delicious meals every time, and how to guarantee maximum flavor from every dish. By establishing a few simple organizational, shopping, and storage habits, home cooks can not only get the most out of fresh foods and spices but elevate their everyday meals to a higher level of accomplishment and enjoyment. Here, too, is advice on useful equipment and implements, pantry staples, do-ahead tips, and 111 easy-to-master recipes (many complete with timelines, and half of which are gluten free) that are sure to keep family and friends coming back for more. By separating each process into its constituent parts, anyone can easily create such tasty dishes as Lime-Cured Shrimp and Roasted Corn Chowder, Porcini-Dusted Pork Chops with Cremini Mushrooms and Golden Raisins over Horseradish-Scented Potatoes, Pommes Frites with Chipotle Aioli, Duck Confit with Three-Bean Cassoulet, Windy City Stovetop Pizza, Braised Asian Pear with Roquefort and Sweet Port Wine Dressing, Banana Chocolate-Hazelnut Crepes, and dozens more right in his or her own home.

The conceit of the Food Network show Dinner: Impossible is that dinner is always possible, and in this quirky cookbook, host Irvine (Mission: Cook!) brings his show-tested know-how (frogs leg’s over an open fire, anyone?) to home cooking. In his Mise-En Place chapter, for instance, he outlines an approach for getting organized, developing a personal arsenal of tools and ingredients and using the freezer as a strategic weapon, then includes a series of recipes that demonstrate the importance of setting up ahead of time, like dishes of flour, egg and breadcrumbs for a veal cutlet that needs breading or assembling different components in a logical order for duck confit with three-bean cassoulet. Irvine’s dishes range from the prosaic (chicken pot pie; scalloped potatoes) to the wild (venison potatoes brandade; sea scallops over leeks with mango curry chocolate sauce) but his can-do attitude, emphasis on technique and helpful timelines make them equally approachable. While readers may find that the order of the book is a bit unconventional, those willing to delve into it will find Irvine’s advice practical and illuminating and his recipes solid. Photos.(Mar.)