Dueling Cookbooks, at the Count of 3

Are six ingredients too many to qualify as a simple recipe?

How about five? Four? OK, OK, three.

Three measly ingredients. Wouldn’t it be great if you could make a fabulous dish using only three ingredients?

Absolutely. What a great idea. That’s what New York chef Rozanne Gold thought when she decided to sell an idea for a cookbook she had been carrying around in her head for four years.

Gold wanted to write a three-ingredient cookbook that used top-notch ingredients and some clever professional chef techniques to produce simple but exceptional meals. The dishes would be upscale enough to appeal to proficient cooks but simple enough to tempt beginners.

After talking to two interested publishers, Gold sold her idea to the one that offered more money. But the publisher that offered her less ended up publishing a three-ingredient cookbook anyway, releasing it within weeks of Gold’s.

A coincidence? Naw, just the cookbook publishing biz, where publicity is crucial and timing can be everything.

In this case, when HarperCollins didn’t get Gold’s book, the publisher jump-started a similar proposal its editors said they had been mulling over from an outside editor-book packager. That outside editor then made a deal with a Philadelphia writer to put together a three-ingredient cookbook in just six months.

The result: Within a month of one another this spring, Gold’s “Recipes 1-2-3” (Viking, $22.95) and Andrew Schloss’ “Cooking With Three Ingredients” (HarperCollins, $17) were published, and food writers have been comparing and contrasting them ever since.

A spokesman for HarperCollins says there’s no mystery or controversy about what happened. “HarperCollins received both proposals at the same time. We bought one over the other and published it in a timely fashion,” says Steven Sorrentino, vice president and director of publicity. “That’s it in a nutshell.”

But a cookbook editor at another publisher says the “timely fashion” part of the deal, in a notoriously pokey industry, was deliberate. “It’s a clever way to ride the coattails of the publicity for Rozanne’s book. If [Schloss’] book had been published six months before or after, it wouldn’t have gotten nearly the attention.”

As it is, the attention has been somewhat less than desirable. Although New York foodies have gushed over New Yorker Gold’s clearly more sophisticated book, Schloss’ book, aimed at the shortcut-happy home cook, has been savaged.

The New York Times dismissed the book in two paragraphs, saying some of the recipes “defile every meaning of taste.” Newsday gave Schloss a single sentence, calling the book’s reliance on convenience products a throwback to the 1950s. Newsweek magazine accused Schloss of being “so happily wedded to packaged foods that some of the recipes might have sprung from the test kitchens at Kraft or Campbell.”

Other media have been gentler. The Baltimore Sun refrained from making any judgment on the book, opting to interview Schloss (as well as Gold) and to include two of his recipes that don’t call for convenience foods. The Associated Press food writer commented on the 1950s-like recipes but added that “many [of the recipes] use ingredients that 1950s moms never considered, like jasmine rice, black-bean sauce, fresh ginger and coconut milk.”

Although both authors limited themselves to three ingredients (salt, pepper and water don’t count), their books couldn’t be more different in the types of recipes they include.

Schloss, a Philadelphia cooking teacher, has co-written three other cookbooks, including an easy-baking book called “One-Pot Cakes” (William Morrow, 1995). He says he was asked to do a book for “everyday middle America,” one that would appeal to cooks who don’t mind using convenience products like canned soups and bottled salad dressing.

Three months into writing the book, he learned that Gold also was doing a three-ingredient cookbook, but, he says, “I knew that the two books would be completely different. My editor and I talked about this. The feeling was if [my] book was too esoteric in ingredients or flavors, the concept wouldn’t appeal to the right people.”

Although he includes some upscale recipes, such as fresh tuna with caramelized Vidalia onions and mashed potatoes with celeriac, most of the recipes are closer to the kind he recently prepared for a television show in Dallas: Baked Hot Lips Jalapen~o Chicken, in which skinless chicken parts are marinated in jalapen~o ranch dip, coated with corn-bread stuffing mix and baked.

He also includes such pedestrian combinations as ground-turkey meatloaf made with ranch dressing and corn bread stuffing mix, as well as a vile-sounding sauce that combines condensed tomato soup, grape jelly and lemonade concentrate.

His recipes that come closer to hitting the mark include spicy grilled jumbo shrimp marinated in Old Bay seasoning and yogurt.

Schloss acknowledges the criticism he’s gotten but contends that some food writers are out of touch with what everyday time-crunched cooks are looking for.

“There’s a snobbism from the foodies about convenience foods. When I do demonstrations [of my recipes] for regular people, they think they’re great. They pick up my book and say, ‘This is for me. I can do this.’ ”

Gold, too, says she wants people at home--”the people who have become uncomfortable with cooking”--to feel they can make her recipes. On the other hand, she also believes it was crucial that her book appeal to the professional chefs she considers her peers.

She is well-known in the New York food world for her consulting work with the Rainbow Room and the new Windows on the World, as well as for her stint as chef for former New York City Mayor Ed Koch.

“I wanted to get people back into the kitchen cooking again, and if they only had to deal with three things, they might actually do it,” she says. “On another level, many professional chefs are beginning to talk about how a really great chef only needs a couple of ingredients--how simple food and inspired flavors are coming back.”

Her book doesn’t completely shirk convenience foods, but her convenience foods are ones that are, as she puts it, “socially acceptable for chefs to use”--black-olive puree, sun-dried tomatoes in olive oil, the Middle Eastern spice blend za’atar, Chinese oyster sauce, prepared pesto sauce.

Her gift is being able to see such products in an entirely new context--pesto and bread crumbs to coat a rack of lamb, for example, or oyster sauce swirled with butter for a quick steak sauce.

Gold’s long experience as a chef has also taught her the value of a little butter or cream to create a silken sauce out of almost anything--from boiled, pureed broccoli stems to a few squeezes of orange juice. (Her idea of making a pasta sauce from a stick of butter and a can of tomato paste, however, is a dud.)

Other ideas, though, fall into the “duh” category. How many times have we seen recipes for new potatoes roasted with rosemary and olive oil? Who is amazed to discover mashed potatoes with butter and cream?

Gold insists that even these no-brainers contain valuable little techniques, such as her method of using cold butter and warm cream with the mashed potatoes to produce a superior texture.

MAHOGANY SHORT RIBS

Hide the prune-juice bottle and let your guests guess what is in this delicious dish from Gold’s “Recipes 1-2-3.” The prune juice lends some sweetness and is a good foil for the salty teriyaki sauce. Together they produce mahogany-colored, tender, flavorful beef that falls from the bone. The ribs are also delicious the next day. Remove any congealed fat from the top of the sauce and slowly reheat the ribs in the liquid.

3 pounds short ribs

1 cup teriyaki sauce

1 cup prune juice

1 cup water

1/2 teaspoon whole black peppercorns

Cover ribs in mixture of teriyaki sauce and prune juice. Refrigerate, covered, overnight.

Remove ribs from marinade. Bring marinade to boil in large pot with water and peppercorns. Lower heat, add ribs and cover. Simmer until meat is very tender, about 2 hours.

Remove the ribs to platter. Reduce sauce over medium-high heat few minutes to thicken. Pour sauce over short ribs.

Makes 4 servings.

Each serving contains about:

811 calories, 83 gm protein, 23 gm carbohydrates, 41 gm fat, 196 mg cholesterol, 18 gm saturated fat, 2910 mg sodium.

SPICED GRILLED SHRIMP

A winner. Mildly spicy and incredibly easy. From Schloss’ “Cooking With Three Ingredients.”

1 1/2 pounds (16- to 20-count) jumbo shrimp, uncooked

1/2 cup plain yogurt

1 tablespoon Old Bay seasoning

With scissors, slit shrimp shells down center ridge of back. Clean vein from under slit, but do not remove shell.

Mix yogurt with seasoning. Add shrimp and toss to coat. Cover and refrigerate 1 hour.

Prepare hot fire in barbecue grill (or prepare broiler). Lightly grease rack of grill. Grill shrimp 4 inches from heat 90 seconds per side (or broil), until pink and curled. Serve hot or at room temperature. Serve peeled or unpeeled.

Makes 4 servings.

Each serving contains about:

137 calories, 28 gm protein, 1 gm carbohydrates, 1 gm fat, 262 mg cholesterol, trace saturated fat, 437 mg sodium.

CINNAMON-RAISIN BREAD PUDDING

This is put together with items that are easily found at virtually any supermarket or, quite possibly, in your own kitchen. From Schloss’ “Cooking With Three Ingredients.”

1 (16-ounce) loaf raisin-cinnamon bread, cut into 1-inch dice

6 cups milk

2 (3-ounce) boxes cook-and-serve vanilla pudding mix

Toss diced bread with 2 cups milk in 13x9-inch baking dish. Let stand 10 minutes.

In separate bowl, mix remaining milk with pudding mix until smooth. Pour over soaked bread and toss lightly.

Bake at 350 degrees until browned and set almost to middle, about 1 hour. Remove from oven and cool on wire rack at least 15 minutes before serving. Serve warm or chilled.

VARIATION: Make chocolate bread pudding by substituting chocolate loaf cake for the bread, chocolate milk for the plain milk and chocolate pudding for the vanilla.

Makes 12 servings.

Each serving contains about:

230 calories, 7 gm protein, 39 gm carbohydrates, 6 gm fat, 17 mg cholesterol, 3 gm saturated fat, 411 mg sodium.

COFFEE AND VINEGAR POT ROAST

Over the years, Gold has collected a stack of wacky and wonderful recipes from a variety of odd sources. Her favorite, originally known as Lutheran Ladies Peking Beef Roast, says to “burn on both sides and douse with coffee.” Improbable perhaps, but delicious.

1 (5-pound) chuck roast

1 cup white wine vinegar

2 cups strong, hot black coffee

1 cup water

Black peppercorns

Salt, pepper

Put roast in large nonmetallic bowl and pour vinegar over it. Refrigerate 24 to 48 hours, turning several times.

Remove meat from marinade, reserving vinegar. Pat meat dry with paper towels and brown in heavy pot until nearly burned on both sides. Meat will generate its own fat.

Pour coffee and water over roast and scrape up browned bits with wooden spoon. Add 2 tablespoons whole black peppercorns (or combination of black and white) and 1/2 tablespoon salt. Cover and cook slowly until fork-tender, about 3 1/2 hours. Turn several times during cooking. Remove roast from pan; keep warm.

To cooking liquid, add reserved vinegar, as desired, and salt and pepper to taste. Raise heat and reduce liquid until you have 3 cups. Thinly slice roast and heat it 30 minutes more in the liquid (gravy) over very low heat.

Makes about 8 servings.

Each serving contains about:

983 calories, 77 gm protein, 1 gm carbohydrates, 67 gm fat, 282 mg cholesterol, 26 gm saturated fat, 179 mg sodium.