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Sam Zien is the creator and host of Sam the Cooking Guy and Just Cook This! on the Discovery Health Channel. Since first airing in 2002, Sam has won eight Emmy Awards. His Web site is thecookingguy.com.

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Sam Zien is a regular guy who cooks great food. No cutesy patter. No foo-foo ingredients. Just easy, great-tasting stuff that real people like you can make, served up with lots of humor. All of which has made him one of today's fastest-rising TV food stars—the host of Sam the Cooking Guy as well as Just Cook This! on the Discovery Health Channel. Sam's e-mail inbox has long been flooded with requests for a cookbook. Now, he finally delivers.

Just a Bunch of Recipes features 126 of Sam's all-time favorite recipes. All of them are big in taste and small in effort—crowd-pleasingdishes that skip the weird ingredients and complicated steps and focus on the flavor. You can't go wrong with any of Sam's recipes—they're all seriously good and seriously easy. Once you start fixing them for your family and friends, you'll be the one everyone turns tofor great everyday food.

For quick family meals, Sam is your man. Choose from recipes like Shrimp Tacos,Buffalo Chicken Pizza, and Steak Salad withBlue Cheese Crumbles as well as super-fast favorites such as Chili Corn Chip Bags and Tomato and Potato Chip Sandwiches. On weekends, kick things off with a Pastrami Benedict or Banana Bread French Toast for brunch—then wow your friends with "company" dishes like Tomato and Yellow Pepper Gazpacho and Teriyaki and Bacon Scallops. Try out a "Three-Two-One" Bloody Mary, Sammy-Boy's Margarita, or Lager and Lime for good measure. And for dessert, forget about it—you haven't lived until you've tried Sam's Ice-Cream Sandwich Deal, Doughnutmis? ("tiramis?" made with powdered doughnuts), and Grilled Pound Cake with Fresh Fruit.

Complete with photos of Sam as well as his inimitable take on essential kitchen tools and ingredients, Sam the Cooking Guy is all you need to start fixing food that's unbelievably easy and delicious. So make a run to the store, invite some friends, and head for the kitchen. As Sam says, "You can cook too, but some of you just don't know it yet."

Aus dem Klappentext

Sam Zien is a regular guy who cooks great food. No cutesy patter. No foo-foo ingredients. Just easy, great-tasting stuff that real people like you can make, served up with lots of humor. All of which has made him one of today's fastest-rising TV food stars the host of Sam the Cooking Guy as well as Just Cook This! on the Discovery Health Channel. Sam's e-mail inbox has long been flooded with requests for a cookbook. Now, he finally delivers.

Just a Bunch of Recipes features 126 of Sam's all-time favorite recipes. All of them are big in taste and small in effort crowd-pleasingdishes that skip the weird ingredients and complicated steps and focus on the flavor. You can't go wrong with any of Sam's recipes they're all seriously good and seriously easy. Once you start fixing them for your family and friends, you'll be the one everyone turns tofor great everyday food.

For quick family meals, Sam is your man. Choose from recipes like Shrimp Tacos,Buffalo Chicken Pizza, and Steak Salad withBlue Cheese Crumbles as well as super-fast favorites such as Chili Corn Chip Bags and Tomato and Potato Chip Sandwiches. On weekends, kick things off with a Pastrami Benedict or Banana Bread French Toast for brunch then wow your friends with "company" dishes like Tomato and Yellow Pepper Gazpacho and Teriyaki and Bacon Scallops. Try out a "Three-Two-One" Bloody Mary, Sammy-Boy's Margarita, or Lager and Lime for good measure. And for dessert, forget about it you haven't lived until you've tried Sam's Ice-Cream Sandwich Deal, Doughnutmis? ("tiramis?" made with powdered doughnuts), and Grilled Pound Cake with Fresh Fruit.

Complete with photos of Sam as well as his inimitable take on essential kitchen tools and ingredients, Sam the Cooking Guy is all you need to start fixing food that's unbelievably easy and delicious. So make a run to the store, invite some friends, and head for the kitchen. As Sam says, "You can cook too, but some of you just don't know it yet."

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Sam the Cooking Guy

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

The weekends are very different from the weekdays, right? So why make the food the same? Go out on a limb and make something different-and a different cereal doesn't cut it. Unless you mix two or three of them together like my Grandma Jenny used to do. (She was a cereal master. What that woman could do with Cheerios[R], Lucky Charms[R], and shredded wheat would make your head spin.)

"Three-Two-One" Pomegranate Sammy's Hash Pull-Apart Lox, Spinach, Mush Frittata French Tuna Cristo & Goat Cheese Benedict Banana Toast Blueberry Bloody Mary Champagne Browns Cinnamon Eggs & Onions room & Bacon Toast Mountain Smoked Salmon Pizza Pastrami Bread French Cinnamon Ring

Liquid Brunch

Nothing says brunch like a "hello" cocktail, and these are two that we serve to kick-start the day. But we don't have them "every day," only on brunch days for God's sake-just days that end in a y.

"Three-Two-One" Bloody Mary

Serves 1

This is a hybrid of the Canadian version of a Bloody Mary. It's made with Clamato juice instead of tomato-but don't worry, it's not like drinking a bowl of clams.

Ice 3 ounces vodka 2 ounces Clamato juice you'll find it in the store by the tomato juice 1 ounce dark beer (like Newcastle Brown Ale) -save the rest for a marinade 2 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce 1 fat teaspoon prepared horseradish 1/2 teaspoon celery salt 2 or 3 good dashes of your favorite hot sauce 3 good grinds black pepper 1 large wedge of lime

Fill a cocktail shaker 1/3 of the way with ice and also add ice to a serving glass. Add the vodka, Clamato, beer, Worcestershire, horseradish, celery salt, hot sauce, and pepper to the shaker. Shake really well and pour over the fresh ice in the glass. Squeeze and drop in the lime wedge, sit back, and enjoy.

Note: The urge to hum "O Canada" is completely natural and, I assure you, only temporary.

Pomegranate Champagne

Serves 6

I'm not a huge champagne guy, and even less huge when it comes to the classic Mimosa (champagne & OJ), which I find a bit sweet. But pomegranate juice is tart and makes a very different, yet still special drink. There's really no need to buy expensive champagne when you're mixing it like this-that would just be unnecessary.

Ice One 750 ml bottle of champagne or sparkling wine by the way, "sparkling wine" is just champagne that comes from somewhere other than the "Champagne" region of France 9 ounces pomegranate juice 1 lemon, cut into wedges

Add ice to glasses, then fill with champagne and juice. Squeeze, then drop in the lemon wedge and serve.

Sammy's Hash Browns

Serves 2

Breakfast is easily my favorite meal, and over the years I'm sure I've had hundreds of pounds of lousy, weak, or tasteless hash browns (which somehow I still managed to eat). But the thought of all those bad extra calories just makes me want to scream. Learn from my mistakes and make these.

1 teaspoon olive oil 1/2 onion any color you like, diced small 1/2 red bell pepper, diced small Half of a 2-ounce package of "ready bacon," diced small 1 large russet potato, peeled and shredded just before you're going to use it Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste Sour cream, for serving (optional)

Heat the olive oil in a nonstick pan over medium heat. Add the onion and red pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the bacon and cook for another couple of minutes. Squeeze and discard any liquid from the potato, add to the cooked onion and pepper, and mix well. Flatten down with a spatula, and cook until crispy and brown on the bottom. Then flip and cook until crispy and brown on the other side-you're cooking it like a giant pancake. Serve in wedges alone or with some sour cream.

A little inexpensive caviar on the sour cream wouldn't be the worst thing in the world, you know.

Cinnamon Pull-Apart

Makes 1 Bundt pan's worth

Hot, drippy, gooey, and cinnamon-y-the ideal weekend food. It's also the ideal "I'm sorry" peace offering. Plus, it can right a bunch of wrongs. You make it for someone and you're not only saying "I'm sorry" but also "Boy, was it foolish of me to say you're starting to age just like your mother."

1 cup pecan pieces 1/2 cup raisins 12/3 cups granulated sugar 1 1/2 sticks (12 tablespoons) butter 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon Three 10-ounce packages refrigerator biscuits, quartered

Preheat the oven to 350F. Grease a Bundt pan really well and scatter half the pecans and raisins in the bottom. Stir 1 cup of the sugar and all the butter in a small pot over medium heat until melted and well combined. Keep on very low heat. Mix the cinnamon with the remaining 2/3 cup of sugar in a large bowl. Drop half of the biscuit quarters in the bowl of cinny-sugar, a few at a time, to coat them well with the mixture and then put them in the Bundt pan on top of the pecans and raisins. Drizzle half the melted butter mixture evenly over the biscuits and top with the remaining pecans and raisins. Finish by coating the remaining biscuits with the cinny-sugar, put them in the Bundt pan, and drizzle with the remaining butter. Bake for about 40 minutes until golden brown and the top springs back when pushed lightly. Remove from the oven and carefully turn upside down on a platter big enough to handle some of the gooey caramel-y stuff running down the sides.

And here's your big moment: you walk over to your loved one with this warm, amazing-looking thing and apologize for whatever you did. If they forgive you, everything's cool and you enjoy the pull-apart together. If they don't, you just walk away, taking the pull-apart with you to eat alone. Seriously, either way it ends pretty good.

Lox, Eggs & Onions

Serves 2

Lox-thinly sliced cured salmon-goes really well with eggs. Okay, so if you're not Jewish this'll be more in my ethnic camp than yours, but it's a classic and worth trying. And in case you like it so much you think about converting, we just happen to be taking applications right now.

1/2 tablespoon butter 1/4 cup small diced yellow onion One 4-ounce package lox, chopped fine 4 large eggs, beaten Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste come on, would you expect any other kind of salt in this recipe? but go easy on the salt because the lox is already salty.

Melt the butter in a large nonstick pan over medium heat and cook the onion, stirring occasionally, until it starts to brown I said "starts"; I didn't say all "becomes burned up," about 5 minutes. Add the lox to the onion, cook a bit, and allow to heat through. Pour in the eggs and cook like scrambled eggs, stirring to break up, until they're done to your liking. I just mean make them as moist or dry as you like. I don't like mine too dry.... Okay, I don't like mine dry at all.

Spinach, Mushroom & Baon Frittata

Serves 8

Don't shy away from brunch because you think you have to...