This collection of more than 90 traditional and new recipes is designed to help busy people save time without having to compromise on quality or taste, or resort to the ready-made meal section of the supermarket. Each recipe shows how to bypass time-consuming techniques or suggests alternatives for ingredients that require lengthy cooking, so that the busy cook can still create tempting but inexpensive dishes such as sun-dried tomato goulash or Provencal plaice without the hours of preparation traditionally required. The book is divided into soups and starters, snacks and light meals, vegetable dishes, fish, poultry, meat, desserts, baking, and stocks and sauces.