Maximum flavor, minimal effort

"Life is too short to stuff a mushroom." So said British feminist icon Shirley Conran. She might have added that it may also be too short to stir risotto, can tomatoes or make your own puff pastry.

I have a hunch Ms. Conran, now 81, feels any of these tasks is trivial, no matter how much time one has on this earth -- a viewpoint I reject -- but her comment underscores a common complaint about modern life. There never seems to be enough time.

Even those who deem cooking a worthwhile endeavor increasingly find it difficult to spend hours in the kitchen, though, ironically, they collect lavishly illustrated -- and lavishly priced -- cookbooks, rarely miss an episode of "Top Chef," and post photos of their restaurant meals on Facebook.

The late R.W. Apple called this the Foodies' Paradox. "With every passing year," he said, "we care more and more about food, and we have less and less time to cook." So what's a person to do?

Frankly, you have to cheat. I know that sounds reprehensible, and in any other endeavor outside the kitchen I would be the last person to condone cheating. I agree with the Greek playwright Sophocles, who said, "I would prefer to fail with honor than win by cheating." That philosophy should be strictly adhered to when running for office, playing Scrabble, operating a business or just about every human enterprise.

But failing in the kitchen, even with honor, only leaves family members and guests hungry. So these days, for most of us, cooking, if you aspire to sophisticated, healthy and beautiful cuisine on a regular basis, requires some level of deviousness.

Now, by cheating in a culinary context, I mean simply streamlining a recipe or taking shortcuts -- such as folding pie dough into a galette instead of fitting it into a pie tin; baking risotto in the oven instead of stirring it on top of the stove; serving tiramisu or trifle in deconstructed fashion rather than layering it into a mold; creating a semi-freddo instead of churning ice cream; using a soft cheese like goat cheese as the base for a soufflé so you don't have to make a roux; hiding a square of chocolate in the middle of a molten cake to make sure the center stays liquid; concocting a no-bake crème brulée out of Greek yogurt and heavy cream instead of a cooked custard; using packaged filo pastry or wonton wrappers for mille feuille instead of home-made puff pastry; oven-roasting tomatoes for a pasta sauce instead of toiling over a saucepan; or using Nutella as the base for a mousse so you don't have to melt and cool chocolate.

All of these constitute what I call, oxymoronically, honest cheating. They don't compromise the flavor or appeal of a dish. In fact, they often enhance it. That's because they don't rely on processed ingredients like canned cream of mushroom soup, Cool Whip or -- perhaps the nastiest convenience food ever devised -- instant pudding. That's not really cooking.

The doyenne of this type of stylishly streamlined cuisine has to be Donna Hay, Australia's answer to Martha Stewart, who deserves to be better known in this country. The pages of her nearly two dozen cookbooks and her bi-monthly magazine are filled with photos that make you want to lick the page, yet her recipes are uncomplicated, straightforward and invariably clever.

If you yearn to cook but don't have much time, do what millions down under call "doing a Donna." It's a recipe for delivering maximum flavor with minimum effort -- and it sounds a lot better than cheating.

Cheat's Goat Cheese Souffle

This is a typical Donna Hay recipe: fast, fresh and simple. In fact, that's the name of the cookbook, her latest, from which it is adapted.

5 ounces goat cheese

1 1/2 cups cream

pinch of salt

2 eggs, separated

2 cups fresh breadcrumbs

Beat together goat cheese, cream, salt and egg yolks until light and fluffy. Fold in the breadcrumbs. Beat egg whites until soft peaks form and fold into cheese mixture. Spoon mixture into four lightly greased 1 and 1/2 cup capacity ramekins. Bake at 400 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes until puffed and golden.

Tom Harte's book, "Stirring Words," is available at local bookstores. A Harte Appetite airs Fridays 8:49 a.m. on KRCU, 90.9 FM. Contact Tom at semissourian.com or at the Southeast Missourian, P.O. Box 699, Cape Girardeau, MO 63702-0699.

You'd never guess that these goat cheese souffles about to be pulled from the oven are the result of clever cheating on the traditional recipe.