Shortcut cooks: For them, a tasty, healthy & quick dinner is just a jar away

A LONGTIME local cooking teacher, Ann Hazan is a proponent of making things from scratch. But as a working mom who needs to get dinner on the table every night, she recognizes the need for short cuts.

That's why you'll find Hazan reaching for the Francesco Rinaldi no-salt pasta sauce when she puts together a lasagna, braises meat for osso bucco, or preps other dishes where the sauce is not the focal point. After a little doctoring with fresh onions, Hazan says, you would have a hard time figuring out that the sauce came from a jar.

"If I want to make a quick lasagna, I'll use [jarred sauce] because there are so many other things in there," said Hazan, whose class repertoire includes "30 Minute Menus" at Main Line School Night in Radnor. "If you find the right quick ingredients, it works so well."

When Hazan is serving pasta, though, she'll leave the jar in the cupboard and throw together a sauce with fresh tomatoes, olive oil and garlic.

Her choices are typical of the decisions home cooks face in trying to balance wanting to serve fresh and healthy meals with the daily deadline pressure of getting dinner on the table.

"We like to think of ourselves as purists, but it's not reality," said Hazan, who also teaches at Foster's Homeware in Old City. "Most people don't want everything from scratch - we all have our plates full."

For Deana Gunn, who has two children under age 7, her everyday cooking solution is to enlist the help of a guy named Joe - as in Trader Joe's.

Gunn, a self-trained cook who holds a doctorate in electrical engineering, has such a passion for the Monrovia, Calif.-based chain that she has collaborated with fellow MIT alumna Wona Miniati on two books: "Cooking with All Things Trader Joe's" and its sequel, "The Trader Joe's Companion: A Portable Cookbook."

"We grew up cooking from scratch, but over the years, as we got busy with careers and once we had children, we didn't have the hours to devote to it on a daily basis, but we didn't want to succumb to a life of fast food and takeout," Gunn said.

Their strategy is to use Trader Joe's vast selection of simmer sauces, tapenades, salsas, canned beans and other prepared ingredients as a cooking base. Although many stores stock such items, they prefer TJ's because of the products' relatively low cost, compared with upscale chains and gourmet shops, and reliance on all-natural ingredients.