Scripps Howard News Service
By Joycelyn Winnecke

At 8:59 a.m. on a Sunday morning, we were standing outside the little market, faces pressed against the glass. How disappointing. We were ready to cook at high speed--Sam Gugino-style. But our time-trial was being stalled by business hours.
My friend, a fellow food lover who was visiting for the weekend, had flipped through Gugino's new book, Cooking to Beat the Clock (Chronicle, $16.95), and declared herself highly skeptical. ``Delicious, inspired meals in 15 minutes,'' he claims. Ha. Myrta wasn't buying that.
Me, I'm pretty quick with a knife and a saute pan (and have scars to prove it). Fifteen minutes didn't sound like much time to me, either, although I was game for giving it a shot. I would be the cook and Myrta the time keeper, coach and taster.
Though shopping time isn't calculated by Gugino, we zipped through the little store, snatching chicken breasts and chickpeas at a pace that perhaps frightened the still-sleepy clerk who had let us in, finally, at 9:01.
By 9:20, we were emptying our bags onto the kitchen counter. (OK, when minutes count, it helps that my apartment building has its own small grocery store.)
Moroccan chicken soup was our first project.
Myrta waved the flag and I got to work: oil in skillet, cut up chicken, chicken in skillet, onion in food processor, onion in skillet, spices in skillet, chicken broth in skillet.
Wait. Darn. Long-existing spatial relations handicap slows us down. Find bigger pan, empty skillet contents into it. Resume.
Chicken broth in pan, cut up zucchini, zucchini and couscous in pan, open chickpeas, rinse chickpeas, chickpeas in pan.
It's soup.
``This is delicious. I can't believe this is a 15-minute soup.'' This from both me and Myrta, giggling, pleased with ourselves and the soup.
Well, actually, it was a 20-minute soup, although with the correct pan and one try under my belt, I'll bet I could make it 15 minutes. And it really is quite delicious, the cumin, ginger and paprika creating an exotic--but not too--flavor.
We started the clock again for chicken fajitas with mango salsa. Sixteen minutes later there was a simple but tasty stir-fry of chicken strips and red pepper, and a really lovely salsa of mango, jalapeno, cilantro, onion and lime juice. I would serve both to company.
Gugino is preaching four concepts. Flavor, he says, means a well-stocked pantry. Organization means having the right equipment. Focus means ``being single-minded about getting the meal out in a hurry.''
And the final element, creativity, involves thinking beyond recipes, ``So you don't always have to follow a specific formula.' For the fajitas, turkey, pork, lamb or beef could be used.
The point, of course, is that you're hurrying up to cook so that you can sit down and enjoy a decent, relaxed meal. We thoroughly enjoyed our food and our talk, spending an hour and a half at the table. That's the point.