The New Best Recipe
The authors vary, but we all have a cookbook that we turn to again and again for simple powerhouse recipes. Forget how to make perfect hard-boiled eggs? From Julia Child’s Kitchen, page 81. Need a quick kasha varnishkes next Shabbos? The Molly Goldberg Jewish Cookbook, page 205. A recipe for creme anglaise? Larousse Gastronomique, page 390.
Setting Jewish recipes and obscure French preparations aside, and after testing several recipes with excellent results, I’ve supplanted my traditional tomes with the latest from the editors of Cook’s Illustrated, The New Best Recipe
I feel I haven’t even scratched the surface of this expansive resource, but the recipes I’ve attempted so far have all been such overwhelming successes that I’m confidant they speak for the entire volume. Here’s my progress so far:
OVEN FRIES
Soaking potato wedges briefly in hot tap water was the trick for crunchy, evenly browned fries.
PASTA PRIMAVERA
This dish came in handy when I needed a cheese-free vegetarian entree. The careful timing spelled out in the recipe assured perfectly cooked vegetables the creamy tomato sauce.
BEEF AND PEPPER LO MEIN
A few small changes for kashrut and the available ingredients in my pantry, and this was a quick and easy dinner.
ROAST TURKEY FOR A CROWD
This recipe saved the day when preparing for 14 Rosh Hashana dinner guests. My first attempt at a whole turkey, it was incredibly easy, very tasty, and they even recommended using a kosher bird!
BREAKFAST STRATA
This delicious combination of French bread, eggs, and cheese is an excellent way to serve several people at a brunch. If baked in a decorative gratin dish, it can go directly from the oven to the table. Leftovers were excellent cold, too.
FRENCH TOAST
I never thought my simple recipe of challah and beaten egg could be topped, but the science behind NBR’s French toast truly yields a superior product.
RICOTTA CALZONES
I had never made a calzone that wasn’t an utter disaster — puddles of cheese and tomato exploding out all sides of a doughy pocket — until this recipe. The use of ricotta as the foundation for all other filling additives provides safety and predictability — no huge air pockets between filling and upper crust, and no messes in the oven. They look professional, to boot.
CRISP CHOCOLATE CHIP COOKIES
Another first: I had never made chocolate chip cookies as perfectly round and thoroughly consistent as these. They’re delicious and they look straight out of a bakery. Plus, NBR indicates an Israeli product (Tropical Source) as tester’s preferred chocolate chip brand.
STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE
I’ve already covered the pareve conversion of this recipe on the blog — easy to make and easy to serve.
SUMMER BERRY PUDDING
It’s hard to believe how an unassuming combination of berries and challah can make such a tremendous dessert, with no baking required.
And of course, their foolproof hard-boiled eggs live up to their name. However, I do have one gripe. Many of their recipes end with “serve immediately.” Considering the majority of my cooking is done for Shabbat, I usually need recipes more like, “prepare in advance, then leave on a lukewarm stove for three hours before serving.” In striving for the “best recipe,” the folks at Cook’s Illustrated are willing to sacrifice convenience. It’s nice to have a compendium of perfect procedures, but the realities of everyday family cooking — where meals aren’t served on moment’s notice — need consideration.
That said, this book is still, hands-down, the best thirty-odd dollars I’ve spent in a long time.
The “serve immediately” instruction seems to be a problem with many cookbooks. I’ve found vegetable dishes to be the most problematic. These days, the only veggie dishes that I even consider for Shabbat are those meant to be served cold, mushy, or in kugel form.
What we really need is a kosher cookbook that has some way — maybe an icon on the corner of the page — to indicate recipes that can be reheated.
Long as I’m talking . . .
I’m generally a fan, but there are a few things about Cook’s Illustrated that bug me in general. One is their tendency to “improve” recipes in such a way as to change their fundamental character. Their Southern Corn Bread contains sugar and yellow cornmeal, and their challah contains milk and butter. I have this mental image of them re-working cholent (not that they’d ever touch the stuff) to involve stir-frying followed by a 40-minute simmer to blend the flavors, then garnishing it with parsley.
They also have a funny habit of “discovering” things that I thought everyone knew, possibly out of the need to have some shocking chuddish in each recipe. Their revolutionary advice for brisket is to cook it until the meat is fully done, then keep cooking it for an hour. I was honestly not aware that there was another way to braise brisket. What else did my mom teach me that they don’t know yet?
I hear that. I often sit in wonderment over the vast collection of cookbooks they must own, each item in which has only terrible recipes in them! Every pre-recipe anecdote relates “cloyingly sweet” this, or “thick, gloppy” that from the traditional formulations they first attempt. Get some better sources! :)
I have to wonder if part of their basic format is just there for marketing. Fixing a broken recipe is exciting. “Seared tuna is easy to make and usually quite good, but there’s always room for improvement — we cooked 47 tuna steaks to figure out where that room lay” is a lot less exciting.
And anyway, to convince a reader that nobody’s ever made a decent apple pie is to convince a reader that he needs THIS apple pie. :)