Perfect Vegetables
The folks at Cook's Illustrated have mastered the art of repackaging. They produce a hardbound and indexed omnibus of each year's issues which costs as much as a year's subscription. They have a fully searchable website limited to members, and membership is again about equal to a year's subscription to the magazine. And they produce cookbooks which mostly collect recipes from the magazine on some particular topic.
I am of the opinion that their recipes are worth repackaging. Most food magazines and cookbooks do not test their recipes. It is refreshing to read a Cook's article in which they have put some seemingly simple dish through many iterations, varying this and that and sometimes bringing in noted food scientists to explain surprising results. I swear I've learned more about biochemistry from my Cook's subscription than I did as a bio major at UC Berkeley. They're not afraid to add work they think is necessary (as I mentioned in the Burgers & Fries post), but they're not shy about challenging traditional methods which they think add nothing to the finished product. And since they don't accept advertising, they have no qualms about trashing products they think aren't up to snuff.
I had noted the announcement of Perfect Vegetables in a recent issue of the magazine, but didn't think much of it. While I bought all their little topical cookbooks: How to Make a Pie, How to Stir-Fry, and so forth, I've mostly avoided their larger cookbooks. Not for any reason except the fact that I have most of the recipes they are publishing in these books. I've been a subscriber for 8 years or so and have the hardbound collection for each of those years. But the good folks at Cook's decided I wasn't spending enough money on their products, so sent me a trial copy of Perfect Vegetables.
The cookbook is exactly what I imagined it would be: a collection of the best vegetable recipes they have published over the years. Want to know the best way to prepare an artichoke? Stuff tomatoes? Mince a shallot? It's all in here. They even cover some more unusual vegetables like edamame and kohlrabi. Their coverage of exotics isn't on the order of Vegetables from Amaranth to Zucchini, but it is nonetheless a nice change from cookbooks that cater to the crowd that fears trying new things.
Interspersed in the pages are marginally related sidebars: reviews of V-slicers near the recipe for scalloped potatoes which demands even, thin slicing of the potatoes. An appraisal of bean "frenchers" which split large green beans into smaller ones which supposedly act more like french haricots verts (don't believe it, is their opinion). Sometimes these seem like they are helping pad the book to some contract-specified page count, but for the most part they're nice interludes. I might have preferred them all in one section, with cross-references from the recipes. For instance, their review of chef's knives is somewhere in the middle of the book, and you're only likely to know it's there if you're reading through the book. If they were all in one place, you could just flip through that and get an overview of every sidebar in the book.
The book does have a small section of color pictures, but presentation has never been a strong suit of the Cook's staff: things are not done badly, but they're not very eye-catching. But their description of what they look for in, say, Pommes Anna, will make your mouth water. They've got some good food describers in their stable of writers.
I haven't explicitly tried any recipe from this cookbook, but I have used many of the original printings over the years, and rely on them heavily. In the end, I decided to keep the book mostly because it provides an easy one-stop place for all the Cook's recipes I use now from myriad other sources. So when I want to remind myself about the best way to prepare a particular vegetable, I don't have to rummage through 7 different cookbooks to find the answer. I wouldn't be as inclined to keep their "New American Classics" or whatever, but this one I think makes a handy reference from a publication I credit with a lot of integrity and sincerity.
- The Joy Of Writing A Great Cookbook: Interview With Kimberly Yorio
If you want to be a food writer, I highly recommend that you read Will Write for Food by Dianne Jacob, but if writing a cookbook is your goal, you’ll also want to check out The Joy of Writing a Great Cookbook by Kimberly Yoirio. This no nonsense book...
- Cheap Holiday Gifts!
I am not only a cooking magazine addict. I am a cooking magazine pusher. It probably comes as no surprise that I absolutely love cooking magazines and subscribe to a whole passel of them. But I also think they make a great gift for the foodie or wannabe...
- That Cookbook Meme
It finally found it's way here thanks to Alice, so here goes... Total number of (cook/food) books I've owned: I really have no idea. Because of limited space, I occasionally thin out my books, so who knows how many have passed through here. At...
- Keep Or Don't Keep: Magazines Worth Moving
So here it is: The final countdown (cue the Europe song). In two weeks, we will have no claim to our apartment; we will want nothing to do with our apartment. Ever again. Today, I culled magazines from my shelves in an attempt to reduce the amount of...
- Huh?
A lot of you know that I like Cook's Illustrated. I'll often start with their recipe for some base component of a dish, and expand from there. They do exhaustive trials on their recipes, and regularly debunk myths, or explain the science behind...