Eye’z Still Reads Magazines, Yes Truly Eyez Do

February 9th, 2010

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Cook’s Illustrated..America’s Test Kitchen..It’s All The Same

Cook’s Illustrated is a magazine I have subscribed to for nearly ten years. I don’t remember a month where I have not read a Cook’s Illustrated Magazine. No, I don’t read the others in the line of Cook’s Illustrated off shoots like Cook’s Country, or Baking Illustrated, just Cook’s, the original.

I also pay to subscribe to the online version too. I have bought probably most of their recommended products in both the Testing Corner and Equipment Corner including knife sharpeners; thermometers, salad dryers: goodness the list goes on.

Unfortunately what I have not ever done was invest in the hard cardboard magazine holders which, by now, I’m guessing would take up half a house.

I am a bad magazine person. Once read, I donate my magazines usually bringing them with me to work and leaving them on a table nearby. Of course, all postage labels removed because I am a stickler for nobody knowing where I live. Too private for that, odd because I write a food blog and don’t hide from the internet…quirky, I know.

However, I have lost track of time since August when I moved and lost track of my subscription to Cook’s. I don’t know if it ran out or it got lost because of the address change, but this past Friday I walked into the Tabagerie and stared eye to eye at the February edition and suddenly felt like I was in a weird ‘Sleeping in Seattle’ scene from atop the Empire State Building. A long lost friend was just spotted.

Holy crap, what happened to all my Cook’s Illustrated issues?

I knew I had to find out where my subscriptions had fallen prey to but nevertheless this edition wasn’t going unread. At almost 7 bucks Canadian, the sticker price was a little shocking. I already knew I wasn’t making any of the recipes because I never did.

I love reading Christopher Kimball’s Editorial because being on the border of Vermont and spending many weekends in Stowe and Burlington; I know his head space and where and what he talks about. In fact, as a family we nearly moved to Burlington, Vermont several years ago after winning the last ‘green card lottery‘ which allowed a percentage of Canadians the legal right to move to the States with a valid Green Card, not needing to secure a job or sponsorship. It fell through because in the end, we just didn’t want to ‘be Americans’, and in retrospect that was a good thing.

However, that is why when Kimball tells his tales of his neighbours and their cows and their rural living, like a scene out of The Waltons, I appreciate his intentions. That food is from the land and Vermont is all land, all farms, all folks who live and love their hinterlands. When one reads the opening of a Cook’s Illustrated editorial, one is brought from their big city living to the outskirts of farm country where you can feel the milk being churned into butter and cheese.

Chris talks not of people, but of ‘folks’.

February’s edition was a good one. I had forgotten how each recipe is written: like a science experiment; Aim, Hypothesis, Equipment, Procedure, Results, Discussion and Conclusion. Who needs to do the actual cooking?

So for those who haven’t read February Cook’s Illustrated I am going to break it down succinctly and because I thought this issue had enough value to that sharing it would be both fun and informative for my readers.

Aside from the recipes for Minestrone Soup, and Beef Stew, and home-in-the-oven Pulled Pork, I want to focus on a cake they talked about called a Kolachke (this one a cream cheese coffee cake). Kolachke is a word I have read several times in the past two weeks.

A Déjà Vu, for which I reason that during the last two weeks cleaning and preparing my late mother-in-law’s house to be put up for sale, going through her cupboards and kitchen to clean its contents, I discovered a handwritten cookbook. This is obviously here she wrote her keepsake recipes that over the years that she found either in magazines or copied from a friend who made a delicious cake. Yes, cake…they were all cakes. Titled in Polish Kruche Ciasto or Kolachke…but definitely all cakes.

Due very possibly to the fact that she played cards almost every second night and each of the six card-playing Polish ladies were true ‘balabustas’ in the kitchen. For those of you who know Eastern Europeans, you know that desserts in the form of bubkas or kolachkes play a big part in a meal at dessert time and especially when the card playing stops for a bisel piece of cake, some umshtelling and probably a lot of kvetching.

So, isn’t it a b’shert thing that Cook’s Illustrated writes up their cooking lab experiment by making a Kolachke??? I had never heard the word Kolachke and here it is over and over again. It definitely put thoughts into my head of striking coincidence.

The only good Tip I found they wrote was for storing your Meat Thermometer. Drill an extra hole in the wooden knife block large enough to stick that damn meat thermometer, the thermometer you can never find in a timely fashion to stick in the chicken. Now you’ll always know where to find it. I liked that idea - enough to put it to real use today. Drill and all, I like that idea, it’s a keeper. Excellent.

Oddly enough, I guess if you read enough of these magazines over the years, like recipes on blogs, they repeat themselves so that the other hints read insignificantly in the world of good hints and tips. Like who doesn’t know NOT to re-use marinade? And that you are not supposed to refrigerate hot foods right away. These are no-brainers for those of us willing to spend close to 8 bucks on a cooking magazine.

I have only one real criticism for this magazine considering, Christopher Kimball, the title: Cook’s Illustrated; a February 2010 issue I am going to go out on a limb and strongly suggest you …introduce your illustrator to color and then to fuse color to those drawings…really…this is the Photoshop generation, so why not join the new generation and investigate how current illustrative devices can be utilized in the magazine that extraordinary artwork take a stronger place and statement, please.

Lastly and because I am tired and this is becoming boring, I “Michelin Star” the Test Kitchen Tip on Boiling Water, which is, and I quote:

“In recipes that call for a specific amount of boiling water, how much does it matter when you measure the water?”

Apparently it does, according to their testing of a Devil’s Food Cake calling for 1 cup of boiling water. When measuring one cup and then boiling it; there is loss of enough water that it made a difference in the rising of the cake. The end result being that when a recipe calls for a specific unit of boiling water; first boil a lot of water AND THEN measure the amount needed. The difference makes a difference.

They also like Cream Whippers, particularly the Liss Professional Polished Stainless Steel Cream Whipper which dispenses whipped cream that does not weep, at the press of a button.

Hmmm…have to buy that.

Before I sign off I just want to send a kudo out to Amateur Gourmet who wrote on his blog before Christmas about an inexpensive knife sharpener he loves. The Accusharp. I am not sure my link will show if you are not a registered user on this site, so here is another link. He was so enthusiastic about it on the video he posted, that ‘consumer me’ bought it on eBay and loves it to the exclusion of my electric knife sharpener (also a Cook’s ‘best of’); and just last Saturday on PBS who do you think highlighted the exact same knife sharpener? You got it! America’s Test Kitchen!