The Best Light Recipe Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This book isn't quite 4 stars, in my opinion, but alas, no fractions...
Let me start by saying I'm a HUGE fan of Cook's Illustrated. I subscribe to their magazines and their website, I watch their PBS show "America's Test Kitchen" and I own several of their books. What I love about CI is their scientific and educational approach to cooking and baking. They never throw a recipe at you and expect you to go at it blindly. All their recipes are prefaced with a detailed write-up of their test kitchen trials and tribulations...they painstakingly test every single recipe and they take you along for the ride. What you get in the process is not just a "recipe", but a deep understanding of why a recipe works, and with it a better understanding of cooking and/or baking in general. You will definitely improve your skills in the kitchen if you are exposed to CI.
With all that being said, it is no surprise that I eagerly anticipated the release of this book. It didn't take long, however, for my enthusiasm to wane. My biggest problem with this book is its one-dimensional approach to "lighten" recipes. By that I mean CI's main focus in this venture was on lowering fat and/or calories, but does not pay enough attention to other problem diet busters, like sugar and bad carbohydrates. I am not proposing that CI should have made this book "low carb", but a marriage of low fat/good carbohydrates would have been a more practical approach, especially given what we have learned about nutrition in the past few years. The inclusion of more whole grains would have been a much healthier approach. There are so many tasty whole grain alternatives these days to choose from, like brown basmati rice instead of white, or whole wheat pita bread in place of white. There are some recipes dedicated to healthy grains like quinoa and bulgur, but too many recipes with processed, nutrition-less grains. I am also disappointed with the limited attention on good, heart-healthy fats (eg/good mono-unsaturated fats like olive oil and canola oil in place of the less healthy vegetable oil). It seems their research on diet and nutrition was a bit short-sighted and old-fashioned.
Also, be aware that this is NOT a diet book. In CI's defense, I really don't think that was their intention. I think what they mainly set out to do is take many of our guilty favorites (like macaroni and cheese, chicken parmesan and cheesecake) and lighten them up without compromising too much of their flavor. They certainly accomplished that task. This does not mean, however, that you will lose weight eating them. While there are some recipes in the book that are inherently healthy and light, many of the dishes are still not considered "low calorie". Also, nutrition information does follow each recipe, which is nice, but they are very hard to apply since CI does not let you know what size each serving is.
As far as the recipes go, it is a well-rounded book that includes several appetizers/hors d'oeuvres, salads, soups and stews, vegetables, grains, pasta, poultry, meat, fish/shelfish, and a whole section dedicated to stir-fries. They also offer lightened up recipes of breads and desserts. There are definitely some winners here: like the "Tortilla Soup", the party dips, the "Chipotle Chicken Skewers", their Vinaigrette, "White Chicken Chili", "Chicken Parmesan" and even their "Scalloped Potatoes". I have also heard very good reviews of their "Chocolate Bundt Cake" and their "New York Cheesecake", though the cheesecake recipe is very time-consuming and tedious.
I have come across a mediocre dish or two, but for the most part, the recipes are worthy of the Cook's Illustrated name.
So if you are looking for a way to cut some fat and calories from your every day cooking, but still want to eat some tasty fare, then this is a great cookbook to have on your shelf. But if you want to lose weight, this book alone is not going to do it for you. Although I do admit that cutting fat is certainly a good start.
Hope this helped!


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Includes 300 flavoured, lower fat and reduced-calorie recipes. Each recipe lists calories, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, protein, fibre and sodium per serving.

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The New Best Recipe: All-New Edition Review

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(More customer reviews)I'm the Baker. When my husband-to-be first came to my house to cook me a dinner, he rummaged through my cabinets and said "Where are your pots and pans?"; then he looked through the pantry and fridge and said "Where is your FOOD?" I had to explain that, in my vocabulary, "cook" is a verb meaning "to put into a microwave on high for 4 to 5 minutes." Food? Small boxes in the freezer, of course.
I tell you this so you'll understand how improbable it is that the first thing I tackled from "The New Best Recipe" was chicken stock. A real-deal chicken stock, I'm talking here--the kind that turns to a jelly when cooled, is deep gold, and can improve nearly any dish you add it to--the kind that takes eight or ten hours to make, the classic way.
See, I had picked up this massive (1028-page) book in the bookstore and idly opened to the Soup chapter, where I read a three-page explanation of how to make real chicken stock in one hour. They detailed all the blind alleys they'd explored in trying to come up with the perfect recipe for stock--the different cooking techniques, times, ingredients--until they'd found a way to make rich golden stock in an hour. The technique was, er, unorthodox to say the least, but it all seemed to make perfect sense, so I bought the book and decided to try to make a stock to present to the Cook as a fait accompli.
Holy smoke, it worked! And I gotta tell you, if I can make a couple quarts of chicken stock between the time my daughter gets home from school and the time my husband gets home from work, then you can too.
So, enough anecdote; now for details.
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1. The book is a compilations of recipes from Cooks' Illustrated magazine and the America's Test Kitchen TV show (which I've never yet seen). The title seems presumptuous: "best" according to whom? Isn't "best" a matter of taste? Well, yes, but they are at pains to describe for nearly every recipe just what they MEAN by "best." Here's an example, for pound cake:
"...the main difficulty with pound cakes of the classic type is textural. Cakes might be said to have five 'texture points': moist/dry, soft/hard, dense/porous, light/heavy, rich/plain. To contemporary tastes, cakes must be relatively moist and soft; the three remaining texture points are negotiable.
"The problem with pound cake is that we ask it to be moist and soft on the one hand but also dense, light, and rich on the other. This is an extremely difficult texture to achieve unless one resorts to baking powder, with its potent chemical magic. Air-leavened cakes that are light and soft also tend to be porous and plain, as in sponge or angel cakes; moist and dense cakes inevitably also turn out heavy, as in the various syrup-soaked Bundt cakes that are so popular. From pound cake, we ask all things."
Or for broiled salmon:
"We set out to find the best way of cooking a whole side of salmon, enough to feed eight or more guests, in the oven. We wanted fish that was moist but not soggy, firm but not chalky, and nicely crusted, with golden, flavorful caramelization over its flesh. If we would work some interesting flavors and contrasting textures into the bargain, all the better."
Or for roasted potatoes:
"The perfect roasted potato is crisp and deep golden brown on the outside, with moist, velvety, dense interior flesh. The potato's slightly bitter skin is intact, providing a contrast to the sweet, caramelized flavor that the flesh develops during the roasting process. It is rich but never greasy, and it is accompanied by the heady taste of garlic and herbs."
In other words, before telling you how to make X, Y, or Z, they tell you what you're shooting for. I appreciate this. Mostly my goals and theirs coincide, but if they don't I'm aware of it BEFORE I start to cook.
2. After they describe the goal, they tell you the variations they tried to achieve it. This might include fiddling with cooking temperatures and times, number or type of ingredients, cooking techniques, tools, containers, phase of the moon... whatever! The folks in those test kitchens apparently have an infinite supply of time and money, not to mention patience.
So, for the chicken stock, they tried blanching, roasting, and sauteing the chicken; backs, wings, legs, or the whole chicken; carrots, celery, onion: yes or no? A sidebar details issues like what kind of chicken to buy, how to cut it up, and tips for storing the stock once you've made it.
You find out what works, and why, but also what didn't work, and why not. Knowledge really is power. Time after time in the past I've followed a recipe (or so I thought) and messed it up--with no idea of where I went wrong or how to fix it. Most cookbooks assume that cooks just don't make mistakes. This one tells you just about everything you could do wrong, so you won't.
By the way, I LOVE it that they attribute techniques and recipes found in other sources (including, in the case of pound cake, recipes from 1772, 1824, and 1985).
3. Is there some science about your ingredients or techniques or equipment? You'll learn about it. Why is is that butter and eggs for a cake should be at room temperature? Some cake recipes say combine everything at once ("quick mix" technique) and others say to cream suger with butter, then add the eggs and flour. Why do they both work? What's the difference in the end result? And what about those dark non-stick cake pans? Will they change anything? You'll find out.
4. After you understand the issues around your recipe, they give you the recipe itself. Many have three or four variations given after the main recipe. Each step is spelled out clearly, with both visual and time cues (e.g., "until the pork is in small, well-browned bits, about 5 minutes"), often accompanied by clear B&W illustrations and useful sidebars.
5. There are separate mini-essays on ingredients and equipment, comparing them a la Consumer Reports. We learn which are the best brands of chocolate chips for cookies (with different recommendations for thick/chewy vs. thin/crispy, no less!) and which paring knives were rated best.
I found a chart that lists the volume of medium, large, extra-large, and jumbo eggs. For that alone, I'd have bought the book, since the Cook (who's also the shopper) buys XLs, but the Baker's recipes all assume Ls. Now I actually know by how much they differ (8:9 is the ratio, in case you wondered).
6. Have I mentioned that everything I've made so far has rocked?
----
Downside? The Table of Contents and the Index both stink like the stinkiest of stinking fish. Does 22 lines ("Pork... 385", "Cakes... 823") seem to you like enough detail for the contents of a thousand-page cookbook? Me neither, especially as the individual sections don't have their own ToCs. This is ridiculous. But the index is even worse. Tiny print, uniform font sizes for all three levels of indent, no indicator letters at the top of the page to remind you where you are, and a distinct lack of cross-indexing make it a near-total waste of time. Someone could make a lot of people happy by preparing sectional ToCs and a decent index for this massive tome.
We don't accept every single bit of information in this book (the Cook has a serious bone to pick with them vis-a-vis their unflattering assessment of bluefin tuna, for instance), but for each item we disagree with, there are ten that have us nodding in agreement.
It could be described as a scientific cookbook, but that might leave you with the impression that it's dry and colorless. Quite the contrary--I find it fascinating reading, especially the parts about how they screwed up.
The prose is not lyrical or charming, as The Joy of Cooking frequently is, but it's truly engaging in its eagerness to give you all the tools you need to succeed. I doubt there's a cook in America who couldn't learn something from this book. I think it's that rare cookbook that is equally suitable for beginners, experienced cooks, and everyone in between; as much fun to read like a book as it is to use as a manual. Get it!


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The Best 30-Minute Recipe Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)If this is your first cookbook from the ATK/Cook's Illustrated crew, I can almost guarantee you will be very happy with it. It's a very thorough and accessible approach to some cracking good recipes. The prose style is entertaining and informative and helps a less experienced cook get some insight into the tastes and textures that make a "good" recipe.

But if you want to learn more or get further into the style, you may find that you get less geniunely new material with each subsequent purchase. While any one of their books is very much worth having, they tend to endlessly repackage and reissue their recipes in various formats. That's a little problematic for someone who is a fan of the ATK approach, but also is in no way a collector of cook books. If a cook book has 3 or 4 recipes that I haven't seen before and genuinely want to try, I'll be satisfied, and each new ATK issue just barely satisfies that criterion. But the relatively high cost of acquiring these new recipes along with the 5th iteration of, say, mashed potatoes, Chicken Parmesan and skillet tamale pie, may irritate and exasperate some buyers.
One reviewer called these folks "A cottage industry gone amok". That has some truth to it, but it may be a little harsh. A more sympathetic reframing might be that they are simply trying to package their recipes in convenient ways so as to meet the demands of a particular segment of the cookbook market: "Best Recipe" vs "America's Test Kitchen companion series" vs "Cook's Illustrated compilation". And "Quick Meals" vs "Light Meals" vs "Vegetables" and "Soups and Stews". But at some point, the typical cook will probably decide that he or she is being rather cynically exploited by some shrewd entrepeneurs determined to squeeze every possible cent out of about 350 really good recipes, supplemented with some helpful product reviews. I haven't reached that point yet, but I may soon.
So in summary: excellent cookbook, but docked a star for my purposes because I am paying "all new recipe" prices for a "20% (or less)new material" format.



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300 Fast and Flavorful Recipes from America's Most Trusted Test KitchenTired of quick recipes that aren't really quick or don't taste very good? While some cookbooks promise 30-minute meals, America's Test Kitchen delivers. The Best 30-Minute Recipe is packed with more than 300 great-tasting recipes, along with time-saving techniques that will help you become more efficient in the kitchen. You'll also find honest evaluations of ingredients important to quick cooking, such as chicken broth, preshredded cheese, instant rice, and more. And because the type of equipment you use is important to the success of any recipe—made in 30 minutes or not—we tell you which brands are worth buying.The Best 30-Minute Recipe features a surprisingly wide range of recipes. You get not only the very best versions of naturally quick dishes like salads and stir-fries, but also quick and easy recipes for typically long-cooking dishes that you'd never even think of making on a weeknight—including meatloaf, lasagna, beef pot pie, and a pad thai so easy that you may never call for takeout again. With efficiency and good taste, The Best 30-Minute Recipe is the time-pressed cook's guide to getting dinner on the table, night after night.

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