What's cooking? part 4

simmer for an hour i can handle
it's just the "you must spend 4-5 hrs making our perfect food" that i bristle at -- that's a luxury i don't even want, like a fur coat

I still love Cook's for the occasional new take on something or a weird technique that saves time or when they seem to have done the work for me in terms of distilling a bunch of recipes down to one definitive one. But I don't slavishly follow every bit of a recipe and get kind of tired of the new turkey recipe every fall. They also have different ideas than I do in terms of what ingredients are obscure or hard to find.

I've been using their pumpkin pie recipe for the last couple of years and every time I use it I swear it's the last time, because it's so annoying and overcomplicated. like cook the pumpkin etc and then whisk in the cream and then put the eggs in a food processor and while that's running pour the HOT liquid into the food processor, and it's just like u_u really

but stupidly I never think to do the research to find an alternative! it always turns out nice enough though, I think is why I forget.

Laughing at Lechera and me in this thread because we are so ourselves. She's like, "How does this thing work for ME because my life/needs come first or gtfo?" and I'm like "How much can I suffer to do this per some lofty standard? Oh, was it supposed to be fun? I must have missed that memo."

selfish only child, at your service!

I was thinking something far healthier and more practical but either way!

that too ;)

for the record i use the pumpkin pie recipe on the can of pumpkin and just fiddle with the spices and rely on a good crust to make it taste fancy and not like cafeteria food

also i don't think i am selfish

yeah I've heard that the Libby's recipe is the way to go. I think I will resolve to do that this year.

You all are cracking me up this morning :) I like CI for its faux science experiment approach, but damn if I'll ever cook that way. I do leverage a few steps out of their longwinded stuff if they interest me, just to try it some times (turkey flipping, I'm looking at you. Also, pumpkin dewatering...). I think the only recipe I've made from them is the Wacky Cake one (chocolate eggless cake that has baking soda and vinegar for the leavening - sheet cake very similar to one we had in grade school and full of nostalgia).

I bought their Baking Illustrated book 10 years ago -- but I've only made the pumpkin pie and maybe 1 other recipe because I can always find a less irritating recipe for almost everything else in there elsewhere lol

I made their green bean casserole for Thxgiving last year and it was the worst. They had you taking dozens and dozens of tiny button mushrooms and not even cutting them up – tearing them into quarters. Which I did against my own better sense that asked why I couldn't just cut them. And using more cream than I even buy in a year. A bunch of factors that made the recipe both expensive and tedious. And in the end the precious sauce of torn mushrooms tasted like Campbell's cream of mushroom soup. NEVER AGAIN

I wonder if Cook's Illustrated is really an Onion-type joke on what lengths they can get us to go to?

I mean, tearing button mushrooms just sounds like the WORST of all Cook's illustrated experiences

That kind of impressive, as people try quite hard to simulated the Campbell's flavor! I think most honest recipes just give up and tell you to put the soup in.

and it's so true, 9 times out of 10 you do the stupid dance they want you to and the end result turns out...*shrug* fine. But not amazing.

Yeah I know a much faster way to get the childhood casserole flavor of cream of mushroom soup.

why in the world would you tear up a mushroom

The end results often turn out amazing but then I cut corners, lots, the second go round, and it also turns out amazing. Most food is like an amazing miracle to me, I guess my standards aren't that exacting. And sometimes CI does give you a shortcut. Like iirc they said you don't have to salt eggplants. Or maybe I looked at pages of minutiae in CI about how to prepare eggplants and said fuck it and just gave up on salting them.

i think also i don't really love the kind of food they are asking me to make in the first place
i don't want to get anywhere near a can of cream of mushroom soup, esp one where i tore the mushrooms to pieces myself

sad as it is to say, green bean casserole is pretty freaking good with canned beans and canned soup. if you like that kind of thing, which I do.

i think also i don't really love the kind of food they are asking me to make in the first place

yeah for real – and I wonder about them loving it. I think every one of their recipes starts out with "every version of this we tried before was bland and insipid, with a soggy crust and a greasy finish" and I think, if you've hated this food every time you've eaten it, why are you trying to make it?

argh at tearing mushrooms - why? See also, peeling those tiny damned pearl onions. No. I do not need those precious things in my chicken pot pie ever again when I can have 2 hours of life doing something else.

There is a story somewhere (here? idk, can't remember) about someone who cooked and cooked and cooked and ended up basically with warmed up canned Spaghetti-Os.

lol yuk

2 kinds of 7-up salad

http://i46.tinypic.com/2q2k9kk.jpg

2 c hot 7-Up
1 c mayonnaise
1 c cottage cheese
green food coloring, if desired

(that is not what's cooking, it's purely for lols)

I'd take the green over the orange, personally.

♥ 7-UP SALAD ♥

I love that basically anything mixed up with some mayo is a salad :) Hello, heavenly hash.

btw, Laura Shapiro's Perfection Salad is a super read about the history of US cooking from the 1940s and 50s.

jello salad is my worst nightmare

i think that book would effectively make me lose my appetite

My friend had this Jugged Hare recipe card in her kitchen as a joke, combination lols & nausea

http://www.flickr.com/photos/the_justified_sinner/2972777850/

idgi looks tasty and pretty to me

GAY TIPSWORD. omg.

I adore CI and often times seek out recipes by them and follow them to a T and I find the articles super fascinating. Am I a fool? :-(

how do yall get their recipes? the website seems to be entirely pay-based?

It is I think. My mom sends me the magazine subscription.

we had a subscription for a while, and I bought their Baking Illustrated cookbook

Don't they have a tv show? America's Test Kitchen or something? I don't watch much so am not sure.

bowties creep me out so I try to avoid it
(well and the whole dude it's attached to creeps me out in general)

http://www.gpb.org/files/national/americas_test_kitchen.jpg

There's a podcast of some recipes plus kitchen tips and appliance reviews. I quite like it although it doesn't give the measurements of the ingreds, I guess in an attempt to force you to pay for that info. But for everything except baking, you can approximate the measurements from what you see in their bowls and spoons.

MS Public Broadcasting offers Create TV as a broadcast-only channel (no cable or satellite) but I haven't figured out how much hassle or expense it would be to set up the antenna to get it. Anyway, it has a few cooking shows I'd like to see like America's Test Kitchen and Ming Tsai's show.

P much anything they've ever done you can find by googling "[recipe bane] cooks illustrated"

America's Test Kitchen is pretty decent as a cooking show. I should figure out when PBS shows it locally and start watching again. Last I saw, they showed it back-to-back with Rick Bayless's cooking show, with he and his daughter having a bizarre almost-flirty dynamic.

i watch create a lot at my parents' house. some of those shows are soooooo bad. like the red-haired vegan lady (not sure what this is called) and katie brown workshop. there was a scandinavian cooking show on at xmas. they also have jacques pepin on half the shows, i like that.

Oh man if the red haired vegan lady is who I think you mean that's the worst cooking show ever. And Bayless def. gives of a weird creepy vibe that my wife has dubbed "yoga sleazy".

On the other hand I never will tire of Jacques Pepin.

lol @ "yoga sleazy," I know exactly what you mean

Who is red haired vegan lady?

http://www.christinacooks.com/
she wants to help you cook for your guy, she says things like that a lot. your guy will love this.