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Title: Restaurant Favorites at Home: A Best Recipe Classic (The Best Recipe) by Editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine ISBN: 0-936184-67-1 Publisher: America's Test Kitchen Pub. Date: September, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (4 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: More of what CI should be doing
Comment: As I look over the last few issues of CI it's hard to get excited about yet another roast chicken or brownie recipe. Now that they've tackled just about every 'classic' recipe, they seem to be stuck in something of a rut. But having a look through the Restaurant Favorites' book, there's all sorts of amazing looking dishes to get excited about trying. As usual, CI applies their rigorous testing and streamlining to provide a detailed and reliable recipe. Here's hoping the magazine decides to swing towards more exciting food like this.
Rating: 5
Summary: This is my favorite Best Recipe book!
Comment: I wasn't expecting to enjoy this book so much. I was anticipating recipes from the kinds of restaurants I eat out in frequently, which are in my price range, and still prepare foods I don't often do at home. But the restaurants represented in THIS book are the extremely pricey, cutting-edge, wait-for-days-for-reservations places that I rarely can afford. These restaurants have incredible food. So I haven't even been able to taste a wide range of dishes in this unique category, let alone prepare them at home. A diverse group of people in the high-end food industry were polled to find the recipes that people ordered again and again. The editors pared 750 suggestions down to 150, with the chefs generously contributing their recipes for inclusion.
These are indeed things you could not cook at home. In this volume it takes more than the average amount of Cook's Illustrated tweaking to make the recipes accessible to the home cook. (Christopher Kimball noted in his preface that this project was more work than he had expected, and it's easy to see why.) But they don't stop until every problem is solved.
And the food!! I have made several of these recipes, and they are sublime. I have dog-eared dozens more pages with additional dishes I want to try. Each dish represents the particular vision of the chef who created it. Sometimes we think food like this it too weired for the average person to enjoy, but this is not the case. Everyone who tried my dishes to loved them, including children.
Rating: 3
Summary: From anyone else this would be a 5-star book, but...
Comment: It really hurts giving a weak rating to a Cooks Illustrated book. The America's Test Kitchen crew is one of the most overachieving organizations in the culinary world, turning out magazine, cookbooks, and a TV show at a furious pace, and all the while serving as the oracle of record for all things culinary. By itself, this is an excellent book, with excellent interpretations of normally-inaccessible restaurant dishes for the home cook. But it seems to lie outside what Cooks Illustrated does best; their usual methodical approach is muted here, though not nonexistent.
The selection of recipes is a good one -- lots of New American, kicked-up ethnic (including Anthony Bourdain's Cassoulet from Les Halles), innovative twists like "Green Eggs and Ham" (Seuss-inspired -- eggs in an herb sauce), and some flat-out four-star stuff that nobody would ever think to do in a home kitchen. The usual sidebars with product reviews and food tastings are there, as well (though seemingly in smaller-than-usual quantity), and there's even a short section on restaurant presentation. But... there's something missing.
On the one hand, the ATK crew could have gone even deeper, exploring the basics of restaurant cuisine and how to adapt its techniques to the home kitchen. Complex, yes, but a lot of fun. On the other hand, they could have pulled out a straight Todd Wilbur impression, then going one better and talking with the chefs about the origins of the dishes and the restaurants they come from. But Cooks Illustrated sent this one straight down the middle, creating something that doesn't quite fit either genre of cookbook. It doesn't, after all, feel like a Cooks Illustrated book with its interlocking technical commentary, nor does it satisfy as French Laundry-style food porn.
This doesn't mean I don't recommend it -- if you're bored with the usual, this book still does a good job despite its shortcomings, and the recipes sound truly delicious. But it's a diversion from the usual, and an awkwardly handled one at that. Know what you're getting into beforehand and you won't be disappointed.
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Title: Perfect Vegetables: Part of "The Best Recipe" Series by Editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine ISBN: 0936184698 Publisher: America's Test Kitchen Pub. Date: August, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Baking Illustrated: A Best Recipe Classic (The Best Recipe Series) by Editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine ISBN: 0936184752 Publisher: Cook's Illustrated Pub. Date: March, 2004 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The Kitchen Detective: A Culinary Sleuth Solves Common Cooking Mysteries With 150 Foolproof Recipes by Christopher Kimball ISBN: 0936184701 Publisher: America's Test Kitchen Pub. Date: August, 2003 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: Italian Classics (The Best Recipe Series) by Editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine ISBN: 0936184582 Publisher: Boston Common Press Pub. Date: 15 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The Quick Recipe (The Best Recipe Series) by Editors of Cook's Illustrated Magazine ISBN: 0936184663 Publisher: Cook's Illustrated Pub. Date: March, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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