America's Test Kitchen Founder Chris Kimball Leaves Show
10 years ago
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Comments (31)I'm not staying at my house this week so I took a look at what Amazon reviewers have to say. The book does not use canned soups. Though the attached review may not sound all that positive, it does answer the question of ingredients, etc. "I usually rave about Cooks Illustrated books because they are the best all-around cookbooks out there, but I have to rant a little about this one. The idea behind Cover and Bake is to improve on classic casseroles by getting rid of sub-par ingredients like cream of mushroom soup and pre-packaged bread crumbs, and simplifying cooking procedures so as to allow as much one-pot cooking as possible. The people at Cooks Illustrated make a lot of references to "Tuesday night dishes," i.e., main courses that can be prepared, cooked and served quickly and don't result in a lot of clean-up. This, however, isn't that book. The dishes that look so quick and easy when you watch them on America's Test Kitchen aren't so quick and easy at home because they have someone else to pull the leaves off of enough fresh tarragon that they have 3 tablespoons ready and waiting when they start cooking their Chicken with Spring Vegetables. When at home you have to trim and cut the chicken, pull the leaves off of the tarragon and chop them, wash and cut leeks, carrots, and asparagus and measure out cream (rather a lot of it) and chicken broth as well as various spices, and make home-made bread crumbs in the food processor, it all adds up to several hours of preparation before the casserole even makes it into the oven, and along with the casserole dish itself, you end up with a dutch oven, food processor, cutting board, knife and several prep bowls to clean. You can make the basic dish in advance, but you still have to wait for the mixture to chill down before you can put it in the refrigerator, and you have to leave it out at room temperature for an hour before you can put it in the oven. Yes, it tastes much better than the chicken casserole you would make with precut pieces of chicken and cream of mushroom soup, but unless you make it on a weekened and have someone to take it out of the refrigerator for you before you get home from work, it's not a quick and easy weeknight dinner. As mentioned by someone else, this also isn't healthy eating. Most of the dishes have cream or cheese, and vegetarian isn't a word the folks at Cooks Illustrated seem to have learned, although the dishes seem to have a lot of mushrooms. Even the side dishes aren't truly vegetarian as a lot of the recipes in the book use one form or another of pork for seasoning, or otherwise rely on cheese or cream. For a book called Cover and Bake, I certainly expected at least some recipes which make star use of grains, rice, beans and vegetables, which are nice to have even for meat eaters. Those also aren't here. These are basic beef, pork, chicken and fish with rice and/or potatoes and they are hearty dishes. The side dishes are basically rice dishes to serve with the meat. Don't get me wrong -- the resulting food tastes good. But their "paella," for instance, bears no resemblence to paella. It's shrimp with tomatoes and rice and while it's quite tasty, for an expensive dish, it just isn't the star it ought to be. When you make a dish that calls for 1 1/2 pounds of extra large shrimp, which is going to run you at least $25, plus the costs of the other ingredients, the dish should be more than tasty -- it should be spectacular. No one is going to complain about this dish, but it's doubtful they are going to rave about it either. On the plus side, everything is extremely easy to prepare, especially if you like making food that serves 4-6 people and makes use of 9"X13" baking dishes, dutch ovens, and large skillets. There are, as always, plenty of useful illustrations, and the instructions are easy to follow. I'll use this cookbook since I still like the idea of dishes I can make over the weekend and keep in the refrigerator for several weekday uses, but it's not going to replace Cooks Illustrated's New Best Recipe or The New Basics or other recipe collections I own. This is really for people who like chicken and rice, beef and potatoes and other combinations that classically go into casserole dishes with thick and creamy sauces. If that describes you, this book is probably a 5-star book for you. Otherwise, you may search hard for recipes that sound worth the trouble." I tried to link and for some reason it keeps being rejected....See Morereally bad cooking shows??
Comments (73)I find a lot of great recipes on random blogs. You can tell pretty quickly the ones who can cook, so have a blog, and the ones who want a blog so try to cook. They might not have the kind of test kitchen homogenization that makes for foolproof results, but with underlying sameness, but for someone who knows how to cook and how to interpret and adapt for one's own kitchen, they're great! I find more great recipes in blogs than on cooking shows, for sure, and it's easier to find what one wants than in books. Never made a PW one, though, from either blog or show. I saw a part of a good bad cooking show on PBS today. It was part of the NHK world block, and I was using it to keep track of fifteen minutes before I had to leave the house. The Japanese woman who was cooking had pretty good English but not a lot of vocabulary. "Ingredients" was used, unmodified, to mean seasonings and flavorings specifically, as well as ingredients in general, and things like that. If one was watching rather than just listening it was intelligible. The host seemed to speak Japanese at least somewhat but spoke American with a Western accent and filled in some descriptions. She was demonstrating very simple food for very beginning cooks. The one I came in on looked like a vegetable stew, then there was a "Japanese omelette" (i.e., fritatta). Her recipes had the same quantity of seasonings/flavorings for each item so people wouldn't be scared off of cooking! That was the bad. Even if it was okay for what she was making, I shudder to think of people trying to do that with other recipes just by guess. OTOH, she was good about showing the basics, like how much salt was on her finger for a "pinch", and explaining why she worried the fritatta in the pan to loosen it. Neither dish looked particularly good, but they really were simple enough for a clueless in the kitchen viewer to make, and other than potentially being high in salt, they looked like things people should want to eat (veggies and eggs) rather than boxes of this and that, or colorless sludge. So it was good and bad, and for what it was aiming for, probably pretty good....See MoreI miss Chris!?!
Comments (17)I've always enjoyed ATK and Cook's Country and while I was never a super fan of Chris, I thought the on air chemistry between Chris, Bridgette and Julia was good. I have only seen one episode of the new season, but thought Bridgette and Julia were uncomfortable working together during their segments, it seemed forced. Perhaps they need time to find their footing, but I'd rather see them solo in each of their segments. I bought Milk Street and thought I was reading ATK or Cooks....See MoreCooking Show Heebie Jeebies
Comments (32)Exactly, CLEAN hands. It's the egg (raw chicken, raw pork, etc.) crusted hands in the salt pig that I object to. Very few eggs are actually infected with salmonella or whatever but if it's enough for the government to have a cow over poultry, it's enough for me not to be putting my eggy hands all overy everything. I use 7th Generation dishsoap, which is milder on my skin than many handsoaps. It's in a pump you operate with the back of your hand, though if I've been elbows deep in meatloaf, I may still have to wash the pump. I usually use food service gloves for things that are too icky, partly to save my hands, partly to keep my hands warmer, and when it's something I'm going to be in and out of I use the baggie kind rather than the latex kind so I can slip my hands in and out and leave the gunk on the gloves. I'm more worried about cross contamination and putting bad stuff where it shouldn't be than the food, really. I'm not the one cleaning most of the time, and I try to be aware of where I'm putting likely contaminants and spatter. I'm not an oversanitzer, and I suppose the bacteria will die on the salt in the salt jar, but I'm still not doing it. It grosses me out, and it's a bad example for professional cooks to set on TV. The hair band thing doesn't bother me that much. These people on TV look well washed, and I don't think touching their hair is a big deal. They'll have a lot more bad bacteria from touching the doorknobs, food packaging, etc. People generally don't get sick from hair in food either. Hair in food is just gross. Sweat is surely a bigger issue, especially after it has rolled down a face gathering what it may......See More- 10 years ago
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