American Classics: More Than 300 Exhaustively Tested Recipes For America's Favorite Dishes





Classic recipes from American home cookingâ€"tested and refurbished in the Cook's Illustrated test kitchen.

Over the years, many classic American recipes have fallen into disrepair, barely recognizable shambles of their former selves. So if you want a recipe for cornbread, cheesesteak sandwiches, frosted layer cakes, hermit cookies, green bean casserole, or macaroni and cheese that tastes at least as good as you remember, where would you find it? Well, now you can turn to American Classics from the editors of Cook's Illustrated.

This 448-page cookbook provides 335 recipes covering the wide range of American cooking. Choose from favorite regional dishes such as Boston baked beans, Chicago deep-dish pizza, and New Orleans' legendary red beans and rice. Beloved family fare, such as chicken pot pie, corned beef and cabbage, turkey Tetrazzini, ham roast, stuffed peppers, fried onion rings, pecan bars, and coconut cream pie are also included. Timeless restaurant dishes, such as Parker House rolls, Waldorf salad, and bananas Foster, have been updated and streamlined. And because our editors have tested each recipe dozens of times, they are about as close to foolproof as any recipe can get.

This in-depth volume provides answers as well as recipes. How do you keep lemon meringue pie from weeping? Can you capture the flavors of a real clambake on top of the stove? Which brand of frozen blueberries tastes better than fresh? How do you cook smothered pork chops so they are tender, not tough?

American Classics also contains more than 200 illustrations that show you how to shave meat for cheesesteak sandwiches, shape crescent rolls, shred cabbage, and frost cakes. Dozens of no-nonsense equipment ratings and taste tests of supermarket foods are also included. Find out which food processor does the best job of kneading bread dough and why all cheese graters are not the same.Derived from the pages of Cook's Illustrated magazine, American Classics (part of the successful Best Recipe series) offers 300 formulas for a soup-to-nuts trove of American standards--everything from clam chowder, mashed potatoes, and fried chicken to brownies, carrot cake, and lemon meringue pie (which required 28 tryouts before the "best" was achieved). The book goes far to realize its mission with exhaustive "what-we-were-looking-for-and-how-we-got-it" investigations; tons of useful asides on techniques, ingredients, and equipment; great how-to illustrations; and the recipes themselves, which are precisely thought through and clearly rendered. All in all, even a cursory dip into the book takes readers into the very heart of cooking.

How does it work? Let's take the recipe for Grilled Cheese Sandwiches, a simple dish but one that's frequently botched. First, the problem of achieving the right filling distribution: "Tradition ... suggests that the cheese be cut into thin, even slices for easy melting," say the authors, but this can be problematic as "cheese planes don't work well on soft, rubbery cheeses" and cutting with a knife "requires patience, practice, and a relatively hard block of cheese." After a number of slicing failures, the authors opt for "the common box grater ... which is quick and efficient." Next, the bread: "Some like it soft and some like it firm," but even so, a supermarket brand gets the nod. Testing a full range of fats reveals salted butter is best for "superior flavor and its ability to turn bread deeply golden," and so it goes through the choice of skillet (heavy gauge with a flat bottom) and the correct cooking temperature (no more than medium low). An exemplary recipe for grilled cheese sandwiches follows.

If all of this sounds obsessive, it is. More compelling is the fact that this approach helps readers understand the parameters of any cooking task, thus educating their tastes while also providing true technical empowerment. And the dishes really are keepers. --Arthur Boehm









List Price: $ 29.95



Price: $ 18.90

Other posts like this, by keyword: