Indholdsfortegnelse for July - August 2017 i Cook's Illustrated

Swapping ground turkey for the usual ground beef and pork mixture can give meatloaf a lighter flavor profile that makes it more summertime-friendly. But simply substituting turkey for the beef and pork in the typical recipe, which calls for little more than the ground meat, an egg binder, and a tenderizer in the form of a panade (a mixture of bread crumbs and milk), results in a loaf that cooks up pasty and bland. Rather than solve these issues, most recipes try to merely distract from the problems by adding a thick glaze or folding in lots of vegetables or spices. Surely I could do better. I hoped to turn out a juicy, tender turkey meatloaf with complementary additions that highlighted the turkey’s mild, meaty flavor instead of overshadowing it.…

Ask a Northerner about corn fritters and you’re sure to get, well, an earful: They’ll describe crispy-on-theoutside, tender-on-the-inside dumplings dotted with fresh corn, deep-fried in a pot of oil, drizzled with honey or maple syrup, and served as a sweet treat. Southerners, on the other hand, will talk about fritters formed into patties and skillet-fried in a modest amount of oil. These contain cheese, herbs, and/or chiles and, accompanied by a dollop of creamy sauce, are served as a side dish or appetizer. As a Yankee, I have an affinity for the drenched-in-maple-syrup variety, but for this recipe I decided to focus my energies on the southern type. To start, I dove into the world of southern corn fritters, researching dozens of recipes before settling on a handful to try…

A fresh fruit tart is the showpiece of a bakery pastry case—and for good reason. With its clean crust edge and ornate arrangement of fruit glistening with glaze, this dessert is beautiful and conveys a sense of occasion. But anyone who has served one knows that the pretty presentation literally falls apart when the knife meets the tart. Instead of neat wedges, you get shards of pastry oozing messy fruit and juicestained filling. That’s a disappointing end for a dessert that started out so impressive and required several hours to make. It seemed to me that the classic fresh fruit tart needed to be reconceptualized from crust to crown. I wanted the crust and filling to be sturdy and stable enough to retain their form when cut, and I wanted…

As vinegars go, the red and white wine varieties are utility players: Neither is as distinct as sherry, balsamic, or cider vinegar; nor is either a go-to condiment for a particular dish as sherry is for gazpacho or balsamic is for strawberries. But that’s exactly what makes them valuable as pantry staples; a good version of either can deliver a jolt of clean acidity and balanced fruity sweetness to just about any dish. However, the white wine kind has a small but significant advantage: It doesn’t impart color, which can make it the better choice for seasoning pan sauces and soups or for pickling vegetables. Since we last tasted white wine vinegars, several products have been discontinued or become hard to find. So we rounded up eight widely available vinegars,…

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Cleaning Narrow Vessels with Rice Whenever a carafe, cruet, or syrup dispenser that is too narrow to clean with a sponge becomes cloudy, Roma Heerhartz of Sacramento, Calif., cleans it with cool water, a little dish soap, and a small amount of dry rice. After adding these ingredients to the vessel, she covers the top and rapidly swishes the rice kernels around, which loosens any residue so that it washes away. Shower-Capping a Sifter Ellen Fuss of Woodbury, N.Y., wraps an unused hotel shower cap around the bottom of her flour sifter when she’s storing it or needs to put it down between tasks. The elastic holds the cap in place around the base, so no flour falls into the bottom of her kitchen drawers or onto the counter. Fitting…

I’ve always wondered why there isn’t a tradition of smoking more cuts of beef. We smoke chicken, turkey, pork, and many kinds of fish, but when it comes to beef, not so much. Sure, there are some notable exceptions, such as Texas-style barbecued ribs and brisket. But why don’t we smoke quicker-cooking cuts; for example, steak? It turns out I’m not the only one to have this thought, as I was able to rustle up a few recipes for smoked steaks. While most called for rib eye or porterhouse, I was more intrigued by those calling for flat-iron steak, a cut we haven’t used much in the test kitchen. It’s a beefy-tasting steak from the shoulder that’s decently marbled and tender and also has the advantage of being relatively inexpensive.…

My longtime definition of cucumber salad—cool, crisp slices tossed with a tangy vinaigrette or a sour cream dressing—was recently upended when, at a Sichuan restaurant, I was presented with a plate of large, craggy, skin-on cucumber pieces sparingly coated with dressing. The cukes had a crunchy, almost pickle-like texture and hinted at garlic and sesame, with mild acidity and touches of sweetness and salinity. The simple preparation proved to be an ideal accompaniment to the rich, spicy food. The dish, called pai huang gua, is drop-dead easy to make. Smash the cukes with a skillet or rolling pin (or, as is traditional, with the flat side of a Chinese cleaver). Once they’re smashed, tear them into rough pieces and briefly salt them to expel excess water. Finally, dress the chunks…

Tasting Mascarpone Mascarpone is a soft, creamy cow’s-milk cheese from Italy that’s both slightly sweet and slightly tangy, so it’s versatile enough to be used in sweet applications (in tiramisù or tarts, dolloped on berries, drizzled with honey) and savory dishes (stirred into pasta or risotto or served alongside baked or roasted potatoes). It’s an acid-set cheese, which means that the cream and/ or milk is coagulated using acids such as citric or acetic acid instead of rennet. It’s then cooked until it reaches a thick and spreadable consistency similar to that of crème fraÎche or sour cream. Mascarpone used to be available only in Italian markets and specialty shops, so when we started seeing it in our regular supermarkets, we took notice. We found four nationally available products and…

I can’t think of a cuisine that doesn’t lay claim to a grilled chicken dish, but the Thai version might be my favorite. Called gai yang, it’s street food that originated in Thailand’s northeastern Isan region but has become ubiquitous throughout the country. Countless variations exist, but the most popular features small whole chickens that are butterflied, flattened, and marinated in a garlic-herb paste. To keep the hens flat, cooks position them between bamboo clips that look like giant clothespins; they then grill the hens over a low charcoal fire so that their fat renders and their skin crisps. What you get is the best version of grilled chicken—juicy meat, bronzed skin, and smoky char—made extraordinary by the flavor-packed marinade. The chicken is cut into pieces and served with a…

Italian seafood pastas such as frutti di mare and pescatore promise noodles teeming with shellfish and saturated with clean, briny-sweet flavor. And while many versions are chock-full of shrimp, clams, mussels, lobster, scallops, squid, or any combination thereof, I’ve yet to eat one in which the pasta actually tastes much like the sea. The shellfish flavor tends to be locked up in the pieces of seafood themselves rather than awash throughout the dish. Together with the typical tomato-based sauce, these dishes resemble nothing more than pasta drenched in marinara and punctuated by the occasional bite of seafood. Most recently I came across this problem in a bowl of linguine allo scoglio, another mixed shellfish–and-pasta classic that’s named for the rocky Italian seashores where seafood is abundant (scoglio means “rock”). Tangled…

S ome think it’s sacrilege to cook a perfect summer tomato, but I disagree. Cooking intensifies the tomato’s natural flavor, and it’s an excellent way to use great tomatoes at the time of year when there are plenty of them around. That’s why tomato gratin (sometimes called scalloped tomatoes), a classic dish that serves this very purpose, has always appealed to me. It combines fresh tomatoes with bread—typically sandwich bread or bread crumbs—to soak up all the juices released as the tomatoes cook, and it’s topped off with Parmesan for both flavor and contrasting texture. Sugar, garlic, and herbs are typically the only other additions, lending a subtle flavor boost. The problem is that most versions suffer from mushy, pasty bread as well as tomatoes that are undercooked, overly sweet…

Five years ago we set out to find a reasonably priced blender that could stand up to the constant, heavy-duty use that many of us demand of this appliance. Of course we wanted it to be able to carry out routine tasks such as pureeing soups and sauces to a smooth consistency, but we also wanted it to reliably handle jobs such as blitzing ice into snow for frozen cocktails or pulverizing fibrous ingredients into smoothies—not just occasionally but daily. We’ve seen such regular, strenuous use cause many blender malfunctions over the years, from cracked jars to burnt-out motors, so once we found a midpriced winner, we didn’t stop there. We subjected it to a long-term durability test, making more than 400 smoothies in a single copy of our favorite,…