Indholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2019 i Cook's Illustrated

I took the position because I wanted to learn how to cook seafood. I did learn how to slowly poach halibut so that when the exterior hinted at flaking, the interior was a silky medium-rare. I did learn how to char huge, freshly shucked sea scallops by rolling them along their equators over a white-hot cast-iron cooktop like sticky summer tires on hot asphalt. And I did learn how to cut any whole fish, regardless of species or shape, into pristine fillets. But my greatest takeaway from my brief tenure at Le Bernardin had little to do with seafood at all: It was learning the true value of a sauce. The saucier, the highest-ranking cook at the restaurant, would craft a dozen sauces daily to dress every piece of fish…

Murgh makhani, also known by its English name, “butter chicken,” is a wildly popular dish that has reached royal status in northern Indian cuisine. But according to most sources, the dish was originally intended to solve the rather pedestrian problem of preventing leftover meat from tandoor-roasted chickens from drying out. The solution turned out to be magnificent: The charred meat was bathed in a lush tomato-based gravy that was enriched with butter (and often cream) and scented with ginger, garlic, and spices such as garam masala, coriander, and cumin. Butter chicken has since helped spawn a major restaurant franchise and become one of the most well-known Indian dishes in the world. It’s also a popular dish to make at home, as the sauce is a snap to prepare: Soften some…

Truth be told, I’m not a huge kale salad fan. But I also don’t like cooking kale to death: Braising can dull its distinctive flavor and turn it mushy. Wouldn’t it be nice to have something in between? In other words, a side that celebrates kale’s gutsy taste and achieves a tender (but not sodden) texture. Right away, I decided that dry-heat methods—roasting, broiling, and sautéing—were out; they produced either brittle, crisp leaves or ones that were wet but still chewy. A moist environment was essential to produce just-tender greens. I settled on steaming, which didn’t wash away flavor like boiling and blanching did. The problem: To cook enough to serve four (about 14 cups of prepped kale, which cooked down to 5 or 6 cups), I had to use…

When my kids were little, making Sloppy Joes was a win-win situation. They loved eating them, and I loved sneaking bites off their plates. Eating a full portion of the filling, however, was off the table, since it was one-dimensional and cloyingly sweet. That said, those few bites were such a guilty pleasure that I’ve often wondered if I could give the sandwich an overhaul so that it could satisfy adults and kids alike. After all, the filling couldn’t be any easier to make: Just sauté some chopped onion (and sometimes celery, carrot, and bell pepper) in a skillet before adding ground beef to brown, and then finish with a ketchup-based sauce. And who knows? Maybe techniques that we normally apply to highbrow foods would come in handy here, too.…

Ground black pepper is one of the most ubiquitous and well-loved spices in the world. It holds a place of honor next to salt on restaurant tables and at kitchen workstations and appears in at least 2,000 of our recipes, from cacio e pepe to steak au poivre. No matter the recipe, we love its balanced heat and earthy, toasty flavor. All true peppercorns are harvested from Piper nigrum, a vining plant native to the Indian state of Kerala, which is located on the Malabar Coast. While peppercorns have been cultivated and used in Indian cooking since 2000 BC, we know that by AD 100 they were heavily traded throughout Europe and Asia. In the Roman cookbook Apicius—one of the oldest surviving cookbooks—black pepper is listed as an ingredient in…

I think I speak for all my colleagues when I say that we occasionally doubt our ability to add value to a cooking technique. But challah was the assignment that really gave me pause. That’s partly because the enriched, glossy braid is a cultural heavyweight. More than just a fixture at Ashkenazi Jewish holiday tables, it’s a biblically significant bread steeped in age-old rituals, symbolism, and strong opinions. When I polled a few well-versed colleagues and experts about what qualities challah should have, I received a flurry of disparate answers: The crumb should be fluffy or densely chewy. It should taste rich and sweet (acclaimed food writer Mimi Sheraton once described challah as “a brioche-like confection that falls just this side of cake”) or only slightly so. It should have…

When I’m running low on time, energy, groceries, or all three, I like to whip up my “emergency eggs”: I just chop up whatever leftover cooked vegetables are stashed in the refrigerator, toss them in a hot skillet with beaten eggs, and stir until curds form. Whether they’re for breakfast, brunch, or dinner, these healthful scrambles always satisfy, even if they are a little rough around the edges. But I knew that if I gave them some attention, I could come up with recipes worth repeating. My fresh take on scrambled eggs meant staying away from heavy add-ins such as meat and cheese and mundane vegetables such as onions and bell peppers. As I experimented with more contemporary options, I nixed spinach and Swiss chard; they tended to weep after…

You probably know ribs as a low-and-slow affair featuring fall-off-the-bone meat that’s been steeped in smoke and coated with a flavorful rub or sauce. Tuscan grilled pork spareribs, known as rosticciana (“RO-stee-chee-AH-na”), are not those ribs. Their preparation falls in line with the less-is-more ethos of Tuscan cuisine, where foods are seasoned sparingly to allow their natural flavors to shine. In this case, it’s all about the pork, so the seasonings are restricted to salt, pepper, and maybe a hint of garlic or rosemary. Then the ribs are grilled quickly—typically for only 15 to 30 minutes—over a hot fire until the meat is browned and crisp but still succulent and clinging to the bone with satisfying chew. Eating them with your hands is a truly primal experience. That said, I…

The frugality of New Englanders is evident in a number of tried-and-true regional dishes. One of my favorite examples is fish and potato cakes: In days gone by, leftover cooked fish scraps didn’t go to waste. Instead, the fish (usually cod, either fresh or salted) was flaked and folded into potatoes that had been mashed with milk and butter; the mixture was seasoned with aromatics and herbs (and sometimes bound with an egg) before being shaped into cakes. The cakes were then coated in bread crumbs and pan-fried to develop crispy, golden exteriors that encased creamy interiors. Today, the dish is a regional classic, generally made with fresh fish and served with lemon wedges and tartar sauce in roadside diners from Rhode Island all the way to the Maritimes. Modern…

I’m a peanut butter fanatic, and I feel uneasy if I don’t have an extra jar or two of the stuff stashed away “just in case.” So you might be surprised to learn that peanut butter cookies haven’t always been my first choice for spur-of-the-moment baking. After all, the cookies’ other ingredients are constants in my kitchen, too. But the truth is that I enjoy most peanut butter cookies only when they’re warm and fresh. As they cool, so does my enthusiasm. I wanted to think that a solution to these flaws would come easy to a peanut butter devotee such as myself. But after weeks of trying to devise a recipe for cookies with robust peanut flavor and lasting chew, I had to admit that a fix was anything…

WHAT IS IT? This bell-shaped wooden implement is a mold once used by dairy farmers to shape butter. Butter was made in the home until the mid-18th century, after which it became more the task of dairy farmers. Farmers churned cream into butter, washed away the buttermilk, and then placed the butter in a mold that could come in a variety of shapes. A decorative stamp, unique to each farm, was attached to the base of the plunger. Well-to-do families used similar smaller molds to make decorative pats of butter for their tables. To test our mold, we soaked it in water and then refrigerated it (measures that would help prevent the butter from sticking to the sides of the mold) before filling it with soft room-temperature butter. After refrigerating…

Most of Spain’s cured meats are made from pork, but the shape, consistency, and flavor of each product is unique. Skinny links of CHORIZO CHISTORRA—a smoky Basque-style version of the country’s most familiar sausage—is a traditional breakfast meat served with eggs; spicier CHORIZO PICANTE is seasoned with hot smoked paprika. Plump, juicy Catalan BOTIFARRA is “white” (meaning it contains no blood), while coarse-textured MORCILLA is sanguine, with a faintly funky finish. Mallorcan SOBRASADA—not to be confused with Italian soppressata—is rust-red, spreadable, and pungent; cooks often smear it on crusty bread and toast it until it melts. Lean, jewel-toned swaths of pork loin, called LOMO IBÉRICO, are gilded with fine olive oil at the table. Without the smoked paprika that seasons many of the region’s sausages, SALCHICHÓN tastes purely of pork…