Indholdsfortegnelse for May/June 2023 i Cook's Illustrated

At one point in middle school, I told my family that I was a vegetarian. My mom was shocked. Not because I was one of those kids who’d ask for steak on his birthday, but because I didn’t really eat fruits and vegetables. If you looked at the food pyramid plastered in classrooms and doctor’s offices around that time, you’d have seen that my new proclamation knocked out half of the third story. And my dislike of fruits and veggies had already closed off the entire second floor. That left me with a small attic of fried foods and fats; a wide and robust foundation of pasta, rice, and bread; and a rich, oozy core of cheese and cream. Yeah, that sounded about right. Not to my mom. Let’s just…

Few subjects inflame the ire of culinary pedants more than salade Niçoise. They’re not wrestling over historic points like where the dish originated (as the name suggests, it was in the French coastal city of Nice) or aesthetic considerations, such as the most attractive way to plate the salad (thoughtful composition or playful jumble?). No, the most spirited debate focuses on what actually belongs in this iconic dish. Salade Niçoise first showed up in the 19th century as a simple trio of tomatoes, anchovies, and olive oil. Renowned chef Auguste Escoffier, who was born near Nice, bulked it up with boiled potatoes and green beans. In 1972, Nice mayor and cookbook author Jacques Médecin decreed that the salad must be comprised mostly of tomatoes that had been salted three times…

To prepare fresh fava beans for cooking, I start by unzipping the fuzzy green pods and plucking out the handful of smooth-skinned nuggets hemmed along their length. Next, I plunge the beans into boiling water, just for a few moments, to soften their taut, waxy sheath and drop them into ice-cold water to halt cooking. Then, after toweling them dry, I slit each sheath with the tip of a paring knife and squeeze gently so that the green gems pop out—gleaming and completely unscathed. It’s a heck of a preamble for any produce, but I’d argue that it’s a meditative spring ritual and that the willingness to undertake it is a testament to just how special fresh favas are. After months of hardy brassicas and dense roots, their newness and…

A little precision can do a lot for Eton mess. The iconic mash-up of macerated strawberries, swoopy cream, and broken meringue trades on its thrown-together charm, whether you believe it materialized at the posh British boarding school when a bouncy labrador crushed a pavlova or at a Victorian engagement party. But the elements’ sublime contrast is what made the dessert worth repeating, so why not design a version around that? Berries that don’t just punctuate the cream but ripple through it. Meringue that isn’t hard or tacky—often the curse of store-bought—but uniformly crisp. Cream just thick enough to capture the fruit and cookies in a cloud. It’s crucial to bake the meringue low and slow for some of the time in the turned-off oven’s fading heat so that it thoroughly…

As a seed grows into a plant, one end becomes the root, and the other becomes the shoot, poking through the earth to develop above ground. With many plants, we harvest just the leaves or the fruit, but with these specimens, we eat the entire above-ground portion. Licorice-y ANGELICA, a relative of celery, parsley, and carrots, is a favorite of foragers; when young and delicate, its stalks can be candied as an old-fashioned treat. One of the first signs of spring is the appearance of oniony, garlicky RAMPS—pickle them to preserve their pungence beyond their fleeting season. Another common candidate for pickling is juicy, crunchy PURSLANE, a glossy and lemony weed that can be found in fields, gardens, and backyards. Like ramps, ASPARAGUS is a harbinger of the spring; it…

Warm Pasta Bowls with Pasta Water To heat up pasta bowls or plates, Rea Culwell of Walla Walla, Wash., places them in a clean sink with a colander on top and drains boiled pasta over them. The shower of hot water thoroughly warms the dishes, and any residual water can be wiped off with a kitchen towel. Prevent Your Hands from Smelling Garlicky Gina Ferreri of Shelton, Conn., has a trick for preventing pungent garlic odors from lingering on her hands. Before she handles the allium, she rinses her hands under lukewarm water, leaving them a little damp (be sure to fully dry your knife-holding hand). The water acts as a barrier, giving the fragrant, volatile garlic compounds (which are hydrophobic) less access to cling directly to skin. An Efficient…

When I worked the fish station at Troquet, a now-shuttered bistro that overlooked Boston Common, I prepared anywhere from four to six different dishes during each service. Most involved a smoking-hot pan for crisping skin-on striped bass fillets or searing scallops, but every so often my chef would run a dish that offered a reprieve from all that sizzling heat. It was à la nage, French for “in the swim” and for the classic method of gently poaching and serving fish in a fragrant broth. To make it, I’d slip a fillet of something flaky and white like halibut or cod into a pan filled with gently simmering broth. It only took minutes for the fish to cook through and turn silky, at which point I’d gently usher it from…

A gooey on the inside, crisp and golden on the outside cheese quesadilla is a go-to snack for good reason. The treat requires only a few ingredients and it can be prepared in minutes: Just sandwich cheese between a couple tortillas and toast briefly in a skillet. When I recently set out to craft substantial, dinner-worthy quesadillas with complex fillings though, things got complicated. My early tests resulted in less-than-stellar specimens, starring underdone proteins, soggy vegetables, and ingredients that were completely obscured by the gooey cheese. As I contemplated which ingredients to incorporate, it became clear that I needed to establish a quesadilla framework. After focusing on each element of the quesadilla, from protein to cheese, I homed in on the best way to choose and prepare these ingredients to…

My infatuation with oatcakes began during the eight years I cooked at hotels and restaurants in the Scottish highlands, where the word “oatcakes” refers to the savory, cracker‑like flatbreads that served for centuries as a stand-in for bread. (Wheat wouldn’t grow in Scotland’s cool, moist climate, but oats thrived.) The classic recipe requires few ingredients—sometimes just oats, a pinch of salt, a small amount of fat, and water—all of which are mixed to form a dough that’s rolled out, cut, and baked until crisp and dry. Nowadays, oatcakes are often purchased rather than homemade, but they are still eaten all day long in Scotland—with butter at breakfast, with tea for elevenses, accompanying a lunchtime bowl of soup, or topped with cheese and enjoyed with a whisky in front of the…

High-quality dried pasta is widely available and quick to prepare, so why make your own? This was the first question I put to Katie Leaird, a former America’s Test Kitchen editor and current food writer and pasta-making instructor who studied her craft in Italy. Without hesitation, she replied: “Because fresh pasta is a completely different food.” The texture of a fresh noodle, she insisted, is chewy in a way that’s impossible to replicate with one that’s been dried. You should also make pasta by hand—no food processor, no mechanical roller, not even a rolling pin—simply because you can. The tactile experience of pasta “fatto a mano,” or handmade pasta, is a meditative way to pass an hour or two, and it rewards you with a hearty meal, particularly when you’re…

Everyone gets stuck in a salad rut, matching up the same greens, vinaigrette, and produce on autopilot. But you can make one that feels vibrant and varied simply by switching up the dressing and the way you prepare the embellishments. Pickle some carrots; roast others. Shave cheese so that it’s feathery or fry it until it crisps. Swap a portion of the lettuce for herbs. Read on to learn tricks for shaking up your routine. TAKE A BREAK FROM YOUR EVERYDAY VINAIGRETTE Even if you do nothing else, switching up the dressing can make greens feel new and interesting. POMEGRANATE-HONEY VINAIGRETTE MAKES ABOUT 1 CUP KEEPS FOR: 1 WEEK REFRIGERATED Bring 2 cups pomegranate juice and 1 tablespoon honey to boil in small saucepan over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to…

In 2018, Turkish food critic and TV personality Vedat Milor sparked a Twitter frenzy by launching a simple poll: Should menemen—the hearty breakfast of eggs, peppers, and tomato—contain onion? Nearly half a million impassioned Turks weighed in. Yes, they decided, but the victory was narrow, with just 50.6 percent of the vote. It’s only natural that the topic should be so hotly debated, as menemen is central to Turkish foodways. When I spoke to Filiz Zorlu, author of Contemporary Turkish Cooking (2007), she commented on the ubiquity of the simple, satisfying egg dish. During childhood road trips to Ankara or Istanbul when her family would stop to eat, “always it was menemen,” she recalled. Named after a district in the country’s Izmir Province, the vegetable-forward eggs are embellished with fresh…