Innholdsfortegnelse for August - September 2016 i Cook's Country

THE USUAL GO-TO cut of pork for backyard barbecue is the pork shoulder, but in certain corners of the Carolinas, many pitmasters swear by ham (see “On the Road”). I don’t mean the smoked, sliced ham you’ll find on a holiday table but rather “fresh ham” or “green ham,” which is bought uncooked and, with care and attention, can be transformed into a remarkably savory, deeply flavored filling for a summertime sandwich. Fresh ham, cut from the hindquarters of the hog and sold unsmoked and unseasoned, is leaner than traditional barbecue cuts like shoulder. Cooking it takes a little know-how, but if it’s done properly, the payoff is big. The meat is less soft, more chunky, and best of all, the crisp, bacon-like bits of skin are chopped and mixed…

MANY VERSIONS OF coleslaw are nothing more than waterlogged cabbage shreds awash in diluted dressing—no wonder it goes uneaten. I wanted coleslaw with personality that could hold its own amid a full barbecue spread. Cabbage is 93 percent water, which will thin the dressing, obliterate flavor, and compromise creaminess. I had to get rid of that water. One popular method is to salt the sliced cabbage, let it drain, and then rinse and dry it before adding it to the slaw. Frustrated with the four-step process, I tried just salting and draining the cabbage, but the results were too briny. I swapped in sugar for some of the salt (sugar also draws out water), but it took 2 hours to fully drain the cabbage. I’m not that patient. I tried…

 FEW FOODS BENEFIT as much from the high, dry heat of live-fire cooking as mushrooms do. Fire concentrates their sweet, earthy flavor and magnifies their meaty texture. Fans of grilled portobello caps know this already, but what about the smaller, milder white button mushroom? I tried several recipes for grilled button mushrooms that clearly demonstrated what didn’t work. The real duds employed a low fire, corralled the mushrooms in a foil “hobo pack” or disposable pan, or skewered the caps into a stack. In each case, the mushrooms stewed in their own juices and netted no char. It was clear that keeping the heat high was key to drawing out the mushrooms’ excess liquid, which allowed them to brown. I set to figuring out how best to prep the mushrooms.…

A loaded picnic plate suddenly collapses, showering your sandals with potato salad. Been there? Our longtime favorite disposable plates by Vanity Fair were recently redesigned, so we decided to revisit the category. We stocked up on eight nationally available products priced from $0.11 to $0.54 per plate. Although most come in multiple sizes, we opted for plates around 10 inches wide—roughly the size of a dinner plate. We put these plates to the test by saddling them with a full 2 pounds of bone-in chicken breast, piping-hot baked beans, coleslaw, and potato salad. Then we walked around the bustling test kitchen, periodically prodding the food with a fork, to simulate plate usage at a barbecue or party. Half the plates buckled, sagged, or cracked from the get-go. But things really…

MANY CUISINES AROUND the world have a version of chicken and rice, from Spanish paella to Singaporean chicken rice. But among the most famous, and popular, is Latin American–style arroz con pollo (“rice with chicken”), with fall-off-thebone chicken nestled in creamy, flavorful rice—a dish you might encounter in Miami, perhaps, or New York City. Before starting, I spent hours on the phone talking to professional chefs, home cooks, and others who’d grown up with arroz con pollo and make it regularly. They waxed enthusiastically about Puerto Rican versions, Cuban versions, Central American versions, and more. I made six recipes and ordered the dish from a few local restaurants. What I found was that there are as many recipes for arroz con pollo as there are people who cook it. If…

THE APPEAL OF a peach upsidedown cake lies in its simplicity: You toss butter, sugar, and peaches together in a skillet; pour a basic batter over them; and bake the whole thing until the batter is cooked through. The moment of truth arrives when you invert the skillet onto a plate to reveal (one hopes) beautifully caramelized peaches perched atop a rustic, not-too-sweet cake. But too often the result is overly sweet or, worse, a soggy mess. When researching peach upside-down cake, I came across several recipes calling for incorporating cornmeal into the cake layer. I loved this rustic, down-home idea and headed into the kitchen to try to make it work. I employed a simple quick-bread assembly method: Liquid and dry ingredients are mixed separately and then gently stirred…

Dried fettuccine is a simple product that’s been made with two ingredients—flour and water—for centuries. When prepared well, these long, wide noodles are greater than the sum of their short ingredient list, showcasing a clean flavor and a hint of springy chew. To find the best option, 21 America’s Test Kitchen staffers tasted four nationally available fettuccines boiled and tossed with neutral-tasting canola oil and in our recipe for Fettuccine with Butter and Cheese. One product in our lineup, from Ronzoni, was an outlier: Like most fresh—but not dried—fettuccine, it contains eggs and is clearly labeled as “egg fettuccine.” (Ronzoni does make an eggless dried fettuccine, but it’s not as widely available throughout the United States.) While our tasters liked this pasta, we preferred the cleaner, less-distracting flavor of those…

IN HIGH SUMMER, blackberry brambles blanket the Pacific Northwest, and a slice of blackberry pie is never far from reach. In Oregon it’s known as marionberry pie, named after the native blackberry variety prized by pie makers. Cut into a good example of this seasonal staple and you’ll see what sets it apart from other fruit pies: You won’t get a soupy, oozy slice. Instead, the purple filling retains its shape. But how? Aficionados I spoke with claimed that there are no tricky tricks, no added pectin or gelatin, nothing stranger than a bit of starch. As trustworthy as my sources were, I was skeptical. Could I create a cohesive blackberry filling with tart, clean, fresh summertime flavor? Only one way to find out. I grabbed a handful of existing…

There is a long history of English muffins in England, where they are simply called “muffins.” The first published recipe appeared in 1747 in Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, an English cookbook that was also quite popular among American cooks. At that time, Englanders could find the “Muffin Man” peddling his wares (wrapped in flannel to keep them warm) as he roamed the streets at teatime, ringing his bell. By the 1850s, recipes began appearing in American cookbooks, including “The Hot Muffins of Old England,” which appeared in The American Matron; or, Practical and Scientific Cookery (1851), by “A Housekeeper.” In the mid-1960s, English muffin bread entered the scene as a commercial product when supermarket chains began baking and selling privatelabel muffin bread. “Makes great…

IT’S TEMPTING TO reach for bottled lemonades in the grocery store beverage case—what could be more convenient? Unfortunately, many of these cheek-sucking versions are packed with sugar, flavorings, and colorings—and not much else (often they don’t even contain real lemon juice). They pale in comparison with homemade, in which lemons add dimension and freshness you just can’t find in the supermarket. I wanted a simple recipe for refreshing lemonade that balanced sweetness and tartness—a reward worth all the squeezing. Lemonade requires sweetening. Many recipes call for doing so with simple syrup (a boiled mixture of sugar and water) to help the sugar dissolve easily. While simple syrup is indeed simple to make, it needs to cool back to room temperature before it’s added—a speed bump I wanted to avoid. I…

SUCCESS IN BAKING starts with careful measuring. And while a good scale is the most accurate tool, dry measuring cups are often more practical for the home cook. Lots of new models have come on the market since we last tested measuring cups eight years ago, so we decided to revisit the category. We rounded up 12 sets, priced from $5.99 to $44.95 and including our prior winner (from Amco), and headed into the test kitchen to see which ones measured up. Our preferred measuring method for dry ingredients is the “dip and sweep”: We dip the cup into the container of flour or sugar, scoop out a heaping cupful, and then sweep the top of the measure level with the back of a knife. Models with handles that extend…

We’re looking for recipes that you treasure—the ones that have been handed down in your family for a generation or more, that always come out for the holidays, and that have earned a place at your table and in your heart through many years of meals. Send us the recipes that spell home to you. Visit CooksCountry.com/recipe_submission (or write to Heirloom Recipes, Cook’s Country, P.O. Box 470739, Brookline, MA 02447) and tell us a little about the recipe. Include your name and mailing address. If we print your recipe, you’ll receive a free one-year subscription to Cook’s Country. PEPPER VINEGAR Kimberley Johnston of Little Rock, Ark., writes, “This vinegar gets better the longer it sits and is great on just about everything, especially pulled pork sandwiches. And don’t forget the…

Sheet Shifting Does it really matter if I switch and rotate my cookie sheets while baking? Lucy Sammer, Rye, N.Y. Most of our recipes for cookies, pies, cakes, and tarts call for rotating the baking sheet or pan halfway through baking to ensure even cooking and browning. But we love challenging assumptions, even our own, so to answer your question, we baked our Chewy Sugar Cookies and Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies both with and without rotating the sheets. Sure enough, the cookies on the sheets that weren’t rotated baked a bit unevenly, with certain cookies darker due to oven hot spots. The difference was minor but noticeable. Since our recipes are designed with that step, which requires opening the oven door and losing heat, the cookies we did…

IN HAWAII, FRIED chicken is often served as part of a “plate lunch” with macaroni salad and steamed rice (see “The American Table”). But not all fried chicken in Hawaii is the same. Mochiko chicken features boneless, skinless thighs marinated in soy sauce and battered with sweet rice flour. Katsu-style chicken is coated in crisp panko crumbs and fried. Karaage chicken is marinated in soy sauce or tamari, brown sugar, sake, and lots of ginger and garlic; coated in potato starch; and then fried and served with a sharp dipping sauce. The common denominator is utter deliciousness. I made versions of each style and gathered tasters. Each style had its fans, but the flavorful karaage was the most popular; we used it as a primary inspiration. I found a few…

THE CENTER OF the artichoke universe is Monterey County, California, which produces millions of pounds of the vegetable each year. Locals love artichokes’ delicate flavor, especially when grilled. Cooking them over an open fire brings out a nutty note. Artichokes are part of the thistle family and are technically the bud of a flower; the spiky tips of the leaves evolved to protect the bud from predators—except for those with a sharp knife. After experimenting, I found it best to use a vegetable peeler to remove the fibrous outer skin of the stem before snapping off the bottom rows of the remaining tough leaves. Placing each artichoke on its side and lopping off the top quarter got rid of most of the spikes. I pruned the rest of the leaves…

DURING ITS HEYDAY in the 1950s and 1960s, Fritzel’s restaurant in Chicago attracted big names: Tony Bennett, Phyllis Diller, Joe DiMaggio, and Marilyn Monroe were just some of the celebrities who ate there. And back then, eating at Fritzel’s meant sharing one of its most celebrated dishes: pletzel. This foccacia-like flatbread (sometimes called “onion board”) is not as well-known as other staples of Jewish delis and bakeries (think bagels and rugelach), but those who know pletzel really love pletzel. It took some doing to find existing recipes for pletzel, but persistence paid off, and I found five, including an old recipe from Fritzel’s. The five versions varied widely. One was thin and brittle like a cracker; others were soft and doughy. The one we liked best had a crisp exterior…

With its warm summer days and cool, clear nights, the Pacific Northwest’s climate is ideal for growing berries, including a prized variety of blackberry called the marionberry, or Marion blackberry. The berry, which ranges from dark purple to black in color when fully ripe (red berries still need time to ripen and develop flavor), is named for Marion County, the home of Oregon’s state capital, Salem. Oregon produces about 30 million pounds of the fruit annually, and 90 percent of commercial marionberries are grown in Marion County. Because the sweet, earthy berries tend to have a little more juice and a sweeter flavor than other common blackberry varieties, they are sometimes referred to as the “Cabernet of blackberries.”…

WHEN WE COOK steaks in the test kitchen, we usually sear them in a hot pan or grill them over a blazing fire to achieve a brown crust around tender, juicy meat. But I wanted to make dinner for four with vegetables as well as strip steaks, dirty only one pan in the process, and have everything ready at the same time. Impossible? We’d see about that. I started by simply roasting a steak on a rimmed baking sheet. The results were unsurprising: a sad, gray steak without any crust. I missed the intensified flavors that come with searing. But in order to achieve browning, meat requires direct contact with a heating element, which isn’t exactly what the oven is built for. In a bid to simulate the direct, searing…

Lemonade, a mixture of lemon juice, sugar, and water, has roots in many cultures: Arab cookbooks from the 13th century contained recipes for drinks made from lemon syrup, Mongols drank a sweetened lemon drink containing alcohol, and street vendors in France sold it in the 1800s. During the mid-19th century, American bartenders mixed lemonade into cocktails, but with the temperance movement, lemonade became a genteel Victorian-era drink supposedly popularized by First Lady Lucy Webb Hayes (wife of 19th U.S. president Rutherford B. Hayes). Forbidding the consumption of alcohol in the White House, she became known as Lemonade Lucy. Household juice extractors increased the drink’s popularity, so it was often enjoyed with guests, served out of pitchers specifically designed for it.…

BONELESS, SKINLESS CHICKEN breasts are often tagged as a boring, easily overcooked substitute for more-flavorful thighs. I disagree. Call me Pollyanna (it wouldn’t be the first time), but I think of this lean, mild meat as a blank canvas just waiting for a creative boost. I love citrus juices—lemon, lime, and orange—but when they’re used in a marinade, their acidity can toughen meat. I needed another way to bring these flavors to grilled chicken. Years of testing have taught us that marinades do most of their work on the surface of the meat, while a solution of salt and water deeply seasons meat and helps keep it moist. By combining the two into a salty marinade, or “brinerade,” we season the meat throughout while also adding flavor to the exterior.…

LAYERED WITH FAT and ribboned with bands of chewy cartilage, boneless English-style short ribs are not a common choice for grilling in America. We typically use low-and-slow cooking methods, like braising, to unlock this cut’s rich flavor. But in Argentina, where beef is king and grilling is an art form, boneless hunks of short rib are cooked over hardwood coals to a rosy medium-rare. Sliced thin and served with a tangy herb sauce or piquant pepper relish, the ribs often take top billing at the churrascaria. I wanted to help us get into the act up here in North America. I prepared a handful of existing recipes to help set my course and was knocked sideways by the results. The best of the bunch produced juicy ribs with a deep,…

Beginning in the mid-1880s, Japanese immigrants arrived in Hawaii by the thousands to work the sugar and pineapple plantations. Influenced by the settlers, the local Hawaiian cuisine evolved to include several recipes for fried chicken: mochiko, katsu, and karaage, all Japanese adaptations of Chinese or European techniques. Our Hawaiian-Style Fried Chicken recipe takes cues from the karaage style, which is a type of “dry” frying (without batter), though it has become shorthand for the recipe. (Our recipe gets its crunch from a dry coating of potato starch.) Another Hawaiian tradition that takes inspiration from Japan is the ubiquitous “plate lunch,” a complete meal usually served in a compartmentalized container, which has an ancestor in the traditional bento box.…

PICTURE A CLASSIC steakhouse favorite, the twice-baked potato: a crisp potato shell filled with fluffy, cheesy mashed potatoes and baked until the top turns golden brown. Now take it to the grill and add smoke. Not a bad idea, if you ask me. My hopes for creating this dish entirely on the grill were dashed early on; baking potatoes on the grill took forever and gave me subpar, inconsistent results. So I decided to start in the kitchen, fully baking six russets in the oven. I sliced them in half lengthwise, let them cool slightly, and carefully scooped the flesh from all 12 halves into a bowl, leaving about ¼ inch of potato around the interior of each half. I roughly mashed the scooped-out flesh with butter, salt, pepper, half-and-half,…

These days, Hollywood is known more for juice cleanses and extreme dieting than for actual eating, but things were different in the 1920s, when silent-film stars Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford held court at their sprawling Beverly Hills mansion, Pickfair. It’s hard to overstate just how famous the power couple was—Pickford, in particular, was a global celebrity with immense cultural impact—and their lavish dinner parties were legendary, attracting the likes of Gloria Swanson, Henry Ford, and Albert Einstein. On the menu? As often as not, dishes the couple brought back from their European travels, including pasta with butter and Parmesan. In a recollection for McCall’s, Pickford wrote: “I saw Professor Einstein demonstrate his Theory of Relativity with a knife, a fork, a plate and the edge of our dining table.…

ENGLISH MUFFIN BREAD Makes 2 loaves The test kitchen’s preferred loaf pan measures 8½ by 4½ inches; if using 9 by 5-inch pans, check for doneness 5 minutes early. English muffin bread is designed to be toasted after it is sliced. Cornmeal 5 cups (27½ ounces) bread flour 4½ teaspoons instant or rapid-rise yeast 1 tablespoon sugar 2 teaspoons salt 1 teaspoon baking soda 3 cups warm whole milk (120 degrees) 1. Grease two 8½ by 4½-inch loaf pans and dust with cornmeal. Combine flour, yeast, sugar, salt, and baking soda in large bowl. Stir in warm milk until combined, about 1 minute. Cover dough with greased plastic wrap and let rise in warm place for 30 minutes, or until dough is bubbly and has doubled in size. 2. Stir…

CHERRY CRISP IS a delightful mix of textures: juicy, vibrant fruit nestled beneath a toasty, crisp streusel topping. But does it need to be a multipan, multidish process? I hoped not. I decided early on to use sweet, not sour, cherries. They’re much easier to find and, of course, they’re sweeter (this is dessert, after all). And while I love the flavor and texture of fresh cherries, I wanted this to be a dessert I could make year-round, so I decided to go with frozen cherries. I found that, when mixed with sugar, lemon juice, and vanilla extract, they tasted just as good as fresh. Plus, they don’t need to be pitted. A 10-ounce bag was just right for two servings and cut the prep time dramatically. To keep this…

IT’S A ROMANTIC scene: a pot of tomatoes simmering on the stove, filling the kitchen with an aroma promising saucy suppers for weeks to come. But stovetop tomato sauce requires constant monitoring to stave off scorching. I wanted a convenient way to make tomato sauce without peeling the tomatoes first and without the messy task of removing the seeds at the end. I looked to the slow cooker. In the closed chamber of the slow cooker, I thought, contents can simmer at a consistent low temperature for long periods of time unchaperoned—with no threat of scorching. To get my bearings, I cut a bunch of plum tomatoes in half, placed them in the slow cooker, and let them stew. A few hours later, I had a fleet of seeds bobbing…