Innholdsfortegnelse for April/May 2020 i Cook's Country

MOST OF THE banana pudding pies I’ve encountered in my life have let me down. Sure, they’ve made my sweet tooth happy, but for the effort involved, they’ve always seemed dull. Lacking in pizzazz. Our new recipe for Banana Pudding Pie (pictured on the cover) delivers that pizzazz and then some. Our Executive Food Editor, Bryan Roof, was inspired by a version at Buxton Hall Barbecue in Asheville, North Carolina. Test Cook Jessica Rudolph took his notes into the kitchen, where she spent weeks developing a recipe that any home cook can tackle with confidence. Make it (see page 22) and you will have achieved something remarkable—and earned major bragging rights. While on the subject of bragging rights: If you turn to page 24, you’ll see our recipe for American…

ELECTRIC DEEP-FRYERS promise to make frying easier, safer, and less messy than frying in a Dutch oven with a probe thermometer attached, which is how we typically deep-fry foods in the test kitchen. The machines are essentially metal bins with an electrical heating element suspended inside: To use them, you pour oil up to a maximum fill line, turn the machine on, and, in most cases, set the desired temperature for the oil. Once the oil is ready, you lower the food into the oil (usually via a basket) and often stick on a lid, which helps reduce any mess and supposedly contains unwanted odors. To find out if any of these machines had advantages over a Dutch oven, we bought six deep-fryers and used them to cook frozen mozzarella…

CHICKEN CROQUETTES WITH LEMON-SCALLION SAUCE Serves 4 to 6 An average-size rotisserie chicken should yield between 3 and 4 cups of shredded meat, which is more than enough for this recipe. LEMON-SCALLION SAUCE ½ cup mayonnaise1 scallion, minced1 teaspoon grated lemon zest plus1 tablespoon juice1 tablespoon water CROQUETTES 3 slices hearty white sandwich bread, torn into 1-inch pieces1 tablespoon all-purpose flour2 large eggs1½ cups finely shredded rotisserie chicken1¼ cups plain instant mashed potato flakes4 scallions, sliced thin2 garlic cloves, minced1¼ teaspoons table salt1 teaspoon pepper⅛ teaspoon cayenne pepper1½ cups half-and-half2 tablespoons unsalted butter2 cups vegetable oil for frying 1. FOR THE LEMON-SCALLION SAUCE: Combine all ingredients in bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate until ready to serve. 2. FOR THE CROQUETTES: Process bread and flour in food processor until…

KINGSTON TROPICAL BAKERY sits under the train tracks at the corner of White Plains Road and East 226th Street in the Bronx. A sidewalk‑facing case filled with golden Jamaican‑style beef patties lures customers inside, where shelves are loaded with fresh breads, buns, and other Caribbean treats. But this is more than a bakery. After fifty years in business, Kingston is a neighborhood institution and gathering place for the local Jamaican community. Manager Caroline Sinclair grew up in Jamaica and worked in banking before a career change brought her to the Bronx thirty years ago; today she oversees operations with a sharp eye on quality. Kingston isn’t the only bakery selling patties in town, but it’s one of the few that makes them from scratch. Others have switched to industrialized methods…

NEVER TRIED COOKING DRIED BEANS? HERE’S OUR FOOLPROOF METHOD. 1 Brine the Beans Brining the beans for 8 to 24 hours takes forethought. But this step seasons them thoroughly and helps them maintain their shape throughout cooking. (Be sure to pick through them to discard any funky-looking beans or pebbles before brining.) 2 Cook Uncovered The cooking time for dried beans can vary a lot based on bean type, brand, and age; cooking them uncovered on the stovetop gives you the ability to watch and taste them as they cook. 3 Slowly Simmer Maintaining a gentle simmer prevents the beans from rupturing. (Boiling water causes the beans to knock into each other and break.) 4 Taste for Texture After 40 to 50 minutes of simmering, the beans should be just barely…

I LOVE SAVORY, spicy, satisfying enchiladas—especially when someone else makes them. They’re just too much work for me on a weeknight. But do they need to be? I challenged myself to create a streamlined recipe for fresh, tangy baked green chile enchiladas with melty cheese, one that I could pull off even after a long and taxing day at work. Cooking through a handful of existing recipes revealed a range of supposed shortcuts; some were acceptable, and some were definitely not. In a side-by-side tasting of enchiladas made with shredded rotisserie chicken and chicken that I’d poached or roasted, my tasters barely detected a difference in flavor—there was my first acceptable shortcut. The sauce proved to be a trickier challenge. Store-bought green enchilada sauce (salsa verde made with tomatillos, green…

PERFECTLY ROASTED POTATOES, buttery mushrooms, a savory strip steak, and maybe something green to lighten things up. I mentioned my dinner desires to my wife one Sunday evening, and she laughed. “I bet you can’t do it in one pan!” On Sundays, our deal is that I cook and she’s in charge of doing dishes, so she clearly had an ulterior motive in issuing this challenge. Well, challenge accepted. I started with a cast-iron skillet to cook my steaks, knowing that—because cast iron gets ripping hot and retains heat really well—I’d get a beautiful brown crust. I seared the steaks in a bit of butter because, well, butter and steak are best friends. Just a few minutes in the hot skillet on each side produced a perfect crust and a…

MY FIRST FORAYS into making ramen involved a microwave, a squiggly brick of dried noodles, and a little pouch of powdered chicken flavoring. And while I’ll still slurp down the instant stuff, I’ve gotten a little more ambitious about making my own ramen. These days, I’ll trek all over town to eat in the best ramen shops and then spend the better part of a three-day weekend taking pains to re-create the “perfect bowl” by simmering stock overnight, doting on slow-roasted pork belly, and marinating soft-cooked eggs. But I’ve also learned that you don’t need to put in that much work to make truly incredible homemade ramen. The one shortcut I employ is using the noodles (but not the seasoning packets) from packages of instant ramen (you could use fresh…

Encourage-mint I want to grow mint in my garden this year, but I don’t know which kind to plant. What is the difference between spearmint and peppermint? –Emily Wells, Saratoga, N.Y. There are more than 30 species of mint, but peppermint and spearmint are the most common. Peppermint has smooth green leaves and stems with a purple tinge, while spearmint (the type of mint most grocery stores carry) has bright green or gray-green leaves with a more crinkly texture. To compare their flavors, we had tasters sample raw peppermint and spearmint leaves side by side and then had them try our recipes for Fresh Mint Sauce (an accompaniment for our Crumb-Crusted Rack of Lamb) and Cucumber-Mint Lemonade prepared with each type of mint. Since peppermint contains more menthol, it makes…

I’M A FOOD-LOVING Southerner from one of America’s great eating cities: Charleston, South Carolina. As such, there are dishes I’m expected to know and love, most of them rightly so. For instance, shrimp and grits—delicious! Fried green tomatoes are on that list, too (see “The American Table”). And until a couple of months ago, I’d have been on board with the most avid fan of those tart, cornmeal-crusted tomatoes. But when I began my assignment for fried green tomato BLTs, I uncovered something downright dishonorable: My professed love for this Southern favorite was a lie. Let me explain. I researched dozens of recipes, picking the most delicious‑sounding ones to fry up in the test kitchen. I took pains to keep the fried tomatoes hot and crispy for each tasting. My…

WHEN I WAS growing up in north-eastern Ohio, my grandmother Mary Lou used to serve a memorable dish called “hot rice.” The buttery rice was cooked in a tomato-rich sauce spiked with hot red peppers that provided the dish’s signature bite. (The famous fried chicken from nearby Barberton is often served with a similar rice, but they call it “hot sauce.”) Sadly, Mary Lou’s recipe has been lost. Longing for her version, I started sampling some recipes from Ohio cookbooks. The recipes typically call for canned tomatoes, jalapeño chiles or red pepper flakes for heat, bell pepper for sweetness, and white rice. Most call for everything to be cooked together until the tomatoey liquid is absorbed. Common issues: clumpy rice and a searing, unbalanced heat. My goal was to combine…

POTATO KUGEL, SAVORY cousin to the Jewish home-style favorite noodle kugel, sounds so promising: shredded potatoes mixed with onion, eggs, and fat (often schmaltz, rendered chicken fat) and baked until crisp on the outside and fluffy on the inside. It’s like one giant, sliceable latke. But the recipes I tried were disappointing. Some kugels were eggy and rubbery, some were slimy, and all were overpowered by the sour tang of raw onion. I learned some things right off the bat: We preferred cooked onion to raw, savory schmaltz was our fat of choice, and squeezing the shredded potatoes dry reduced slipperiness. Armed with this knowledge, I took a stab at an improved kugel. I softened 2 cups of finely chopped onions with a sizable dollop of schmaltz and used the…

CORN TORTILLAS HAVE been a dietary staple in Mexico and other Latin American countries for centuries. While we enjoy making corn tortillas at home, it’s more convenient to use supermarket products. To find our favorite, we gathered seven nationally available 6-inch corn tortillas, the size we call for most frequently in our recipes. Five of the products were made from corn, and two were made from blends of corn, wheat gluten, and/or wheat flour. We gently warmed the tortillas and sampled them plain and in pork tacos. Our ideal corn tortilla has corn-forward flavor, mild sweetness, and a slight nuttiness developed from nixtamalization, the chemical process that prepares corn for use in tortillas (and other applications). A few of the tortillas we tasted hit all those notes, exhibiting “slightly sweet,”…

THERE’S NOTHING LIKE a good nonstick skillet. You can crack an egg into it and count on a perfect fried egg sliding out a few minutes later, even if you get distracted for a bit or are a little clumsy with your spatula. It’s our go- to pan for all sorts of delicate and fast-cooking foods. We know which nonstick skillets we like: those with a slick and durable coating, a wide cooking surface, and a comfortable handle. Finding that several intriguing new models have hit the market recently, we gathered nine nonstick skillets and used them to make stir-fry, frittata, and pan-fried sole—recipes selected to test the pans’ capacity, browning ability, and maneuverability. We also cooked eggs in the dry skillets back-to-back, stopping either when they began to stick…

SOY-MARINATED EGGS Makes 8 eggs Mirin can be found in your supermarket’s Asian foods section. The soy marinade can be reused to marinate up to three batches of soft-cooked eggs; it can be refrigerated for up to one week and frozen for up to one month. 1 cup soy sauce¼ cup mirin2 scallions, sliced thin2 tablespoons grated fresh ginger2 tablespoons sugar2 garlic cloves, minced8 large eggs 1. Combine soy sauce, mirin, scallions, ginger, sugar, and garlic in small saucepan and bring to simmer over medium-high heat. Remove from heat and stir in 1 cup cold water; set aside. 2. Bring 3 quarts water to boil in large saucepan over high heat. Fill large bowl halfway with ice and water. 3. Using spider skimmer or slotted spoon, gently lower eggs into…

Layer Cake Perfection –Stephanie Roberts, Broken Arrow, Okla. I’m an avid baker, and I love making tall, showstopping layer cakes for special occasions (and sometimes just because it’s Thursday). But I’ve never been any good at cutting a single cake round into two even layers. After botching another one, I finally got fed up and figured out a way to cut the cake without having to eyeball it. I set the round on my rotating cake stand and placed eight toothpicks halfway up the side of the cake around the perimeter (using a ruler to make sure that they’re even) to act as a guide for my knife. I then worked my way around the outside of the cake, cutting right above the toothpicks. Now it’s easy to get even…

Fried green tomatoes are an iconic Southern food. Right? Not so fast. In 2011, food historian Robert F. Moss published The Fried Green Tomato Swindle and Other Southern Culinary Adventures, a book in which he debunked the idea that fried green tomatoes have deep roots in the South. In fact, the earliest references he could find to the dish were from turn-of-the-century cookbooks published in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. This makes sense if you think about it; there are a lot more green tomatoes up North, where the summer growing season is shorter and not every tomato gets a chance to ripen on the vine. We can blame Fannie Flagg’s best-selling 1987 novel, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe, and the 1991 movie adaptation Fried Green Tomatoes…

WHEN FENNEL BULBS are roasted in a hot oven, they develop a sweet, almost nutty flavor, with an enchanting licorice undertone. But roasting them in the oven can take upwards of an hour. I wanted a speedy way to make deliciously sweet, tender, nicely browned fennel on the stovetop. I started by chopping fennel bulbs into different-size wedges and sautéing them in olive oil. Small wedges fell apart, and those that were too big were a challenge to cook through evenly. One-inch wedges were just right for serving, and I found that they cooked most evenly when I added some water to help them steam through. Through testing, I landed on placing the wedges in a skillet; adding a cup of water, a few tablespoons of oil, and some fresh…

Expand Your Horizons Many markets now carry interesting varieties of common herbs. Look for Thai basil, which has a deeper, more peppery aroma than Italian basil; substitute lemon thyme for regular thyme in almost any dish; and experiment with purple sage instead of green. There are countless varieties of herbs to try. Unexpected Uses WHEN GRILLING OVER CHARCOAL The stripped stems of hardy herbs such as thyme and rosemary can be tossed onto your lit charcoal while you’re grilling; the perfumed smoke will add an extra dimension of flavor to your food. MAKING FLAVORED VINEGAR You can make flavorful herbed vinegars—and thus incredible vinaigrettes—by adding fresh herbs to distilled white vinegar, letting the mixture steep for two weeks, and then straining it. TEST KITCHEN TIP Don’t chop chives with a…

AMERICAN SANDWICH BREAD Makes 1 loaf 2½ cups (13¾ ounces) bread flour2 teaspoons instant or rapid-rise yeast1½ teaspoons table salt¾ cup (6 ounces) whole milk, room temperature⅓ cup (2⅔ ounces) water, room temperature, plus extra for misting2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted2 tablespoons honey 1. Whisk flour, yeast, and salt together in bowl of stand mixer. Whisk milk, room‑temperature water, melted butter, and honey in 4-cup liquid measuring cup until honey is dissolved. 2. Fit mixer with dough hook. Slowly add milk mixture to flour mixture on low speed until cohesive dough starts to form and no dry flour remains, about 2 minutes, scraping down bowl as needed. Increase speed to medium-low and knead until dough is smooth and elastic and clears sides of bowl, about 8 minutes. 3. Transfer dough…

THE ONLY THING better than gravlax layered on a bagel with a smear of cream cheese at your favorite deli is having homemade gravlax at your fingertips—no need to swap your pj’s for real clothes to visit that deli on a Sunday morning. Gravlax is an ancient salmon preparation. Fishing communities in northern Europe and Russia, surrounded by an abundance of salmon, acquired most of their catch during the time of year when the fish swim upstream to spawn. To preserve the fish for the rest of the year, they’d salt and bury it—this curing process gave them easy access to protein during the lean winter months. Today the process relies on refrigeration rather than shovels. Instead of being buried in the earth, modern gravlax is made by “burying” salmon…