Notes about Recipes in this book

• Simple sweet and tangy barbecue sauce

  • ashallen on February 26, 2022

    A delicious, multi-dimensional sauce that was excellent with slow-cooked pork shoulder. I had to substitute soy sauce for Worcestershire sauce and did not have the optional liquid smoke, but it was still great. I also didn't reduce the sauce quite enough on the stovetop (ended up with a scant 2 cups vs. 1.5 cups) but the flavors were still strong and very good. Very easy to make - the only step that's slightly fussy is pressing juice from the pureed onion.

• Creamy corn pudding

  • ashallen on December 11, 2019

    Very nice - simultaneously creamy and brightly sweet from the corn (though not sticky sweet!). I leave out the cayenne pepper and find that leftovers are really good for breakfast. I've tried making this with frozen corn when fresh corn is out of season, but the skins on the frozen corn kernels have been a bit tougher with the yellow corn I've tried being a bit tougher than the white corn. Next time I use frozen corn, I'll try pulsing it a bit in the food processor first to chop it up a bit. [Cross-post for Annual Edition/Magazine/Cook's Ill. Cookbook.]

• Lattice-top fresh peach pie

  • ashallen on November 23, 2019

    Good peach pie recipe, though I ended up tweaking it a bunch to suit my preferences. Flavor and texture of the peach filling in this recipe is very good. The crust was OK, but I thought there was too much of it relative to the filling (and I usually love lots of crust!). I also wanted it to be more buttery (it's ~50/50 butter and shortening). [Cross-post for Annual Edition/Magazine/Cook's Ill. Cookbook.]

• Pan-seared steaks

  • ashallen on May 27, 2021

    I couldn't remember the last time I'd cooked a steak and thought I'd better check a recipe. This was a simple, quick and easy approach that produced a straightforward and satisfying result. My 1-inch thick steaks ended up browning a bit faster than I'd wanted (issues with my outdoor gas burner...), so I covered the cast iron pan and let the steaks cook gently over low/residual heat until the interiors came up to temperature.

• Chicken cacciatore with portobellos and sage

  • ashallen on October 21, 2019

    Very good - sauce is richly flavored. I added some extra wine and accidentally forgot to drain the tomatoes, so I cooked the dish uncovered for about half an hour to further reduce the sauce. [Cross-post for Annual Edition/Magazine/Cook's Ill. Cookbook.]

• Chicken cacciatore with white wine and tarragon

  • ashallen on October 21, 2019

    Great flavors. Recipe works great as written. I've also substituted yellow onion for shallot and 1 tsp dried thyme for fresh thyme and it's still worked well. Substituting 2 tsp fresh rosemary for tarragon did not go well, however (even though I usually love rosemary). Also, making a half-batch version of this recipe has worked fine. [Cross-post for Annual Edition/Magazine/Cook's Ill. Cookbook.]

• Roast crisped-skin turkey

  • ashallen on November 05, 2019

    A good, solid recipe for roast turkey (unstuffed). However, my turkey's skin has never gotten super crisp using this recipe - maybe it's my oven? Uses a wet-brine. Be careful not to over-brine the turkey. I did that one year and it ended up tasting a bit like... ham. The search for the perfect roast turkey recipe continues... [Cross-post for Annual Edition/ Magazine.]

• Giblet pan gravy

  • ashallen on November 29, 2019

    This is an excellent recipe for classic turkey gravy - deeply flavorful. It's good with or without the white wine. Also good with or without the giblets chopped up and stirred in. [Cross-post for Annual Edition/Magazine/Science of Good Cooking/Cook's Ill. Cookbook.]

• Cornbread and sausage stuffing

  • ashallen on October 11, 2019

    This recipe convinced my bread stuffing-loving husband that he really likes cornbread stuffing, too! Excellent recipe - moist, flavorful and always comes out well. Also handles modification well. We prefer our stuffing without sausage - I substitute 1 extra egg + 2-3 tbsp rendered roast chicken fat for it. Another substitution is an extra 1/2 c yellow onion for the garlic and I usually double the sage and thyme. Making a half batch works great (full recipe makes a *ton* of stuffing!). I usually bake half-batches in a 9x13 Pyrex dish so there's more surface area for brown crisping on top. Leftovers keep well and it also does well in the freezer if sufficiently protected from drying out. The base cornbread recipe is great, too - even if I'm making just a half-batch of stuffing, I'll usually make a full batch of cornbread so we have a bunch to eat straight-up. [Cross-post for Annual Edition/Magazine/Cook's Ill. Cookbook.]

• Golden cornbread

  • ashallen on August 22, 2019

    This is a great cornbread. Not too sweet - you can taste the cornmeal - and an excellent light crumb. I like it best the day it's made but it's still quite good the next day. I've made other cornbreads that were moister but their texture wasn't as light. I originally made it for a Cook's Illustrated's cornbread stuffing recipe (and still do - that's another great recipe!), but I now make this to eat on it's own, too. Cutting the recipe in half and baking it in an 8x8-inch pan also works well.

• Arugula and roasted pear salad with walnuts and Parmesan cheese

  • ashallen on November 29, 2019

    Very nice salad - I love this combination of flavors. Initially I was concerned that the walnuts might be a bit bitter, but there's something about this ingredient combination that made them taste a bit sweet! I used my own homemade balsamic-mustard vinaigrette. I accidentally bought Bosc pears and, as the recipe notes, they seemed a bit dry - the recommended Bartlett or Anjou pears would've been juicier. I used a very nice Italian parmesan and it was good but seemed mild in competition with the other ingredients. It'll be nice to experiment with some more assertive cheeses in this. [Cross-post for Annual Edition/Magazine.]

• Rich and velvety shrimp bisque

  • ashallen on December 03, 2019

    This is a delicious bisque - full flavored and, as the recipe title says, velvet-textured and smooth. I don't have a chinois fine but straining the bisque through a fine mesh metal strainer worked well. [Cross-post for Annual Edition/Magazine/Cook's Ill. Cookbook.]

• Dutch apple pie

  • ashallen on November 23, 2019

    The flavors in this pie were very good and the crumb topping had nice crunch. However, I found the amount of apples called for (4.5 pounds) to be way too many for a standard (i.e., not deep dish) 9-inch pie plate. I could barely get the apples to perch in the plate without some tumbling out. I thought that the mound would settle down after baking, but even after baking there was a big mound of apples that the crumb topping was only just able to cover. The recipe photo in the magazine did *not* show a highly mounded pie slice and the ratio of apples to crust/crumbs was higher than I prefer. Perhaps there was a typo in the recipe ingredient list. Next time I'd cut back the apple quantity to the 3-4 pound range. The crumb topping ingredients resisted coming together into crumbs - I ended up adding some water to get them to form properly - that worked fine. My 3.5 star rating is for the recipe as written - with tweaking it'd be great! [Cross-post for Annual Edition/Magazine.]

• Bittersweet chocolate roulade

  • ashallen on November 10, 2019

    People love this cake - it's delicious, beautiful, and super-festive for the holidays. Deeply chocolatey but balanced by the espresso mascarpone cream filling. Moist without gumminess - the cream filling moistens the chocolate sponge cake around it and the chocolate ganache seals all of that good moisture in. The only drawback is that it doesn't make a ton of cake for the effort required - it serves 8-10 quite modestly (especially since it's so delicious and it's nice to have more than one slice!). Also, there are several steps and rolling up the cake can be fiddly - I don't make this when I'm in a rush. [Cross-post for Annual Edition/Magazine/Cook's Ill. Cookbook.]

• Espresso-mascarpone cream

  • ashallen on September 20, 2019

    I originally made this cream as part of Cook's Illustrated's recipe for a chocolate Yule log cake (this was the filling), but it is so completely delicious that it's great anywhere you'd like something that tastes like coffee-flavored whipped cream but has a firmer, thicker consistency. [Cross-post for Annual Edition/Magazine.]

• Dark chocolate ganache

  • ashallen on September 19, 2019

    Absolutely delicious and easy - though a bit more clean-up than the ganache method from Cook's Illustrated Annual Edition 2003 (January/February magazine issue). [Cross-post for Annual Edition/Magazine.]