CI Reviews

[jducoeur]

What the heck -- one can review recipes, right?

Yesterday's entertainment was reading the July/August issue of Cook's Illustrated. Having a decently quiet (rather house-focused) weekend, we wound up playing around with it, in between packing boxes. Two recipes tried; both qualify as "tasty pain in the ass".

We made the "Ultimate Oatmeal Cookies" yesterday. Or at least, mostly -- we turned out not to have the dried cherries, but it made a lovely excuse to chop up some of the enormous block of dark chocolate that we've had sitting on the sideboard for years. The cookies are enormous: one batch makes 16 cookies, each a fair dessert unto itself. They're quite good, soft inside and gently crisp outside, and probably worth making as a change of pace occasionally.

More extreme on both the "tasty" and "pain in the ass" scales was the "Rescued Orange Chicken". The premise of this particular article was that most Chinese Orange Chicken is overly sweet, goopy, and kind of chewy; they decided to come up with a recipe that really works. They succeeded -- the resulting chicken is crisp, the flavor slightly spicy, a positively intense burst of orange with only enough sweetness to compensate. (Which is kind of remarkable, given that the recipe involves half a cup of brown sugar.) OTOH, it takes most of two hours of near-solid work. The marinade/sauce is mildly involved, and the chicken needs to be marinated, dredged in egg white and a cornstarch mixture, deep fried pretty carefully and thence drenched in the now boiled and thickened sauce. Definitely not a dish for everyday, but in the same category as their chili recipe, worth the effort on a weekend day when I have some time to cook. Goes well with the Nashoba Valley Barley Wine that we opened up in the interest of killing off some bottles instead of moving them...

Comments

[ladysprite.livejournal.com]

I've made the oatmeal cookies, and I fell in love with them at first bite. Then again, I'm a fan of big, chewy cookies. I didn't think they were that much work, though....

If you're looking for a good, simple recipe from them, have you tried their scones? It's from a fairly old issue, but it's both incredibly quick and easy (like, less than 20 minutes start-to-finish) and darn yummy....

[jducoeur]

I didn't think they were that much work, though....

Probably aren't, in the grand scheme of things. But I'm still a relatively inexperienced baker, so it all *feels* harder than it really is. It'll probably cease to feel like work after I've made them a few times. (And I suspect they're even better with the cherries.)

have you tried their scones?

Hmm. No, I haven't, and that sounds very interesting. I've never tried making scones, and they might make a nice change of pace when I want something to bring places. Fortunately, when we packed up most of the cookbooks this weekend, we left the CI set out -- they've turned into some of my favorite cookbooks...

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

It'll probably cease to feel like work after I've made them a few times.

There you go -- it's for Science!

[corwyn-ap.livejournal.com]

I second the recommendation for the orange chicken. It is one of the best I've tasted, and a lot of work.

I'll have to try the oatmeal cookies. Maybe for halloween treats?

[jducoeur]

Possibly, if you're a believer in giving out hefty treats. There are *big* cookies -- about four inches across, and half an inch thick. Best way to think about it is that a full-size cookie sheet gets you eight cookies.

So it would probably do well for a sparse neighborhood that gets only a modest number of trick-or-treaters, but I wouldn't do it in a dense suburban area...

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Is there something about the recipe which means you can't make them smaller?

[jducoeur]

Might work, but I suspect it would take some tweaking. Given that these suckers start out an inch thick and about 2.5 inches across, an important aspect of the recipe is that they do *not* bake all the way through. (Indeed, the recipe is explicit that you take them out of the oven when slightly underbaked, and let the residual heat finish them.) Make them smaller, and you're likely to get a thinner and crispier cookie, unless you adjust very carefully...

[corwyn-ap.livejournal.com]

Well, I went up to the mother of our trick-or-treaters, and she said she was taking them to a party, so they wouldn't be by. So, no cookies this year.

Maybe I will make them for B to take to work for the early bird sale this weekend.

Thanks.