Cookbook Project, Book #197
Feb. 12th, 2014 09:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ladysprite"Cook's Country: Best Lost Suppers," America's Test Kitchen
I may have mentioned previously that I have a serious love for America's Test Kitchen. They have never led me wrong, recipe-wise, and I adore my subscriptions to their magazines. But occasionally they publish additional books, with recipes that they either haven't collected elsewhere or have altered in helpful ways. Also, since I was late to the Cook's Country train, there's just a lot of stuff I missed.
So about a year and a half ago, when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
umbran and I went on vacation, we found the local second-hand bookstore, and I found this on the shelf. It's a collection of, in their words, "old-fashioned, home-cooked recipes too good to forget." The recipes were sent in by readers, but then subjected to ATK's testing and polishing - and they're honest about that, too. If they make any changes, there's a note after the recipe explaining what they changed and why.
I read through the whole book enthusiastically, but the recipe that kept catching my eye was one of the first ones in the book - Granny's Tamale Pie. I love Mexican and Tex/Mex flavors, it looked delicious, and it was complicated enough to intrigue me.
And since I have more time than I know what to do with right now, and since this is a recipe that takes 3-4 hours to make, I made it for my gaming group last week (with help frommetaphysick when it came to prep-work and heavy lifting).
It's a layered casserole - seasoned cornmeal with chicken broth, tomatoes, bacon, onion, and garlic, layered with poached chicken and baked until everything has melded into a delicious whole, served with a spicy tomato sauce, and it's wonderful. Rich and moist and complex and interesting, and the sauce really makes the whole dish. I don't know if I'd make it again; as I said, it's four hours of poaching chicken and reducing broth and simmering aromatics and whisking cornmeal and then hefting around a cast-iron Dutch oven full of food inside a water bath in a roasting pan. But it was absolutely worth making at least the once. And there are a handful of other recipes, less labor-intensive, that I fully intend to make as well.
Yet another win for America's Test Kitchen....
I may have mentioned previously that I have a serious love for America's Test Kitchen. They have never led me wrong, recipe-wise, and I adore my subscriptions to their magazines. But occasionally they publish additional books, with recipes that they either haven't collected elsewhere or have altered in helpful ways. Also, since I was late to the Cook's Country train, there's just a lot of stuff I missed.
So about a year and a half ago, when
umbran and I went on vacation, we found the local second-hand bookstore, and I found this on the shelf. It's a collection of, in their words, "old-fashioned, home-cooked recipes too good to forget." The recipes were sent in by readers, but then subjected to ATK's testing and polishing - and they're honest about that, too. If they make any changes, there's a note after the recipe explaining what they changed and why.I read through the whole book enthusiastically, but the recipe that kept catching my eye was one of the first ones in the book - Granny's Tamale Pie. I love Mexican and Tex/Mex flavors, it looked delicious, and it was complicated enough to intrigue me.
And since I have more time than I know what to do with right now, and since this is a recipe that takes 3-4 hours to make, I made it for my gaming group last week (with help from
metaphysick when it came to prep-work and heavy lifting).It's a layered casserole - seasoned cornmeal with chicken broth, tomatoes, bacon, onion, and garlic, layered with poached chicken and baked until everything has melded into a delicious whole, served with a spicy tomato sauce, and it's wonderful. Rich and moist and complex and interesting, and the sauce really makes the whole dish. I don't know if I'd make it again; as I said, it's four hours of poaching chicken and reducing broth and simmering aromatics and whisking cornmeal and then hefting around a cast-iron Dutch oven full of food inside a water bath in a roasting pan. But it was absolutely worth making at least the once. And there are a handful of other recipes, less labor-intensive, that I fully intend to make as well.
Yet another win for America's Test Kitchen....
