The New Best Recipe by the editiors of Cooks Illustrated

I have a cousin who, after graduating from UC Berekley, decided to become a chef. She enrolled in the California Culinary Academy and when she graduated at the top of her class, she scored a job at Restaurant Gary Danko, one of the three restaurants in California to receive a five-star rating from Mobil. Her tenure there was short-lived, but because of her, I have developed a love for that restaurant that surpasses all rational thought. If I had enough disposable income, I would just move in.

Soon after my cousin quit her job at Gary Danko, she moved to Taiwan to open her own restaurant with her sister. This restaurant, in the heart of a trendy section of Taipei, was called Wicked and offered the Taiwanese something unusual: high-end fusion cuisine. I never had a chance to dine there, but other family members told me how elegant and classy the décor was and how innovative the dishes were. In addition to the unusual cuisine, my cousins also wanted to offer a small retail shop in the restaurant, and came to our bookstore for a supply of the fancy cookbooks that are so popular in the States now.

It was because of this one shipment that I opened a wholesale account with America’s Test Kitchen, the publishing house that produces all of the America’s Test Kitchen cookbooks as well as the Cook’s Illustrated books. I only placed one order—I guess the Taiwanese people never took to the lusciously illustrated (and expensive) books on Western cuisine. When my cousins sold the restaurant a year later, a library of beautiful cookbooks ended up on my cousin’s bookshelf at home.

The Cook’s Illustrated Best Recipe was one of the books Wicked was unable to sell. It also happened to be one that I already owned and used often. The recipes in the book are all similar to (if not directly transferred from) the recipes featured in the Cook’s Illustrated magazine. There is quite a bit of explanation for each dish, including all the steps the experimenters used to reach the absolute best combination of ingredients and methods. And because it was such a huge tome, pretty much anything I ever wanted to make could be found in it.

Because of The Best Recipe, I have perfected omelets, homemade pasta, three types of chocolate chip cookies, banana bread, and cinnamon rolls. If E decides he wants to have roast beef, or pan-seared halibut, this is where I turn.

In 2004, America’s Test Kitchen published a new, expanded edition of the book called The New Best Recipe. As if it hadn’t been heavy enough already, this new edition was now another half-inch thicker with many more recipes added. I was torn—should I get the new edition when there was nothing wrong with the one I already had?

Before I could even decide, a package arrived at my office. A big, heavy package from America’s Test Kitchen. Sure enough, inside it was a free review copy of The New Best Recipe. Some days at work are hard to get through, but some days are like manna from heaven, are they not? Apparently, our company was on their mailing list for review copies because of that order we placed for Wicked. The New Best Recipe was simply the first in a string of packages that arrived over the course of a year, each bearing a beautiful new cookbook. They did stop coming after a while—I guess they figured out that we were not buying anything. But for that short time, it sure was exciting.

The New Best Recipe by the editors of Cooks Illustrated

tags: cookbooks book reviews Cook's Illustrated America's Test Kitchen Gary Danko