At the beginning of the year, I received America's Test Kitchen Cooking for Two 2010 as a gift. I love this cookbook because it produces reliably delicious food in manageable portions but also includes lots of interesting text about how to do right by your kitchen and ingredients. I don't love the little sinking feeling I get looking at the "for Two" on the cover when I know I'm going to wrap the second portion up for tomorrow night's dinner. But that's another blog post....
Pros
If you can follow directions meticulously, the end result will be near restaurant quality every time. And if you get distracted by one to many glasses of wine during food prep, the cookbook even includes some passages that help you pinpoint where you went wrong. I also like the "Use it Up" sidebar that provides a quick recipe to help you make the most of unused portion of an ingredient from another recipe on the page (love this since I get frustrated by how often food goes to waste in my one-person household). Another key feature is the index, organized by ingredient type.
Cons
I imagine some folks don't like that certain recipes (desserts, mostly) call for the use of smaller, unusually-sized baking dishes, ramekins, or pans, but I've found that I can usually get by with what I have in my own kitchen.
Some of the recipes I've tried recently:
- Pan-Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Sweet Potato and Spicy Maple Butter
- Pan-Seared Steak with Red Wine Pan Sauce (from the iPhone app)
- Classic Beef Chili
- Lemon Pudding Cake
- Individual Fallen Chocolate Cakes
The first-year associate schedule lends itself to frozen dinners, but I find that I have time to cook at least once a week. I'm going to try to pick out something new for each of the next few weeks just for fun. In particular, I want to try one of the "One Big Roast, Three Great Meals" series of recipes.
1 comments:
Sounds like an awesome recipe book. I might have to get one. Thanks for posting about it!
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