Five hundred of anything is too many, and also not enough.
The folks at America’s Test Kitchen have (yet) another cookbook out called “America’s Test Kitchen 25th Anniversary Cookbook.” The organization is celebrating its 25th anniversary on the air this year and is putting out this book featuring 500 of the most game-changing (their phrase) recipes out of the 13,000 they have shown to date.
Obviously, it’s an interesting concept. But I was most intrigued by the thought of the people who gathered together to pick out the 500 recipes.
What criteria did they use? Did they get into fights over which pastas should be used or how many recipes for chocolate chip cookies (they ended up with two) or why just one recipe for ice cream is on the list?
Did someone threaten to walk out if they used that photo of bagels to illustrate their recipe for New York bagels? Because someone should have. Those look like supermarket bagels.
Did they easily come up with a thousand recipes they wanted to include, and then were friendships and relationships ended in the arguments over which would make the final cut?
Were there tearful, passionate pleadings to include aligot, moqueca, chelow ba tahdig and zha paigu? Were some of them too embarrassed to admit they did not know what aligot, moqueca, chelow ba tahdig and zha paigu were?
Aligot is French cheesy mashed potatoes; moqueca is a Brazilian seafood stew; chelow ba tahdig is an Iranian rice dish; and zha paigu is Taiwanese fried pork chops. I didn’t know them, either, except moqueca.
The inclusion of aligot, etc., is a pretty good indication of the book’s sensibilities. It seems to be saying that American cooking is now as international as the makeup of the country itself.
So yes, it has a recipe for meatloaf with a ketchup glaze, which is my personal nomination for the most American dish of all time. And it has a recipe for chicken noodle soup. And it has five different recipes for chili.
But it also has a recipe for bulgogi, the popular Korean beef barbecue. And it has a recipe for guay tiew tom yum goong, a Thai hot and sour soup. And it has a recipe for chicken enchiladas verdes.
In fact, with all the shîzi tóu, cataplana, kanelbullar, lao hu cai and gongbao jiding in the book, it is almost like they are making a point about American food being greater than the sum of its parts. And also, gongbao jiding is just kung pao chicken, and if they called it that it wouldn’t seem quite so exotic.
The book’s subtitle is “500 Recipes That Changed the Way America Cooks.” But did they? Did they change the way America cooks?
As delicious as it is, is pub-style steak and ale pie a thing here, really? Are folks making papardelle with duck and chestnut ragu? Is everyone chowing down on grilled napa cabbage with radicchio topping?
I love omelets, and I make them frequently. But their version, which takes 25 minutes to make, requires an oven, a stove top, a stand mixer, cream of tartar and two tablespoons of butter. Their recipe has in no way changed the much simpler and faster way I cook them.
Their spinach lasagna parcooks its no-boil lasagna noodles by covering them with boiling water for five minutes. In other words, it boils its no-boil noodles.
I sound like I’m complaining, and I’m not complaining. I don’t mean to complain. There are plenty of recipes and techniques in this cookbook that I want to try, starting with the no-knead brioche and the chicken under a brick with herb-roasted potatoes and the stir-fried cumin beef. For that matter, I want to try the aligot, moqueca, chelow ba tahdig and zha paigu, too.
I just feel bad for the people who had to pick all those recipes.
