How wrong I was! If you believe this, dear reader, and are anything of a cook, I am warning you now: don't fall for it! So some of my best recipes come from the internet, some of which now I consider top secret (a little silly, as they come from the least secretive place you can imagine). But 90% of recipes I have tried from who-knows-where on the internet have been flops. Usually some critical detail about how to cook the item in question was left out.
Cooking is not so much an art as it is a trade, learned through apprenticeship. As few of us can afford cooking school, at least all the time, we must apprentice ourselves--to our recipes, but more especially, to our cookbooks. There are all kinds of definative cookbooks that have been honed for the last fifty to a hundred years--my cookbook of choice is Joy of Cooking, mostly because of one my editions of it was given to my mother as a wedding gift. Yes, one of my editions. The recipes are different in each one. It's almost as if you can witness the evolution of eating in America, right before your eyes.
In the 1950's, there was a limited, seasonal larder, and most women cooked, learning how from their mothers. In the 1970's, the larder was still seasonal, but less so, and extensive instructions on everything from how to carve a turkey to how to set a table are included. By 1997, the cuisine has radically expanded, now with a section that features food from around the world, and a cuisine that presupposes access to a modern supermarket and fresh food all year.
One thing that Joy of Cooking is sadly lacking is recipes for my slow cooker, which is proving tricky for my Crock Pot on Trial project. But yesterday as I was picking up parchment paper for my cheese puffs (they were quite delicious, thank you), a special edition of Cook's Illustrated caught my eye: best recipes from Slow Cooker Revolution! I know a home chef (a quite excellent one) who aquires her new recipes by going to Barnes and Noble, perusing the cookbooks, and then copying down the recipes she wants to try. I'm sure she's not completely aware that it's illegal (I didn't bother to tell her), but her logic is simple: you might get two or three recipes that are good out of a great big cookbook, but that's all. I think it greatly depends upon the sort of cookbook in question (for full details, read up a paragraph or two). Anyway, the point is--get it while it's hot. If you'd like to have a slow-cooker cookbook, run out and get this magazine. It's not huge, but it's inexpensive and I have it on good authority that it's a good buy.
It may be the oldest trick in the book, but I wanted to share one of my favorite tricks: bringing lettuce back to crispy life by immersing it in cold water in the refrigerator.
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| Viola! Crispy lettuce! |
That's all. Up ahead: Cheese Puffs! And culinary disasters!
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