In celebration of the official start of summer (and as a result of the horrid levels of heat/humidity in Minneapolis), this weekend we broke out the ice cream maker. As Tom mentioned, we took home a pint of strawberries from the Midtown Farmer’s Market and they were starting to get a little funky after a couple of days in this heat. I spent some time hulling the teeny tiny somewhat rotten (I mean really ripe!) strawberries while Tom prepared a simple syrup on the stove with ½ cup of of water and ½ cup of sugar. When the strawberries were ready, Tom pureed them in the food processor and added the syrup, tasting for sweetness as he went. When the mixture was just right, we poured it into a bowl to refrigerate overnight. The next day, after just 15 minutes of going round and round in our Krups GVS142 the sorbet was ready to go in the freezer awaiting the dessert hour.

It was so red! And so delicious! I’m so glad we gave our ice cream (and sorbet) maker a second try. Though we’ve had it for a year, we haven’t used the thing much and so far have felt a bit of single-purpose-kitchen-electronics-buyer’s-remorse. After reading a glowing review of this model in Cook’s Illustrated, I had to have it, and was very disappointed when I realized Krups had stopped making it—hence eBay. After two lost auctions, I won the third and was ready to present Tom with the surprise. In the end, the quality of the ice cream we made last summer didn’t seem worth the effort; plus, loads of heavy cream and whole milk took up too much space in the fridge. It seemed easier to just buy our ice cream and sorbet by the pint or half-gallon when the mood struck. We’ve shared with you our love for Talenti in the past, and homemade ice cream just wasn’t reaching that level. BUT. We never tried making sorbet. So far, our homemade ice cream hasn’t convinced us to skip the grocer’s freezer, but homemade sorbet puts even Talenti to shame. I can’t wait to see what other fresh fruit the market will bring.

Short answer: no.

But why even ask the question? Once again, radical claims by  Cook’s Illustrated could not go untested. Cook’s Illustrated #99 had the gall to suggest that one could cook crispy, creamy french fries in just six cups of oil.

If six cups of oil sounds like a lot, consider that usually when making fries at home I use at least 3 quarts—that’s 12 cups—of oil. The reason for all that oil is temperature control: trying to retain enough heat in the oil so that adding a bunch of cold potatoes doesn’t cause the temperature to drop for very long. Temperature control is the key to great fries. Cooked first at 325° for tenderness throughout, fries are finished at 375° for golden, crispy exteriors. Adding a pound or two of 75° potatoes can drastically reduce the temperature of the oil, so the more hot oil the better. In my restaurant days, I remember lovingly adding 70 pounds of oil to the fryer every Monday morning. Nothing you could drop in there was going to lower the temperature by much. Sometimes I dream of that fryer.

How did Cook’s propose to cook 2½ pounds of potatoes in such a small amount of peanut oil? By eschewing specific temperatures all together. In this recipe, ¼” matchsticks of yukon gold potatoes (I usually make fries with russets, but those are apparently too starchy for this technique) are added to six cups of room temperature peanut oil in a dutch oven. You then turn the heat on high, and after five minutes the oil will be bubbling happily. 15 minutes later the fries will have reached the state that is achieved by the usual 325° parcooking step: the fries are limp and blonde but cooked through. Cook’s promised that after an additional five to ten minutes cooking, the fries would be golden and crispy.

I waited five minutes. Still limp. Ten minutes. Not much goldener, not much crispier. Fifteeen minutes. My steak was getting cold. It took a full 17½ minutes of additional cooking (for a full cook time of 37½ minutes, which is not that far off the mark from normal fries if you consider the time to heat the oil). I should probably mention here that the small stove in my apartment is seriously weak on BTUs and it’s quite likely that this prolonged the cooking time. But if BTUs and temperatures were going to be a factor, Cook’s could have gone to the trouble of listing specific temperatures. On draining the fries I was disappointed to see that many of them had broken into stubby fragments.

In spite of their short length, the fries tasted fine. They were a little too crispy and not creamy enough in the center—probably a consequence of the long cooking time and the relatively low-starch potato. They weren’t terrible fries, but they weren’t that great either—I have gotten much better results in terms of appearance, flavor and texture using the traditional two step method and more oil. And even though they used only six cups of oil, that’s still kind of a lot of oil. If I’m going to go to the trouble, I’d just as soon use the 12 cups and make fries the right way. As excited as I was by the possibility of fries with less oil and less hassle, sometimes making a bigger mess is worth it. Especially if someone else has to do your dishes.

I’m not usually one to make cookies (much to Martha’s dismay), but when Cook’s Illustrated claims to have created “Perfect” chocolate chip cookies, the boast could not be ignored. Cook’s is based on perfecting recipes, but their claims are not usually quite so bold; more along the lines of ‘Ultimate Coq au Vin’, ‘Perfecting Berry Trifle’, and #$@%ing Awesome Hollandaise’. Simply ‘Perfect’ is a higher claim and an outrageous one, all the more so when made about chocolate chip cookies, a recipe with a thousand variations and everyone’s mother’s is the best. Such claims cannot go untested.

A lot of people don’t like Cook’s Illustrated because they find their recipes a little too, let’s say, particular. I agree although am not bothered by it personally. This recipe for chocolate chip cookies was, however, atypically reasonable. There were no strange or overly fussy ingredients; just flour, baking soda, butter, white sugar, brown sugar, salt, vanilla extract, eggs and chocolate chips, with nuts optional. Just one kind of fat, no pastry flour and no need for vanilla beans.

The one part of the recipe that seemed a little, well, precious was also the point of departure for this recipe, when it went from standard to superfluous cookies: browning the butter. After melting most of the butter, you leave it on the heat a bit longer until it turns golden-brown. It occurred to me just how brilliant this step was as my apartment filled with the rich smell of toffee.

Another step seemed a little odd: after whisking together the wet ingredients, wait three minutes, then whisk for thirty more seconds, and repeat twice more. There are some who would balk at setting a timer and repeating this ritual, but in my experience resting batters and doughs can save mixing time, and it gave me time to do the dishes. I cannot testify personally as to whether you need to do this step, but I will defer to Cook’s. They test this stuff!

The dough came together really beautifully, leaving nary a dust of flour un-moist. At this point, Cook’s suggests dividing the dough into 16 portions  of 3 T each, either by measuring the individual tablespoons or with a #24 scoop. I decided I would out-Cook’s Cook’s by measuring the mass of my dough and dividing by 16, then using my scale to make portions of exactly the same size, by mass. I had 972 g of dough, which works out to 60.75 g per cookie. This makes pretty big cookies.

They go in a 375°F oven for 14 minutes, rotated once in the middle of baking. They come out looking and smelling good.

So, were they perfect? Without getting into all the implications of the word, these cookies are damn near close. Definitely the best chocolate chip cookies I have ever made. Nothing really stands out about the flavor, they just taste exactly like a chocolate chip cookie. What’s most impressive about these and any great cookie is the texture. The great cookie texture divide falls along people who prefer crispy cookies and those who prefer chewy. As I fall firmly on the crispy side, my first bite of cookie was a slight disappointment since the cookie was only chewy. I had made the mistake of breaking my cookie in half (for the photo, I admit) and taking my bite only from the center. For my next bite, I attacked both the edge and the center. And thus the genius of the ‘Perfect Chocolate Chip Cookie’ was revealed: the edge was crispy enough to satisfy my needs and, my crispiness needs sated, I was free to enjoy the chewiness of the center. A chewy cookie lover would be so happy with the center that they wouldn’t object to the crunchy give of the edge. This cookie managed to create a perfect harmony of crispy and chewy without compromising on either. If that is perfection, then this was the perfect chocolate chip cookie.

When I was looking for a recipe for spinach lasagna, Tom’s archival memory located the exact back issue from his collection in which such a recipe appeared. This one comes from the March & April 2004 issue of Cook’s Illustrated magazine. 

My lasagna didn’t come out looking quite so spinach-y as the picture in the magazine, but as anyone who complains about a CI recipe will ultimately reveal… I didn’t follow the recipe exactly. I changed things up a bit by making two smaller, square lasagne instead of one big 13×9. I usually do this when making lasagna as it is basically the same effort, and I get two dinners out my time instead of one. Lasagna #2 is already in the freezer waiting for the next time I don’t feel like cooking.

A few last words…

As it says in the article, “…use Italian fontina rather than bland and rubbery Danish or American fontina…” I found Italian fontina at the Wedge and I was glad I did. I passed up the Wisconsin variety (Don’t be fooled by Bel Gioso’s name… it’s Americano.) at Rainbow for the good stuff and it smelled sooo good when I took the cheese out of the plastic wrap today. No more non-Italian fontina!

Tom’s first words when coming in the door after work: “Smells like shallots!” I used to think “5 shallots” meant five of the shallot-shapes that come lumped in twos sometimes. I have known since I got some schooling from Tom a while back that 1 shallot is whatever the unit is BEFORE you take the skin off. I’m glad I know this now as my 5 large shallots that I picked out equalled exactly 1 cup—just as the recipe said they would when minced. 

Giving no-boil noodles a soak for 5 minutes in hot tap water makes for a WAY better end result. I used Barilla as CI suggested and did this soak that they talked about in a “Key Step” caption with photo. What a difference. As they said, “A five-minute soak… dramatically reduces the baking time for the no-boil noodles, allowing the spinach to remain fresh looking and tasting.” Try this the next time you use no boils… and don’t forget the foil on top!

Freshly ground nutmeg is awesome. I was reminded of nuez moscada en croquetas as I was grating it into the béchamel with my Microplane grater. If you don’t have one of these already (I know that most of you do), you should get one. Nothing is better for ultra-fine parmesan grating, chocolate shaving, nutmeg grating, and citrus zest creation!

The hardest part? Waiting the 10 minutes after it came out of the oven for it to cool before I could cut it and EAT.

The biggest problem with my last attempt to make the ciabatta recipe in the latest Cook’s Illustrated was that the dough was so wet that it was too hard to work with; more trouble than it was worth. This was mostly my fault since, not owning a stand mixer, I followed Peter Reinhart’s standard mixing style of a hand continuously dipped in water operating like a dough hook. The water prevents the dough from sticking to your hand but it also gets added to the dough, throwing off the water ratio.

This time I avoided adding water at all costs. I still don’t have a stand mixer but I decided a metal spoon and my bulging biceps could take care of the mixing. I ambitiously set my timer for ten minutes and started stirring. After six minutes had passed my arm told me it was time to stop. The dough was looking pretty good, not so sloppy looking as last time. I let it rise, folding it over itself twice at half-hour intervals.

Shaping the dough this time was easier; even though I know my gluten development was not what it would have been with a stand mixer, the dough was still springy enough to be easily shaped. Plenty of flour was still a must, but during shaping the dough more or less stayed where I put it.

The result was a bread that was almost identical to the last one, but a bit less of a hassle to make. This consistency is a testament to the quality of Cook’s Illustrated’s recipe development process. Check out the crumb:

Because of its chewy, substantial texture this is a great bread for sandwiches. I used my first loaf for a BET: Basil, Eggplant and Tomato, with melted provolone.