Cook's Illustrated February Magazine Recipe Review

Normally I reserve fancy cooking for Christmas. I love to cook, but with all that we do getting dinner on the table becomes more about speed and quantity than excellence most of the time. We also do most of our food shopping at Sam's Club which is great because it saves us tons of money, but not great in that the food offerings are pretty stable and pretty basic. Food had become a boring necessity, and I decided we needed to do something to shake things up.
I've mentioned my appreciation of Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen several times, but now it was time to subscribe. I am now committed to cooking every recipe in the magazine at least once, which has really livened up dinner and food in general. We've had a great month and now it's time to fill you in on the results.

Slow-roasted Beef--Superb! Beef is limited in our home because of its high fat content, so to find a recipe that used such a lean cut of beef and made it fabulous was a highly acclaimed feast. Definitely worth the extra fuss.

French Chicken in a Pot--OK. It may have been our oven which has its finicky moments, but it took much longer than specified to cook. No one was particularly overwhelmed by this rather good chicken recipe. We probably won't make it again, but it was tasty.

Crunchy Baked Pork Chops--Fabulous! This was a tremendous amount of work. If I ever make it for company, which I will, I'll follow the make-ahead instructions and just pop them in the oven. The work was most certainly worth it. We loved this recipe.

Best French Onion Soup--Unbelievably Wonderful! Two things, one this is a different recipe than the one in the The New Best Recipes Cookbook. Two, I hate onions. I only made this soup because I'd committed to making every recipe in the magazine. I'm so glad I suffered through cutting up all those onions. Perhaps it's because you get to torture the onions for several hours and through two or three deglazings, but whatever it is, this soup is to die for. We served it in Panera bread bowls which we warmed in the oven and covered all over with Gruyere cheese. Everyone was in love, even the kids. You must try this soup.

Spanish Style Garlic Shrimp--OK. I couldn't get the dried peppers which may have made a difference, and I think I forgot the sherry vinegar which most certainly made a difference. In any case, we enjoyed the shrimp, but it didn't blow us away. It was just nice.

Almost No-Knead Bread--YUMMY! I bought my first bottle of beer for this bread. It was so worth it. Being me, to justify the expense of the beer I made four loaves and we were all so glad I did, though cooking the bread assembly style did create some problems with the way I was supposed to adjust the oven temperature and such. They all turned out though and they didn't last very long. We especially enjoyed this bread with chili. The crust is just the way I've always wanted crust to be and couldn't get. Very, very good. I'll be trying the variations and maybe I'll even get crazy and make a true sourdough now that I know how to get a good crust.

Roasted Broccoli--Worth fighting over! When you have children ages 3-12 fighting over the last broccoli spear you know a recipe is really good. You must try this!

Thin and Crispy Oatmeal Cookies--No Opinion. I didn't make them. I'm trying to get over being such a perfectionist and when I read the directions they would have taken forever and none of us like oatmeal cookies that much. Sorry.

Spice Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting--It grows on you. I've already made it twice. The first time I just thought it was nice, but the taste haunted me. I had leftover ginger root and a Superbowl party to go to, so I made it again. The second cake cemented my addiction. It will make a nice alternative to my favorite carrot cake recipe. Very moist.

Tramontina Dutch Oven--They said that this would be almost as good as LeCreuset, and since I don't have 230 dollars to spend on a pot I bought one. It really is an excellent pot and performed quite well when I made the chicken, the bread and the soup in it. I'm glad I acquired it. We needed a medium size soup pot. Bonus, it's only 40.oo bucks at Wal-mart.