Sunday, July 19, 2009

Simple Living Tool of the Week

Amazon.com: The Best Skillet Recipes: What's the Best Way to Make Lasagna With Rich, Meaty Flavor, Chunks of Tomato, and Gooey Cheese, Without Ever Turning on the Oven or Boiling a P

I love to cook. I love leafing through cookbooks, making up the menus and grocery lists, and most of all I love adding those one or two ingredients the recipe didn't call for or using that new technique I learned on the cooking channel. Cooking has been a hobby of mine through most my teenage years and into my adult life.

It was when I was first married that I realized my habits in the kitchen were a little out of hand. I made good food, but in the process I used and dirtied every dish in the house in a whirling, frenzied, sauteeing, deep-frying tornado. A lot of enjoyment was sapped from perfectly delicious meals because the my mind was filled the images of the mountain of dishes in the sink, the burnt food spilled on the stove-tops, and the over-flowing trash-can: easily an hour's worth of clean-up for both me and my husband.

Over the last couple years, I made small changes here and there, but it was when we started talking about moving into the yurt that I got serious about living simply in the kitchen, since our yurt kitchen would be a camping stove and a small section of wall along the outside of the one, large, round room.

Of course, this was quickly turned into an excuse to buy a book, and, serendipitously, I was soon presented with just the right. It was during the local NPR station's fund drive that Chris Kimball was a guest on the mid-morning call-in show, answering questions and promoting the give-away gift: America's Test Kitchen and Cook Illustrated's skillet cookbook. Perfect, thought I, just what I am looking for. But instead of pledging $150 to the NPR station, I bought it for $35 at Barnes and Noble. It's their own fault; the news that day was full of people telling me how poor and destitute I am.

The book has been a success. I have been learning to make whole meals which need only a skillet, spatula, cutting board, and knife to prepare, and only those things need washing up afterward. Every recipe has a detailed account of the process the test kitchen went through to arrive at the final product, for instance why they use soft tofu instead of firm to make crispy fried tofu. Reading it is just like watching ATK on the public television station.

The first recipes I tried involve making a sauce in the skillet and adding dry pasta right to the sauce. Not only does this eliminate the need for a pasta-pot of boiling water, but the pasta itself is more flavorful because it is absorbing more than just salted water. Thinking environmentally, it takes a lot of BTUs to boil a pot of water, so one can save half the energy of a traditional pasta meal while making the same amount of food.

I wish I could review more of the individual recipes, but I must admit that my cooking style usually prohibits me from actually following recipes. Don't tell the folks at ATK, though, because after testing and tweaking any given recipe one-hundred plus times, they do not take kindly to the idea that us part-time hobbyists know better than they, and perhaps defensibly so. All I can say is that last night I made chicken fajitas that were delicious to the taste and highly desirable, spending $20 to feed eight people, dirtying a minumum of dishes, and though you will not see that particular combination of ingredients in Best Skillet Recipes, that meal was as much a product of that cookbook as it was my own creation.

It could have more photographs. I like large color photos with every recipe, and they only provide seven or eight in a small glossy insert, so I give it four out of five stars.

My rating scale:

1 star: Evil
2 stars: Incompetent
3 stars: Competent
4 stars: Excellent
5 stars: Flawless

4 comments:

  1. I'll have to check this one out. I'm all for less mess.

    tal

    ReplyDelete
  2. Although "excellent" would be even better for 4 stars.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Fixed that, but you missed my misspelling of "competent" right above that.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I was looking at what 4 stars meant.

    ReplyDelete