Disclosure / Disclaimer: I received this ebook, free of charge, from William Morrow via #netgalley, for review purposes on this blog. No other compensation, monetary or in kind, has been received or implied for this post. Nor was I told how to post about it. All opinions are my own
A charmingly obsessive, thoroughly tested exploration of the best ways to cook and bake your favorite foods.
Some might think the “best” roast chicken means “most efficient without sacrificing juicy meat,” while others might think “best” is the one that you won’t be able to stop thinking about for years, no matter how long it takes in a sous vide bag. When writer Ella Quittner (creator of Food52’s “Absolute Best Tests”) is cooking or baking something, she cannot rest until she’s tested every method she can to arrive at the best result. Even if that means traveling to Tokyo to learn the trick to extra juicy tsukune for her tender meatballs or spending time in the Alabama Black Belt gathering intel from the pros for her flakiest biscuits.
In Obsessed with the Best, Ella walks you through the results of 24 head-to-head tests of cooking methods to help you find the perfect choice for your palate. From these building blocks, Ella shares more than 100 recipes, grounding you in minimalist techniques that maximize flavor, and sharing creative options as jumping off points for your own favorite flavors. Recipes include:
- Under-Pressure Flaky Biscuits,
- Fluffy No-Special-Equipment Buttermilk Pancakes,
- Caramelized Shallot Soft Scrambled Eggs with Comté
- Crispy Smashed Potatoes with Insurance Cheese,
- Rigatoni with Vodka “All’Amatriciana,”
- Triple-Secret Tender Meatballs,
- Lemon-Butter Cold-Poached Shrimp
- Overachiever Extra Brown Butter Bakery-Worthy Chocolate Chunk Cookies and
- Actually Manageable French-ish Buttercream
Punctuated with reported essays on people, places, or things obsessed with “the best”—be it a bacon evangelist from Iowa who flies annually all the way to Kofu, Japan, to throw a “Porktober Fest” in the middle of a seasonal celebration of a feudal lord, or an international spin through different pasta-making methods from Osaka to Tuscany—Obsessed with the Best is precise, informative, personal, and fun in equal measure.
Review:
This is an interesting take on the 'what is better'- tried and traditional, versus traditional with a twist, versus something totally different. Ella says she doesn't want to get into the cultural differences from traditional cooking, but she pretty much DOES with every recipe that she picks as best. In a sense, it's understandable- home cooks don't have access to fine dining techniques or speciality ingredients that trained chefs may use. But having said that, sometimes simple IS better, and ultimately it is all a what tastes good to me, may not be your preference (latkes and macaroni and cheese recipes will definitely divide people). So keeping that in mind, it's really more a look at traditional recipes and how to change them- cookies that taste like bakery ones, biscuits that have layers like restaurant ones, macaroni and cheese that has a different tang to it. Would I pick her recipes every time? Nope. Again this comes down to personal taste. I will be trying the different flours for shortbread cookies, as we're trying to get away from heavy gluten flour, but those aren't recipes I'm sharing until I've tried them myself. So take the technique tips away from the book, and maybe you might use some of the recipes for weeknights, but for family gatherings, you know you're going to bring the dish everyone already loves.
About the Author:
Ella Quittner is a journalist, screenwriter, and humorist who writes about obsession, culture and food. She has contributed to New York Magazine, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Baffler, T Magazine, Food52, Bon Appétit, Saveur, Food & Wine,and many other publications. Ella grew up back and forth between the West Coast and East Coast. She has explored much of the United States and beyond, stopping to find the best bite every single place she goes (even La Guardia).
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