Archives for May 2016

Poached Cod with Tomato and Saffron

May 26, 2016 By Steve Dunn Leave a Comment

Flaky, Tender Cod in a Rich, Fragrant Broth

I fell in love with this dish when I first saw it published in Bon Appetit a couple years ago. In fact, I found the photo of the dish so striking that I cut it from the magazine and pinned it to the bulletin board in my kitchen, along with a handful of other drool-worthy food shots to act as a small art installation decorating the space while my home was staged for sale. For the LONG 2 + years it took me to sell the house I looked longingly at the shot of this dish everyday, but for some damned reason never got around to cooking it until a few weeks ago. Such a shame, because this dish is so flavorful, and SO easy that I’m sure it’ll become a regular in my dinner rotation.

Food Revolution Day 2016

May 20, 2016 By Steve Dunn Leave a Comment

Join Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution to ensure ample, healthy food for all.

Pizza Rustica

May 15, 2016 By Steve Dunn Leave a Comment

This dish is called “Pizza” Rustica, but it actually has more in common with a quiche than a pizza. I had never heard of the dish until this past Easter when my wife craved one, fueled by a memory of the “pies” her Grandmother brought to every Easter feast of her youth. Sadly, her Nana’s recipe is lost somewhere in her extensive family tree, so she did some on-line research and chose this one as the one that best reflected what she remembers her Grandmother making. It comes from one of our favorite pastry chefs, Nick Malgieri. I debated holding this post until next year as the Easter holiday approached, but this dish is so good, and would make such a great addition to a Summer pot-luck, I thought I’d share it with you now. The filling is a rich mix of ricotta, mozzarella, and pecorino, studded with a variety of Italian meats such as prosciutto, and dried sausage. It has a slightly sweet crust which balances the salty, cheesy filling beautifully, and when baked, makes a photo worthy star of any family spread.

Bittersweet Chocolate Semifreddo

May 7, 2016 By Steve Dunn Leave a Comment

Frozen Chocolate Deliciousness Without an Ice Cream Machine

See these two beautiful balls of frozen beauty? They’re the super lucky result of a kitchen fail!

Working at America’s Test Kitchen I get paid to make recipes fail (in a sense) over and over again until they are positively bullet-proof and guaranteed to deliver great results for our fans. At home however, I try to keep kitchen failure to a minimum. That said, last weekend when making this semifreddo (Italian for half-frozen), I misread the recipe and ended up making a very different dessert from what the author intended. I was in a hurry to throw something together and get it into the freezer for dinner guests that evening, and in my haste, “lost” an entire cup of cream from my mix. Merde!

For those of you unfamiliar with the wonders of semifreddo, its a frozen dessert that can be made without an ice cream maker, and has a softly frozen consistency that feels more like a frozen mousse than an ice cream or gelato. The key to its airy texture is that its made with a light, fluffy Italian meringue that doesn’t freeze as solid as the custard base typically used when making ice cream.

America’s Test Kitchen TV 2017

May 3, 2016 By Steve Dunn Leave a Comment

Smoked Pork Loin with Dried Fruit Chutney

See that little lovely above, mahogany-glazed, tinged pink with smoke, and so juicy you can see the knife glisten?

That’s one of my babies…..isn’t she beautiful!

Since I started working at Cook’s Illustrated over a year ago, I’ve developed a bunch of recipes for the magazine, and this slow-smoked pork roast is one of them. Not yet published in the magazine (it’ll be in the July/August issue), it is one of 5 of my recipes that will be cooked and shared with our audience as part of the 2017 season of the America’s Test Kitchen TV show which starts filming in just a couple of days. I must say, that as exciting as it was when my first recipes started actually appearing printed in the magazine (about 9 MONTHS after I started working there), the prospect of them being showcased on TV is even cooler. As you might imagine, there’s lots of “TV magic” required for a dish like this one, that calls for an overnight dry-brining, and about 1 1/2 hours of cooking, to appear as though it was cooked start to finish in the span of a 20 minute TV segment. This roast was cooked by one of my talented co-workers, Matt Fairman, who will be grilling a bunch of them behind-the-scenes as backups for the roast actually being cooked on-screen by the show’s hosts. Matt will likely need to cook 6-8 of these roasts, each to a different stage of recipe completion, to be shuttled before the cameras as “twins” for the on-set roast so the whole cooking process can appear to be condensed into a short time frame. This was a “practice run” that he cooked and presented to me for my approval to make sure it looked and tasted the way it’s supposed to before he’s actually called upon to cook it with cameras rolling. It was perfect, he did an awesome job!

Archives for May 2016

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