Monday, July 3, 2017

My three favorite cooking magazine issues from the past 25 years

I think I've made it fairly clear I love to cook.  As you can read in a post from last July, I started learning to cook when I was in junior high when my Mommy was attending nursing school; I've been experimenting and having fun cooking ever since.  In addition to my favorite cookbooks I’ve written about earlier, I also love cooking magazines.  I get a ridiculous number of them (just ask Larry): Food and Wine, Bon Appetit, Saveur, Cooking Light – and before its demise, Gourmet.

I pour over these magazines each month and while I don’t make something from every issue, even today I study the articles and use what I learn to improve my cooking. If I do the math right, I’ve gotten at least one of these magazines for more than 25 years, starting in the early 1990s when I first started subscribing to Gourmet and discovered the amazing writing of Laurie Colwin, who tragically died in 1992 at the age of 48.

Of the hundreds of cooking magazines I’ve gotten over the years, I’ve saved just three.

The first is a Special Collector’s Edition of Bon Appetit from May 1997 that was my inspiration for tackling real Italian cooking. From it, I learned to make risotto and Pollo alla Marengo (Chicken with tomatoes, onions and mushrooms), and discovered how wonderfully diverse the regional cuisines are in this relatively small country.

The second magazine takes an amazing look at the history of American food. Also Bon Appetit, this issue from September 1999 chronicles the American century in food. Starting with 1900 it takes the reader through a century of food, restaurants, libations, cooking essentials and made-in-America food products.  Its timelines share the years when thousands of iconic items such as Tabasco (1868), Oreos (1912), Tupperware (1946), Cuisinart (1973), and Velveeta (1928) were created. The articles on each decade share those years' favorite recipes and the societal changes that impacted the foods Americans ate and the people who cooked them. It is a fascinating look at our country. (One of the most interesting articles in the issue is each decade’s take on apple pie).

Crab cakes
The third cooking magazine I’ve kept is Food and Wine’s 25th Anniversary issue published in September 2003 that featured what they considered their 25 best recipes ever. From this issue have come many of our favorites: an amazing macaroni and cheese with buttery crumbs, spaghetti with Bolognese sauce, molten chocolate cake, and Mrs. Duvall’s (Robert's mom) pan-fried crab cakes. (Note: Jenni and I always got a kick out of the irony of the tofu with spicy meat sauce recipe that’s described as the “tastiest tofu recipe the magazine ever came across” – not hard to imagine why that tofu tasted good. LOL).

Over the years, I’ve adapted Mrs. Duvall's crab cake recipe to create my own version.  Here’s the recipe:

Crab cakes with mustard sauce
¼ cup mayonnaise
¼ minced onion
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
½ teaspoon dry mustard
¼ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 pound jumbo lump crabmeat, drained (break each piece into a couple of smaller pieces, but don’t shred or get pieces too small)
Approximately 2 cups of panko crumbs
4 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 tablespoons vegetable oil

In a large bowl, combine mayonnaise, onion, eggs, Worcestershire sauce, dry mustard, salt and cayenne. Using your hands, gently fold in crab, being careful to not break up the crab any further. Start adding in panko crumbs with your hands, a 1/3 cup at a time until the mixture comes together and will form small cakes. Form into 6-8 crab cakes depending on the size you like. Coat the crab cakes on both sides with the remaining panko crumbs. (At this point, you can cook right away or refrigerate for a few hours.

In a 12-inch nonstick skillet, melt 2 tablespoons of butter and two tablespoons of vegetable oil over medium heat until it foams. Add half of the crab cakes, cook for 2-3 minutes each side. Place in a warm oven. Wipe out the skillet and heat another 2 tablespoons of butter and 2 tablespoons of oil and cook the remaining crab cakes.

Serve with mustard sauce.

Mustard sauce
1/3 cup mayonnaise
¼ cup sour cream
2 tablespoons of Dijon mustard
1 tablespoon of English dry mustard
Dash of hot sauce
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Combine all ingredients and refrigerate for several hours for flavors to combine.

2 comments:

  1. One of my favs is a Bon Appetit from 1992. Its pages are tattered and sticky from repeatedly making a poppy seed cake with orange glaze, a recipe shared by a restaurant at a reader's request. As dense as a pound cake, the cake became a regular at potlucks for decades.

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  2. And that my friend was a comment from Janine. I pushed publish too fast.

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