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JANET K. KEELERFran McCullough scours hundreds of books, magazines and the Internet to find the year's food trends and write The Best American Recipes 2003-2004.
Meet Fran McCullough, your new best friend.
McCullough, along with co-author Molly Stevens, has done what you don't have time to do, and that's figure out which recipes from what publications are worth clipping.
To accomplish what many of us say we're going to do but don't, the pair pawed through hundreds of cookbooks, magazines, newspapers and even scoured the Internet to find the yummiest, most cookworthy recipes of the year. Then, get this: They tested nearly 550 of them to come up with the 136 recipes printed in the fifth edition of The Best American Recipes (Houghton Mifflin; $26).
Don't you just love your new best friend? Now, you can toss out those towering stacks of Gourmet, Family Circle, Cooking Light, Bon Appetit, Southern Living, etc. (We'd love it if you saved the Taste sections!)
It's best not to take McCullough for granted, or she just might find something else to do with her time. (Then who would you get to go through a year's worth of cookbooks to find, and try, corn bread salad with grilled sausage and spicy chipotle dressing?) When the book's deadlines loom each fall, about eight dishes a day are tested in McCullough's New York kitchen and at Stevens' Vermont home. McCullough says she has been overwhelmed each of the five years she has tackled the project. (Stevens joined her on the past three.)
"But then it's exciting to see what people are doing," McCullough says in a phone interview from Westchester County, N.Y. And surprising.
The exotic cuisine of the year? British. The importation of British cooking shows such as those by Nigella Lawson and Jamie Oliver have goosed interest in the maligned food of Great Britain, McCullough says.
Trend of the year? Bacon. Sara Perry's Everything Tastes Better with Bacon (Chronicle Books, 2002) helped push that guilty pleasure, McCullough says. The beauty of her book is the title; something everybody knows but doesn't like to admit. The resurgence of the Atkins diet has also enhanced bacon's reputation.
"I think that book really startled people," McCullough says. Many food writers (including this one) wrote about the book, featuring recipes dripping in bacon grease.
The Best American Recipes 2003-2004 was compiled during a time (2002-03) when it looked like people didn't want to cook anymore, McCullough says. In fact, it still seems like that. Cookbooks touting canned foods, convenience products and three or fewer ingredients are big sellers. The continued snubbing of cooking from scratch makes the authors nervous, she says.
They ask themselves, "Do people really want recipes? Are they really cooking?" Then they look at the printed evidence and answer, "guess so."
"There are always these double things going on," she says. "Some people are cooking a lot less; other people are cooking a lot more. I do know that cooking equipment (sales are) booming."
Rather than ignore the signs that home cooking is dying, the authors embrace the notion that good food cooked simply can win back the masses. And they found plenty of recipes that fit that description.
McCullough's favorite recipe in the book, lemon posset, has just three ingredients: heavy cream, lemon juice and sugar. Posset is a classic English dessert, a cross between pudding and mousse. Another favorite is eggs with crunchy bread crumbs from Judy Rodgers' award-winning The Zuni Cafe Cookbook (W.W. Norton & Co., 2002). Though McCullough admires the legendary California chef, she had all but given up on the cookbook because of its challenging recipes.
"It's like getting a Ph.D. when you read it," she says. "There's not much that you just run out and cook for dinner."
Then she discovered the recipe for eggs fried over bread crumbs toasted in olive oil and finished with a splash of full-bodied vinegar such as balsamic. A terrific dish for houseguests, she says.
The pair is searching for recipes for the sixth edition and new trends have already surfaced, joined by perennial favorites lemon and chocolate. Some cuisines getting a lot of press: Indian, South American/Spanish and Scandinavian.
Swedish meatballs?
Yes, says McCullough, and meatballs spiced with flavors of France and Japan, too. Credit the Scandinavian craze to telegenic chef Marcus Samuelsson of New York's Aquavit. He was one of People magazine's 50 most beautiful people in the world in 2001.
"And the new darling of the dessert world is granita. It's just everywhere," McCullough says.
Granita is a slushy dessert, often flavored with fruit, sort of like a snow cone for adults. Leave it to your best friend to keep you informed.