http://mediadecoder.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/conde-nast-to-close-gourmet-magazine/?hp
I am shocked! I get that ad revenue is down, I get that they need to cut costs, but to close down Gourmet! Get rid of Lucky, get rid of one of your golf titles, cut Architectural Digest down to six months a year, but please don't get rid of Gourmet!
I have to be completely honest--when Ruth Reichl took over, like so many others, I declared the magazine to be ruined, and let my subscription lapse. I felt a little like I did in high school. You know, you're friends with someone early on, then they join some club or team and you feel like their new friends change them. The new person they've become just isn't someone you want to be friends with at that point in your life. You both move on. Then, one day several months or years later, you find yourself interacting with this person--maybe you're both on the yearbook committee now, or you're both in the spring musical production--and you realize that you've both changed more, and now you can be friends again.
Well that's how it was with me and Gourmet. Gourmet's new friend Ruth changed it, and not for the better in my opinion at the time. Then, one day, maybe two years ago now, I picked up a copy on the newsstand. I don't know what prompted me--maybe it had a pretty cover. Maybe I had read something on a food blog about a recipe that sounded good (let's be honest--that was probably it). Whatever the motivating factor was, I picked it up and kept picking it up. And then I subscribed. And now I make probably two recipes a month out of it, and flag even more for future use. I love what Gourmet has become--it's much more in synch with how I cook today. Lots of weeknight recipes, with a nice mix of fancier stuff for weekends and holidays when I have more time for cooking.
In fact, so completely have I about-faced on Gourmet that when a friend told me she had old issues from 1999 - 2004 or so that she would let me I have, I jumped at the chance. That span represents the almost entire time that Gourmet and I were estranged. I got a second chance! The stash even included the September 1999 issue that was the first one on which Ruth Reichl worked, and which created such an outcry (both for and against), as well as the November 1999 issue in which said outcry was recorded. I also have the August 1999 issue, which was the one just prior to Reichl's taking over, and which followed the older format. It's fascinating to read the two together.
Of course, the magazine has come even further now, with bigger changes that are nice to see and note. In the period BR (Before Ruth), Gourmet's opinion was clearly that there were no restaurants worth troubling with anywhere but New York and LA. Ruth expanded the restaurant reviews to the whole country. Gourmet used to be full of huge beautiful pictures of Italy, Francy, Germany, Laos...big glossy shots of places far away, along with travel tips for when you got to go (ha!). They still cover some travel, but it's not the main focus any more. The main focus is clearly food. Food that you could cook on Thursday night, as well as things you could make for your guests on Saturday night, or for Thanksgiving dinner. I feel it's more well-adjusted in the past couple of years. The Quick Cook or Gourmet Every Day columns from so long ago often had things like oatmeal cookies and cranberry sorbet. Perfect! Just what I serve for dinner every night! No, now you get things like steak, pork chops, and shrimp, as well as vegetarian choices. Much more useful.
I'm just hoping Conde Nast gives Gourmet a second chance. I looked at the Conde Nast website, bu there was no "contact us" button, so I guess I'll send an email directly to Gourmet. They can't do this! I already subscribe to Bon Appetit, Food + Wine, Martha Stewart Everyday Food, Cooking Light, Fine Cooking, and Donna Hay Magazine. On the newsstand I often buy The Food Network Magazine, La Cucina Italiana, and Delicious. I refuse to buy Paula Deen, Rachel Ray, anything Taste of Home, and anything Cook's Illustrated publishes. There will be a sad hole left in my cooking life.
Showing posts with label Gourmet magazine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gourmet magazine. Show all posts
Monday, October 05, 2009
Friday, September 19, 2008
Loveable: S'mores Cookies
I believe I have found the world’s ugliest cookie. I made some cookies from a recipe in Gourmet magazine, and when I made a second batch, one of my nannies asked me what that log in the refrigerator was. I explained that they were the chocolate cookies that had been around the previous week. The other nanny was joyous that I was making another batch.
“I kept eating them,” she said, “And Kerina kept asking why I was eating those ugly cookies. I told her, they’re ugly, but they’re awesome!”
Indeed, I would say “ugly but awesome” sums these cookies up perfectly. In fact, so ugly are they that it took me half the batch just to find one that was attractive enough to photograph.
These are from a local company called Dish D’lish, run by a woman named Kathy Casey. The recipe was in the March issue of Gourmet magazine, in the You Asked for It section. A woman in the Seattle area said she goes out of her way to buy one of these whenever she flies out of Sea-Tac. Since I don’t fly (except in extreme situations), I realized would probably never get one of these cookies unless I made the recipe. And since there was no picture of the cookies with the recipe, I had to assume I was doing things correctly and that ugly was part of their charm.
The first time I made them I forgot to stir the candy bits into the cookie dough. The second time I made them I did, but I realized that I actually liked them better without them. Both times the recipe made more like 11 cookies than 10 (I'm not very good at rolling out the log to exactly 8" long).
Also the first time, I rolled the dough out into a log on a floured board, but didn’t like the look of the white flour on the chocolate dough. Remembering my Martha Stewart wisdom, I recalled the tip to “flour” cake pans for chocolate cake with cocoa to avoid that white-flour-on-the-outside-of-a-chocolate-cake look. I dusted the exterior of the dough log with cocoa powder. When baked off, the cookies had an extra hint of chocolate that was subtle, but interesting.
The topping is the real gotcha on these cookies. You have to mound the marshmallow goopiness perfectly in the center of the raw dough or it melts and slithers off onto the baking sheet, making it look like the topping was caught in the act of trying to escape when you opened the oven door and pulled the cookies out. If you manage to calculate the exact area of the cookie circle using the formula you remember from geometry, of course (isn’t it π x r squared?) and blop the stuff in the exact middle point, you wind up with a pool of melted marshmallow goodness that turns lightly golden. Using one large marshmallow half per cookie (cut around the equator), instead of the minis, also helps the appearance a bit. It’s still not very pretty, but it’s tasty.
I think the dough for these cookies could be used for more than just s’mores cookies. I see melting other things on top of them, such as caramels, or starlight mints. This bears consideration.
My one beef with these cookies is that after you make them, you’re left with most of a can of sweetened condensed milk to use up. It only calls for a quarter cup of it, and then you’re left with at least another 9 or so ounces of the stuff. I guess the solution is to make more ugly cookies.
Chocolate-Toffee S'more Cookies
from Gourmet magazine, March 2008
makes 10-11 jumbo cookies
For Dough
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1/4 cup shortening
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 (8 oz.) package toffee baking bits
For Topping
1 1/2 (5" x 2 1/2") graham crackers
1 cup mini marshmallows (or 5 large marshmallows halved through their equator)
1/4 cup sweetened condensed milk
Make the dough: combine flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt in a bowl. Cream together butter, shortening, and sugars in the bowl of an electric mixer until fluffy, then beat in the egg and vanilla. With the mixer on low, add in the flour mixture and mix until the dough just comes together. Stir in toffee bits.
Shape dough into a log 8" long, 3" in diameter on a board dusted with flour (or a combination of flour and cocoa powder) with floured hands. Flatten the ends and chill, wrapped in plastic, for 6 hours or overnight.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment. In a food processor, grind graham crackers into fine crumbs (about 1/4 cup). Combine crumbs with marshmallows and sweetened condensed milk (mixture will be very sticky).
Cut dough crosswise into 10-3/4" thick rounds. Place 2-3 slices on each baking sheet (these cookies spread about 5" during baking), and top with 1 heaping tablespoon of marshmallow topping, placing it in the center of each slice (this is where a single large marshmallow is easier than a clump of the smaller ones).
Bake cookies 18-22 minutes until topping is golden and cookies are baked through. Slide onto a rack to cool completely. Finish remaining cookies in the same manner.
“I kept eating them,” she said, “And Kerina kept asking why I was eating those ugly cookies. I told her, they’re ugly, but they’re awesome!”
Indeed, I would say “ugly but awesome” sums these cookies up perfectly. In fact, so ugly are they that it took me half the batch just to find one that was attractive enough to photograph.
These are from a local company called Dish D’lish, run by a woman named Kathy Casey. The recipe was in the March issue of Gourmet magazine, in the You Asked for It section. A woman in the Seattle area said she goes out of her way to buy one of these whenever she flies out of Sea-Tac. Since I don’t fly (except in extreme situations), I realized would probably never get one of these cookies unless I made the recipe. And since there was no picture of the cookies with the recipe, I had to assume I was doing things correctly and that ugly was part of their charm.
The first time I made them I forgot to stir the candy bits into the cookie dough. The second time I made them I did, but I realized that I actually liked them better without them. Both times the recipe made more like 11 cookies than 10 (I'm not very good at rolling out the log to exactly 8" long).
Also the first time, I rolled the dough out into a log on a floured board, but didn’t like the look of the white flour on the chocolate dough. Remembering my Martha Stewart wisdom, I recalled the tip to “flour” cake pans for chocolate cake with cocoa to avoid that white-flour-on-the-outside-of-a-chocolate-cake look. I dusted the exterior of the dough log with cocoa powder. When baked off, the cookies had an extra hint of chocolate that was subtle, but interesting.
The topping is the real gotcha on these cookies. You have to mound the marshmallow goopiness perfectly in the center of the raw dough or it melts and slithers off onto the baking sheet, making it look like the topping was caught in the act of trying to escape when you opened the oven door and pulled the cookies out. If you manage to calculate the exact area of the cookie circle using the formula you remember from geometry, of course (isn’t it π x r squared?) and blop the stuff in the exact middle point, you wind up with a pool of melted marshmallow goodness that turns lightly golden. Using one large marshmallow half per cookie (cut around the equator), instead of the minis, also helps the appearance a bit. It’s still not very pretty, but it’s tasty.
I think the dough for these cookies could be used for more than just s’mores cookies. I see melting other things on top of them, such as caramels, or starlight mints. This bears consideration.
My one beef with these cookies is that after you make them, you’re left with most of a can of sweetened condensed milk to use up. It only calls for a quarter cup of it, and then you’re left with at least another 9 or so ounces of the stuff. I guess the solution is to make more ugly cookies.
I even put it on a really pretty plate in the hopes that it would make the cookie more visually appealing. Fail.
Chocolate-Toffee S'more Cookies
from Gourmet magazine, March 2008
makes 10-11 jumbo cookies
For Dough
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 stick unsalted butter, softened
1/4 cup shortening
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 (8 oz.) package toffee baking bits
For Topping
1 1/2 (5" x 2 1/2") graham crackers
1 cup mini marshmallows (or 5 large marshmallows halved through their equator)
1/4 cup sweetened condensed milk
Make the dough: combine flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt in a bowl. Cream together butter, shortening, and sugars in the bowl of an electric mixer until fluffy, then beat in the egg and vanilla. With the mixer on low, add in the flour mixture and mix until the dough just comes together. Stir in toffee bits.
Shape dough into a log 8" long, 3" in diameter on a board dusted with flour (or a combination of flour and cocoa powder) with floured hands. Flatten the ends and chill, wrapped in plastic, for 6 hours or overnight.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 2 large baking sheets with parchment. In a food processor, grind graham crackers into fine crumbs (about 1/4 cup). Combine crumbs with marshmallows and sweetened condensed milk (mixture will be very sticky).
Cut dough crosswise into 10-3/4" thick rounds. Place 2-3 slices on each baking sheet (these cookies spread about 5" during baking), and top with 1 heaping tablespoon of marshmallow topping, placing it in the center of each slice (this is where a single large marshmallow is easier than a clump of the smaller ones).
Bake cookies 18-22 minutes until topping is golden and cookies are baked through. Slide onto a rack to cool completely. Finish remaining cookies in the same manner.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
