The Best Light Recipe
In an ongoing effort to bring readers the flakiest pie crusts and the most tender of meat loafs, the mad scientists at Cook's Illustrated subject recipes to endless tests in order to find out exactly how much cream the perfect corn chowder requires or how much salt the perfect veal roast needs. In this cookbook, they turn their attention to light versions of their favorite recipes, using the same trial-and-error method to devise healthier finished products. The recipes in this book are middle-American classics such as Chicken Pot Pie, Crab Cakes and Spaghetti and Meatballs. For the most part, these dishes taste as luxurious as their full-fat siblings-the pot pie is tender and creamy, the crab cakes are dense with lump crabmeat and the spaghetti and meatballs are hard to stop eating. Even desserts are terrific, although the authors confess they found it impossible to come up with light versions of apple crisp or yellow cake that would meet Cook's Illustrated standards, so those recipes were omitted. Still, their efforts were well-rewarded with rich Peanut Butter Cookies and moist Chocolate Sheet Cake. They even worked their miracles on Cheesecake, testing 28 recipes before coming up with a silken, light version as addictive as the real thing.Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.