I've mentioned my love for Cook's Illustrated (both magazine and cookbook received as thoughtful and wonderful gifts!)and how they attack recipes and products with impressive zeal to weed out inferiority and tweak endlessly for improvement. They often do staff tastings of products and recommend their top scorers. Every time I read one of these tidbits, I write it down on a scrap of paper, only to be consumed by one of the several black holes that seem to follow me around. Today as I scribbled down tidbit #83582374, I was struck with a brilliant plan; I could post them on the blog, thereby being eternally available to me and anyone else who cares!
-Columela Extra Virgin Olive Oil is recommended as being particulary fruity.
-As a kid, my grandmother made the best salads. I found out later it was because she used red wine vinegar that my grandfather made and you just can't beat that homemade flavor. Cook's though, had to test supermarket brands and the winner was Spectrum Natural Organics, followed closely by Pompiean. Both are made with Concord grapes, either a blend (Spectrum) or undiluted (Pompiean). I'm guessing that could be a good sign; the grapes my grandfather used locally here in New York were probably Concord so I have high hopes!
-I am a Penzey's spice junkie. I assume that all of their spices are far superior to the sawdust sold in supermarkets but they never score all that well in these testings. Cook's rated Penzey's chili powder lowest out of the 10 or 12 tested products and Spice Island received unequivocal praise. I'm not sure I am ready to knock Penzey's off my spice pedestal and I'm also not going to buy 12 different kind of chili powders to prove Cook's wrong.
-As a nod to summer, they tested hot dogs and accoutrements. Nathan's dogs and Gulden's spicy brown mustard rated the highest out of all products tested. I like Gulden's spicy brown just as much as anyone else but these people OBVIOUSLY did not try WNY's homegrown Sahlen's hotdogs and Weber's horseradish mustard.
5 comments:
Thanks for the recommendations on red wine vinegar. I still miss Grandpa Gullo's vinegar (along with his wine barrel in the cellar, he also has a vinegar barrel)and have yet to find a replacement. Will check these out.
oh.. webers kicks goldens ass ANY day of the week.. and twice on fish fry fridays! ;) and thanks girl for all the recs.. im happy to have someone read all this stuff and send me the cliffs notes!
Aunt Mae Zanghi tells me that Grandpa ordered his grapes from California!
84 boxes every year.
40 white
2 black
for each barrel.
One wine barrel.
One vinegar barrel.
Aunt Mae Zanghi informs me that Grandpa Gullo used grapes from California.
40 boxes of white
2 boxes of black
for each barrel.
Aunt Mae Zanghi tells me that Grandpa used grapes from California.
40 boxes of white
2 boxes of black
(that's it for naming the variety of grapes)
42 boxes of grapes per barrel.
1 barrel of wine.
1 barrel of vinegar.
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