[.ca] The Best American Recipes 2003-2004: The Year's Top ... (ISBN 0618273840)

Fun series with good recipes and lots of annoying aspects:
This latest in a series which I believes goes back about five (5) years breaks no new ground in presentation or insights about the American culinary scene. All that means is that this book is fun to read and may be worth a purchase from the deeply discounted pile of books at the entrance of Borders. But, it adds little of substance to one's permanent cookbook library. At the top of my list of reasons not to pay list price for this book is the fact that it gives no criteria by which the editors choose their best of winners. You have nothing like the closely reasoned thinking you get from the Cooks Illustrated magazines or books. You do not even get any rationale for how sources are chosen. On top of this is the very few recipes from Cooks Illustrated or other 'best of' sources. Next on my list of complaints is that when a recipe comes from a periodical, the editors do not give enough information about the source which would enable you to find that particular issue. This may be useful especially for recipes from Savour or Gourmet, where recipes often accompany articles on countries or restaurants and you may be interested in reading about the recipe's source. Another irritation is that all the copyrighted sources show that they were published in 2002, not 2003. This irritation is doubled when I find recipes from republished material, such as new editions of works by M. F. K. Fisher or memoirs including old material such as 'Between Bites' by Jim Villas. I really like both authors and I think they deserve every credit coming their way, but I already own their works, so I don't need to see their old material rehashed here. Yet another irritation is in the Foreword by guest contributor Alan Richman. Like Tony Bourdain before him, he was primarily enlisted to provide some opening comic relief. The problem is, at least some of his humor is based on plainly false observations such as a mythical difficulty in finding shallots at an American grocery. Unlike the author, I find shallots at every store stocking vegetables in my middle-sized city. Bring back Tony Bourdain. At least I know where his cynical sense of humor is coming from. I always look forward to some insights from the editors' trends of the year. This year, I flatly disagree with their identifying a movement toward can opener cooking exemplified by Sandra Lee's 'Semi-Homemade' rubric. I think that with the recent popularity of Rachael Ray's books and TV show, I would more likely identify the trend as a strong interest in cooking at home and the search for ways to do it quickly without having to rely too heavily on prepared foods. The observation about Sandra Lee is doubly ironic in that her Food Network TV show started in 2003, and, as cited above, all the recipes presumably reflecting this trend are from 2002. The last annoyance with which to burden you are my finding inaccurate statements in the editors' notes to some recipes. One I found was the statement that scallops are stored in solutions of sodium to preserve them. Sodium cannot form a solution. Only sodium salts can form a solution, and, I believe the salt used to preserve scallops is not the most common sodium salt, sodium chloride, but some less common compound. In spite of all these nuisances, this book is fun to read, if not worth the expense to own it. If I were to fall back on a quote from Joseph Conrad, which says that the sole purpose of a cookbook is to increase the amount of happiness in the world, I believe this book can do that, especially if acquired at a deep discount or from the library. In the books defense, I cite with favor the editors' notes accompanying each recipe. This levels the quality of the entries, balancing sophisticated stuff from Jeremiah Tower with material found on the back of a bread crumb can. Recommended, with reservations.

disappointed so far:
First of all, the book itself is fairly low quality. Printed on cheap easily soiled paper, no pictures included. I made 2 recipes so far, so I will come back and comment again after I've tried some other recipes in the book. Both the recipes I tried were listed as Top Ten in the book. one of them was for Buttermilk Scones. Pretty easy, simple recipe, but ther recommendation about using the food processer didn't really work in the way they suggested, required much more than 10-12 pulses to cut in the butter. The scones were totally bland and flavorless, this is the first time I made scones, so maybe this is the way they are supposed to be? Pretty boring. The second recipe I tried was the Spaghetti with Tuna Sauce. This dish is supposed to be served at room temperature. Again, this wasn't that great, hard to imagine this being some best recipe of the year, especially in the top ten. Difficult to get the sauce evenly mixed with the pasta. Flavor was okay, but most folks aren't to thrilled about eating room temperature spaghetti. -Okay now I made another, called Spicy Baked Rice. Pretty easy to make, not bad, put fairly boring and difficult to see how this is a recipe that would be the "Best" of anything.

Use it all the time:
This series is the absolute best. I have them all. Recipes are reasonably easy, creative, and meal menu suggestions are a big help. For those cooks who need pictures to tell them what the heck they are eating, this probably isn't for you. But if you are into any sort of forward meal menu planning, then pick this and the other years' editions up. An experienced palate also helps so that room temperature dishes are not a shock, but a style to which the Italians and French have become accustomed.

Great series - terrific selections!:
Fran McCullough is well known in the food bood business and I've come to trust her taste. I'm automatically favorably inclined towards any book she's associated with. This series started out strong and has only gotten better over the years. I love the editors comments in the headnotes and they are great at discerning trends. Also there are lots of really simple but very tasty dishes here, along with a few real challenges.