My Companion this Summer: America's Test Kitchen's Complete Summer Cookbook

 I am a huge fan of America's Test Kitchen and their books.  For starters, they put the "TEST" in test kitchen.  A lot of those recipes that look so good in magazines, that you try to make, and they turn out bland, horribly, cakes don't set, glazes run down the sides of cakes, etc, and you feel like a failure as a home chef.

But a lot of those recipes aren't TESTED or lack critical steps.  Thus anyone following step by step without modification (like adding the necessary 30-40 minutes needed to caramelize onions rather than the 5-10 minutes most recipes lie that it takes) would have the same disappointing result.

Not so with ATK.  Their youtube video series are also good.

One issue with their cookbooks is that there is quite a bit of overlap.  As someone with a lot of their cookbooks, I see that.  A book in the "make ahead" compendium with show up as an identical item in the Autumn/Winter cookbook, and so forth.  But enough stays on theme and has enough variation for me not to mind the duplications.  Most of their books are pretty hefty on number of recipes, and the 500+ in this one means that you're not going to feel like you've just bought multiple copies of the same book with different names.

Onto the Complete Summer Cookbook.

I try to cook from a cookbook a week with some others showing up for a side dish or a pie and some recipes creeping in from the internet.  The Complete Summer Cookbook, is one that's shown up over and over again.  I just can't seem to stop cooking from it, and when I search Eat Your Books for ideas for my dinner using ingredients I have, recipes keep popping up from this book, and I'll just do *one* more.

The contents are organized partially by course, but partially by situation.  This is summer after all, so after our small bites section, we move to salads, then the easily handheld stuff: Burgers, Sandwiches, Tacos.

They have a whole chapter of main courses inspired by the Farmer's Market, something that very much appeals to my hipster heart.  Countertop cooking, grilling recipes, even preserves to hold some of that summery produce deep into the winter.  There are recipes that keep easily outside at a picnic or barbecue and feed a large crowd: your pasta and potato salads, but also some really unique samples.

And most doesn't involve your oven.  As someone who does *not* have central air conditioning (curse this old house), this makes things VERY nice for me.

There are so many recipes that not all of them have pictures, but I feel they include pictures of things that could be hard to conceptualize versus vegetable sides, where it's lovely to include a picture of roasted asparagus, but we all have a pretty good idea of what it looks like.  That being said, a lot of the recipes DO have pictures, and the pictures are high quality and instructional.

Some recipes are quite simple.  Seen here are the New England Lobster Rolls, which is more about obtaining the ingredients that complication, but while it was very simple and easy, the results tasted exactly like a lobster roll you'd grab from a Maine seasonal shack.

Others make things that look complicated but aren't, and do impress at a party.  This is their raspberry chiffon cake, aka, the first time I've actually used powdered gelatin in my cooking (jello shots don't count) but it shall not be my last.  This made a really light tasting mostly bakeless (minus the crust) airy dessert for the 4th of July that kept my kitchen cool.  

My one hitch with this was the crust, which may have been my own fault.  I used their pastry crust recipe, but had the pie crust fail, which is unusual for me.  While I have not yet mastered any manner of prettying up the edges, this one kind of fell and sagged.  There were still no complaints from my company.  All I would have needed to do to go fully bakeless is buy a store-bought pie crust, but I like to complicate my own life.

Here we have two recipes in one, the chicken satay with peanut sauce and broccoli rabe.  The chicken was absolutely nice and hits the GRILL aspect we crave in the summer.  The peanut sauce featured a large ketchup component, which had me skeptical and when tasted alone, was a little too brassy, but paired with the chicken, it was wonderful.  The broccoli rabe was a very simple recipe allowing the in season veggies to shine on their own.

In the meantime, want people to be really impressed with a quick late spring/early summer meal but don't want to put a lot of work in?

That beautiful crust is just slightly rolled out store bought puff pastry, turning this into an easy weeknight meal.

I was all ready to put the book aside and use something else!  But my lovely SO reminded me that we had a barbecue to attend, so I *had* to make another dessert.  Enter the eclair cake:

I had never heard of these before (I guess I need to get invited to more parties!) and was extremely skeptical that layering vanilla pudding and graham crackers would exactly mimic the taste and texture of an eclair, and I was wrong.  This is effectively a 9X13 eclair.  I was also worried that it would grow soggy, but still no.  The directions were quite simple and made a fantastic cake that was well loved.

I would really recommend this book to anyone unless they had very specific dietary restrictions.  Like many of their other cookbooks, the recipes are marked for things for crowds, things that are gluten free, and vegan options.  There is such a great array of recipes that you could cook from this through the summer for years and not repeat an entry.  It's currently sitting at 27 dollars for the bound book on Amazon.  Kind of in the middle for cookbook prices, but a great value for the money.