A Day at Cooks Illustrated

Location: Boston, MA

The other day I visited the offices of Cooks Illustrated magazine, easily the best, most comprehensive journal about food on the market. It's difficult to get hold of the in the UK, but in the US has a circulation of around a million copies. I was introduced to Cooks Illustrated by my friend Orlando, owner of Le Manoir de Raynaudes, and formerly editor of BBC Good Food. So, even though I'm ideologically opposed to nepotism (though not naive enough to believe that in practice, it's not how the world works) Orlando managed to help me get a visit to the holy shrine of food experimentation, 'America's Test Kitchen'.

The kitchen is located on the premises where Cooks Illustrated and its sister publication 'Cooks Country" is produced. The unassuming, first floor premises is also the hub for the production of books as well as a TV programme that airs on the American networks. It's America's most watched cookery show on public television, which is impressive, so altogether the place is a hive of activity and the volume of literature produced quite astounding. With a million loyal followers, it's safe to say that Cooks Illustrated is doing something right, and when over lunch I quizzed the executive editor, he was candid about the whole thing. "Look" he said "it's revolutionary. We don't take adverts, we only talk about food, and we make sure the recipes always work." He had the look of a man who couldn't believe how stupid the competition was. True, I thought, the recipes do always work, and how many times have you tried to follow a recipe from a so called food magazine that makes little sense, that is inaccurate in its measurements, or falls apart the moment you don't have the requisite baking tin?

The reliability of the recipes is down to the rigour with which they test them. It's an exhaustive process, that I can't really go into here (arrogantly I assume competitors might be reading, ha!) but lets just say it takes forever. No stone is left unturned and no creme brulee left unburned by a variety of grills and blow-torches - that's the other thing, not only are recipes tested, but a variety of equipment with which to cook the recipe is also tested. The quest is utterly infectious, but it's not necessarily for perfection, as that ridiculous Heston Blumenthal undertook on his recent TV show, but a perfect recipe for home cooks. Test cooks buzz around, and like ants are always purposeful. In fact, if you try to imagine a large colony of ants wearing chef whites (bear with me) and waving tiny little knives that their legs could hold, you have an idea of the intensity of activity that I walked into. And they're not any old Tom who can hold a ladel: these are all trained chefs, many of whom have worked at fine restaurants. They're like zealots, ruthlessly purging any inaccuracies in their recipes, before writing the whole lot down in Cooks Illustrated style. When you read the articles, it seems so serene - "I've occasionally wondered why this happens to that, and so I decided to try and find out." - but believe me the effort that goes into getting answers belies the calm cool exterior of the publication.

I left feeling utterly galvanised. If you were to work somewhere like Cooks Illustrated, not only would you develop technically, as a cook, but your writing would also become tighter and you'd develop a masochistic desire for answers. It would be an experience like little else and would teach you to think outside the box, perhaps even develop new techniques that haven't been tried before. Buy Cooks Illustrated - they ship overseas and you can sign up on-line. You won't be disappointed.