Comments on: A New Food Journal: Lucky Peach

By: Kathie

Kathie — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 02:35:33 +0000

Thanks for the tip on Lucky Peach! I bought it, liked it, subscribed. Sassy and serious, both. I’d given up on food magazines, mostly, but this seems just my cup of tea.

By: Laurel

Laurel — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 00:14:11 +0000

I certainly take your point about Cook’s Illustrated and the overuse of “exotic” and similar terms. I do like the magazine, but I agree their strength is in finding foolproof and/or innovative techniques for making classic American (in the white sense) recipes at home. Their taste buds do trend toward the bland and their baked desserts always seem insipid and too sugary–when they come out okay. However, I did want to note that since you wrote your rant, IMO their approach to Asian, Southeast Asian, Mexican, and other “exotic” cuisines has greatly improved. There are many more such recipes, usually at least one per issue*, and while they do persist in making substitutions, many of the recipes are pretty good. I have just looked up a couple of them and saw no trace of the “exotic” language, albeit in the truncated online versions.

* Since my husband is vegetarian, I used to be, and we eat very little meat, I also really appreciate that they’ve greatly increased the frequency of their vegetarian recipes.

I do also like that they’ve remained advertising-free. OK, so they make up for it with reams and reams of their own advertising, republishing their own stuff over and over, but I’d rather the latter than the former.

Not a perfect publication, but IMO far from Paula Deen.

I’ve heard a lot recently about Fine Cooking from people whose recipes I enjoy–definitely need to give them a closer look.

By: FuzzyChef

FuzzyChef — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 07:00:04 +0000

Barbara,

Thanks for reviewing Lucky Peach! I was deciding whether to buy it, and now I will.

Cooks Illustrated has had a long, depressing decline which has paralleled the ageing of its founder and monarch. He’s gone from being an inspired challenger to overly commercial cooking magazines with poor recipes, to a tyrant with delusions of grandeur. They also destroyed their online community in the process, which is why I now operate cookaholics.org.

La Cucina Italia is also sad because at some point in 2007 they decided on quantity (of recipes) over quality, and the magazine has slid downhill ever since. Then the publisher and Paulo split into two separate magazines. I used to subscribe but I don’t anymore.

By: N.B

N.B — Tue, 26 Jul 2011 02:08:39 +0000

Hello Barbara!

I am an avid fan of your blog. I am not sure if this is the appropriate avenue but I was wondering if I could convince you to post a recipe for Pad Kee Mao. You seem to have quite an intimate understanding of authentic Thai so I am certain your recipe will be superb.

Hope to see one soon and keep up the awesome work!

By: Barbara

Barbara — Mon, 25 Jul 2011 19:50:52 +0000

Kimsie–the recipes include one that is for pate a choux made from ground up dried ramen noodles instead of flour. That sounds pretty weird to me. Not say that cornflakes and ramen doesn’t sound weird, too…..because it does.