Reading your reviews of our recipes on gourmet.com is like watching "The Jerry Springer Show." I find out what readers like and don't like and most of the time there aren't many punches being pulled. For last November's issue, Test Kitchen director Ruth Cousineau worked on a recipe for little tea cakes called Pink Cuts. The recipe came from a story on Ruza Zivná, a sweet old Iron Curtain grandma with an iron fist and a delicate pastry hand. Although this family recipe survived the fall of the Eastern bloc, it took a real hit when it went onto the web. One reader/reviewer from NM had a field day making fun of the Gourmet-speak in the recipe. Well, NM, I see your point: it may seem silly to call for 1 cup minus 1/2 tablespoon of flour, and maybe our writing does seem a bit persnickety. But in our defense, we were trying to maintain the integrity of Ruza's recipe and give the cook all the information needed to get the very best results. Sometimes it feels excessive, but we hear you, and we're constantly striving to walk the delicate line between assisting the cook and stalking.
In the March issue I wrote a recipe for Crisp Braised Pork Shoulder. Wow, what a cat fight that caused! I braised that shoulder at 350 degrees and a reviewer from NY, who didn't make the recipe, wrote a treatise on how braising should be done at a temperature of 180 degrees. Well, some of you defended me, some of you berated the writer for bashing the recipe without braising the pork, and some of you shared your own techniques. Now I can tell you, unequivocally, that I made that recipe at 350 degrees and it was not dry and stringy but succulent and moist. There is rarely only one correct way to cook anything. All that said, I love reading your reviews. Sometimes I want to slap myself, or slap my thigh, and then there are the times I want to slap you—but please, keep reviewing.
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