When life gives you tomatoes... make Panzanella!

For our July challenge, we decided to cook each of the featured recipes in our new Cook's Illustrated magazine subscription. Unfortunately, we doubt we can legally post the recipes (Neil is cautious - being a JD and all) - so we will post our reviews of the magazine in general and recipes that we prepare.

We started out with Panzanella and Corn Chowder (no pics this time - sorry!).

Panzanella
If this tells you anything, we have already made the Panzanella three times - twice for ourselves and once for a picnic AND we plan to have it again this week (when we like something - we tend to reeeaaalllyy like it). We had never had this dish before, and usually avoid raw tomatoes in our daily cooking - but this mix of crusty Italian bread, tomatoes, olive oil, cucumber, basil, and shallots really hit the spot on a warm summer day.

Taste: 4 out of 5
Difficulty: 2 out of 5

One of the highlights of the magazine is how they test several methods of preparing each dish to create a 'fool proof' and tasty outcome. This was particularly helpful when getting the bread to be the correct texture and to soak up the juices from the tomatoes.

Corn Chowder
This was our first time making chowder, so we really did not know what to expect! Fortunately, one feature of the magazine subscription is a supplementary e-newsletter that includes links to 3 minute videos showing the steps to create the dish. The videos were very useful and sped along the cooking process - given that we are visual learners :)

Taste: Sarah: 4.5 out of 5 Neil: 4 out of 5 (we just could not agree on this one...)
Difficulty: 3.5 out of 5

Wrap - Up
Two recipes into the challenge we have already found two recipes we will (and already have) replicate in the future. Lessons learned:
(1) raw tomatoes can be tasty - as long as that gooey stuff and seeds are removed
(2) fresh corn on the cob is a must when making corn chowder - so next stormy day (which there will be many in Pittsburgh) we will make sure to have some fresh corn handy
(3) a picture is worth a thousand words - video guides to recipes can be helpful and speed up the prep work

This coming week we are making cucumber salad and "perfect scrambled eggs." And given our enthusiasm for the recipes thus far - we have already downloaded the free Cook's Illustrated app and will be preparing several of those recipes.