I agree with every single review here that gives Fine Cooking five stars. It was always my favorite food magazine -- with the focus on proper technique, rather than upon fancy pictures put together by food "stylists," rather than cooks.
"Was" is the operative word though. This year Fine Cooking felt it had to "fix" something that was nowhere near "broke" and they turned FC into exactly the "food stylist" type of magazine that had sent me into the arms of Fine Cooking to begin with. The new format is all style over substance; indeed, there are so many "pretty" stylized pictures that it is now difficult to read -- the text gets lost.
FC also lost the unique personal style from the original FC -- the old format had these simple articles, oftentimes with a cook giving you the take on a single technique or ingredient. The cook was right there with you, with their hands on the food, and their smiling face beaming at you the beginning of the article. It looked like real food being cooked in front of you by a real person, rather than stylized food being glossed up with shellac before a hot camera.
Alas, that is all gone now. There are still a few good recipes, such as the excellent "Grill Braising" article by Bruce Aidells (my guess is that Bruce was under contract before they changed the format). But why wasn't Bruce in the shots, instead of these picture-perfect creations? And why did the text have to be so difficult to read?
I can say I am not alone in my disdain; others I know here were also heartbroken when the format changed, and the online blogs and FC's own blog included many angered by the change. Some did like it -- but then there are lots of people who do like these "stylized" publications, I'm just not one of them. Its just not what I looked for in Fine Cooking. My subscription has now lapsed, although I hope they bring back the old format (my guess is that they lost many subscribers).
In any event -- I thought that this review was necessary to give fair warning to those reading the OLD reviews about the OLD FC format. "New" is not always necessarily "improved."Get more detail about Fine Cooking.
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