By Louise Jones
Photography by Hubert Schriebl
The house was built in 1806 in the middle of Rupert, on the present corner of Routes 153 and 315. Known as the Carver house, it's a handsome white clapboard farmhouse with a porch on two sides and barns in back and across the street, but it was sadly dilapidated. Then a few years ago I noticed a crew working on it. Great, I thought, someone has bought it before it collapses. That someone was Christopher Kimball, cookbook writer and the man behind two acclaimed cooking magazines, the sixteen year-old Cook's Illustrated and the five year-old Cook's Country. He also oversees the PBS television shows based on the magazines. America's Test Kitchen from Cook's Illustrated is filmed in the company's headquarters in Brookline, Massachusetts, but the new America's Test Kitchen from Cook's Country is being filmed in the Carver house. PBS comes to Rupert!
"I always liked this house and when it came on the market a few years ago I bought it," Chris told me. "Then, when I decided to change the venue for the Cook's Country TV shows-take it out of the Boston area-it seemed like a good place." Chris Kimball spent his childhood summers and holidays in Sandgate, where his parents owned a small farm. He and his wife Adrienne and their four children have continued the family tradition at their own Sandgate farmhouse and he's a popular figure in the area. He supervises Sandgate's annual summer pig roast and attends the Rupert firemen's carnival and barbecue. His editor's letter at the front of each magazine issue is invariably set in one of the two towns.
From the start it was important to make as much distinction between the two television series as between the magazines. Cook's Illustrated examines often-complex classic and popular recipes in exhaustive detail, aiming at the best, foolproof instructions for everything from international dishes such as Pad Thai to stuffed chicken breasts to dinner rolls to flaky apple turnovers. Introductions to the recipes include the kitchen science that explains why some ingredients and procedures work and others don't.
Cook's Country has a different emphasis. It harks back to traditional dishes that Chris says he knows people still eat but food magazines rarely feature. Although Cook's Illustrated is slightly trendy, even setting trends-the Cook's Illustrated staff was among the first recently to popularize the process of brining meats and poultry to enhance tenderness and juiciness -Cook's Country is definitely down home. The staff is interested in regional, heirloom foods, with the best recipes for such dishes as Au Gratin Potatoes, Lemon Pudding Cake, and Glazed Meat Loaf. Although few "meals in minutes" appear on the pages, there are adaptations for preparing old favorites, such as chicken cacciatore, in a slow cooker. Each issue also features a "When Things Go Wrong" column, recipe contests and a section entitled "I'm Looking for a Recipe," in which readers ask one another for help tracking down lost recipes. According to Kimball, the aim of both magazines is "to get a recipe that works at home."
Because the Cook's Country television show is telecast in the fall and the locale is important, filming is done a year ahead. The first series of thirteen shows was produced in the autumn of 2007 and appeared on PBS in fall 2008, with 300,000 viewers. I watched the filming last year, in the fall of 2008, for this fall's shows. Dates and times vary with your television provider. I have a satellite dish and the series is shown on Saturday early afternoons.
The crew is in Vermont for about two weeks and follows an intense and very well planned schedule. The staff has painstakingly tested the recipes in Boston; now they're ready to shoot the programs, every day from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. with a lunch break. Time is set aside for equipment reviews and for tastings and ratings of popular store-bought foods.
Erin McMurrer, the Test Kitchen Director, told me that they bring a large portion of the ingredients with them from Boston. It sounds like supplying an army on the move. "The items that we bring with us are roughly about eighty percent of the meat, chicken, and fish." They also bring along basic staples and hard to find items. "All other ingredients are mainly purchased from Shaw's in Manchester, and sometimes at Price Chopper as well," she said. "We have a special relationship with Shaw's in Boston, so when we filmed Cook's Country in Vermont, we worked out a similar shopping system with their location in Manchester." They also shop at JK Adams, Vermont Kitchen Supply, RK Miles and Aubuchon Hardware for last-minute equipment.
