>what a food is supposed to taste like, and pursues recipes based on this imagination.
They're much more utilitarian about it but this is basically the Cooks Illustrated/ATK approach as well. My main complaint is that it can lead to really fussy recipes though I think they've toned that down a bit in recent years.
I find this complaint very surprising - in my experience CI generates simplified, sometimes oversimplified, recipes for most things. They are geared towards easily accessible ingredients and minimal techniques, after all.
I agree the techniques are fairly simple and they tend to keep ingredients straightforward. When I say they tend to be fussy, there often seems a fair bit of cooking things different ways, using a fair number of bowls etc. It's not a big deal and I actually tend to like them as a rather mainstream if not especially exciting source of recipes.
But, as I say, I think they've also focused a bit more on prep time of late.
Cooks Illustrated was my favorite magazine, it was always interesting even when the recipes were a bit fiddly. I appreciated their ad-free format as well. Unfortunately I had to cancel my subscription when they went to auto-renewal, it just smacked too much of dark patterns to me.
They're much more utilitarian about it but this is basically the Cooks Illustrated/ATK approach as well. My main complaint is that it can lead to really fussy recipes though I think they've toned that down a bit in recent years.