Currently cooking from Tasty by Roy Finamore

This dish isn’t much to look at, but it is probably the best thing I’ve cooked out of Tasty.

If you’ll recall, the last recipe(s) I tried out of this book weren’t so successful. I was ready to go onto the next book, but decided that I needed to get one last review from Tasty. I didn’t have high hopes for this one; how good could a recipe be that only had cabbage, egg noodles, butter, sour cream and some seasonings in it? I expected this dish to be boring and bland.

I was so wrong.

You start off by cooking a shredded green cabbage in butter until it starts to brown. Along the way, you throw in some crushed caraway seeds, salt and pepper. Once the cabbage is meltingly tender, you added cooked egg noodles and toss the whole thing with a cup of sour cream. Finamore recommends that you save some of the pasta water to help loosen the sauce up. I’m glad I did, as it was a little dry at first. I used about 3/4 of a cup of the pasta water.

Comforting and filling, this dish was a home run. It is so easy to make, and I could have eaten just this for dinner.

My final impression of Tasty? Before this dish I would have shrugged and probably not come back to Tasty. Now I’m wondering how many other sleepers are in there.

Here’s the story of the dessert that almost wasn’t . . .

Once upon a time, I offered to provide dinner (with dessert, of course) to Bryan’s niece who just had a baby. Along with a huge pan of lasagna, I planned on wowing her with Finamore’s Chocolate Whipped Cream Cake filled with whipped cream and raspberries. It is elegant, but simple (and very pretty, judging by the picture in Tasty).

As I was reading through the ingredient list, something caught my eye. The recipe calls for 2 teaspoons of baking soda. Now, according to author Shirley O. Corriher (in her most recent book, Bakewise, she talks about how baking soda/baking powder works and the proper proportions one should use), 2 teaspoons of baking soda is the amount of leavening needed for 8 cups of flour. This recipe has less than 2 cups. So, I anticipated that the cakes would fall, and in the recipe, Finamore says that the cakes will fall a little. Uh, yeah. Take another look at that picture. I’d say my cakes fell *a little*.

So, with visions of a perfect black and white cake crumpling around me, I decided to turn the cake (which tasted fine, by the way) into a chocolate trifle by making Finamore’s version of chocolate pudding (and knocking out another recipe while I was at it).

Fortunately, the chocolate pudding recipe is pretty straightforward. You whisk together, egg yolks, cornstarch and unsweetened cocoa. You temper this with hot milk/cream, then the whole thing goes back on the stovetop to cook. Once it has come to a boil, you take it off the heat and stir in bittersweet chocolate, butter and some vanilla.

I wondered about the lack of sugar in the recipe, but figured that the bittersweet chocolate would provide the sweetening. Wrong! The dry bitterness of the cocoa powder came through loud and clear. Fortunately, the pudding was still liquidy and hot enough that I was able to stir in about 1/4 cup of sugar with no problems (I halved the recipe, so if making a full recipe, you’d need more sugar).

In the end, I got my chocolate trifle and it tasted fine, but I’m sorely disappointed in Finamore. I can’t believe that these two recipes passed muster as is. I did a quick search to see if there had been any corrections posted, but I didn’t find anything. The fix for the chocolate pudding is easy. I’d dissolve 1/2 to 2/3 cup of sugar in the milk/cream mixture as it is heating. For the chocolate cake, I’d reduce the baking soda down to 1/2 teaspoon or use 1 teaspoon baking powder along with 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda.

Currently cooking from Tasty by Roy Finamore

Who would have thought that a marinade that contains a lot of beer might make the meat taste like beer? Duh! Apparently not me. Neither Bryan nor I like the taste of beer, so after a few bites of this steak, we politely pushed it aside and concentrated on our roasted broccoli instead.

I might have mentioned here a time or two that Bryan and I eat a lot of flank steak. Besides being pretty inexpensive, this cut of meat is quick cooking and takes well to just about any marinade. You can grill it, broil it or cook it on the stovetop, and the leftovers reheat well.

Finamore’s marinade contains a bottle of beer, molasses, soy sauce, lime juice, garlic, ginger and hot peppers. I left out the hot peppers and ginger, mostly because I forgot to buy them at the grocery store. I let the meat marinate for about 4 hours before grilling it. If you like beer, you’ll probably like this marinade, since that was about all I could taste.

Currently cooking from Tasty by Roy Finamore

I couldn’t admit that I had gotten smacked down by some shrimp and bacon, so I was determined to give this recipe another go, with a few modifications.

This time around, I used jumbo shrimp so it was easier to wrap the bacon around and secure everything together. I also cut almost all of the fat off the bacon, since it was the bacon fat that caused the 2′ flames last time. And lastly, I grilled these puppies more on indirect heat and without closing the grill lid (and obsessively moving the skewers any time I detected a flare-up).

In the end, the shrimp were just okay. We actually preferred the smaller shrimp to these big ones and I seriously overcooked the shrimp while trying to get the bacon done. I think I’ll leave this dish to the pros.

Currently cooking from Tasty by Roy Finamore

So far, this is my favorite recipe from Tasty. It was quick and delicious and takes advantage of all the wonderful summer produce that’s available.

You start out by cutting the kernels off of three ears of corn and sauteing them in some butter. Once the corn is cooked, you add diced, fresh tomatoes and cream and cook until the cream is reduced by half. To this sauce, you add cooked fettuccine and some fresh basil and parmesan. Easy and satisfying.

Well, mostly satisfying. You see, both Bryan and I wanted some sort of protein with it and we wanted to cut down on the amount of cream. So a couple of days later, I took another stab at this recipe, modifying it a bit.

In my version, the dish starts off by browning small chunks of chicken (I used one breast that I cut into 1/2″ pieces). Once the chicken was browned, I moved it to a plate and added some diced onion to the pan. I sauteed the onion until it was soft and then added the corn, which I cooked for about 6 minutes. I deglazed the pan with chicken broth (about 1/2 of a can) and a splash of white wine and reduced the liquid by about half. Finally, I stirred in about 2 tablespoons of cream to finish off the sauce.

My version was much less rich than the original, but it was full of flavor and satisfying, and, I hope, a little better for us since I plan to make this dish for as long as I can get good corn and tomatoes.

Currently cooking from Tasty by Roy Finamore

Why make English muffins? Well, why not? I had the ingredients (flour, yeast, salt and water) and instead of heating up the house with the oven, these little babies get cooked on a cast-iron griddle on the stovetop.

The simple dough is mixed up and left to rest overnight in the fridge. The next day, the dough is divided into 10 pieces, rolled into balls and flattened and left to rise until almost double. The dough is then cooked (I used my electric griddle) for 8-10 minutes per side. Presto! English muffins.

These were really, really good, especially toasted and spread with butter and jam. Next time I make these, I’ll divide the dough into smaller balls (12, maybe, instead of 10) since some of my muffins were pretty big. Also, during the cooking, you are supposed to press down the dough to flatten it. My English muffins were very, very flat, so next time, I won’t press them as hard.

Currently cooking from Tasty by Roy Finamore

This is a simple side dish, albeit one that takes four hours of simmering on the stovetop. The beans (I used great northern beans) are cooked until tender with an onion, a couple of whole cloves, a couple of carrots, a stalk of celery, some rosemary and a bay leaf. If you have any parmesan rinds, you can also throw one of those in. Finamore doesn’t have you soak the beans first; he says the texture is better without soaking. I just liked that I didn’t have to plan too far in advance to make these.

As a side dish, these are, well, beans. Straightforward and simple. The cloves add an unusual flavor that I thought was okay, but Bryan didn’t really like. Finamore gets some mileage out of this recipe, using the beans to make a soup and a baked pasta dish. He also says the beans freeze really well.

Currently cooking from Tasty by Roy Finamore

Pork tenderloin is so easy to cook, but it can end up bland and boring, so I’m always looking for ways to spice it up. In this recipe, Finamore has you spread a mixture of Dijon mustard and herbs over a tenderloin before rolling the meat in bread crumbs. The meat is then browned on the stovetop before getting baked in the oven until done.

Easy, right? The only problem I had was that the bread crumbs didn’t stay on the tenderloin while I was browning it, and I ended up with meat that looked like it had a skin disease. It tasted great, though, and was moist and tender. This makes a great weekday meal and the leftovers are equally as good.

Currently cooking from Tasty by Roy Finamore

I was worried that this dish was going to be too strong. After all, it calls for a 1/2 cup of vinegar, 1/2 cup of white wine and a whole lotta onions. But eaten with rice, this chicken was quite good. The flavors mellowed out and weren’t too harsh.

The dish starts out by browning chicken thighs. Then 3 large sliced onions are browned and the pan is deglazed with the white wine and vinegar. The chicken thighs are added back into the pan and the whole thing simmers on the stovetop until the chicken is done.

The only change I made to the recipe was to use a mixture of cucumber vinegar and white vinegar instead of the champagne vinegar called for. I already have a bunch of different kinds of vinegar in my fridge, and I didn’t want to have to buy another kind just for this dish.

Two things I learned while making this dish:

1. Bacon and shrimp are both very slippery and resist staying wrapped together, even when skewered.

2. Bacon is flammable.

Did you notice that there’s no picture accompanying this post? That’s because I was too busy trying to put out the fire to take pictures. Who knew that dripping bacon grease plus grill would equal leaping flames? Okay, in some logical part of my brain, I probably knew that that might happen, but in my eagerness to try this, I ignored those warnings.

This recipe starts out by wrapping a piece of bacon around an extra-large shrimp and skewering them together. The skewers are then brushed with a mixture of ketchup, maple syrup and soy sauce (or fish sauce) and grilled. In Tasty, there is a beautiful shot of perfectly grilled shrimp surrounded by a crispy piece of bacon. I’m going to make myself feel better and believe that they totally doctored that photo.

Bryan and I were able to scavenge a few of the less burnt shrimp. The combination of the salty and sweet was really nice. Look for a repeat of this recipe soon. With pictures, hopefully.