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(More customer reviews)`tasty' by master culinary editor, Roy Finamore is an odd book by many counts, but if you happen to fit its best audience, it may be one of the best cookbooks you will see for many a moon. The blurb on the front from Ina Garten, `Recipes every cook should know' goes a long way to explaining what this book is all about, especially as it has a lot of similarities to Garten's own friendly `comfort food' style of recipes. But, I must point out at the outset that while Garten's books have less than half the recipes of this volume, they are all more expensive than this very thrifty list price of $30.
The very best audience for this book is not the `I hate to cook, but have to' crowd, or the `I like to cook, but don't have the time Rachael Ray fan club' or the foodie cookbook collector who pores over good celebrity chef offerings from Sara Moulton, Susan Spungen, Tyler Florence, and Deborah Madison. It is also not necessarily for the dedicated professional who studies volumes from the CIA (Culinary Institute of America) or `Cooks illustrated'. It is for people like the author who like to cook, have the time to do moderately complicated recipes (work at home men are a perfect audience here), who like tasty, classic recipes, but who don't want to assemble a large library of cookbooks to garner twenty (20) good recipes. As someone who does own over 500 cookbooks, my first impression is that I have seen almost all these recipes in some other book. Maybe not the exact recipe, but something like it, as with the tomato pie, which has a family resemblance to a Sara Moulton tomato tart or the Welsh Rabbit, which I have seen in several English cookbooks from Nigel Slater and Jane Grigson, not to mention a gaggle of Irish cookbooks.
Finamore is a cookbook editor who has worked with many important cookbook authors such as Garten, Martha Stewart, Tom Colicchio, Diana Kennedy, Anne Willan, and Gale Gand. This, I sense just a bit of the culinary `fellow traveler's point of view I taste in the work of Alton Brown, with not quite as much humor and not quite as much circumspection with words as I appreciate from Brown. For example, Finamore grossly misuses the term `melt' when referring to the breakdown of one ingredient into another as when mashing up anchovies or garlic into vinaigrette. Finamore is also not entirely rigorous in explaining all his terms, as when he uses the term gorgonzola `dolce' cheese in a recipe with no explanation of the two different varieties of gorgonzola in his introductory glossary of ingredients.
But all this is minor nit-picking. In general, this is a superb cookbook for the casual cook who wants a reliable source of `tasty' recipes. The fact that many of the recipes will look familiar to even the non-foodie is a good thing, because even if they are not strictly `comfort food', they will have the feel of well worn slippers instead of the straitlaced feel of a totally unfamiliar `original' restaurant recipe from Emeril or Mario or Bobby or Daniel or Thomas or even bad boy Tony. Just to take one example from my experience, I have just started to do cooking without the safety net of a published recipe, and as I had two quarts of leftover homemade chicken stock, I wanted to make chicken noodle soup. Now, I searched all my favorite soup books from Barbara Kafka, James Peterson, the CIA and what have you, and I just couldn't quite come up with a validation of what I had in mind. Most were just a bit more complicated than I thought it should be. So, I did my best, making two annoying mistakes in using too many noodles and the washed up chicken meat from the stock recipe. But here, in Finamore's book is the most lovely little chicken soup recipe you can ask for, using homemade stock and some boneless chicken breast.
One of the better things about the recipes in this book is that they do not rely on a lot of unfamiliar ingredients. If you have a good working knowledge of the standard American / French / Italian pantry, you will find nothing here which will be hard to find in your local Wegmans market.
I also give extra credit to the book for covering breakfast and lunch. Any good cookbook for the casual cook must include these items, as they are usually only covered in specialty books. I also give the book extra credit for giving us several recipes which make good use of ingredients we commonly have left over, such as ricotta cheese.
Finamore mentions several lessons he learned from the likes of Jacques Pepin, which brings to mind the fact that this book replaces Pepin's `Fast Food My Way' as my favorite book to recommend to anyone who is looking for one good cookbook for when they like to cook. That is not to say this is not a good book for the foodie crowd. It is an excellent book for when the food sophisticate wants to let down their hair and make some `comfort food', but they want something just a bit more interesting than the latest Rachael Ray quickie. Looking through the `weekend dinners' chapter, I find, for example, the perfect combination of sophistication and simplicity in the `beef tenderloin stuffed with summer salsa' for serving 8. The beef tenderloin is impressive, the roulade technique is fancy, the salsa is `tasty, the prep and grilling requires some skill and experience, and the end result is great, even for leftovers. In the same chapter, the recipe for pork chops is careful to use a brine, without preaching about the lean state of modern porkers.
Highly recommended for everyday recipes, like it says!
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For the past twenty years, Roy Finamore has shaped America's most popular cookbooks, publishing such influential authors as Martha Stewart, Ina Garten (the Barefoot Contessa), and Lee Bailey and working alongside chefs and other food authorities to help them streamline their recipes. Now, in Tasty, he shows you how to make the most of your time and have fun in the kitchen.Tasty proves that a meal doesn't need to be showoffy to be uncommonly good. When you serve food from this book, your family and friends will sit up and take notice, and you'll be relaxed and smiling when you sit down at the table. Among the simple but exceptional dishes in Tasty:Buttermilk Pancakes with Hazelnut Butter: breakfast with a minimum of effort; unbelievably light and fluffy.Sicilian Spinach Pie: perfect for a lunch or picnic, with the easiest pastry you've ever made.Fresh Pea Soup: with three common ingredients, it's ready in five minutes.Chicken Milanese: Crisp chicken and tart salad -- the kind of food you crave when it's hot out.Pork Roast with Fruit Stuffing: a fine company dish or Sunday supper.Chinois Noodles: Asian-inspired and equally good warm or cold.Chocolate Whipped Cream Cake: Whip cream, add eggs and a few dry ingredients, and you've got cake!As Roy says in his introduction, "Good simple food is meant to be shared and enjoyed. Cook often."
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