The Frankies
First up in the Rural Kitchen challenge is "The Frankies Spuntino: Kitchen Companion and Cooking Manual" by Frank Falcinelli, Frank Castronovo and Peter Meehan.
Like all of my personal cookbooks, this one was a gift during a past holiday (or was it birthday?) and promised to teach me how to make the same dishes served in the Frankies restaurant in Brooklyn, NY. The line that won my heart was found on the unnumbered page after the introduction under the heading of "About these recipes & this cooking." And that wonderful sentence goes "Most of the work-work in their recipes--the part where you mess up your counters and floor and generally feel like cursing--happens well before you serve the food, so by the time you are ready to serve, you can ladle it out and pretend like it was no problem and you could do it any old time."
At last, a cooking instruction I can do and do with great ease!
I have found the problem with most cookbooks is they assume you can cook a new recipe for something you have never heard of before, let alone tasted. And how is a person to know if they did it right if they have never tasted it before (which is a rant I have about risotto and polenta, but will save for another time)? What I love about the Frankies' approach is they are asking me to attempt pretty common flavors and letting me know right off the bat that I will make a mess and I will curse, but I will still be able to serve it!
My first selected task was the tomato sauce that served as a base for nearly every entree in the last half of the book. It called for a big stock pot, which I luckily had, but did require a trip to the grocery for the remaining five ingredients. They lay everything out as far as what to get, and are pretty descriptive as to what to do with the ingredients when you have them in front of you. My problems with completing this recipe started right off the bat with the two major components, the canned whole tomatoes and the olive oil.
Neither of the two suggested products could be located in any of the grocery stores in town, so I improvised with what I could find. I can honestly say after trying different tomatoes and olive oils in my five attempts at this recipe, I'm still not sure which one works the best as I keep forgetting to write down what I have tried. So note to self, write this stuff down, especially if you are going to blog about it!
Anyway, smashing the tomatoes by hand (as suggested) is an incredibly messy process but also cathartic. Babysitting the garlic while it is browning is nerve racking because we all know nothing ruins all your efforts like burned garlic. And I always seem to forget the red pepper flakes until seconds before I add the tomatoes! Then there is the four hours it takes to just let all the magic happen, which seems more like eight. In a nut shell, I haven't been able to make the same sauce twice, mostly because I experiment with ingredients then forget to write down what I have tried.
On the plus side, it does turn out pretty good each time and this sauce is a winner when used in the suggested lasagna recipe toward the back of the book. In fact I surprised myself with how good lasagna could really taste when the sauce is homemade, and with the exception of the meatball recipe I have only used the sauce for spaghetti and lasagna.
My next challenge was the meatballs, which had two ingredients I was incredibly skeptical of: raisins and pine nuts. The day I made the meatballs was my very first time trying pine nuts, and I found them to be a most tasty snack. Unfortunately, after about 15 minutes I had a strong, very unpleasant taste of pine in my mouth that lasted for almost a week! After some research I discovered this phenomenon only happens to a few people and has been dubbed "pine mouth" and there is no known reason why it happens and no way to get rid of it other than waiting for it to leave your system. I also discovered it usually happens when the nuts are from Chinese pines, which are mixed in to bulk up the good stuff. It is suggested to only eat pine nuts when the words "Made in China" are not on the bag, and to my great disappointment such nuts are not to be found in my local grocery stores.
But I digress... So I made the meatballs but did not actually try them because everything I ate tasted like pine so I thought "why bother." My husband and dad, however, found them to be super tasty and neither noticed the raisins or pine nuts in them. My husband has even requested them again, however the pine nut incident keeps me from doing this, and the fact that making the meatballs and sauce is an entire days process and can only be done on weekends.
Long story short, I'm too lazy to keep up with this book. The food is good, but it is time consuming, the ingredients are not budget friendly, my toddler wouldn't eat any of it and I'm still mad about the whole "pine mouth" thing. The book itself is a good read, being witty and informative, but these recipes do not fit into my lifestyle at present.
So on to the next book!
Like all of my personal cookbooks, this one was a gift during a past holiday (or was it birthday?) and promised to teach me how to make the same dishes served in the Frankies restaurant in Brooklyn, NY. The line that won my heart was found on the unnumbered page after the introduction under the heading of "About these recipes & this cooking." And that wonderful sentence goes "Most of the work-work in their recipes--the part where you mess up your counters and floor and generally feel like cursing--happens well before you serve the food, so by the time you are ready to serve, you can ladle it out and pretend like it was no problem and you could do it any old time."
At last, a cooking instruction I can do and do with great ease!
I have found the problem with most cookbooks is they assume you can cook a new recipe for something you have never heard of before, let alone tasted. And how is a person to know if they did it right if they have never tasted it before (which is a rant I have about risotto and polenta, but will save for another time)? What I love about the Frankies' approach is they are asking me to attempt pretty common flavors and letting me know right off the bat that I will make a mess and I will curse, but I will still be able to serve it!
My first selected task was the tomato sauce that served as a base for nearly every entree in the last half of the book. It called for a big stock pot, which I luckily had, but did require a trip to the grocery for the remaining five ingredients. They lay everything out as far as what to get, and are pretty descriptive as to what to do with the ingredients when you have them in front of you. My problems with completing this recipe started right off the bat with the two major components, the canned whole tomatoes and the olive oil.
Neither of the two suggested products could be located in any of the grocery stores in town, so I improvised with what I could find. I can honestly say after trying different tomatoes and olive oils in my five attempts at this recipe, I'm still not sure which one works the best as I keep forgetting to write down what I have tried. So note to self, write this stuff down, especially if you are going to blog about it!
Anyway, smashing the tomatoes by hand (as suggested) is an incredibly messy process but also cathartic. Babysitting the garlic while it is browning is nerve racking because we all know nothing ruins all your efforts like burned garlic. And I always seem to forget the red pepper flakes until seconds before I add the tomatoes! Then there is the four hours it takes to just let all the magic happen, which seems more like eight. In a nut shell, I haven't been able to make the same sauce twice, mostly because I experiment with ingredients then forget to write down what I have tried.
On the plus side, it does turn out pretty good each time and this sauce is a winner when used in the suggested lasagna recipe toward the back of the book. In fact I surprised myself with how good lasagna could really taste when the sauce is homemade, and with the exception of the meatball recipe I have only used the sauce for spaghetti and lasagna.
My next challenge was the meatballs, which had two ingredients I was incredibly skeptical of: raisins and pine nuts. The day I made the meatballs was my very first time trying pine nuts, and I found them to be a most tasty snack. Unfortunately, after about 15 minutes I had a strong, very unpleasant taste of pine in my mouth that lasted for almost a week! After some research I discovered this phenomenon only happens to a few people and has been dubbed "pine mouth" and there is no known reason why it happens and no way to get rid of it other than waiting for it to leave your system. I also discovered it usually happens when the nuts are from Chinese pines, which are mixed in to bulk up the good stuff. It is suggested to only eat pine nuts when the words "Made in China" are not on the bag, and to my great disappointment such nuts are not to be found in my local grocery stores.
But I digress... So I made the meatballs but did not actually try them because everything I ate tasted like pine so I thought "why bother." My husband and dad, however, found them to be super tasty and neither noticed the raisins or pine nuts in them. My husband has even requested them again, however the pine nut incident keeps me from doing this, and the fact that making the meatballs and sauce is an entire days process and can only be done on weekends.
Long story short, I'm too lazy to keep up with this book. The food is good, but it is time consuming, the ingredients are not budget friendly, my toddler wouldn't eat any of it and I'm still mad about the whole "pine mouth" thing. The book itself is a good read, being witty and informative, but these recipes do not fit into my lifestyle at present.
So on to the next book!
Comments
Post a Comment