Deceptively Passable: A Book Review
Fri Apr 04, 2008 at 10:16:44 PM PDT
About six months ago, I saw Jessica Seinfeld (Jerry's wife) pimping her cookbook, Deceptively Delicious, on Oprah. I was glued to the screen. I don't know why, since my daughter is open to eating vegetables. She loves asparagus, bell peppers, cauliflower, cucumbers. Once, when we were having a guest for dinner, she even sneaked all the broccoli before we sat down to eat. Still, there's no reason not to get extra vegetables in wherever we can. Also, to let you in on a little secret, I'm lukewarm about most vegetables and have been "sneaking" them into my own food for years.
So I was thrilled when my sister-in-law gave me the book as a Christmas gift. I tore into it immediately, although I was already having my doubts. I had heard about the controversy by that time, saying that Seinfeld may have plagiarized the idea and even some of the recipes from Missy Chase Lapine's Sneaky Chef. There was also the issue of the $20,000 dollars worth of shoes as a thank you gift to Oprah for having her on her show. Jessica Seinfeld can spend her money any way she wants, but the super rich giving the super rich gifts like this is, in my opinion, just so tasteless. Oh, and don't forget the shameless exploitation of her husband's fame. Almost every page has a cute cartoon of Jerry or the Seinfeld children saying something not remotely interesting. Sadly, this Jessica Seinfeld woman was growing less appealing by the second.
But I digress! The recipes are the point, no? Well, they'll do!
The first thing I tried was the french toast with banana or pumpkin puree. Very good, although I had to wonder if two tablespoons worth or puree made much nutritional difference.
Over the last few months I have tried making most of the muffins and some of the other dishes, with varying degrees of success.
When I first flipped through the book, what caught my eye were the tofu nuggets. Simply cut up the tofu into bite size pieces, roll it in spinach puree, cover with breadcrumbs and fry them up. I was excited, and so was my daughter Simone, who was thrilled to have tofu for dinner.
I steamed and pureed the spinach, which lead to the first problem: an entire bunch of spinach yielded 1/4 cup puree (so maybe 2 Tbs of puree packs a lot of vitamins after all?). Fine, I figured. The recipe serves four, and I'm serving two, as my husband wouldn't touch tofu. He has a moral objection to dishonest food anyway.
Problem number two arose soon enough. Without a nanny, cook or maid, I mostly do for myself. Simone likes to help me cook, which I'm not convinced is a bad thing. I asked my husband to keep her out of the kitchen, but it was hard. She wandered in to help, took one look at the spinach puree, and announced that she would not be eating it. It did look disgusting, I must admit. But I soldiered on, which brought me to problem number three (of five): Breadcrumbs do not cover up dark green. Ya ain't foolin' no one!
Problems four and five? They were labor intensive and yucky. Ironically, Simone would have gladly eaten tofu (though she won't now...) and would have at least picked at spinach salad.
I was intrigued by the chocolate cake with beets, which I made for Simone's birthday. You can clearly taste the beets. I took a bite and apologized to a guest, who politely said "oh, it just adds another layer of flavor."
Not to completely trash the book. The french toast is good, the peanut butter and banana muffins are very good, and the macaroni and cheese with cauliflower? Out of this world, imo.
Bottom line, if you have trouble getting your kids to eat vegetables, and if you can cook in seclusion, this book is worth the $16.95 or whatever. I feel some guilt about not trying out The Sneaky Chef, but surreptitious vegetables didn't go over well enough in my family for me to buy another book.
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