Culinary Adventures - Farfalle with Tuna

Upon arriving at Borders today, Dantzel and I immediately gravitated towards the discount rack and were surprised to find "Cooking with just Four Ingredients" by Joanna Farrow on there. We had debated on purchasing this book before several times, but always rejected it on account of its cost - it's an incredibly large, hardcover cookbook with beautiful color photos of almost every recipe. The book is chock full of incredibly easy and simple recipes indeed only requiring four ingredients. When we first browsed it, we were skeptical by its fantastic claim, thinking most of the ingredients most likely belonged to a rare catagory, involving traveling to far away Middle Eastern countries, only to be sent on some quest by a sultan involving slaying some mythical beast of ferocious quality in order to acquire a certain spice or tuber.

But we were wrong. The cookbook is simple and easy and mercifully short on its ingredients list, so upon seeing it for sale, I snagged it and bought it. We decided to try it out that very night and stopped by at the local grocery store to buy a can of olives for 99 cents, two small cans of tomato paste for 30 cents, and a bag of pasta (unfortunately, not Farfalle, but twisty egg noodles) for 59 cents (we already had a can of tuna back home). All in all, the entire enterprise cost less than two dollars. We then went home and made a delightfully simple but flavorful tuna tomato sauce and pasta, and enjoyed our creations.

Minus water and salt, the recipe certainly lived up to its expectations. I had never considered tuna as a meat for pasta sauce before, and was pleasantly surprised at how well it worked in such a role. We added itallian seasoning and tarragon leaves for spices, which added a nice touch. We had no left over sauce (it was simply too good), but plenty of left over pasta. The recipe claims to serve four people; I jotted in pen next to it "(to six)," for unless you are feeding four ravenous teenage track runners, six people can comfortably eat a nice serving of farfalle with tuna.

Just to put in a shameless plug for the cookbook, it includes some impressive recipes such as rosemary focaccia bread (involving strong white bread flour, easy-blend (rapid rise) dried yeast, olive oil and chopped fresh rosemary) and creamed coconut macaroons (which uses creamed coconut, egg whites, caster (superfine) sugar and dry, shredded coconut). Perhaps what's so mind boggling about the whole book is that it is page after page of very appetizing, normally complex sounded recipes - all under four ingredients. In the front, there is even a list of savory sauces such as hollandaise sauce, sweet sauces such as real custard and summer fruit coulis and your basic stocks, and tips on how to store and use them - all, once again, under four ingredients. For the poor college student, a book of fairly fancy and tasty recipes each involving readily inexpensive and common products under the number of four is a godsend. Dantzel and I eagerly look forward to exploring this tome of culinary knowledge.

This coming Monday: Spaghettini with Roasted Garlic, with the ingredient listing of "One whole head of Garlic." An entire head! We're excited, and we'll let you know how it turns out.