The Romney Family Table: Sharing Home-Cooked Recipes and Favorite Traditions

One day while checking Facebook, I found a link to this cookbook on Amazon. I was interested in how the recipes are, but all that seemed to be there were snarky comments about the wealth of the Romney family. This bothered the sensibilities of this liberal Democrat, so I did the socialist thing and checked it out of the library.

The great majority of this book is stories of the Romney family gatherings and traditions of which I have very little interest (I would feel the same if Michelle Obama wrote a similar cookbook). Most of the recipes are basic recipes that I’ve seen before. I picked out a few that looked interesting and tried them.

On page 19 are three different variations of Rice Krispies treats. The Irish one involves just adding green food coloring. I’ve had the s’more variety.

The Chubby Hubby Rice Krispies Treats caught my eye with the magic word “Nutella”. These are the basic Rice Krispies Treats but added in are pretzels, pecans, and Nutella. I totally missed the extra cup of mini-marshmallows in the recipe so I just added less Rice Krispies. I also made a change where I stirred the Nutella into the melted marshmallows before adding the Rice Krispies. Mrs. Romney has adding the Nutella after the Rice Krispies. After spreading in the pan, you are supposed to melt a 12-oz bag of chocolate chips and then drizzle the melted chocolate over the treats. I drizzled about a quarter of that amount. As you can see, there is a lot of chocolate there.

 I found the treats to be a little tougher and chewier than your normal Rice Krispies treats. I was very glad I didn’t drizzle all of the chocolate on them. It would be a bit of overkill, even for this choc-a-holic. They were okay. Not a keeper.

Next was the Sweet Pork Burritos on page 128. In my local Safeway I was unable to find chipotle chilies in adobo sauce and bought a jar of La Consteña Chipotle chilies (with a Google search, I found out that they are packed in adobo sauce). I liked her suggestion of putting the chilies in the strainer and then pouring the Dr. Pepper over them to “clean” the sauce off of them. There is no use of the chilies in this recipe, so save them for another time. I used a mild taco sauce instead of a medium to hot variety as a personal preference. After mixing the sauce ingredients in my blender, I poured it into the crock pot. (A note on the blender, don’t pour in all the Dr. Pepper unless you have a gigantic blender and don’t forget that the Dr. Pepper will foam up when you turn on the blender.)  I then added the pork. Mrs. Romney doesn’t have it in the recipe, but I like to cut the pork up before putting it in the crock pot. I was afraid all the pork wasn’t going to fit in my crock pot.

After 8 hours at low heat, I fished out the chunks of pork and pulled the meat apart. I then put them back in the sauce for another hour. Finally I put some of the meat in little flour tortillas and gave them a try. The meat has a nice sweet flavor when you bite into it and then a couple seconds later the POW of the spices kicks in making my mild palate reach for a glass of root beer. I liked it. The one major change I would make is the cut of the meat. Don’t use pork tenderloin. Use pork shoulder instead for a moister pulled pork. I used a pork shoulder when I made again. It was more moist, but the pork shoulder took a couple more hours to cook in the crock pot.

Mrs. Romney lists toppings for these burritos, but I like mine plain. Thus, I cannot comment on how the toppings and meat taste together.

I love a good lemon Bundt cake so I made the Sunny Lemon Cake. I have never seen Lemon Oil as an ingredient. I’ve seen lemon zest, lemon extract, and lemon juice. I went with lemon extract. I added a bit more lemon extract than it called for and also added a little lemon juice. Even with these additions, this cake is not very lemony. I even let it sit for a couple days to soak in more of the glaze, but it only slightly increased the lemon flavor.

Poppyseed Bundt Cake is really easy to make especially since two of the ingredients are a box of white cake mix and a box of instant pudding mix. For the rum option, I used a Cruzan Rum Junkanu! citrus rum. Now this recipe and the Sunny Lemon Cake both have rum in them. “Don’t Mormons avoid alcohol?”, you may be thinking to yourself. I found out from a Mormon co-worker that cooking and baking with alcohol is fine as the alcohol cooks off.

In the preparation of the pan, it says “Pour batter into a buttered Bundt pan dusted with cinnamon.” I used my trusty Pam with Flour and then did a little dusting of cinnamon in the pan. A note regarding clean up: the cinnamon tends to really stick to the pan, so you’ll have to scrub out the nooks and crannies of your Bundt pan to get out all the cinnamon.

The strange thing about this cake is that I really didn’t like the first piece I ate, but liked it more with each piece I ate. My classmates at Swedish School loved it.

Jen’s Crispy Chicken with Dipping Sauces is actually quite easy and quick to make. My mini food processor was great to blend the walnuts and bread crumbs. It says to cut up the boneless chicken breasts into “bite-sized pieces”. I cut several sizes of bite-sized pieces. Around 2 inches square seems to work the best. Although I baked them for 20 minutes instead of 25 minutes. Mine ended up being overcooked and a bit dry.

The recipe also has three recipes for dipping sauces. None of them really appealed to me, so to counteract the spiciness of the chicken, I dipped them in lingonberry fruit sauce (purchased at Cost Plus World Market). It was a delicious combination.

When you make these, try to eat all of them the same day. These nuggets do not warm up in the microwave well. The outside turns soggy and the inside turns tough.

Mitt’s Meat Loaf Cakes are easy to make and are delicious. They also microwave well, so I’ve had them for dinner four days in a row with mashed potatoes. Yummm. My only gripe with this recipe is that you are supposed to put them in 6 mini-loaf pans. What size mini-loaf pan? My mini-loaf pans are 7”x 3 ¼”x 2”. This recipe didn’t make enough for 6 of those size pans, so I only used 4.

Potato Gratin with Gruyere and Crème Fraiche is okay. It tastes good, but is missing something. Maybe should have used garlic salt instead of regular salt. Maybe should have used Yukon Gold potatoes instead of Russet. Who knows?

One gripe I have with the instructions is she writes, “Using a spatula, spread half of the crème fraiche on potatoes.” This is not such an easy task as crème fraiche has a consistency somewhere between sour cream and cream cheese. You’ve just spent time laying out your nice rows of potato slices and trying to spread the crème fraiche over it ruins them.

The recipe for Fontina Cream Pasta is a keeper. It was very easy to make and is delicious. I used San Marzano crushed tomatoes and had to go to two different supermarkets to find fontina cheese (Safeway didn’t have it but King Soopers did). It also microwaves well.

This recipe and the Potato Gratin recipe taught me to read the recipes before making my shopping list. Both recipes have items in the ingredient list that are just garnish. Anyone need some fresh parsley?

I’m not sure why I tried “Josh’s” Heavenly Rolls. Yeast breads and I don’t have a pretty history. I mixed the ingredients in my Kitchen Aid mixer first using the paddle attachment. After I’d mixed in the flour and yeast solution, I switched to the dough hook to mix in the rest of the flour. I’m not quite sure why she writes “Spread a little vegetable oil in a small plastic garbage bag. Scrape dough out of bowl and add to bag. Twist end loosely and tuck under”. I simply sprayed Pam into the bottom of my large mixing bowl and put the dough in that. I put the bowl in my oven with a pan of boiled water under it and waited. So happy that the dough rose when it was supposed to. All this work resulted in rolls that were not that heavenly. They are perfectly serviceable rolls, but you’ll get the same results with some Pillsbury Crescent Rolls without all the work.

The last two recipes I tried were both pie recipes – Apple Crumb Pie and Southern Pecan Pie. I will admit up front, that I did not use the pie crust recipe included in the cookbook. I will confess to familial fidelity and say that I used my aunt Phyllis’s pie crust recipe. I don’t think it harmed or helped either recipe.

The Apple Crumb Pie is the first apple pie recipe I’ve made that does not have cinnamon in it. The only flavoring besides the apples is a half teaspoon of vanilla. Thus, it is rather a bland tasting pie. Mrs. Romney has putting on the crumb topping at the end and baking for 20 more minutes “until filling is bubble and topping is browned.” I baked it 10 extra minutes (so 30 minutes total). The filling didn’t get bubbly and the topping achieved a tan coloring.

The Southern Pecan Pie is missing something. I’m still trying to mull over what that something is. It was a tad too sweet and didn’t have enough pecans. This recipe shall not be replacing my own dear mother’s pecan pie recipe.

There you have it, my review of “The Romney Family Table: Sharing Home-Cooked Recipes and Favorite Traditions”. I tried 11 recipes and only 4 were keepers. I cannot recommend this cookbook. Most of the recipes were unoriginal and you can find recipes like the ones in this book in your Betty Crocker Cookbook.

If Mrs. Romney decides to try her hand at book writing again, may I suggest a how-to book on writing  off your dressage horse on your taxes. I know many, many horse owners (including myself) would find that book worth our time and money.