A recipe deceptive in its simplicity. Although it only has a few ingredients: beans, tomatoes, onions, cheese and oregano, somehow they all combine to make a substantial and flavourful whole. This is something typical of Italian cooking, where the simplicity of the dish showcases the ingredients; use substandard parts, and the whole suffers.

We made it with our own garden tomatoes, local organic onions, white beans and sharp cheddar. Taking a cue from one of his related recipes (Bean Casserole with Hominy and Tortillas) we added some corn tortillas in a layer between the beans and tomatoes.

It was surprisingly tasty - I didn't expect too much after assembling it (it's not exactly cooking, which means it's an easy quick dinner item), but both my wife and I were very impressed. This is going to go on our list of quick and tasty entrees.

Boy this is a good recipe, and in typical Bittman fashion is very adaptable. We are usually lazy and get a rotisserie chicken from the supermarket (or save some chicken from a roast) and use some commercial stock, but one day I'll do the whole thing from scratch - whole chicken, stock and all.

I've tried it with biscuit crust, puff pastry (from frozen) and potato crust. It's great all three ways, though I found the biscuits to be awfully thick - in future I'd reduce the amount.

Some notes: the sauce isn't very thick, though on refrigeration the leftovers do thicken up somewhat. He calls for 2 tablespoons of flour to almost 3 cups of liquid, which doesn't really do the job. More flour, cornstarch maybe? Secondly, it's very hard to find pearl onions where I live (inexplicably), so this time I used small shallots, and they worked out very well.

This was a truly wonderful way to prepare duck legs, and really simple. We had two small duck legs rather than the 4 in the recipe so I cut back a little on the proportions: used a medium onion and a little less carrot, as well as two celery stalks instead of 3 and only one cup of stock.

The longest part of the prep is chopping the vegetables. The rest is more or less unattended as you brown the duck legs and render out some of the fat while you're chopping, then cook the vegetables in some of the duck fat and chuck the whole thing in the oven with some stock. After an hour the stock was gone (there would likely be some left with the full recipe) and everything was done.

The skin was crispy, the meat was tender and the vegetables in the mixture of reduced stock and a little duck fat were delicious. I will definitely do this one again.

This was good, and if I'd programmed in 3 1/2 stars to the site, I'd give it that. I liked his suggestion of using dried coconut to make ad hoc coconut milk, but I probably didn't use enough in the recipe. Nevertheless, it is a pretty fair curry, though there are a lot of dal recipes around and I'm going to keep trying more to see if I can find one that can become a classic.

I think this is a fairly authentic version of Bolognese sauce - starting with a sofritto (carrot, celery and onion) and including a small amount of bacon and ground meat, finished with milk or cream.

It does make a lovely sauce - if you take the time to cook it for the full two hours or so, and if you can make it ahead a bit and let the flavours combine, it is a rich and deep sauce - delicious!

I made a tiny adjustment to the recipe - I fried the bacon first, then browned the meat (I used ground pork as that's all I had) in the pan with the bacon and bacon fat and a little olive oil. I then removed the meat while I cooked the sofritto and added tomatoes so they would reduce a bit before I put the meat back in with some stock and then simmered the whole lot. I'm not sure if it made much difference, but hey... tasted good.

Very nice indeed, for homemade. A simple recipe that is fairly quick to make. They puff up nicely in the oven and have a slightly tangy taste from the yogurt in the dough. I might add a little more salt next time, but that's it. We made twelve and froze the leftovers for future curries.

I was quite pleased with how these turned out, and the recipe (like many in this book) has enough variations to serve as a source of future veggie burger explorations. I ended up making these with a little more of the bean-cooking liquid that I should have, and may have pureed them a little too long - they were a little less chunky than I think the recipe specifies - but they had a good flavor and they cooked up quite nicely.

My 8-year-old gobbled hers up and my wife and I agreed that we'd try them again. Though these are definitely frying pan burgers - they would disintegrate on a grill.