I made these last night after seeing the previous review and being intriguted by the idea of baking a giant cookie in a skillet. My daughters were too!

It is a stiff dough, and best to work with a stand mixer paddle attachment if you have one. I found that I underbaked it a little and had to pop it back in the oven to make sure the center had set - with such a thick cookie you do have to watch out for this. Especially since with whole wheat flour it will look fairly brown before it's actually done.

Also, make sure your skillet is clean! I use our deep cast iron skillet for bacon and onions and usually just give it a rinse before putting it away. Luckily I checked and made sure it was as minimally bacony and oniony before making this!

Update - I have since made the original recipe just as regular sized cookies, and I prefer it. The large one was good, and might be fun for a party, but regular cookies are just so conveniently sized (and you can freeze them, etc).

A very good chicken pot pie indeed, and very nearly excellent.

I love chicken pot pie, and have made various variations on the theme. My previous favourite was Mark Bittman's from How to Cook Everything. This one, save for a little seasoning, edges it out, and in fact is a different sort of beast altogether.

As I'm finding with this book, what Thomas Keller has done is taken some familiar dishes and raised them up a level using some of the techniques of a high-end restaurant, but yet not making them so complex as to be out of the range of a competent home cook.

There are two things that raise this pie up - first, the vegetables are cooked separately, with peppercorns, bay leaves and thyme, to subtly flavour them. This step, fiddly though it may be, ensures that each vegetable is cooked properly and that the texture and flavour of each vegetable is preserved rather than blending into a sort of stew like in most pot pies. Secondly, the bechamel is reduced over 40 minutes or so to make a sauce that is rich but subtle.

It does take a while - dinner was a bit late the first time I made this as I had to make pastry, cook the veggies, reduce the sauce, put it all together and then bake it. Subsequent times I have taken a few shortcuts which haven't hurt the recipe.

Now I cook all the vegetables in one pot except the celery (which I blanch) since they all have the same cooking times and it doesn't seem to muddy their flavours. I also increase the seasoning, adding some dried sage and a good shaking of cayenne for a little heat.

I recommend baking it low (I baked it on a baking stone) to crisp the lower crust. This is a double-crusted chicken pot pie that holds together, which doesn't happen very often!

This recipe makes a very buttery, thin chocolate chip cookie which is very good, but not quite the best cookie of its type (as one online reviewer called it). I reserve that honour for the New York Times chocolate Chip cookie (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/09/dining/091crex.html?_r=1).

They are fairly straightforward to make - the most complicated part is making sure you have two types of chocolate (55% and 70%) and carving off the chips yourself. The chocolate melts into the cookie rather than staying discrete as with a 'regular' chocolate chip cookie, and they can get a bit messy - so do be sure to cook them on parchment or a silpat as he suggests.

Update: a couple of days later I have to say that these cookies have grown on me (and my houseguests). They seem to get better after a day or so, and people liked the way the chocolate spread into a layer inside the cookie. They also stay chewy for a couple of days after making, which is nice. 4 1/2 stars now!

This is an egg-white buttercream (also known as a Swiss buttercream), and the first one I've made. Previously I'd made the simple 'American' butter and icing-sugar versions. It's more work, but it has a creamier, lighter result.

You combine sugar and egg whites in a bowl over a simmering water bath, bringing the temperature up to 150 degrees F or so (this safely pasteurizes the egg whites), then beat in a mixer, adding butter to stabilize it.

It makes a very creamy, soft, not too sweet frosting. Adding vanilla at the end makes this a Vanilla frosting; adding a little melted chocolate gives it a delicate chocolate flavour.

It is, however, a very sticky icing - it's hard to work with it without getting globs all over the place. It's delicious, but definitely messy.

An excellent vanilla cupcake recipe. These are made with butter and egg whites, and the resulting cupcakes are a similar to angel food cakes - light and moist and delicious. The difference here is that the egg whites and sugar are beaten into a meringue before being folded into the rest of the batter. I made them exactly as the recipe states and got 24 standard-sized cupcakes.

These will be my default vanilla cupcakes now - they're better than any other I've made.

These are very good indeed. I made them just as the recipe called for and they disappeared very quickly. I agree that the slightly more browned edges are a fine tradeoff for not using a silicone pan (in fact, the contrast between the chewy edges and the soft center is part of what makes these great). Yes, lots of butter (3/4 lb) and chocolate (1 cup of cocoa and 6 oz of chopped), but the taste is worth it - just have small pieces!

I didn't have alkalized cocoa powder, but since this recipe doesn't have any leavening agent, I figured it wouldn't make much difference, and couldn't taste any.

They freeze very well - eating them cold, right out of the freezer is amazing on a warm day; they still stay quite soft. Yum!

This was good, but it wasn't remarkable, unlike many of the other recipes in the book. The biscuit topping seemed less thick than the pictures in the book and the biscuits spread out until they covered almost the entire top; they tasted fine but I think I would have preferred them to be a little less all-enveloping. I also found it not quite sweet enough (this may depend on your particular blueberries).

Very nice hot cocoa recipe - simple and fairly quick (well, okay it does take 15 minutes or so to boil the cocoa powder and sugar mixture and heat it all once you add the milk). Not too rich, not too thin. I followed the suggestions of the other reviewers on All Recipes and reduced the sugar to about 1/2 cup and it was plenty sweet.

In the past, I've used pizza sauce from jars, pasta sauce, whatever was tomato-based and lying around, sometimes a bit of BBQ sauce. I repent now - please forgive me, everyone to whom I fed pizza in the past.

This sauce is perfect - it's not cooked (any more than the canned tomatoes are already cooked, unlike a pasta sauce), which is a very important thing (it cooks a little more in the oven), it has tasty chunks of tomato pulp in it, and it is 'bright' with the addition of red wine vinegar or lemon juice (I use good red wine vinegar) to give it some acidity. When I can get them, I use canned San Marzano tomatoes, as they are just so much richer and more flavourful than regular canned tomatoes.

A full recipe is enough for four or five thin crust pizzas, so I freeze the extra sauce in a ziploc bag.

This makes a very rich and creamy sauce, perfect to use as a base for sauteed mushrooms. It can be a bit too rich, almost - depends on your feeling about heavy cream! Over time, we've reduced the cream and used onions which have been cooked more slowly so they become naturally a bit creamy, and it's still just as good. The thyme is a necessity - it's just the right flavour note here.

I made this for brunch this morning, taking into account aj's notes from the previous review. I made sure there were lots of chives, skipped the walnuts, measured the cheese by weight to be sure I was putting enough in, and for good measure added some left over caramelized onions (about 1/3 cup). I also mixed the cheese up a little, adding 1 ounce of gruyere and 1 of parmesan I wanted to use up from the fridge.

The result was quite cheesy, nice and savory and went very well with our brunch. Even though I used a lot of chives, it could easily have had more - without the onions it might have been missing flavor - in the recipe she suggests scallions as an alternative, and I'm sure they'd be nice too. Also I found that adding the sharper cheeses intensified the flavour. I'll definitely be making this again.

Truly succulent, dark, and flavourful stew. It's not unlike a version of Boeuf Bourguignon with venison. We used venison shoulder steak from a wild deer, given to us by a farmer friend. I cut about 700g of meat from the steaks and then did the recipe pretty much as written, just adding a little more carrot and some mushrooms I wanted to use up. A great way to deal with a tougher cut of venison.

Oh yes. This is Roesti as it should be done. I have searched for a good Roesti recipe for a while, as I had it done properly in a Swiss restaurant in Toronto and it was heavenly - crispy, brown and buttery on the outside and soft and creamy on the inside.

When I tried doing it at home using recipes I'd found online or in magazines, it just didn't work. It would either be too raw on the middle, fall apart in the pan or just be somehow off.

This recipe gets it right completely, as far as I'm concerned. In typical Cooks Illustrated fashion, they isolate the main points to getting it right: correct potatoes (Yukon Gold); getting rid of water from the potatoes; adding starch back in (corn starch or starch from the potato water itself - which I prefer) and then cooking it at the right heat for the right length of time.

A nice wedge of this with scrambled eggs and sausages makes a fantastic brunch.

Close... but not quite close enough. They make a big deal about this being a low fat chocolate chip cookie that doesn't taste like one, and it almost is. The use of dates and browned butter gives a nice flavour note and compensates somewhat for the lower amount of butter in these cookies, but still you can tell that there's something missing from them.

Compared to the New York Times chocolate chip cookies (Google them for the recipe) that caused a bit of a stir the summer of 2008, they're obviously lacking. Fat tastes good, and it's hard to compensate for that.

My preference is to make a full-fat cookie, but make it smaller. A recipe that supposedly makes 18 cookies can easily make double that or more if you restrain yourself.

These are excellent muffins (and you'll have to read the recipe to get the story behind their name). I did not change a thing and they turned out very well. They are moist without being greasy, can take a wide range of fruits (I used frozen raspberries) and have a lovely streusel topping. They're also quite simple to make. They are definitely going to become a family classic.

Update: I've made these several times now and they continue to impress. It's a very versatile recipe, and consistently makes great muffins.

I made these exactly as written in the recipe and they were just perfect. The cookies are nice, and the addition of ground almonds makes them a little crumbly, but not so much they are not strong enough to sandwich. And of course dulce de leche is excellent pretty much anywhere.

I made dulce de leche the easy way - I gently simmered a can of sweetened condensed milk for about 3 hours. I know it says on the can not to do this, but I've done it many times with no explosions, and a quick search online found that many people from South America do this also and as long as it's completely covered with water, it seems to be fairly safe. Note however that I take no liability for caramel explosions whatsoever...

My wife loved this, and my 9-year-old gobbled it up (without chicken though, as she's not much of a meat eater). It has an unusual flavour with the addition of half a vanilla bean - really out of the ordinary if you've not experienced the use of what in the West are spices commonly used in sweet dishes being used in savoury dishes. With nutmeg, cinnamon and ginger plus raisins, it really does have a holiday sort of feel about it.

I would have added more heat, and when I served it I mixed in a little harissa paste, which was just perfect and brought it up to 4 stars in my view.

There are lots of latkes recipes out there, and I've tried a few of them. Many are disappointing - it's not always easy to make them relatively ungreasy and also cooked properly throughout.

This recipe works. I think there are two secrets - the first is the use of a food processor to cut 1/3 of the shredded potatoes and all of the onion into smaller pieces which cook faster. The second is collecting and reusing the thick potato starch which drains out when you squeeze the shreds. I don't (forgive me) use matzo meal, but the starch holds everything together just fine.

Okay, three secrets: the last being getting the right amount of oil to the right temperature and draining them on a sufficient thickness of paper towel. They freeze very well and I revive them by cooking them briefly in a dry frying pan - the residual oil comes out when they heat up.

Simple, straightforward recipe that works, like many Cooks Illustrated basics/classics. I think the definition of what a home fry is varies, as I'd always thought of them as the chunky wedge fries that they call Steak Fries.

However, call them what you will, these cubed potatoes are tasty. Where I'd always gone wrong before was by stirring them too often - rather than leaving them for 4 or 5 minutes to brown each side.

The recipe suggests turning the potatoes three or four times, all together, so that all sides are evenly cooked. In the real world, they get a good cooking on a couple of sides and then I shake them up every so often to try to even them out.

A tasty and fairly simple way to do a less-common cut of pork. I didn't have a fennel bulb or pastis/Pernod, so this wasn't quite as licorice flavoured as the recipe should be, nevertheless the end result was a nicely braised piece of meat, falling off the bone, with a tasty sauce.

Like many similar recipes, it improves overnight - the leftovers were excellent with pasta and with rice over the two days after we made this.

This is a great way to prepare quesadillas. Although we haven't been able to find smoked mozzarella here, we just use a mixture of regular mozzarella and cheddar. We leave out the jalapeno and just use the great chipotle Tabasco sauce. We also add a cooked onion. Very tasty!

This is an excellent meatloaf recipe. We just made it again last night and I was reminded again how much I like it. Because it's made with ground chicken (we use ground chicken thighs), it's not overly heavy. The addition of ketchup and Worcestershire sauce give it a nice undertone of umami.

It's fantastic with mashed potatoes, and overall great comfort food. We often skip the smoky tomato sauce and just use ketchup, but it's nice to go to town and do the whole thing when you have time.

Sometimes with the leftovers I like to put them with some tomato sauce and mozzarella cheese in a panini and grill for lunch. Mmmmm....

These were okay muffins, but nothing special. I'd been led by the instructions to believe they would be something out of the ordinary - they have molasses, honey, lots of butter, and rest in in the fridge overnight, which is supposed to create a 'very moist muffin' with a better crumb.

The result: an almost too dry muffin with a slightly odd taste of molasses which would be better suited to go with pumpkin muffins, perhaps. I baked them for 33 minutes (it's a low temperature bake), taking them out just when they firmed up. I didn't deviate from the instructions except to reduce the salt a little as 1 tsp of regular salt seemed like a lot.

I'll be going back to the very good blueberry muffins I make all the time from this recipe: http://www.cookbooker.com/recipe/1432/lawsuit-buttermilk-muffins

These didn't work out too well for me. The problem with baking, though, is it's hard to tell if it's the baker or the recipe, so I'll be trying this again and updating.

I'm a fan of the chewy Montreal style bagel. The recipe says these are the chewy New York 'water bagels', boiled and dense, which sounds a lot like Montreal style. But when I made them they were not as dense as the ones I'm used to. I also found they were rather large at 4.5 oz each. I weighed some bagels from Siegel's in Vancouver, which are pretty close to the authentic Montreal style, and they were 3 to 3 1/2 oz each, so when I try again, I'll shrink the size. I also intend to boil them a little longer, try the rope method of forming them and maybe put some honey or malt in the water.

By comparison, I tried the bagel recipe from Homebaking (see my bookshelf) and it turned out much better indeed - very close to what I was hoping for, though still not quite chewy enough.

This bread is, quite simply, a revelation. It is simple to make, requiring only an evening mixing, and an overnight fermentation in the fridge. Then the baguettes need almost no shaping, just a rough cut with a dough scraper. It is one of the simplest bread recipes in this book, and one of the best.

The result is truly wonderful. Everyone who's tasted these is wowed - they even impressed my daughter's teacher, who's from France, and knows her baguettes!

A delightful Christmas treat indeed. These are larger than you'd think - the photo makes it hard to estimate, but they're quite a bit larger than the sort of Stollen you buy in the store (at least 50% larger). I made these with marzipan in the centre. The only change I'd make is not soaking the fruit in brandy in advance - I prefer these non-boozy. I didn't have orange or lemon extract and just used zest instead.

This makes a very credible loaf of French bread. The use of pre-fermented dough gives it extra complexity and deeper caramelization, and if you're careful you can make a baguette that rivals the product of a decent French bakery.

I was happy with this recipe until I tried making baguettes with Peter's Pain a l'Ancienne method of knead-free overnight refrigerator fermentation. Those baguettes are such a step above in terms of flavour that I have not made these ones in a long while.

These are nice, fluffy cupcakes, and as with many of the recipes in this fun cookbook, cut out a bit of the fat with plain yogurt, with no loss to moistness or taste. They're not any easier for kids to help out with than any other cupcake recipe - unlike some of the recipes in this book, but I find that my 3 1/2 year old can crack eggs with a bit of practice and even hold the electric mixer.

One note - for the pink frosting, chop the strawberries very finely and only beat them into the butter for the 30 seconds it recommends, then very gently as you add the powdered sugar. The first time I made these I figured I'd use the beater to break the strawberries up, but it ended up ruining the frosting; it broke apart into tiny little globs.

This is a great recipe, and very convenient - you can fry up the onions and make the sauce and then pop the pork in the slow cooker for 8 hours or so while you're off at work. Then you just have to reduce the sauce and pull the pork.

I've made it with and without hot peppers, and I prefer it spicy, but listen to your own tastes on this one. It's not terribly Mexican if you don't put in jalapenos and use cilantro when you serve it, and we often just do this as regular pulled pork on soft buns with coleslaw.

This is one of the best written sourdough (or wild yeast) recipes and how-to's that I've come across online. If you've ever considered trying this, you couldn't find a better place to start.

She doesn't detail exactly how to get your own starter going, but provides some very good links to other, more comprehensive guides. I used the 'pineapple juice method' myself, and found that it took about a week before I had a suitable starter going.

She has great information on care and feeding of a starter once it's going, and then has clear and comprehensive instructions on baking a truly excellent loaf. What I like about this is that it's fairly simple and makes use of a couple of techniques that have become more popular lately among home bakers - stretch and fold to strengthen the dough, and baking in a cast iron pot.

Interestingly, unlike the 'no-knead' technique of Jim Lahey and Mark Bittman fame, here you put the risen dough in the pot cold, then turn on the oven. An hour later you have a fabulous loaf.

I made my first one with 60% bread flour, 40% whole wheat and it was excellent - great crispy crust, nice crumb, and a mild sourdough flavour.

Update: I've been making this for three weeks now, and it continues to be excellent. I've experimented with doing a refrigerator rise overnight and baking in the morning, and found that it wasn't really any more sour, but it was more convenient. I've taken it all the way up to 100% whole wheat, with very satisfactory results. I did, however, add a tablespoon of vital wheat gluten as she recommends, otherwise it would be a much denser bread.

This is a comprehensive and very useful guide to roasting a goose. We used it to roast our very first goose and it came out perfectly. I read various directions in other books and online, and this one was the most straightforward and detailed, so it was a perfect guide for a first-timer, especially since it's important to roast a goose correctly, to drain the thick layer of subcutaneous fat.

We did not use the stuffing they recommended, simply putting onion, garlic and lemons in the goose. Otherwise we followed this exactly and got a perfectly cooked bird. The only thing I'd wish they added was a bit more information about saving and using the fat - goose fat is quite healthy and highly prized for cooking and one of the best things about roasting a goose, but all they say is to bail it out of the roasting pan as it collects. We collected and strained it, keep it in a jar in the fridge, and use it for roasting potatoes.

This was a 3 1/2 - not quite very good, but better than 3 stars. It's a simple version of Aloo Gobi (cauliflower and potatoes) which substitutes sweet potatoes for the regular potatoes. It definitely makes for a sweeter curry because of this. It contains chili powder, which doesn't seem totally Indian; but then chili powder is just ground chilis, so I guess it's close enough!

The review from lemonadesandwich reminded me that I'd been meaning to try this one too, and I did so for a child's birthday party also. My wife was worried it would be too dark for the little ones (6-year-olds) but I had a feeling they'd be able to take it, and they were enthusiastic. As was I. It was moist, very dark and chocolaty, but not as dense as a brownie.

I didn't have 10 x 2" pans, so I cooked three separate layers in regular 9" pans. Cooking time was a little less - 45 minutes or so. I also made half a measure of frosting for a cake using 2 of the layers, as 1 lb of chocolate seemed like an awful lot. I tweaked the frosting a little, using a bit more butter and a little icing sugar, thinking of the kids.

This is a deceptively simple recipe, but the completed pie is greater than the sum of its parts. The tartness of the rhubarb and the sweet / tart flavour of the raspberries are softened by the pear. Then there's some orange peel and cinnamon to round it out. It's incredibly delicious.

The recipe calls for store-bought crusts, but of course it's easy to substitute your favourite recipe. The only thing that's an issue is that these three ingredients are never in season at the same time. What I do is freeze rhubarb in the spring, raspberries in the summer and then when pears are in season in the fall, out come the pies!

This is a very consistent recipe, and makes a simple fall/winter one-dish meal. As jherb wrote, it works well with any root vegetables, but don't forget the cauliflower - it's a veggie that is transformed by roasting.

A very tasty Eggplant Parmigiana variation, with the eggplant baked first in the oven before the whole thing is baked in sauce and cheese. It does take some time, however - minimum of 90 minutes and closer to 2 hours.

The eggplant rounds are extremely tasty out of the oven and I'm tempted to try this again in a deconstructed form, as you lose the crunchy, chewy texture once it's all smothered in cheese. I would put a round on a plate, a dollop of sauce, some cheese and then broil it quickly to melt the cheese.

Simple, easy to prepare and tasty noodle salad. Very good warm or cold. I added julienned carrot, cooked the pepper a bit longer than the recipe calls for and also cooked the green onion lightly as my wife doesn't like them raw. I also found the dressing to be a lot for the amount of noodles so didn't use it all. Finally, I jazzed it up a little by adding some Thai sweet chili sauce rather than cayenne for spice.

There are lots of vegetarian shepherd's pie recipes out there, usually with some form of the same ingredients to make up for the ground or leftover meat in the omnivore version: mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, carrots etc. The Moosewood Cookbook has a classic, for example.

John Bishop's recipe (his sister's actually, though I imagine he's tweaked it), follows along these lines, but the spicing and preparation take it up to another level. The notes contributed by the use of balsamic vinegar, lemon zest and honey as well as the spicing and the lentils (we used du puy as we were out of regular brown) combine to produce a lovely umami experience, tangy and a little tart. Then it's all mellowed by creamy mashed potatoes (we didn't have rutabaga, but the yukon golds we used were perfect).

The only warning I'd add is that this takes quite some time to prepare. The ingredients are simmered for 40 minutes before being put into the oven for another 40 minutes. WIth prep time it's easily two hours or a bit more. I cut a bit of time on the oven side with no ill-effects; the potatoes were not as brown as they might have been, but everything was properly cooked.

I went the whole way and used heavy cream, though only made a half portion of the waffles. They were very good indeed, though I think they definitely would be just as good with buttermilk as the previous reviewer did them. You can taste the cream, I think, and they are a little richer than the usual buttermilk waffles I make. Nice for a special occasion.

This is the first yeasted pancake recipe I've tried, and it's truly delicious. I make it with a blend of whole wheat and white flour (3.5 oz each) and I usually prepare three apples, as two, unless they're quite large, don't provide quite enough apple for the bottom.

One issue, though: the timing of the recipe is complicated, and detracts just a little from it. If you want these for breakfast they requires a primary fermentation of 30 min to 2 hrs, then 6 to 8 hours or overnight in the fridge plus 2 hours out of the fridge (whew!).

So, it's difficult to get the timing right, unless you're having a brunch at 10 or 11am. I actually got up at 5am once to take the batter out of the fridge. What I've found is that if you can do a longer pre-fridge fermentation, before you add the salt (as salt slows yeast growth), then you need less on the other end.

My most recent breakfast timing: 90 minutes to 2 hrs first fermentation. Add salt egg and butter, then refrigerate overnight. Take out for 30 minutes to 1 hr (batter should be frothy and have risen) before cooking.

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 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.

An excellent version of the Italian classic. In typical Bittman style, there are about 20 possible variations (more if you include ingredient substitutions), so it's possible for 10 people to cook from this recipe and get 10 different soups. Though they'll all have the core soup and process in common.

The version we made had cubed parmesan rind in it, as is common in Minestrone. We used some chopped bacon as the meat (he recommends proscuitto or ham). For the hard vegetable we used acorn squash. For the soft veggies we used a cup or so of white beans and another cup or so of chopped Swiss chard.

It was really, really good. We just had it for dinner with some crusty bread.

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.

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.

A simple, excellent waffle batter with Bittman's usual list of variations you can use to create pretty much any type of waffle experience you want. I made the straightforward version substituting half whole-wheat flour for the white, and they cooked up beautifully in my new waffle iron.

I would have never thought of cooking greens with tahini, but this works very well. It's a simple recipe - sautee some garlic and then add your greens (kale in this case) a little stock and some tahini. Finish with a squirt of lemon juice and you have a very tasty side dish. Other variations on the recipe include peanut butter, which at first I thought bizzare, but considering how similar tahini is, makes some sense now.

I ended up using more stock than the recipe suggested - it seemed to vanish quickly.

This is a straightforward vegetarian chili recipe, brought to a higher level by a masterful use of spicing. It has the most complex mix of spices of any veggie chili I've made: cumin, cloves, allspice, coriander, chili powder and oregano. Together they give it a rich depth of flavour.

We make very few adjustments to the recipe. Since our eldest daughter (6 as I write this) likes it, we leave out the Jalapeno. We also add a little corn. Otherwise, it's perfect as written.

Nice and simple, easy to make and just throw in the oven. Very much comfort food. We had this with some tortillas with refried beans and cheese, and it made a perfect dinner for a wet and chilly fall evening. I also used some fresh tomato. We didn't have cayenne, which would have given this a nice little bit of heat, and no bacon, but maybe next time.

This is a very credible borscht, and is quite simple and fast to boot. It's a meat-free version, and fairly stripped down in comparison with the borscht with meat on page 138 (which I have not made). This one can be made in 45 minutes to an hour and just contains 6 ingredients: beets, carrots, onions, stock, cabbage and a little red wine vinegar.

The only thing I'd adjust would be the amount of liquid - it ends up being more stewlike than souplike. I'd either puree some or all of it, or change the stock from 2 cups to 3 or more.