andrew's Reviews
174 recipes reviewed. Showing 151 to 174Sort by: Book Title 
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
I agree with everyone! It's a delicious, rich and fairly time-consuming tart. It took me about 2 hours, start to finish, though when I make it again, I'll consider roasting the cauliflower and caramelizing the onions ahead of time. I might even consider a pre-made crust to save time, though the one I used (a press-in recipe from Cook's Illustrated rather than her recommended crust) was simple to make and very tasty.
I had no mascarpone, so used her suggestion of cream cheese mixed with heavy cream. I could see experimenting with reducing the richness a little in the future by possibly cutting back on the mascarpone/cream cheese and just doing this like a classic tart (using an extra egg and straight cream, without the extra cheese), but that's only my vague sense of excess nagging at me - it's very tasty as it is.
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
This was a good version of the famous chickpea curry - adapted from a Madhur Jaffrey recipe it is well-spiced, slightly sour and tasted fairly authentic to me (I'm no expert though). I might try to soften the flavor a little next time with some tweaks - maybe a little coconut.
Served with basmati rice and homemade naan (from Bittman's How to Cook Everything).
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
I was looking for a quick apple dessert, saw the reviews of this one and decided to give it a shot. This came together quick quickly - it only took a few minutes to make the pastry and then when it chilled in the fridge I peeled and cored apples. I weighed out two pounds, but was left with 2 1/2 apples after I filled my tart dish, so next time I'll cut back on the fruit a bit. I also used Gravensteins, which I'd bought from a local farm, forgetting that they're better for sauce - so the filling ended up rather squishy. Still, very nice flavour and a nice presentation.
If you like your apple desserts sweet rather than tart, I'd mix a bit more sugar in with the slices before assembling it. I like a bit of tartness, though, so I was fine with a couple of tablespoons of sugar on top. It also took less than an hour to cook - more like 45 minutes.
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
Echoing everyone else, these are excellent scones. I used a medium/strong cheddar (yellow/orange as I didn't have white) and the cheese flavor was fairly muted, but still delicious.
I was careful not to overmix, as the recipe says, and still had chunks of butter in the batter which melted out during cooking. Next time, I'll cut the butter in smaller pieces and see if that helps. Definitely addictive!
I also agree with the baking time suggestions - I set my timer 2 minutes less than the recipe suggests and they were almost overcooked - so next time I'll probably try 4-5 minutes under.
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
Very good indeed. I'm particularly impressed by how light in texture they seemed. Perhaps it is partly our peanut butter (it was from a new jar of natural pb, and it seemed fairly runny), but also the creaming of the butter and peanut butter at room temperature has something to do with it, I think.
We made a couple of tweaks - brown sugar only (we're out of white) and chocolate chunks rather than chocolate and peanut butter chips. Otherwise, exactly as written and it made a very good cookie. I might cut back a little on the sugar in future, but that's it. Hello to our new peanut butter cookie recipe!
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
I'll just add my hurrahs to this recipe. These are very, very good cookies. I've done them with fleur de sel and the little nuggets of saltiness are just perfect. I imagine kosher salt would work just as well.
I was extra careful not to overmix them and they ended up tender and crumbly. They didn't look too much like Deb's smooth versions on Smitten Kitchen, however - mine are fissured and cracked. Taste trumps all though.
I did one batch on parchment and one batch on Silpat and preferred the parchment ones. I find that buttery cookies on Silpat have a tendency to spread out more and sometimes get too thin and burned at the edges.
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
As the other reviewers have said, these are nice, simple to make oatmeal raisin cookies. I like them with a bit of kosher salt to make them taste a little more 'adult', and I made the recipe as written.
Update: I've also made these with chocolate chips and walnuts and they're excellent.
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Super Natural Every Day: Well-loved Recipes from My Natural Foods Kitchen
By Heidi Swanson
Ten Speed Press - 2011
A very tasty, simple granola variation. It's fairly straightforward - toasted oats with some nuts and a sweetener. She brings it up a notch with a couple of things - unsweetened coconut and currants - and sweetens it with maple syrup. Orange zest is the final tweak.
Be careful with the cooking time though - I let this one go until it was as brown as I thought it should be, then it cooked a little more on the tray when I took it out, and it turned out I'd overdone it - the currants were fossilized and the coconut was a bit burnt!
Update: I did this again and cooked it until it was nicely tanned but not dark brown. I put the currants in halfway through and they were better, but still a bit dried out. I'm going to take onepotkitchen's advice and put them in right at the end next time. I also did them with almonds and liked that very much.
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These are truly excellent. I was a little skeptical at first, thinking that they'd end up fairly dry, but no - they're just right. They were just as good two and even three days after I made them. The best way to describe them would be as a cross between granola bars and muffins.
I was lucky to have all the ingredients on hand - my personal interests and shopping whims seem to be aligning more and more with Heidi's focus on whole, natural ingredients. Be warned though, to do these properly you'll need a few things that most people don't stock regularly: spelt flour (you can substitute whole wheat), cane sugar and extra virgin coconut oil.
The only tweaks I'd contemplate when I make these again (and I had to restrain myself from making them again immediately today when we finished the last one) would be adding some dried fruit for a little burst of extra flavour. I intend to experiment with dried apple, apricot, and currants in the future.
Update: I've been making these with lightly toasted, chopped almonds now instead of walnuts, and adding chopped dates, and I'm really loving the result.
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This is a simple and quick soda bread recipe, with about 60% rye, the rest being white flour. You can, as Heidi writes, whip it together and have fresh bread cooling on your counter in about an hour.
However, you do have to like the particular taste of soda bread. I don't mind it, but I don't love it. My kids didn't like it at all, and they usually love all breads. My wife, however, thought it was great. So, your mileage will vary. I've tried to review this to reflect this varied level of opinion in our household.
I do like the way she cuts it before baking - almost through, in 8 pieces, so that it bakes up lovely and crusty. Also note, it was quite sticky and not easy to knead - I was a little concerned it wouldn't work out, but it turned out just fine.
If I did this again, I'd consider adding something to contrast the baking soda flavour - maybe caraway seeds.
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I was very pleasantly surprised by this recipe. Not that I didn't expect it to be tasty, but it was almost completely different tasting than I'd expected from looking at the ingredients. Although there's no peanuts in it, it had a slightly nutty, peanut flavour, possibly from the mixture of coconut oil, soy, sugar and tempeh. Everything about it was bursting with flavor - spice from the red pepper flakes and the black pepper, little gingery explosions, a note of caramelized cauliflower, and the mellow taste of the slowly cooked onion and garlic.
I will be making this again, and soon. It may say 'serves four' but my wife and I gobbled it up, with barely enough rescued from the skillet for my lunch tomorrow.
Recommendations: use coconut oil if at all possible, as the flavor contributes mightily to the final product, and don't be afraid to really crank the heat for the last couple of minutes to brown the cauliflower and tempeh. I added a little more water just to help at the end, as suggested in the recipe.
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As long as you have the ingredients at hand (squash, white miso, curry paste, tofu, kale, cilantro...) this is a simple and fast dish which makes a very tasty supper. I made it tonight and served it with some chapatis and it was very good indeed - spicy, but not too spicy, and the roasted vegetables went very nicely with the miso, lemon, oil and Thai curry dressing.
I didn't have a delicata squash but used some cubed butternut squash, which was nice, but it did start to disintegrate a little. Another dish I'll be making again.
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A good basic curry recipe, useful for all sorts of vegetables. I found it a little underspiced, however, compared to some of her other recipes, and in future would add a bit more curry paste. It's also not as complex or innovative as some of the other recipes in the book, hence my 3 stars.
I used red potatoes, red pepper and cauliflower as my vegetables rather than the zucchini and asparagus she suggests (she does say it's her 'refrigerator curry' for leftover veggies, so I felt this followed in the spirit of the thing.
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They tasted great, but I did have some problems with these, and I think that if I didn't have a good idea of why there were problems, I'd have given them a 3.
The issue is that she uses Greek-style yogurt as well as butter in these biscuits, but also suggests using regular plain yogurt. I had homemade yogurt which was a little runny, and the resulting dough, used with exactly her measurements, was extremely sticky. Since she doesn't suggest how sticky the dough should be (something I really appreciate in Peter Reinhart's bread recipes) I forged ahead despite my misgivings and ended up with scones that were more like modest buns - they didn't have the laminated layers that look so lovely in the recipe photo.
Doing this again I would cut back on the yogurt, or add more flour and work to get a dough which was tacky but not overly sticky. Then I would be able to pat / roll it out in such a way that the butter would be flattened and layers would be formed by the folding the recipe specifies.
That all said, I did really like the tangy taste of these, and the mixture of whole wheat and AP flour also added a taste and texture I liked a lot.
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Vij's: Elegant and Inspired Indian Cuisine
By Vikram Vij, Meeru Dhalwala
Douglas & McIntyre - 2006
This is a very mild chai recipe. We followed the directions exactly, using green cardamom pods and fennel seeds straight from our garden, with orange pekoe tea. The taste was quite subtle, more subtle than I remember from visiting the restaurant, so maybe next time I'll boil the spices a little more slowly when I make it.
It's definitely not the aggressive chai flavour you'll get from some places - no cloves, cinnamon or ginger. They do it this way deliberately for the restaurant, so they can keep it hot and not overspiced. It's definitely pleasant, but I think I'll experiment a bit with some additional spices in the future.
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I agree with robing on this one. It was easy to prepare (we had some pre-cooked chickpeas in the fridge, so I didn't even have to open a can. I also used canned tomatoes, though I had whole ones. But the spicing was a little subtle. We had it with rice and the flavour didn't really come through that well. We had some for lunch the next day and had the curry by itself and it was much tastier - you definitely got the cumin seeds, ginger and jalapenos then.
It's not a conventional curry - it only has those three ingredients as spices (and ginger and jalapenos are not exactly spices, are they?), plus the coconut milk. So, I wouldn't up the spicing in the future, as I think it's enough, but I would take care to not dilute it with rice etc.
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Vijs At Home: Relax, Honey: The Warmth and Ease of Indian Cooking
By Meeru Dhalwala, Vikram Vij
D&m Adult - 2010
This has a very interesting flavour and is a nice variation on the standard chicken curry. I used dates, as the recipe suggests (you can also use prunes or tamarind paste), and the flavour of the dates permeated the dish, complemented by the interesting spicing. Instead of a standard curry powder, this one has cayenne, garam masala and paprika. The overall effect is a creamy, slightly cinnamony dish, with a nice little bit of heat, but not too much. Great for a dark and wet evening.
Served with rice and chapati, I made half the recipe and it was enough for four reasonable servings.
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Williams-Sonoma Mastering: Frozen Desserts
By Melanie Barnard
Free Press - 2006
As my wife said after tasting this the first time, "it's like mint-chocolate chip ice cream, only better". It makes commercial versions seem like, well, imitations of the real thing. Yes, this recipe is the Platonic ideal.
There's nothing I'd change in the recipe - I used a cup of fresh peppermint leaves which were growing in our ditch and I steeped them for a nice long time in the cream mixture before making the custard. I used melted semisweet chocolate, drizzled in at the end of the churning process.
Both of my children said this was the best ice cream they'd ever tasted, and it's got to be in my top five (and this includes gelato from all over Italy too).
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This is an ideal recipe if you want to make home-made ice cream in a hurry or you don't have any eggs. It's simplicity itself: cream, milk, sugar and vanilla, and nothing else. Since you're using cold milk and cream, it doesn't require the long cooling of a cooked custard ice cream and can be made in one day if you start early enough.
Compared to a classic French vanilla, it lacks depth, but as the recipe says, it's great for cones and other ice-cream based desserts, and as usual with home-made ice creams, you're still better off than buying commercial!
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The Zuni Cafe Cookbook: A Compendium of Recipes and Cooking Lessons from San Francisco's Beloved Restaurant
By Judy Rodgers, Gerald Asher
W.W. Norton & Co. - 2002
I've made these a couple of times now, once with fresh rosemary and once with dried. I'd definitely recommend fresh, and the 'bruising' method she details in the recipe. Also, salting the water fairly liberally when you initially cook the potatoes is a good tip, since I find salting roast potatoes during or after can be hit or miss. I also found that it took a bit longer to cook than the recipe - probably just increasing the temperature to 425 would do the trick (I don't have a convection oven, so I have a feeling this may some impact).
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I made this for breakfast today, intrigued by the other reviews, and was favourably impressed. It's a simple recipe, but I would never have thought of combining fried eggs and bread crumbs. I really like the crust that results under the egg. I too did them over-easy, without any herbs, but I can see how this could be experimented with in future - not just herbs, but maybe a sprinkling of parmesan cheese too. I liked the balsamic vinegar on top.
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I just made this for Sunday breakfast without even checking to see if anyone else had done it. Great minds...
Anyway, I agree that this is a nice, simple omelette variation. I like the way it puffs up and I would never have thought of cooking eggs in a full tablespoon and a half of olive oil like this, but it turned out very tasty. Until Zuni, I hadn't thought of balsamic vinegar on eggs, but it's a great idea - a nice flavour shot. I also tend to over-beat my eggs when making omelettes and frittatas, so taking her advice to stop a bit early was also a good discovery.
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These are delicious scones, and very simple and fast to prepare. I didn't have an orange to zest, but had some lovely orange oil I'd picked up at a gourmet store for just this eventuality. It meant they didn't have any orange flecks in them, which would have looked nice, but they tasted very nice - citrus and sweet. She calls for a scant half cup of sugar which doesn't seem like much but I think I'd try reducing this a tiny bit next time I make them as they were fairly sweet.
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I'll just add my enthusiastic agreement to the other reviews. These were excellent biscotti. I also didn't have anisette, so I just used a little almond extract instead - the anise seeds seemed to be fine by themselves. I might also try this one without the anise seeds - it looks like a good base recipe to experiment with.
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