Monkey Rose's Reviews
66 recipes reviewed. Showing 1 to 50Sort by: Book Title | Date | Rating 
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Pie: 300 Tried-and-True Recipes for Delicious Homemade Pie
By Ken Haedrich
Harvard Common Press - 2004
This is a fantastic crust recipe. It's my go-to recipe for most pies. It comes out wonderfully - flavorful and flaky. Basically, it's a half-and-half recipe - half of the fat is butter and half is shortening, thus bringing together the best of both worlds.
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Around here, we have a lot of Rainier Cherries in the summer. Usually, cherry pies are made with sour cherries, but this is a great recipe if all you have are sweets.
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I'm not a big fan of coconut, but the flavors go very nicely together. This is a great recipe if you have a lot of sweet cherries as we do around here where sour cherries are harder to find.
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I made this for a work picnic and won a prize for best desert. Even the people who "don't usually like pies" loved it.
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This is a great pie recipe for the middle of winter when the only inexpensive fresh fruit on the shelves are apples and you're not really interested in making a regular apple pie. I think this pie is best when refrigerated, so I'd suggest planning to make it ahead of time.
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The maple in this one gives it a kick that you don't find in regular pumpkin pies.
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I love this pie! It is tasty and very simple to make. It couldn't be much easier. My cousin and I were talking about making key lime pie once and he complained about how much trouble it was. Since this is the ONLY recipe I'd ever used to make key lime pie, I had no idea what he was talking about. I shared this recipe with him and now I think he's a convert.
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Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian: More Than 650 Meatless Recipes from Around the World
By Madhur Jaffrey
Clarkson Potter - 2002
This is a delicious and easy recipe. The directions for canned beans are a little bit vague, but I've managed to make it work by estimating the amount of liquid that should go in in place of the cooking liquid.
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This is a delicious recipe! I'm a little partial because I love beets.
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Barefoot Contessa at Home: Everyday Recipes You'll Make Over and Over Again
By Ina Garten
Clarkson Potter - 2006
This is a DELICIOUS way to make potatoes. We often have it as a side to salmon.
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Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone
By Deborah Madison
Broadway - 1997
Oh my gosh... this recipe!!! It's very easy - you just dump a bunch of things into a food processor and mix. What comes out is a wonderful dip that tastes a bit like Thai Peanut Sauce (and no wonder when you look at the ingredients...). It's a great dip for vegetables - a fantastic and easy appetizer. I make this often for parties, book group etc.
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Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone
By Deborah Madison
Broadway - 2007
Oh my gosh... this recipe!!! It's very easy - you just dump a bunch of things into a food processor and mix. What comes out is a wonderful dip that tastes a bit like Thai Peanut Sauce (and no wonder when you look at the ingredients...). It's a great dip for vegetables - a fantastic and easy appetizer. I make this often for parties, book group etc.
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Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone
By Deborah Madison
Broadway - 1997
This one is a BIG favorite of mine. I usually bring it to potlucks and picnics. I always get a lot of compliments with this one. Sometimes I make 1.5x the curry dressing because it IS really tasty and adds a lot to this dish.
I can't wait for mango season...
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This soup is sinfully easy to make. It's very tasty and hearty even though you don't even need stock. I think that's the real beauty of this soup! No stock! Ms. Madison often calls for you to make your own stock, but sorry sweetheart... I don't usually have the time or patience for that.
I sometimes add a little bit of cheese to the soup for some extra flavor - usually Gruyere.
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I think that this one may become a family favorite at Thanksgiving. It's very very tasty. I usually skip the parsley (I'm not a fan of parsley) and the squash is a pain in the rear to peel and chop up (or else my knives suck). But overall, this dish is worth it for a few wintertime special occasions.
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This is a wonderful recipe. It is extremely tasty AND it's probably good for you too. We've made it many times - especially when we were growing chard in the garden and it was running wild (we used the variation with the chard and garlic croutons). The mustard is such a nice flavor to go with the lentils.
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This is one of our go-to recipes for weeknight cooking. It's easy to make and the ingredients are so simple that we almost always have everything on hand.
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This is a tasty dish and the "spicy" tomatoes aren't too spicy for most people. In fact, I'd almost say that they're barely spicy but maybe that's because I usually only go with 1 jalapeno instead of 2.
I keep all of my dried beans in mason jars in the kitchen. This is the only recipe that I know that uses mung beans - but I love having them on hand because they're so darn pretty!
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The Complete Baking Cookbook: 350 Recipes from Cookies and Cakes to Muffins and Pies
By George Geary
Robert Rose - 2007
This is a very yummy cake and very easy to make as far as cakes go. He calls for fresh blueberries and pooh-poohs frozen ones, but I used ones I picked last summer and froze and they worked just fine without turning the whole cake blue as he warns. This is a great one to make for company or brunch.
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Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone
By Deborah Madison
Broadway - 1997
This is very, very simple. It hardly counts as a recipe at all. However, it's one of the reasons I love this book. There are great recipes like this in there - it's really just the simple addition of lemon juice, olive oil, and pepper that it makes it stand out and really pop when compared to the usual steamed broccoli with a pat of butter or a dash of salt that I think most people usually do.
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These are DELICIOUS! This is my ultimate "I'm showing off" recipe for when I have guests or for special occasions. These things are also beautiful when they come out of the oven. They're a little bit labor intensive, but SO SO SO worth it. But make no mistake, this isn't a "healthy" vegetarian recipe. There's a ton of butter and cream and cheese in this one. This recipe will spike your cholesterol. There's a reason why it tastes so good.
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This pizza sauce is sublime. It's very simple and very basic, but sometimes the best recipes are.
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One of my very favorite dishes in this book! It's so beautiful and bright when it's done. I love the flavor of the beets especially when paired with the lemon. The lemon adds such a nice zing to this. YUM!
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This is a very heavy cheesy dish, but it's very rich and flavorful. It's great for a cold day.
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This is a great way to make tofu. It might not be "authentic" but it reminds me of the tofu that you usually get in East Coast Chinese restaurants (and that's harder to find out here on the West Coast). I always make this when I'm making stir-fried vegetables. I often add minced garlic and grated ginger in for some extra flavor.
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These are a delicious toothsome treat. A nice change from your every-day pancakes.
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The Ultimate Vegetarian Cookbook
By Roz Denny
Smithmark Publishers - 1996
This is a great desert that's not too sugary-sweet and probably not all that bad for you. It can end up a little bit juicy so I suggest going easy when you juice that orange. Although they suggest you serve it with cream or yogurt, I suggest that you serve it with vanilla ice cream. You can scratch what I said earlier about it not being all that bad for you if you add the ice cream :).
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This is a delicious dish! It works well as a side too.
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Moosewood Restaurant Cooks at Home: Fast and Easy Recipes for Any Day
By Moosewood Collective
Simon & Schuster - 1994
YUM! I don't even know if you should listen to what I have to say about this recipe because I love mangoes so freakin' much that if it's one of the ingredients, I'm bound to love the dish. But I really did love this one - such wonderful flavors! And it did combine well with the Carribean Black Bean recipe listed in the margin of this recipe.
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Pie: 300 Tried-and-True Recipes for Delicious Homemade Pie
By Ken Haedrich
Harvard Common Press - 2004
I think if I'd made this with a regular pastry topping instead of the crumb topping, I'd have been able to give it a 5 instead of a 4. I'm not so hot on cornmeal. Also, I don't usually keep tapioca around, so any recipe with tapioca in it has a strike against it from me. But otherwise, a great recipe.
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This was a very good pie. I had to make it with regular blueberries instead of wild blueberries. It was a pretty basic blueberry pie - quite tasty though!
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This was a nice tasty pie. The brown sugar brought a nice flavor to it. The only problem I had was that I put a top crust on it and the apples cooked down a good bit and left a dome of empty pastry on the top. Otherwise, the recipe worked very well.
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Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian: More Than 650 Meatless Recipes from Around the World
By Madhur Jaffrey
Clarkson Potter - 2002
This method of cooking polenta works very well. I've had better results than when I have tried other methods. Never the less, cooking polenta is almost always a pain and although the results are good and the method is better than others I've found, this is still fairly labor intensive.
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Moosewood Cookbook
By Mollie Katzen
Ten Speed Press - 1992
I love this recipe. Don't expect them to turn out like the ones you get in a restaurant, but they're tasty in their own right.
I've made this MANY times and I've found that I like to add almost twice as much spice as is in the recipe. I also add a healthy helping of cumin. I don't have exact measurements because I usually just keep adding spice until it tastes "right."
Also, there are two versions of the dough recipe. In one edition of this cookbook, there's a recipe with no butter in the dough. That dough comes out a bit tough and rubbery. The really good dough recipe is as follows:
2 cups flour
1 tsp salt
4 tbsp melted butter
1/2 cup yogurt
water as needed
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This comes out very well. I find that there's usually a little too much filling (or too little dough) to make 6. And although she calls for lots of black pepper (and I love black pepper) I find that I like this better without much pepper at all.
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Barefoot Contessa at Home: Everyday Recipes You'll Make Over and Over Again
By Ina Garten
Clarkson Potter - 2006
This is a very tasty and pretty easy recipe (my husband will even make it on his own - that's how easy it is!). It's a nice warm dish and we usually make it in the winter.
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Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone
By Deborah Madison
Broadway - 2007
This is the first recipe I made from this book. It's really quite good and can be used in burritos in addition to being a dip.
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Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone
By Deborah Madison
Broadway - 1997
A tasty way to eat beets.
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This is a wonderful picnic-safe potato salad recipe. It's really yummy! The only problem I had with it is that the next day a lot of liquid pooled at the bottom of the bowl. A LOT. I think it was mostly the olive oil and vinegar. So anyway, I guess my advice is to try to eat it all the first day.
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I made this for my in-laws the first time they came over for dinner. It's a lovely fall/winter salad. The persimmons steal the show and anytime you put persimmons in anything, they're sure to impress or at least be a conversation piece.
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I love this soup! Usually, I make it just as instructed and it comes out really well. Oftentimes though, I'll fudge a bit and skip the "croutons" since it's an extra step and I can be a little lazy.
This is a great soup to have with some buttery biscuits.
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This is a delicious way to eat squash. The recipe turned out well, but cutting the squash in half and roasting it was a big pain. Actually, it was the cutting in half that was a pain. I had half a mind to take an axe to the dang things. But, if you can get past that, here's something to do with those squash that you used as center pieces at Thanksgiving.
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This is a lovely, hearty gratin. It's definitely "heavy" so I prefer to make it with a nice light vegetable side dish.
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This is a very light dish that tastes nice and healthy. Since it's so light, I have paired it with a basic couscous to make it a little more filling.
I recommend reading her prelude on how to shop for and cook eggplants before starting this one (leaching out the bitterness etc.).
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This is a good one for Thanksgiving. This recipe introduced me to and began my love affair with parsnips. The garlic cloves are incredible. The beets add a nice pop of color to the dish. I often use yams in addition to the sweet potatoes and I quarter whole onions instead of using small ones or shallots.
I think of it as a main dish but my husband feels like it's more of a side. He's not a vegetarian, so what do you expect? But I do feel that it needs something to go along with it.
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This is a nice one with a lot of flavor. It's a good one to have if you're sick of tomato sauce with your pasta.
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This is a nice, fresh tasting recipe. The lemon is a nice flavor, but I think it could probably use a little more than she calls for to give it a bit more kick.
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This dish has a very nice flavor to it. The only thing I don't like is that it calls for carrot juice which isn't exactly easy to find. I usually buy a little bottle of Odwalla Carrot Juice for this recipe, but it doesn't use all of the juice so I always have some carrot juice left over. I don't know about you, but I don't usually drink carrot juice, so it ends up going to waste.
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This is a nice risotto to have in the spring (as she even suggests in the book). It has a nice fresh, light flavor to it.
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This is a great basic waffle recipe. Sometimes I add a little molasses, nutmeg, and ground cloves to give them more of a gingerbread flavor.
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