Peckish Sister's Profile

From: Central, FL USA

Joined: December 11th, 2010

About me: I have always liked to cook, particularly breads, fruits, vegetables, vegetarian, poultry and lamb dishes. After marriage we cooked together progressively more difficult dishes with him doing the meat, grilling and frying, and I did the "dough" and the same type of things I had before. After children we started cooking more simply. After discovering the cause of my frequent migraines was an evolving long list of chemicals and odd ingredients, I began getting back to cooking from basic ingredients, and found I could be well again. I also try to cooking from what I can get in season at the ever present fruit and vegetable stands.

Favorite cookbook: America's Test Kitchen / Cooks Illustrated Books

Manchester Stew from Skinny Instant Pot & Slow Cooker Cookbook

I switched up the vegetables and canned beans to reflect what I had on hand. It was my very first use of the Insta pot and I was skeptical of the 3 minute cooking time since I had increased the amounts... read more >

recipe reviews (465)
book reviews (18)
useful review votes (420)

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Peckish Sister's Reviews

45 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 45Sort by: Title | Date | Rating

The Olive and the Caper: Adventures in Greek Cooking

By Susanna Hoffman
Workman Publishing Company - 2004

These crispy, intensely almond flavored macaroons had the perfect contrasting creamy interior. I chose this recipe to use up some of those egg whites left over from the egg yolk sauces and rice pudding. It turned out to be a lot more work with blanching, skinning the almonds, and slicing them. It ground up well, but it was difficult to scoop out into pleasing shapes. It was all worth it, these are nothing like the gummy ones that come out of the store bought packages.

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This is a straight forward lemon egg sauce. I liked that whole eggs were used, instead of the egg yolks in many of these recipes. The recipe worked perfectly and it was nicely thick at the time indicated. Steam was also just starting to rise and so I took it off the heat before it came to a boil. This went well with the meat stuffed grape leaves.

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We love chicken with forty cloves of garlic, so could not resist this recipe. I bought peeled garlic cloves, so it was straight forward to put together and then let cook in the oven. I used my Dutch oven instead of a clay pot, and the recipe worked well. If you are looking forward to whole garlic cloves you will be dissapointed as they do disintegrate into the sauce as she describes. The olives however retain their texture and give bursts of salty flavor.This turned out okay, but is not a recipe that I feel a need to repeat.

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Least year I learned the hard way to dunk the barley rusks from the Greek festival as I broke my tooth on one. This recipe intrigued me.The dough worked up like Playdough, soft and sticky, but still crumbly. Once again, patting out the dough was frustrating and the rolling pin made quick work of it. However my pieces were 9 X 4 " in size, smaller than her 6 X 12", but just as thick. I did not use wheat flour so as to keep them gluten-free. I found her directions to make the rings confusing, but pried up the long edges, carefully rolled them to the middle, pinched the edges together and then gently rolled the log form to try and achieve a cylinder shape and the pinched the ends together to form rings. Six fit on a pan, but I would have needed more pans if I had made them as big as she suggested, which would have made the long baking times problematic. I am not sure why you cool them, before drying them at 200 for seven hours. I did try them periodically. They were raw inside before drying, tasted rich and tasty at 2 hours of drying, and at 5 hours tasted more like dog biscuits (yes, I really liked them when I was 4 years old) and just like the barley rusks from the Greek festival so I took them out after 5 hours. I still don't know why they are called black. Because of the addition of the oil, they did not seem tough enough to break a tooth.

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A nice side dish when you either have bulgar to use up or want a change for rice. I have been freezing my leftover tomato paste flattened out to make it easier to take out the small amounts needed. I was disappointed that it took so long to cook. It was delicious, however.

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I like the Bulgar in this recipe. I have mainly previously just used it for tabouli. The white onions turned a light attractive pink color during the cooking process. The directions worked perfectly, but I felt it was under seasoned. It either needs stock instead of water or additional salt. I love the rich flavor provided by the walnuts. This is an excellent side dish especially when you want something substantial.

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This interesting cake went well,the thick batter spread nicely and it was easy to layer the Cyprus sweet-wine soaked raisins mixed with chopped almonds, cinnamon and sugar between the two layers of batter. I used a layer of greased parchment to help turn the cake out of the 10 inch spring form pan. This is where things went wrong. The cake baked perfectly in the allotted time, and when I turned it over and peeled off the parchment, I had a hard top through which he syrup would not penetrate. I couldn't even pour the first third of syrup as it was already pooling. I finally dumped it all on top and went to bed. Don't expect to be able to eat this soon after making it. I tried skewering it all over with minimal penetration. Perhaps pouring very hot syrup over a very hot cake would help. Maybe the ratio of ingredients is off. This cake has potentential. My cake was dry with a delicious hidden filling and amazing lemon syrup on top. It wasn't the syrup soaked cake of my dreams. However she does call it "frosting" the cake with the syrup, so maybe that is how it should turn out.

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I also made a half recipe using canned chick peas. I threw all of the ingredients in my small food processor and it made up very quickly. Be careful with the garlic, I used one largish clove and the flavor was over powering. I love the ground cumin and coriander. This made a nice quick lunch and would be great as an emergency appetizer with ingredients usually kept on with tortilla chips.

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I used a pound of chickpeas and was glad not to have made the full recipe. I did peel the chickpeas and think that I should have cooked them longer initially as the skins were not loosened at all. I was delighted to learned how to remove the skins with the aid of baking soda. I aso whisked the peeled peas as they cooked, not waiting until the end of the cooking period. I liked the thickened but chunky texture. It is a some what plain soup and went well with the City bread to make a complete meal.

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This bread worked up nicely; it rose a lot faster than the recipe suggested, but the I only use bread machine yeast and that was probably a big factor. I added some of the suggested ingredients on page 122: chopped onion, sunflower seeds and cumin seeds. It made for a nice robust bread that went nicely with the chickpea soup. I found it hard to knead in all of those ingredients after adding the four and in future would add addition ingredients when the dough was soft. I added an entire very large chopped onion, so cooked the loaves until they were quite browned, so the onion would be cooked through, it was a bit of an excessive amount of onion. The two tablespoons of cumin seed and one half cup of sunflower seeds worked well.

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This syrup is not cloyingly sweet like some of the syrups largely made with honey. It cooks for 15 minutes to thicken and reduce. I used a Spanish orange liqueur. The clove and cinnamon taste too strong in the syrup when tasted by itself. But when poured on the custard semolina custard pie, it tastes just right.

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Instead of one half of a cup of coffee, I substituted one quarter of a cup of fresh squeezed lemon juice, so the sourness would not be overpowering. Then I only just brought it to a boil, instead of cooking it for fifteen minutes so it would not be over reduced. It made a very delicious lemon syrup that went well on the walnut cake.

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My songs worked well on my warm stove. The dough also worked well according to the directions and I was delighted with the amount of whole wheat flour. My confusion started with the shaping of the loaves. For me 15 X 4" is not an oblong, but an extreme rectangle. To achieve this shape, the dough had to be more than "slightly flattened". The first loaf I tried to shape by patting, but the second I very quickly formed into shape with my rolling pin. I couldn't understand how 3 to 4 widely spaced slits could form a cross-hatch pattern on this long, skinny loaf and I did not want to risk that this thin loaf would deflate. I was supposed to put it on a well oiled sheet, but I put it on parchment as it usually works well for me. Don't do this! You brush it with water twice and some must have soaked into the bottom crust. I bagged the bread while slightly warm and instead of a crispy crust, I ended up with a very soft crust. But it did have a great sour tang and was the perfect bread to cut up and serve with soup for a crowd.

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What an interesting way to cook greens. I wanted to more healthful version of the Collard cobbler recipe we like. Although this did not call for collard greens, I just cooked them longer until they were tender. I did not have fennel, so added extra dill. She gave the option of either using polenta or cornmeal, so I used polenta on the bottom and cornmeal on the top. This worked very well, there was enough moisture on the bottom to cook the polenta and I am not sure how well it would have cooked on the top, but the cornmeal turned out cooked and crispy. I love the capers in here, but with the tougher nature of the collards and the pickled flavor of the capers, it tasted like eating grape leaves! This sounded very strange to me, but I was able to cut out nice big slabs for serving with the crusts intact.

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Fish cooked on top of the stove with zucchini, tomatoes, a leek and a rich avogolemono sauce. I used steelhead trout. The thickest part was not cooking, so I moved that part over the flame and that helped it finish cooking without over cooking the rest of the fish. I couldn't 't bring myself to use sage and we loved it with Greek oregano. The sauce did turn a lovely pinkish color from the tomato juice. It made a great meal served with rice.

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The caramelized crispy bits were easy to make, you just need to watch the carefully so they do not burn over the high heat. I sliced them, and if you make them even in size, that makes the cooking easier. My largest pieces were not crispy, and the smallest pieces were the darkest. Using peeled cloves made this very fast. I used 16 cloves. This was great on the single vegetable cabbage salad. I could see using this on a wide range of dishes.

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This made a decent salad. My favorite village salad in Cyprus had a blob of potato salad. I made mine with yellow pepper, really ripe tomatoes, and California olives. I loved the addition of capers. I did reduce the oil and chose the lemon juice option. I am not used to cucumbers in Greek salads, but I really liked it.

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This was a good soup. I can not give it a higher ranking, because even though I enjoyed the leek in it, I longed for Scotch broth complete with carrots and thyme. I would not make this soup again, but would opt for making Scotch broth. I also could not leave out all of hat lamb meat and cut it up and added it to the soup after it finished cooking.

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I used leftover roast lamb, but left out the juices. Other than that I followed the recipe exactly. I was skeptical about scoring the top into 12 pieces, but it helped it vent while cooking, made it easier to cut into serving portions, looked very pretty and the filling did not seep through. The aroma while baking was amazing. The filling set up and the nuts, raisins, herbs, etc all worked well. My family was really impressed.

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I usually do not make my own stock, but you can not buy lamb stock. Make this the day before so that you can easily skim all of the congealed fat off of the top. I did not bother to take the time to chop the meat into little pieces, but browned the shoulder blade chops whole. This made a very flavorful lamb broth.

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These flavorful meatballs made with ground lamb were amazing. I could only find ground lamb in a one pound package, so I increased all the other ingredients accordingly. There is a lot of prep work here and you need to plan ahead as there is a long refrigeration period before frying. When the first batch was in the pan frying, I realized that I had forgotten to roll them in the chopped almonds then flour. It was easier to taste all the flavors in the meatballs without nuts. The ones with nuts make a very impressive appetizer.

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I used one pound of ground lamb so increased the rest of the filling ingredients correspondingly. The filling was very good, but missed the presence of garlic. I found the directions for rolling the filling confusing and impossible to follow. The directions for making cigar-shaped rolls on page 90 worked great. If you use the egg wash, don't brush with the oil first as recommended or it will just roll off.

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I did not notice the add-ins for this simple dressing. I did use fresh Eureka Cook lemon juice whisked with the olive oil and salt. It gave a fresh bright lemony taste to the single vegetable cabbage salad. I do think Greek oregano would be a great addition. The special Greek oregano I picked up has more seeds in it than leaves.

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I substituted un-named orange liquor in an orange shaped bottle for the Ouzo. I also chopped the lemon peel by hand, first peeling off thin strips. This made a beautiful golden colored, real lemony flavored syrup with delicious little golden colored decorative chewy chunks of lemon peel. It tasted good with the yogurt cake even if it did not noticeably soak in until the third day.

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We also really liked these potatoes. I used yellow Yukon potatoes, which cooked too quickly for this recipe, if the initial water step was missed, the timing would have been perfect. If you do not use russet potatoes, adjust the time accordingly. Read the directions carefully as I missed the addional 15 minutes required which is important to get the delicious crispness mentioned by the other reviewers.

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I used our local large yellow onions and substituted 3/4 of a cup of apple cider vinegar for the red wine vinegar. I cut the onions by hand with no tears. These tasted great and were a lovely accompaniment to the roasted lamb. The last time I made pickled onions my husband enjoyed them on salads.

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The Arborio rice is superb in this dish. For the lentils, I only had miniature green lentils and they worked well in this recipe. The topping of fresh cilantro mixed with vinegar worked well to cut the grease from the onions. However, 1/4 cup of olive oil was excessive to fry the onions, and I would use the minimum oil necessary. All the components are essential for an intensely flavored side dish that could stand alone for a vegetarian dish.

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This was a very simple recipe. However the rice to water proportion was off. I heated water in my electric kettle and used it to add water until the rice was tender. It should be easier to cook as you are supposed to just add the water, cover and simmer for twenty minutes. I reccomend using the amount of liquid specified for your type of rice. I used Arborio and it was very delicious.

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Excellent creamy rice pudding that turned a rich brown color from the raisins and the vanilla extract. I used the Arborio rice as recommended. Not having whole milk, I used a combination of two and zero percent fat milk. Since I have had trouble with either runny or overcooked rice pudding, I eliminated one cup of the milk. She does not specify how much of the optional additions to add, so I added an amount of black raisins equal to the amount of rice (and also the sugar). It cooked perfectly, thickened just right, and I liked this version made with Arborio rice.

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I went against her advice and used what I could find, a boneless leg of lamb. I inserted the slivers of garlic. After fighting with my mortar and pestle for a while I turned to my spare coffee grinder that I use for spices and it quickly and uniformly pulverized the mustard seeds and peppercorns. I found it helpful to pour some of the oil on top of the lamb as well as pouring it in the pan to roll the herb-coated roast in. It took longer to cook this roast than the time indicated, and as carefully as I was watching, it overshot the temperature that I was aiming for. I followed her advice to let it rest in a warm place, advice that I will not follow again as I watched all the juices run out. However this did produce a beautiful crust and flavorful roast. My previous experiences with Greek flavored lamb have been dissapointing as they lacked the rosemary flavor I crave, and exploit oregano, not one I look for with lamb. However this was a pleasant surprise and tasted great with the recommended pickled onions.

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This cream sauce made up very easily. I made it ahead by 20 minutes and it held well until everything else was ready. I am usually not a fan of nutmeg in savory dishes, but the small amount here was fine. I mad it for the cauliflower dish so added more nutmeg and lemon juice which gave it even better flavor.

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These large garlic bread crumb stuffed mushroom caps looked perfect with crispy-looking beautifully browned bread crumbs. However during the cooking in the butter, the liquid from the mushroom stems makes the bread crumbs mushy. I recommend leaving them out for that reason. I also think using sturdy bread crumbs are important. This was not as delicious as it looked.

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This is the author's favorite dessert and is also a favorite of mine. After the third day of going back for it at a restaurant on Crete for breakfast 37 years ago and realizing they were still cutting it out of the same pan, we went somewhere else the fourth day. I tried so hard to recreate it when I came back and fillo dough was not easily available and I had no idea of what semolina was. I like the sweetness and vanilla in the custard. Be sure to butter the backside of the sheets of fillo used to line the pan so that they remain flexible and can be bent over the filling.

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This bread is very quick to make as it only rises after shaping. My dough was so sticky that I did use flour to shape the rings even though the directions said not too. However the egg wash and seeds went on smoothly. I could not resist putting a light sprinkle of sea salt on the second batch. Although the sesame and cumin seeds were great, we loved the ones that also had salt the best. I would not make them again without the salt.

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I started with half of the water as I have found her soups too thin. Otherwise I followed the recipe exactly. It cooked smoothly until I added the tahini mixture and it acted just like a Yellowstone mud pot, so I thinned it somewhat with boiling water from my electric kettle. This sounded strange, but we loved the chewiness of the arborio rice, the flavor of the soup base, and definitely the saltiness of the olive garnish really made this soup work. The large amount of tahini made a great filling Lenten soup. I will repeat this surprisingly delicious soup.

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I found the perfect tight fitting pan, but think it would have cooked better if it was in a looser fitting pan. I also would not mix the sesame seeds in with the oil, lemon juice and salt, but sprinkle the seeds over after rubbing the liquid mixture everywhere. They clumped and did not form the nice crust l expected. I usually do not like tahini by itself, but this simple sauce went well with the juicy chicken.

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We grilled these skewers and they turned out quite well. Not liking either tarragon or Ouzo, I substituted another Greek herb, oregano. I highly recommend it if you also do not like licorice flavored dishes. We served this over rice the first time and the leftovers in pita bread with tomato, lettuce, onion and vinaigrette.

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A very beautiful presentation that would be very elegant for company. I only cooked one cauliflower, but it was very large. The sauce was thick enough to stick to the cauliflower. The cheese grated on top really makes the dish. The cauliflower was cooked perfectly which also added to the appeal of this dish.

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Another great use of Arborio rice. I liked that the filling consisted of uncooked rice, meat, onions, dried fruit etc. It mixed up quickly, but such a small amount was used in each leaf that it was easy to stuff each leaf, but took a long time. The directions worked perfectly for cooking the stuffed grape leaves. I used ground pork because I had the exact amount needed on hand. The dried mango that I substituted for apricot gave a sweet burst of flavor even without pre-soaking it in wine. I have cooked a lot of stuffed grape leaves, but this recipe is now my favorite both to cook and to eat.

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I followed Southern Cooker's lead and also made this single vegetable salad with raw cabbage, using my mandoline to make short work of shredding the cabbage. I also whipped up the oil and lemon Greek oil and lemon dressing. It was the fastest and simplest cabbage salad I have ever made. I topped it with the fried garlic topping and it turned it into a rather special salad.

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An amazing and substantial Greek type salad based on broken up barley rings. I wish that the amount of water to sprinkle on the chunks of barley rings was specified. I used about three tablespoons. This was incredibly delicious, only missing a little onion. Be sure you do not make too much, it will not keep.

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I had a big batch of the first baby zucchini from my CSA as the basis for this recipe. Since they were so tender, I gave the potatoes ahead start cooking. I cut back on the olive oil. The caper topping turned was could have been a mundane dish into something spectacular. My sons who are not fond of capers even commented on the random bursts of saltiness.

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This seems more like a torte than a cake. I toasted the walnuts and skinned them as much as possible to reduce any bitterness. The directions worked well here. I like coffee, but not coffee flavored anything else, so I made a lemon flavored syrup instead of the coffee syrup. It was delicious, the flavors felt Greek and went together well. It was hard to wait the specified time, but it was worth waiting for. Be careful and only use the amount of syrup specified, it is perfect.

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An unusual flavor popping pudding. I used a high quality organic concord grape juice. My bottle only had four cups of juice so I removed one tablespoon of semolina flour. I was glad for the desired temperature as I reached that faster than the specified time. If I had cooked it to a particular thickness, I would probably have overcooked it.With no additional sweetner added, it tasted just right although not sweet. The blanched almonds sliced easily, and I toasted them in my convection oven. I did not make the sugared basil leaves as I do not cook with raw egg and had no dried egg white powder on hand. Instead, I decorated it with additional sliced toasted almonds. This would be great as a finish to a hot, spicy main course. I divided it all into individual dishes so it could cool faster. A thick chewy skin developed on top, with it being softer underneath at first. It is important to let it fully cool and then the texture is wonderful, uniform small, soft particles.

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It seemed odd to have that much cabbage in a soup with fresh dill on top without making borscht. I was worried that without the red wine the flavor would be flat, but with a little white wine, it was a robust, flavorful soup. The pinto beans instead of the small white beans also worked. Do not skip the toppings. I interpreted shredded salami as short thin strips. Our dill is really lush right now and it was divine with the shredded salami on top of the soup.

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