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


Latest review:

May 20th, 2020

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)

Peckish Sister's Reviews


Search Reviews:

465 recipes reviewed. Showing 451 to 465Sort by: Book Title | Date | Rating | Recipe Title

Culinary Expressions

By Normand J. Leclair
Normand Pub - 2002

15th December 2011

Asiago-Almond Chicken

The crunchy almonds and strong cheese flavor made the topping interesting. Fresh ranch dressing for the marinade may have made this dish taste better. It was very filling and as you pound the chicken breasts, ½ of a chicken breast makes a nice portion size. This was interesting and fairly easy to make and eat, but I don’t usually stock Asiago cheese and probably won’t make this again.

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The Best Vegetarian Recipes: From Greens to Grains, from Soups to Salads: 200 Bold Flavored Recipes

By Martha R. Shulman
William Morrow Cookbooks - 2001

20th September 2012 (edited: 20th September 2012)

Arugula, Pear and Walnut Salad

This was an incredible salad. My pears are either too hard or too soft, but these pears were at the perfect stage of ripeness. I was afraid that the pears would brown, but they held up well. The richness of the nuts, sweetness of the pear, creamy contrast of the gaot cheese, tartness of the dressing and roar of the arugula was amazing. This would be a nice special salad for company.

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Website: Smitten Kitchen

www.smittenkitchen.com
 

4th May 2011

Arroz Con Leche

This turned out too mushy and way too much pudding. The next time I would only make half a batch (use the rest of that can of condensed milk for your tea or coffee), I would use long brown rice to stand up to all that boiling and I would start with ½ cup of less liquid (you can always add more at the end). I took Quezzle Sister’s advice and doubled the raisins, and that was just right. Yes the flavor was very delicious, but I would prefer a slighly sweeter pudding, and the texture was off with the overcooked rice and overblown raisins.

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Culinary Expressions

By Normand J. Leclair
Normand Pub - 2002

28th August 2011 (edited: 28th August 2011)

Apple Goat Cheese Chicken

A fresh tasting, creamy goat cheese and grated apple mixture was good on top of perfectly cooked chicken breast. It is one of many versions of breaded chicken breasts topped with a mixture of ingredients, then a slice of cheese and baked in this cookbook.

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The Pie and Pastry Bible

By Rose Levy Beranbaum
Scribner - 1998

14th November 2011

Apple Galette

This was my first galette. I used honey crisp apples and had quite a few leftover cut pieces leftover, so either did not add enough to the galette, or miscounted my apples. I skipped the optional glaze as I can’t tolerate apricots and thought that red current jelly might be too red. And it was great without it. The crust was thin on the bottom and where I had repaired the crust, apple juices escaped and stuck the crust to the pizza pan. Both of these made it a little difficult to cut and serve pieces. However, it was absolutely delicious and I plan to bake this again.

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30 Delicious Dump Cake Recipes

By Lori Burke
CreateSpace - 2012

15th July 2012

Apple Dump Cake

Two cans of apple pie filling, yellow cake mix, lots of butter and pecans with a few other ingredients in a 9 X 13" pan. I wanted a dessert for the adults to go along with the ice cream sundaes at a potluck and it was very popular, with the vanilla ice cream on top. I will make this again for a pot luck dessert when I don't have time for measuring and chopping. I found I could use my cheese slicer the long ways on the sticks of butter to quickly cut thin slices to cover the dry cake mix.

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The Best Vegetarian Recipes: From Greens to Grains, from Soups to Salads: 200 Bold Flavored Recipes

By Martha R. Shulman
William Morrow Cookbooks - 2001

20th September 2012

Apple Clafoutis

This was my first introduction to a clafoutis and the recipe sure made it sound like a boring desert. This was also my first cooking with the stash of vanilla beans bought for a previous challenge. This was outstanding and continued to call to me from the recesses of the refrigerator. I liked it better than the pear and cherry versions which I tried after this one. The vanilla really stood out in this clafoutis version. I used pink lady apples which do not brown immediately so I skipped the step of soaking the cut apples in lemon and water with no ill effects. This is a great, but simple dessert which holds well.

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30 Delicious Dump Cake Recipes

By Lori Burke
CreateSpace - 2012

A can of apple pie filling and 4 cups of blueberries. I used the frozen ones I am trying to use up. Other than that a typical dump cake with 1/2 cup of pecans. It was a nice quick crumble and great for breakfast.

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Website: Smitten Kitchen

www.smittenkitchen.com
 

16th April 2011

Apple and Cheddar Scones

I was looking for something special to whip up for breakfast. This looked a little intensive, but encouraged by AHJ12475’s review I plunged in. Without a stand mixer (Yes, I think this is finally on my wish list), it took me 1 hour of prep time and she had good directions on how to do it by hand. But I must admit, as I peeled, cut and dried the apples, grated the cheddar (I used orange) and shaped these coffee-shop worthy giant scones (the rolling pin abandoned as I lovingly patted these into the right shape). I was shocked that this recipe only made 6 scones! We enjoyed these by themselves so we could savor their buttery tenderness, concentrated apple flavor and bits of sharp cheddar. Although white cheddar was called for, the orange cheddar color enhanced the golden color of the scones. The sugar topping did not clash with the cheese but added some welcome extra sweetness.

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The Pie and Pastry Bible

By Rose Levy Beranbaum
Scribner - 1998

22nd November 2011

Angel Butter Biscuits

You really have to have faith to make this recipe. I weighed the flour and sugar. I used bread machine yeast so I skipped the proofing step. But I added the proofing water into the buttermilk (I chose that option over the cream). My dough was so wet that I could not shape it into a ball, but after the four hours of chilling, it rolled out beautifully much to my surprise. But the dough was so soft that as they rose they tilted. Next time I will leave out that extra water. They tasted like potato rolls with that satisfying heartiness even though they were very soft and light. The secret ingredient was grated hard-cooked egg yolks. Very good directions including to not use the self rising flour to roll them out in. This was my first use of self rising flour, and I was able to find the White Lily brand. I was a little confused about putting the water in a bread pan on the middle shelf to preheat, then what? But I just assumed that you leave it in place and cook the biscuits on the bottom shelf. I did that and placed the baking sheet on the oven stone and the bottoms were too browned even though the tops were just golden. The next time I will try my air sheet pan. I had stopped using it for biscuits as I found they did not rise as high on it, but this is a whole new recipe and there was a lot of rise in those biscuits. Very special biscuits, just plan lots of time for rising and chilling and realize that you will end up with only 9 very lovely biscuits.

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The Vegetarian Epicure, Book Two

By Anna Thomas
Knopf - 1978

10th April 2011

An Easy Herb Bread

A delicious 100% whole wheat flour recipe that rose to make 3 light textured loaves. I was interested that she changed her herb mix from the recipe in the first book (that I did not make). The smells coming from the dough (yes I actually made this recipe the right way and did not try to jam it into my bread machine) from first adding the sautéed onion garlic and herb mixture throughout the baking process were tantalizing. I only have two loaf pans and often use a medium sized sauce pan for bread, so used that for the third loaf and it turned out the most photogenic.

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Supper Club: Chez Martha Rose

By Martha Rose Shulman
Atheneum - 1988

29th September 2012

Alsatian Apple Cake

This was dreadful. I was glad that I was a little short on apples or the small amount of batter would have been completely eclipsed by the apples. I should have benefitted from Zosia’s experience with the plum tart and cut the apples into 16ths instead of eights. Even when cooking until some of the tops were black, some of the apples pieces were still very hard. The overwhelming taste of baking soda coated the apples. The next time I would mix all dry ingredients together before adding them to the apples. The glaze gave it a very lovely look, but the small amount of actual cake tasted very greasy.

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The Olive and the Caper: Adventures in Greek Cooking

By Susanna Hoffman
Workman Publishing Company - 2004

28th February 2013

Almond Macaroons

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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Slow Cooker Revolution

By The Editors at America's Test Kitchen, America's Test Kitchen
Boston Common Press - 2011

3rd September 2011

15-Bean Soup

The smokey meaty taste of the bacon that was thrown in raw and discarded at the end added wonderful flavor without tasteless bits of meat floating around in the soup. Dried and fresh mushrooms added to the complexity of flavor. The addition of canned tomatoes and greens at the end (I substituted Mustard greens for Swiss chard) gave this bean soup a surprising fresh flavor making it more suitable for year-around dining. I used 19-bean mix as that was what I had on hand. The only change I would make next time is to cut the white mushrooms into spoon-size pieces. The quartered mushrooms were ridicuously large. Definately the best bean soup I have ever had.

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The Food Of Morocco

By Paula Wolfert
Ecco - 2011

26th March 2012

"The Snake" (M'Hanncha)

The almond paste filling made up nicely. I followed the suggestion to let the almonds sit in the water for an hour so that they would be softer to grind. Removing the skins which had filled with water, dark water spurted out that stained everything it touched. The almonds too had taken on a dark hue. The next time I wouldn’t let the almonds sit in the water for more than 5 minutes. The small pieces of mastic exploded under my pestle and ground nicely. I did try one as you can chew this sap as gum and it reminded my of the all natural spruce gum that I used to buy in Maine; I think it could make a good substitute that is easier to obtain, but I checked on-line and it was not cheaper. I used half of the suggested amount of rose water. I took Zosia’s suggestion to use the filo dough. But it also was difficult to manipulate. One sheet makes such a thin covering that it would tear while rolling and also when trying to shape it into a spiral (especially in the beginning which dissuaded me from trying to make individual snakes.). You can see the tears in my picture taken before coating with powdered sugar. I worried that the heavy concentration of cinnamon in the egg yolk would overwhelm the delicate taste of the almond paste filling, but it did not. I had planned to use the chopped almonds instead of the powdered sugar, but am glad that I did not want to peel any more almonds as that would have been overkill. There were definitely enough almonds in the filling. After baking, the filling tasted a little caramelized and amazingly good in the delicate crisp pastry. I do think you could bake it to look like a rattle snake with a little manipulation and that could also be stunning.

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