Peckish Sister's Reviews
465 recipes reviewed. Showing 51 to 100Sort by: Book Title 
| Date | Rating | Recipe Title
Best Slow Cooker Cookbook Ever: Versatility and Inspiration for New Generation Machines
By Natalie Haughton
William Morrow Cookbooks - 1995
I like this flexible recipe as it takes either lean ground beef or turkey. It calls for dried apricots, but also says you can substitute raisins. It is very flavorful and I have used it in empanadas, soft tacos, and burritos and other recipes that call for picadillo. All the preparation is done at the beginning, so it is a good choice when you do not want to be tied to the stove around dinner time, and it is easy to serve the leftovers in a different way.
useful (0)
Sometimes I am just in the mood for hominy, am this fills the bill. This is a very hearty stew with pork, chicken, and various chilies. It seems like too much meat to me, and I usually omit the chicken. I also reduce the chili powder and have always omitted the ancho chilies, but am becoming more adventurous and will include them next time. Serve with hot biscuits or cornbread.
useful (1)
This is quite a special pasta sauce. The 4 hours of cooking on low makes the meat very tender. When the kids first started table foods, this was great for that reason. The flavor is explosive with the Italian sausage and fresh basil; you can vary it by using hot or mild sausage. What I really love about it is when you add the fresh basil and cream at the end and it turns a very bright orange color.
useful (0)
Even though it used chicken broth, not coconut milk, this was still excellent. It is very convenient to make as everything is in one pot including the rice. Snow peas are thrown in at the end with pre-cooked shrimp after everything else has cooked. This is another recipe with a short cooking time (4 hours). The spices are intense and the fresh lime juice along with coconut, raisins, peppers and onions give a lot of flavor surprises as well as good variety in textures.
useful (0)
This sounded really good, like a dish to have for brunch (cooks in 5 to 6 hours). It was quite awful. It might have tasted better if I used a different type of frozen has brown potatoes or if it cooked longer. It also contains ham, bell peppers and a cream cheese topping. I hope to have the courage to try it again.
useful (0)
I love this recipe with a finish of orange peel, brandy, mini marshmallows and chopped pecans. Roast the pecans first and you will like this even better. I like cooking the yams this way for thanksgiving as they are fancy for company and it gives you more room in the oven or microwave for something else.
useful (0)
A reasonable slowcooker rib recipe that uses a cheap cut of meat. I don’t find it possible to trim the fat as they suggest. Instead after cooking and before adding the remaining barbeque sauce, I pour off the accumulated liquid and fat which is considerable. I like to use different barbeque sauces for a variety in taste.
useful (0)
This is a really excellent use of cheap country pork ribs with hoisin sauce, soy sherry, ginger: the usual Chinese spices, but also a nice sweetness from honey, a lot of garlic and grated orange rind for freshness. I am always a fan of cooked scallions and this has a whole bunch along with the crunch of water chestnuts. Great with rice and a green vegetable.
useful (1)
The most difficult part of this recipe is finding the 3 packages of Hunter sauce mix (they suggest Knorr) which is the basis for the rich and distinctive gravy in this dish. It takes frozen baby onions, but I prefer the taste of onion chunks. It also takes ½ pound of fresh mushrooms and I have used 1 pound and it still tasted great. My family loves it served over a large mound of mashed potatoes as recommended.
useful (0)
This flavorful stew is made with lean pork and is good with either the squash or with a substitution of sweet potato. It is somewhat sweet with raisins and brown sugar, but depending on which red wine you use, it balances the flavor and is savory with the addition of the Worcestershire sauce. Very nice for a cool fall day.
useful (0)
I usually cringe at the idea of cooking seafood in the slow cooker, but this is another recipe that has a short cook time. I used salmon for the fish and the shrimp and bay scallops as directed. I am not a fan of cooked green pepper and so substituted extra celery. It is in a tomato and wine based sauce and contains a lot of herbs. It was very good.
useful (0)
This was a nice one pot meal with the rice thrown right in. I cut back on the curry powder, but added extra apple (large apples) and mango chutney (to finish the bottle). You have to brown the ground beef and onion, but other than that, easy to put together. This is one of their recipes that fits well in a regular (3 ½ quart) slow cooker. Their suggestion of a cucumber yogurt salad on the side is a good one.
useful (0)
This seemed like a fairly straightforward beef stew recipe with 1 cup dry red wine and a can of tomatoes. But it turned out too sour. Next time I would either try a different recipe, a different type of wine, or perhaps a teaspoon of sugar would have helped.
useful (0)
The Best Vegetarian Recipes: From Greens to Grains, from Soups to Salads: 200 Bold Flavored Recipes
By Martha R. Shulman
William Morrow Cookbooks - 2001
This was a nice vinaigrette, although a little too heavy on the oil for me. I see that she has two versions of this recipe and this is the one without yogurt. I made it just as the recipe specified with pre-ground cumin. I was expecting more punch from the cumin. I think it would be great with freshly toasted cumin seed ground up in a mortar and pestle.
useful (0)
Although the other reviews of this recipe from her other cookbooks were not too good, I still wanted to try another yeast galette pastry recipe. The dough was so dry that I could not add all of the specified flour. That never happens to me in humid Florida. The recipe should have been enough for two galettes, but I could barely roll out the full recipe to the correct size. It made a nice enough galette, but without egg wash and sugar, was not particularly pretty. It also didn't taste particularly great. I made the apple galette, and we ate it soon enough that it did not get soggy.
useful (0)
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.
useful (0)
I thought this was similar to a pasta dish I throw together without a recipe until I followed this recipe to the letter. It has a great complexity of flavors. I would not have thrown in so many salty olives of my own accord, but there were enough fresh tomatoes to compensate. We do prefer it with angel hair pasta and a little parmesan on top. This is a great quick fresh pasta dish to throw together at the last minute with ingredients that you probably have on hand.
useful (0)
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.
useful (1)
This is great pasta to throw together in a hurry with ingredients you might have on hand. I loved the saltiness of the feta cheese with the tomatoes in this recipe. It is a very simple recipe and might not be something I would make if I had tons of time. But for a quick light dinner, it was very nice.
useful (1)
This was very good and I am always looking for an excuse to eat Arugula. The strong flavors of the feta, vinaigrette and the arugula went very well together. I used small tomatoes, which formed small wedges when cut. Even so, I would prefer the tomatoes more in smaller bite-sized chunks rather than the specified wedges.
useful (0)
I had a very similar experience to QS. I tried a new kind of apple, SweeTango. Very good for eating and cooking, both sweet and tart at the same time. The fragrance of the cooking apples was amazing. When I was ready to stop cooking the apples I had some juice in the bottom of the pan that I reduced to a syrup after taking the apples out. We also tried to eat it up warm. The galette was quite hard and not that flavorful.
useful (0)
Better homes and gardens homemade cookies cook book
By Better Homes and Gardens
Meredith Corp - 1975
I was looking for a sugar cookie recipe that was rolled into balls, then into sugar, instead of a rolled cut-out cookie. This worked OK, but we should have rolled the complete cookie into sugar, instead of just the top. We used a huge assortment of sugars including plain sugar mixed with cinnamon. It was a great activity for kids of all ages to roll lumps of dough into balls and dip into sugar and sprinkles. The favorite ones were rolled into a mixture of same color sugar and nonpareils. I thought the dough could have used additional sugar, but these were a complete crowd pleaser.
useful (2)
These rich bar cookies each have a whole date stuffed with a whole (small) pecan. This was a most unusual recipe and fun to make. But it took a long time especially since I started with cracking the pecans! Eating just one cookie is very satisfying with the range of tastes and textures. Worth making again. I was not sure how well it would store, but refridgerated it should be OK.
useful (1)
Economical and restrained brownies, but still very delicious. These are made in an 11 X 7" pan (so smaller than my usual 9 X 13" pan). The first layer is an oatmeal, flour, brown sugar and butter crust. The second layer is walnut brownie, and the third layer is fudge frosting. I was shocked that the whole recipe only took 2 squares of unsweetened chocolate (no cocoa) and only 5/8 of a cup of butter. My favorite brownie recipe takes 8 squares of unsweetened chocolate. My son loved them (second only to marshmallow brownies).
useful (0)
We had hoped that these would be similar to the Chewy Hermit Bars, but these were good unremarkable cookies that were eary to whip up with ingredients on hand.
useful (0)
So delicious, they are dangerous. This recipe in the book is a little odd as it is Just two paragraphs at the bottom of a page without a separate list of ingredients. I was inspired to try it as these were one of my mother's favorite cookies. These are dense, full of flavor and the walnuts in addition to the raisins add great bursts of flavor.
useful (0)
These economical brownies only use cocoa powder, but have very intense chocolate flavor and appetizing dark color. The half a cup of chopped nuts are sprinkled on top of the frosting also made with cocoa powder and buttermilk. The texture of the brownies was so very smooth, cake-like, dense and moist I was almost convinced it was from a cake mix and I baked them myself. This made a large 15 X 10" pan full. I lined it with heavy duty foil so I could bend up the side to assure that the batter or frosting did not overflow the sides. A great potluck dish that was very popular.
useful (0)
Blue Ribbon Breads
By Margie C. Jensen, Carole Wade, Jr. Arch Cheney, Borge B. Anderson and Associates
Country Kitchen Press - 1977
If you like Elephant Ears, you will love this mini- elephant ear version. I have been baking a version of this recipe for 24 years. I don’t make it very often, but it is great for a special occasion. This time I made a double batch for a bake sale. It is such buttery dough, that I kept the formed roll in the refrigerator at all times, except for the part I was rolling out. Instead of using half dark brown sugar and half white for the filling and for rolling, I substituted an equal amount of light brown sugar. I always have trouble with running out of the sugar cinnamon mixture for rolling out the crisps and with a double batch, it emphasized that for me. So I tried using just enough so that the dough did stick a little as apposed to seeing how much sugar I could make stick – the results were very different. With as much sugar as possible, they could be rolled out thinner, were very crispy, covered with a delightful layer of melted sugar but the cinnamon swirl going through the center could not really be visualized. Also, it was imperative to use parchment to keep them from burning, repeated scrubbing your pan, etc. I found I really liked the less sugary version, they were thicker, but you could actually taste the flakey pastry and it still did taste sweet enough.
useful (1)
This oil based quick bread used finely grated carrots which I took care of in the chopping part of my food processor. It took ½ cup of fine coconut and I used unsweetened natural coconut. This turned out as a bright orange short loaf which I made into finger sandwiches with cream cheese. The coconut’s texture matched that of the carrot and the flavor was not noticeable. I liked that it did not take any extra steps of melting butter, chopping nuts, etc. and could be whipped up in a hurry. I would make this again.
useful (1)
Body & Heart Smart Cooking
By Cabot Creamery
- 1997
We wanted to cook something using a large bag of huge potatoes and a nice block of Cabot Cheddar and this recipe from a promotional cookbook from Cabot Creamery seemed to fill the bill. We microwaved the potatoes instead of baking them. The directions were a little sketchy. It said to combine the sour cream butter, grated cheddar and onion flakes, but did not indicate that heating was involved, so we didn’t, but then we were unable to pour the mixture over the potatoes. However, it still worked out well. Unfortunately my onion flakes had gone bad, so we used chives from the garden, and could not resist crumbling bacon on top. The flavor of the Cabot cheddar came through and was memorable. It worked well as a main course.
useful (0)
The Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Cookbook: Recipes and Reflections from FORREST GUMP
By Editors of Southern Living Magazine
Oxmoor House - 1994
This was a fairly quick and easy, oven-baked shrimp toast covered with a milk sauce and intriguingly cover with cheese, tomato slices and after baking, crumbled bacon. We realized we had to be at some school function just as it came out of the oven and we ate on the run. It was hot, comforting and delicious, but there are probably better things to do with shrimp.
useful (0)
Website: Caipirinha Recipe
I like this recipe because it uses superfine sugar which goes into solution easier than regular or natural sugar used in other recipes. This recipe also has a great ratio of ingredients. If you have spent any time in Brazil and particularly if you came back with a bottle of Cachaca, I highly recommend this recipe.
useful (0)
The Complete America's Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook
By Editors at America's Test Kitchen
Cook's Illustrated - 2009
This is my favorite wilted spinach salad. I like the dressing, it is minimal and brings the only problem to the salad; I never get enough wilting. This may be exacerbated by my tendency to sneak in more spinach. I think the solution is to add the spinach to the dressing in the pan. By the time I scrape all the dressing out of the pan and onto the spinach, it has already cooled quite a bit. I also have one boiled egg per person if you are having this for a meal.
useful (2)
We used a double recipe of this marinade on a charcoal-grilled butterflied leg of lamb (for that grilling technique see The New Basics Cookbook – Butterflied Leg of Lamb P 469). It has all the flavors I want when cooking lamb – garlic, fresh rosemary, also fresh thyme and olive oil. This turned out to be the best tasting leg of lamb we ever had. The flavor really penetrates much more than all of those times I spent forever sticking slivers of garlic into a leg of lamb. I wanted to review this recipe before I forgot (again) where it came from because that would be tragic.
useful (1)
I made this hot, curry paste and coconut milk dish for my family, knowing that it would be so hot I would not even be able to try one bite. They absolutely loved it, fighting over the leftovers. I liked that it was full of vegetables and the fresh lime juice, basil and mint added at the finish were appreciated.
useful (0)
OK, so it took me 6 ½ hours of near constant activity to produce one pan of totally amazing pecan rolls. The first time I made this recipe using the cookbook for that year of the TV show, I went out and bought the pan specified, a tall sided non-stick 9X13” metal pan. Making these for a bake sale was not one of my better ideas as you will want to keep and eat them yourself after all of that work. In addition to making the dough, filling and caramel glaze for the pan, you also make the pecan topping separately. Unfortunately I let them over bake a little and then went to sleep after turning them out of the pan and so they did not get covered on a timely basis, and so were a little dry. But these were still quite spectacular with all of that sticky caramel and crunchy pecans on top and they brought a very good price individually at the bake sale. Well worth the effort if you hanker for an amazing pecan roll experience.
useful (2)
This recipe turned out OK for me. I have made it better before using another recipe. I probably shouldn’t have substituted and then overcooked the angel hair pasta (for the spaghetti). I also skipped the fresh parsley as my plants look a little sad. However I had everything else on hand and will give this recipe another try.
useful (1)
This brined smoky turkey was just right. We had a bird on the smaller end of the range (12 – 14 lbs) and it barely fit in our Weber grill. We skipped using the V-rack as it would have interfered with the lid. The amount of coals was perfect. On the last “leg” of cooking it took the longer period of time. I like that cooking the turkey this way frees up the oven for all the other cooking. This is about the third time we have done it and having the temperatures in the 70s helped. We have had trouble keeping the charcoal going when the weather has not cooperated (cold and windy).
useful (1)
You may have everything on hand for this except the arugula. I used the bow tie pasta option. This can be whipped up quickly. My arugula was a bit bitter, but tasted great paired with the sun-dried tomato pesto and the creamy goat cheese on top. I like that each person can add s much or as little goat cheese as they like. Next time I will add more of the pasta water (it is done to taste) to the pesto as it was very thick on the pasta.
This is a great quick and easy pasta dish. It was remarked that it would be great around Christmas with the red of the pesto, the dark green of the arugula and the bow ties just seem to emphasize that theme.
useful (1)
I was curious to see how this recipe compared to that of the Barefoot Contessa. There were major differences with the addition of oats, powdered sugar and cornstarch. The directions and pictures were very clear. Baking the shortbread in the collar of my 9.25” spring form pan opened on a rimmed baking sheet did not work for me as the fit was so tight it did not open any. When the short bread baked it wrinkled and flaked off in places as it had no where to expand. It might be a little trickier, but next time I would place the bottomless spring form on my largest un-rimmed baking sheet. I substituted rolled barley for the oats (food sensitivity). I had a hard time getting them ground into flour, ending up with lots of hard bits even when I sieved it. It was my own fault as I used a small food processor instead of the specified coffee grinder or blender. However, it is hard not to like real butter short bread. I love the shape of it, it tasted great and I will definitely make this recipe again.
useful (3)
This crispy, chewy, delicious simple Focaccia was really liked by everyone who tried it. I made 4 loaves (two recipes worth in separate bowls). It did take the whole day, but was really worth it. I usually throw more toppings on my Focaccia, but was content to use my garlic-infused olive oil and fresh rosemary from the garden. Even though the bread tasted oily, it was only on the outside of the bread. This recipe had much less oil than many of the recipes I have tried where the bread is very tender. I loved this bread, but don’t recommend it if you also suffer from TMJ!
useful (0)
Oh the bitterness of all those rich walnuts! This recipe has an additional cup of ground walnuts in addition to the 1 cup of finely chopped nuts. Now I know what I spent hours peeling those walnuts for in The Pie and Pastry Bible recipes. To a New England palate, I do not think the bitterness may be as overwhelming (having grown up there myself). The son I made the cookies for loved them. One positive factor is that you will not eat too many at one time. They also wait until the cookie is cool to dust with powdered sugar. One of my favorite parts of the Russian Teacakes was the repeated rolling while warm in powdered sugar so that it made its own icing. I will go back to my Betty Crocker recipe for Russian Tea Cakes.
useful (1)
I was curious to see how these compared to the Barefoot Contessa’s. I am hoping to find some oatmeal recipes that taste OK with rolled barley (mine is rather thick) as a substitute. Unfortunately I forgot to omit the sugar, but was craving maple, so threw in the maple syrup anyway. I was very grateful that the recipe only made 8 scones and also that I had a scone pan (King Arthur) for the gooey dough that resulted. I managed to make a circle of dough, cut it into 8 triangles with a pizza cutter using just a little bit extra flour for the spatula and pizza cutter. The recipe was not clear on the maple-pecan variation on whether or not to glaze and add the 1 TLBS of sugar since there was a maple glaze applied after baking and cooling. I added the milk/cream/egg glaze but skipped the sugar and the maple glaze. I needed to cook them longer as with the wet dough, it took longer to get done in the middles of the larger scones. The end product looked like scones thanks to the scone pan, but tasted more like muffins. The maple flavor was not pronounced without the maple glaze. Regardless, they did taste excellent and may be the best tasting product with the rolled barley substituted for the oats. I think if you took the option with quick oats, it would be a drier, more manageable dough. I was a little worried about the extra toasted rolled grain on top, but the wet glaze added on top seemed to soften them up just enough.
useful (0)
I like that the blueberries are added last and that you can use frozen blueberries without turning the entire dough blue-grey. This was a very interesting way to work the butter by grating frozen sticks halfway, leaving the handles to be put away for another use. I am not always a fan of citrus peel, but I liked the addition of the grated lemon peel here. I cut the long rectangle into 3 perfect 4” squares instead of 4 - 3”squares so I ended up with 6 very large scones. This dough was too soft for me and it would have turned out OK if I had used my scone pan. My next mistake was to remember that I had not brushed the tops with butter and sprinkled on the extra sugar after they had been in the oven for 1-2 minutes. I thought it would be all right to pull the pan out and do this, but apparently the dough had already warmed up so that the final product looked awful, spread out and leaking butter. But they still disappeared in a hurry and there was a little fighting over the leftovers in the freezer. I will look forward to making this recipe again and doing it right – there are still a lot of blueberries in the freezer.
useful (0)
Chocolate satisfaction in every bite. I made this straight forward elegant cake for a special teenager’s birthday. (I hate making frosting and icing cakes.) You just have to schedule enough time to bake the first layer, then enough chilling time for that and the subsequent mousse layers. My only problem came with unmolding. It had chilled enough, but my springform pan doesn’t have as much give as I would like and whichever direction I used to get the cake through was the wrong choice. I had unsightly streaks through all of the layers (on the outside). It was a real disappointment to me that it did not look like the picture, but everyone seemed to really enjoy it.
useful (1)
I had extra cream on hand and these were the easiest scones that I have made in a long time. I was happy to have the currents on hand that the recipe required; they gave just the right amount of sweetness to the scones. This was a very wet dough and once again I was saved by the scone pan forming 8 perfect scones. This is a perfect recipe to whip up in a hurry if you have cream and currents on hand.
useful (0)
Very good peanut butter cookies, but they were more soft than chewy. The directions were excellent. I did not have extra-crunchy peanut butter, so I decreased the peanut butter from 1 cup to 2/3 of a cup and increased the roasted salted peanuts that you grind up from 1 cup to 1 ½ cups. My son thought they were the best peanut butter cookies ever. I made them smaller than suggested and was able to get away with not dipping the fork into ice water every time.
useful (0)
We were looking for a garlicky pasta recipe to use with precooked Langostinos and adapted this recipe. It makes a perfectly seasoned sauce with a total of only 5 tablespoons of fat/oil. We barely heated the langostinos at the end. I caught myself throwing away the
langostino juice, tasted it and the flavor was phenomenal so I substituted what I had been able to save for clam juice. The flavor is also from vermouth, the garlic and lemon juice. We will definitely do this again the right way with raw shrimp.
useful (0)
Crisp and chewy around the edges and a rich fudgy chocolate center. These rich chocolate cookies are different from anything I ever ate before and are a revelation of what chocolate cookies can be. Timing and following the directions as to when to take t the cookies out are essential. I walked away from the first batch and they cooked all the way through and were just plain cookies. The rest turned out perfect. I do make my cookies smaller than they do and so cooked them for about 2 minutes less.
useful (1)
The best part of this recipe was that the spiciness of the cookie meant that I was satisfied with only one! The ginger flavor was nice and strong, I used unsulfured molasses, so that flavor did not overwhelm, and the ground black pepper added to the spicy note. I found it easier to shape the cookies by dropping the dough directly into the container of sugar from 2 spoons without first rolling it around on my hands as it was a very wet dough. A third spoon was used to make the transfer to the cookie sheet. You were admonished not to overbake and so I underbaked them as directed, but thought that they tasted too raw in the middle. It could be the humid Florida factor. This is a flavorful, pretty cookie and I will bake it again.
useful (1)