aj12754's Profile

From: Montclair, NJ USA

Joined: November 22nd, 2009

About me: I can't be the only person who starts thinking about what to cook next while I am doing the dishes for the meal I just finished eating ... right?

Favorite cookbook: I flirt with all of them. But I am a sucker for good writing and great pictures.

Favorite recipe: Pretty much any combo of good bread and great cheese.


Latest review:

June 20th, 2020

Slow-Roasted Tomatoes from One Good Dish

A dish that could not be simpler to make, and absolutely delicious. Topped the cooled tomato with a room temperature slice of mozzarella drizzled with EVOO and some ribbons of basil. A real treat. read more >


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aj12754's Reviews


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

Think Like a Chef

By Tom Colicchio
Clarkson Potter - 2007

24th July 2012

Ratatouille : page 208

This is just fine as ratatouilles go -- slightly easier and quicker than the version at Smitten Kitchen but with not quite the depth of flavor of Deb's version. Colicchio has you cook the ingredients (onion, zucchini, eggplant, peppers and tomatoes) separately and serially, adding additional garlic and fresh basil at each step, plus salt and pepper. Then you toss them all back in the same pan and cook for another fifteen minutes. After that, you drain the cooked veggies in a colander saving the juices in a bowl, return the juices to the pan and reduce them until slightly thickened, and then return all the veggies to pan again. I expected those thickened juices to really enhance the flavor ... but I ended up with basically no juices when I drained the veggies.

I served this with red snapper fillets -- crisping the skin per the recipe for braised red snapper on p. 61. But then instead of braising the snapper in the lemon vinaigrette called for in that recipe, I set the fillets on top of the ratatouille, covered the pan and braised the fish for about five minutes.

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