Sovay's Profile

From: Northern England,

Joined: October 7th, 2012

About me: I've embarked on a mission to cook something new from every cookery book I own - currently 260 - and am planning to use my account here to keep track (thanks to rfb from Librarything for tipping me off to the existence of this site). I've made a couple of rules for myself: to cook the recipe as given, with no substitution or variation unless suggested by the author; and to try to pick a genuinely new dish from each book - in other words, as I've cooked many Leek and Potato Soups in my time, I don't get to count Leek and Potato Soup as a new dish just because I haven't used this specific recipe before (unless it has really significant differences from the usual versions).

Hodge Podge from Mrs Beeton's Cookery Book

Beef and vegetable soup with beer - turned out disappointingly bland. The recipe had no seasoning other than salt and pepper - having tried it, I added a stock cube and some Worcester sauce, which helped... read more >

recipe reviews (241)
book reviews (5)
useful review votes (43)

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Sovay's Reviews

2 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 2Sort by: Title | Date | Rating

Feast: Food that Celebrates Life

By Nigella Lawson
Chatto & Windus - 2004

Expensive but divine - a kind of Middle Eastern trifle. My family were dubious at first due to the absence of custard but soon changed their minds. I made a half-size version and it was plenty for six - though if I'd made the original size we'd probably still have eaten the lot.

It's definitely worth starting early and allowing a full day for the cake to absorb the apricot syrup.

useful (1)  

I wish I could give two different star ratings here. The cake itself is excellent: really easy method and would have been easier still if it hadn't turned out that my food processor is about half the capacity of Nigella's. However I processed the dry ingredients with the butter (eta - the butter needs to be cold for this to work - soft butter clumps together instead of blending with the dry ingredients), tipped the result into a bowl, briefly processed the eggs, sour cream and vanilla until blended and mixed them in, and it turned out fine - great taste and texture and bears out my conviction that cocoa powder makes just as well-flavoured a cake as melted chocolate with a lot less trouble and worry.

The icing/frosting does use melted chocolate and is a lot more trouble for a lot less reward - far too sweet. The taste of sugar completely overwhelmed the chocolate; next time I make this cake I shall try a classic ganache instead.

So the cake gets 5 stars, icing gets 1 making an average of 3.

eta: Ganache is definitely the way to go. I found 200g chocolate (I used Bourneville as I've found the best quality dark chocolate can produce a ganache just the wrong side of bitter) and 200 ml cream was enough for a generous filling and coating for the top only. 250 of each would probably be needed if the sides are to be coated too.

useful (1)