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).


Latest review:

June 10th, 2019

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)

Sovay's Reviews


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3 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 3Sort by: Title | Date | Rating

Flavours of India

By Madhur Jaffrey
BBC Books - 1995

14th March 2014

Cucumber cooked with lentils : page 34

Pretty much what it says on the tin - the lentils form a sauce with coconut milk which would work with a lot of other vegetables as well (I'm planning to try it with cabbage).

I'd make a couple of modifications: firstly the lentils, being pre-soaked, don't absorb that much more liquid during the cooking time so I found I had to reduce the sauce quite fiercely, which I'll avoid next time by adding less water at the outset; and secondly the chillies didn't contribute much flavour in their short cooking time, so I'd add them earlier.

I only had dried curry leaves, not fresh, so they added less flavour at the end; I might try an alternative tarka such as cumin or mustard seeds and maybe a little onion.

useful (1)  


23rd March 2014

Gingery Cabbage and Peas : page 67

I made Gingery Cabbage and Whatever Else Was In My Vegetable Rack, which was broccoli, carrot and beans but no peas. Result was very good - a kind of Indian stir-fry - method would work with any combination of compatible vegetables.

useful (0)  


This is an interesting change from the usual Indian vegetarian dishes of dhal and paneer. The peanut diamonds themselves are pretty straightforward to make. I gave mine 20 minutes in an electric steamer but they could perhaps have done with a little less time - the top looked a bit on the dry side at the end of the steaming time. I found it was best to process the peanuts with the gram flour; when I tried them on their own they just bounced around, but the gram flour weighed them down so the blades could get at them.

I've taken off a star for two reasons, the first being a slight confusion in the instructions for the sauce. This appears to include two identical sets of red onions and garlic cloves, one of which is processed with ground spices to make a spice paste which is then set aside and never mentioned again. It's clear from the ensuing instructions that the sauce should include chopped onion as well, so I fried this additional onion, then added and fried the spice paste before stirring in the yoghurt.

The other issue is that this isn't the most attractive-looking dish; the peanut diamonds are brown and craggy-looking, and the sauce is equally brown and didn't really blend that well, although it tasted fine. I might be inclined to add either a little gram flour or a little tomato paste to bring it together.

useful (0)