kaye16's Reviews
4 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 4Sort by: Title 
| Date | Rating
Jump up and Kiss Me: Spicy Vegetarian Cooking
By Jennifer T. Thompson
Ten Speed Press - 1996
Linguine with Spicy Lentil Sauce : page 99
A full recipe should have served 6, but served only 4 as a one-dish main. Didn't use the minced lemon zest and parsley at the end. My notes say to try a shaped pasta like bowties or shells, rather than linguine.
useful (1)
Pasta with Cannellini Beans and Broccoli : page 95
My notes say this was good, but there was much too much pasta. Probably 8 oz (rather than 1#) would be better, but serve only 2-3.
useful (0)
Spicy Lentil and Feta Cheese Salad : page 205
The two of us ate most of this as dinner, rather than as a salad/side as it is categorized in the book. I used only 1/2tsp cayenne, but a smidge more would have been OK; 1tsp is probably too much. I added some snow peas and chopped cuke for crunch.
useful (0)
Spinach-Stuffed Anchos : page 146
Well, it seemed like a good idea. Not.
First of all, I strongly suspect that Thompson didn't really mean anchos or pasilla chiles, which are dried peppers, but poblanos or chilacas, the fresh forms. Since anchos are rather difficult to come by where I live, I greatly resent that I used a major part of my stash on a mediocre and inappropriate recipe. To eat these, I chopped my chiles quite thoroughly; my husband scrapped any flesh remaining off the inside of of his chiles and discarded the outside.
The filling is basically creamy Parmesan-flavored spinach. Ok, but nothing special.The ingredient list is a bit imprecise. E.g., button mushroom differ greatly in size where I live, but the recipes calls for 8 of them, big ones? small ones? makes a big difference. (I used 6 medium-sized ones; how about that for a waffle?) And how much do 2 cups of spinach leaves weigh?
And the idea of wilted spinach (unchopped) becoming a uniform paste is a little odd. Should I have let it cook to mush (ugh) or should I have zapped it in the blender? Actually, either sounded unappealing, so I just stopped cooking when most of the liquid had evaporated, and it was fine
On the plus side, the dish was fairly quick and easy to make. Two of us ate all four chiles on a bed of polenta, followed by a bit of salad. A lot, but not over-much.
Also, the idea of parboiling the chiles before stuff looks like a good time-saving trick.
If I ever grow fresh poblanos in my garden, I might try this again. Maybe.
useful (0)