kaye16's Reviews
1460 recipes reviewed. Showing 1151 to 1200Sort by: Book Title 
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Website: The Pioneer Woman
Pretty good stuff.
- 4 cups of chopped rhubarb was more like 6-7 pieces
- I used only 1 cup of sugar (sucre de canne, raw brown sugar) for the rhubara instead of 1-1/2 cups. It was fine.
- I used only 1/4 tsp almond extract instead of 1/2 tsp. This was a nice amount and I suspect 1/2 tsp would be too much.
- I used 1/2 cup butter instead of 1/4 cup shortening or lard and 1/4 cup butter.
- Lazy me mixed the crust in the cuisinart rather than by hand.
- I sliced the rhubarb by hand, but should have chopped in the cuisinart since I was getting that out already.
Easy to assemble. Tasty to eat.
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Polenta
By Brigit Legere Binns, Debroah Denker
Chronicle Books - 1996
Really a nice dish. It's the whole main course, you don't need anything with it.
The birds have a mixture of prosciutto and rosemary rubbed under the skin. They're then cooked "bricked", weight down by a heavy skillet. I cooked mine under a cast iron skillet in which was sitting a 3-qt saucepan full of water. They took a bit longer to cook than the book says, but it wasn't a bit deal.
The cabbage side was excellent and easy and worthy remembering. Finely sliced cabbage with a bit of minced shallot and a slog of chicken stock are sautéed/steamed. When done, you stir in a spoonful of grainy mustard. Amazingly good for not much work.
The polenta croûtes were a nice touch to bring the plate together. (In all the recipes for grilled polenta shapes, Binns has you brush them with melted butter before grilling. I spray mine with olive oil and find thme delicious.)
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This was our xmas dinner in 1998! It was excellent. Beautiful duck breasts, soft polenta with a delicious sauce of mushrooms (dried porcini and regular).
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Xmas dinner 2010. Delicious.
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Pot Pies: Comfort Food Under Cover
By Diane Phillips
Broadway - 2000
Easy and delicious. Pork with ginger, garlic, S&P, stewed with mango nectar and chicken stock. No unsweetened mango nectar available where I shop, so I just puréed some mango bits. Clever thing was curry powder stirred into the melted butter for the layers of phyllo. A really nice touch.
Can't imagine this serving eight as advertised. We'll have four servings only.
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A pot pie this isn't, but good it is, an herby tomato sauce over shrimp. Feta simply isn't a "crust" and doesn't scratch the same itch. We sliced some bread so we could soppy up all the good tastes.
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4.5 even, maybe not quite "perfect".
Not a pot pie at all, the topping is grated "Swiss" cheese.
Nevertheless it is quite good. I had about a quarter of the salmon (350g) and made a more-or-less half recipe, which served two nicely as a one-dish meal.
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This is amazingly good for very few ingredients. Easy to assemble. It's really a bit of a stretch to call this a pot pie, maybe because it's baked in the oven? No pastry, so real sauce (although a sauce did develop in the oven).
I had two largish kip filets and made a halfish recipe. I cut them in half to fit them into my largest square dish (10"?). Used about 200g gorgonzola, the whole package that I had.
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Pretty good and quite easy. I used cooked turkey, rather than chicken, since I had that to use up. It was short on veggies, so I added some frozen peas with the meat. The cream made for a nice, yes, creamy sauce. Very tasty and satisfying.
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Quite tasty, and easy to assemble, if pushing the limits of what a pot pie is.
- I made a half recipe and baked our two servings in individual casserole dishes. The six servings suggsted for the full recipe would be pretty skimpy.
- I used a small can of yellow corn for the topping, adding half the optional cream.
- I probably had close to the full amount of the chopped shallots and bell peppers. This was nice; don't skimp on these.
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Website: Proud Italian Cook
Very good way to cook fish.
I used haddock instead of cod, since there was not cod today.
Might be a good idea to package the fillets individually; if not, cut through zucchini ribbons before lifting the fillets out.
Yum.
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Put 'em Up! Fruit: A Preserving Guide & Cookbook: Creative Ways to Put 'em Up, Tasty Ways to Use 'em Up
By Sherri Brooks Vinton
Storey Publishing, LLC - 2013
Half recipe made only about 1-1/2cup, rather than 2-1/2cups advertised.
Tasty stuff.
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The Quick and Easy Vegetarian Cookbook
By Ruth Ann Manners
M. Evans - 1978
This is my go-to recipe of zucchini pancakes, even if I embroider upon it.
The recipe says it serves 4 as a main course; as stated, it serves only 2 who aren't particularly hungry. This evening I made about 1.5 recipe (needing to use up zucchinis and thinking I'd have some for the freezer) and we ate them all. They were good, and I'll have to do this again before long, since I've got lots of zukes to use up.
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Raising the Heat: Cooking with Fire and Spice
By Paul Gayler
Lyons Press - 2002
This book has been sitting on my shelf, ignored, for several years. Why, I don't know. Based on this recipe alone, I'd guess it's going to get a lot more use.
Swordfish steaks are coated with crushed black peppercorns and broiled quickly. Topped with a delicious sauce of (seeded) tomatoes, garlic, chili flakes, preserved lemon, lemon zest, and lemon juice. Served on a bed of chard. Well, there was no chard at the shop this week, so I used spinach instead. Never mind.
A really tasty dinner.
(The recipe said to discard the pulp of the preserved lemon. Instead I minced it and tossed with some steamed haricots verts, a really nice touch.)
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Real Cooking
By Nigel Slater
Penguin Books - 1999
Good, easy potatoes with a vaguely Indian taste, but could be used with anything.
If you've got potatoes already cooked this is a snap to make, otherwise you'll have to boil them up first.
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Good idea for a tasty risottto, but ...
- Serves 2 very generously; three would do.
- Way too much butter. I used about 1tbl olive oil for the pancetta and onion and didn't add the extra butter with the cheese.
- Too much blue cheese, too, even the blue cheese lovers thought so. (Used Fourme d'Ambert, which is middle strong sort of blue cheese. That was good. Stronger would be too much. Slater suggests Gorgonzola.)
- Did the regular sort of risotto making, adding stock ladle by ladle rather than by thirds.
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Really yummy stuff. This is supposed to serve four generously -- three of us ate it all. Yes, we were piggies, but it was very more-ish.
Used ~600g parsnips plus some leftover mashed potatoes for the topping. The sweetish parsnips plus the warm spices (cumin, coriander, garam masala) made a lovely topping. Sweet potatoes might work also, all or part of topping.
Used leftover roast lamb for the filling, with some of the leftover sauce from roasting plus chicken stock.
Could be made ahead and roasted just before eating.
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Another winner from this book. I had a bit more chicken than asked (skinless, boneless breasts); was generous with the chili flakes. A nice meal with a salad.
Easy to make, but takes a bit of wall clock time, twenty minutes or more to marinate the chicken, then bake for twenty minutes, then combine with couscous and bake for another five minutes. But nothing difficult or rushed. Lots of time to make a nice salad. And a very tasty result.
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This recipe is advertised as being a side for 2, but there's a big problem with the amounts. It calls for 225g of rice. I stopped measuring at about 110g, which was about 5/8 cup, way more than needed for two. DH said he'd eat any extra, and he did, but we had enough for four.
I used my smaller amount with all the spices, which probably wasn't necessary, at least for the turmeric, since the rice was very yellow.
Didn't have any kaffir lime leaves, so skipped that bit.
Pretty tasty, and a bright addition to the plate. Just way too much as written.
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Not bad, easy. Maybe not quite as fantastic as other of Slater's dishes, but still quite good. I used real tomatoes, deseeded rather than canned. Was generous with the two teaspoons of harissa, but the dish wasn't that hot. Served over whole wheat couscous.
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Quite good this was.
- Slater asks for shredded lemon grass. Hand-cut "shredded" was a bit too chewy. Usually lemongrass is minced. I wonder if he means microplaned?
- Shakes of soy sauce and rice wine? I used 1/4 teaspoon and suspect that 1/2 teaspoon would be better, since the sauce was tasty and a bit more would have been nice.
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Real Fast Food
By Nigel Slater
Penguin UK - 1993
This is more a method than a recipe. You can vary it as you like with herbs and cheese. I had a pair of rather large tomatoes and cut just the tops off, rather than halving them. An egg, including its white, filled a tomato about halfway up. Slightly smaller tomatoes might be better. I put in about 1-1/2 tablespoons of cream, but I think this was too much. No tarragon in the garden, but lots of basil. The eggs took considerably more than 20 mintes to get done. I served the tomatoes surrounded by a pilaf, rather than on fried bread. This made a nice, simple lunch dish.
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Simple and good.
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This recipe sounds odd, but it's really quite good. One time, lacking the potato, I used rice and corn instead. It's meant to be a side, I guess, but I usually serve it as a vegetarian main with a salad.
- Getting 12 slices out of a 10-oz eggplant is a big iffy. A bigger one or two smaller might be needed.
- 2/3 cup oil for brushing is way too much. I used 1/2 cup tonight and will go back to 1/3 cup next time. (Some of the leftover oil made a pretty good vinaigrette, and the rest will not go to waste.)
- 2 tbl butter is enough, but maybe a bit extra butter.
- The ingredient list has 3 garlic cloves; the instructions mention 4. It's up to you.
- If your harissa is salty, be careful in salting the mashed potato/chickpea part.
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Very good. Might rolls this up in a flour tortilla rather than a pita.
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Remarkably good for so little effort.
- I used 125g bleu d'Auvergne; my DH who is only learning to appreciate blue cheeses, thought it was just the right amount.
- With no fresh pasta in the freezer and no time to make it from scratch, I used 6oz dried tagliatelle instead, a good amount for two.
- I didn't quite have 1-1/2 cup cream, so topped up with a bit of milk. But this is much too much liquid. (I wish I'd seen friederike's review mentioning this.) Probably 1 cup is enough.
- I used frozen spinach.
- And I used my stick blender to zap it a bit, not too smooth, but not leafy.
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This sauce has good, strong flavors and it needs a goodly amount of pasta to balance it out. There is probably an error in the amount of pasta shown in the ingredient list. For 2 people, it asks "1 pound fresh or 4 ounces dried pasta". Recipes typically ask 4 ounces of dried pasta per person. I usually use 6-ish ounces for the two of us. For this one, however, 8 ounces would have been better.
Having read Friederike's comment about the saltiness, I did take care to rinse the anchovies well. My olives were pretty salty too. I didn't salt the pasta water, although I'm not sure that makes a big difference.
After I got the sauce stewing in the pot, I thought it looked like an extra tomato wouldn't hurt, so I added one more. (I used oven-dried tomatoes that I keep in the freezer.)
I served the sauce over cascareccia, but I'm thinking something like fettucine might work too.
Extremely easy and fast to make. Water on for the pasta. A bit of chop-chop. (Make a salad as a go-with.) Put the pasta on. Warm the oil. Simmer the sauce. Drain the pasta. Toss with sauce. Serve.
We enjoyed this a lot; Ed said it got an A.
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Real Fast Food: 350 Recipes Ready-to-Eat in 30 Minutes
By Nigel Slater
Overlook Hardcover - 1996
Lamb chops (or chunks of lamb), slathered with a spicy Indian-ish yogurt sauce and grilled under the broiler. Very tasty.
I let the chops marinate for about half an hour before broiling.
Seemed to take a bit longer than suggested to get done.
No matter, they were good.
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- The recipe says it serves 4 as a side. I made a half recipe for 2 and we found it still too much. Think you'd get 6 servings from a whole recipe.
- The recipe has you fry whole spices till fragrant, along with ground turmeric. My turmeric was burnt before the whole spices were nicely fragrant. I dumped out the pan and wiped it out with a paper towel then started again, stirring the turmeric in when the rice was added later. The resulting dish was a bit oddly flavored. I'm not sure if there was still a residue from the burnt turmeric or if the turmeric missed being fried a bit. Will see how it goes another time.
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We liked this. Stuffed some of the butter mixture under the skin of my thighs. Roasted in the oven at a highish temperature, since the broiler was otherwise occupied. Didn't baste as it went, only when I turned over the thighs. Skin wasn't crispy, but the chickie was good.
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We both liked this. I cooked the slices under the broiler. Was surprised that the cracked coriander actually stuck to the slices when I turned them. Squeezed on a bit more lemon juice than asked (with the basil and salt) at the end, which was a good idea I think.
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Website: Real Simple Food & Recipes
www.realsimple.com/food-recipes
Nice tastes here. Easy and fast to make. I made a half recipe.
- The cabbage slaw was good enough to keep on its own. The bell pepper strips should be quite fine, I thought, to balance with the fine strips of cabbage. Some sesame seeds tossed in might be nice for a bit of crunch.
- Even though the chicken has been pounded thin, it should be turned once during the broiling time to ensure that it's cooked through. I basted liberally/frequently. Ed thought the sauce (essentially the same as that on the cabbage slaw) was a bit too strong.
Enjoyable dinner with rice.
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Website: Real Simple Food & Recipes
www.realsimple.com/food-recipes
Delicious and super easy.
I made a halfish recipe using chicken thighs rather than breasts. Cooked these about 30min (European thighs tend to be smaller than US ones), then did the potatoes and haricots verts another 20min. They could have been done a bit longer perhaps.
All delicious.
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Website: Real Simple Food & Recipes
www.realsimple.com/food-recipes
This is almost a good recipe, but didn't work for us.
- I made a half recipe, with halibut.
- The lentil with sweet potato bit was a bit bland.
- I cooked the fish under the broiler rather than sautéing it. No problem here.
- The sauce was really iffy, much too sharp. I have an idea there there is Dijon mustard and there is Dijon mustard. What I have is too strong to do in a 1:1 proportion with wine. On the other hand, it did liven up the lentils. (The rest will turn up as a salad dressing in the next days.)
I've made similar sorts of things that were much better, so probably won't try this again.
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Website: The Recipe Critic
This was excellent, fast and easy.
I made a half recipe as dinner for two. Used dried herbs for oregano, rosemary, and thyme. Very good.
Whole recipe would serve 4, but not 5.
Would probably be good with kip filets cut into bit chunks, but thighs have more flavor.
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Website: The Recipe Critic
No clue what makes this Mongolian. But it is good.
Easy to assemble.
Used about half the sugar, and only about 1/2cup soy sauce, making up difference with water.
Tasty.
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Website: The Recipe Critic
Very good. And very easy. Serve with something to soppy up the lovely creamy sauce.
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Website: The recipe rebel
Pretty darn good stuff. A half recipe made four servings.
- Used home-made Italian sausage.
- Used two "tablets" of frozen spinach, thawed; it looked too little in the meat, but was fine in the sauce.
- Used a can of (seedless) tomato bits in juice for the tomato sauce and diced tomatoes.
- Didn't cook the noodles, but soaked them while I prepared the rest.
- Used the amount of chipotle asked for the whole recipe. On tasting, I thought it was pretty bland, so I added the remaining chipotle from the jar. That made it nicely zingy, but not too hot.
Went directly onto the Do-Me-Again list.
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Recipes: A Quintet Of Cuisines
By Editors of Time-Life Books
Time-Life Books - 1970
Ed thought it tasted just like a good erwtensoep in the Netherlands.
My celeriac took a bit longer than 30min to get done. Might be better to do this for 30min, then add the rest of the veggies.
Meats can be varied by what you have available. Smoked sausage is a must.
My post on this recipe.
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This is a classic Swiss dish. We liked it quite a bit. I'm usually not good at this kind of thing, it it worked well.
I made a halfish recipe (a short 2# of potatoes probably), which fit nicely in my smaller cast iron skillet. Added the layer of sautéed onions as suggested in the note.
If you prepared the potatoes (parboiling, peeling, chilling) the night before, this would be a pretty good weeknight meal.
I added a poached egg to make a meal of it.
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A Bulgarian holiday dish, oven including a little token.
I made S-shaped pastries, similar to what the author was served. These were filled with a feta-yogurt-egg mixture. I served as an accompaniment to soup-for-dinner. Easy to assemble, they would make nice finger food for a party on on a buffet.
My post on this recipe.
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Some disagreement on this one. I liked it, but Ed thought the bacon was too strong a flavor to go with the white fish. I used Parmesan rather than Gouda. (Don't much like the import Gouda in France.)
Don't be tempted to put a bit of the bacon inside the folded fish: reportedly it comes out soggy and unappetizing; it's the crispy bit on top that's appealing.
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Good, but would make thin slices of the preserved lemons next time rather than leaving them in chunks.
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A Bulgarian salad. Pretty good.
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I did the tuna variation of this.
Tasty, but maybe a bit oily, especially since I'm not very good at this frying business.
My post on this recipe.
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A Tunisian salad. I liked, Ed didn't so much.
The instructions for roasting the bell peppers are better for the Eggplant and Pepper Spread recipe on p104.
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Ground up some cooked lamb with the rest of the ingredients, using the food processor rather than the do-it-by-hand instructions. Food processors weren't yet in most everyone's kitchen. A good filling for a stuffed zuke. I used the extra filling to make some samosa-like things.
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A Tunisian potato salad, a nice variation. The potatoes are boiled, then fried briefly with lemon juice, harissa, and ground caraway seeds.
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A pretty, clear broth with little mushroom-filled dumplings. Vegetarian.
Easy to make, but takes a lot of clock time.
Dried mushrooms are soaked for 2 hours, then simmered for another 2 hours until the liquid is reduced. I've never seen them treated like this. The liquid is added to the beet stock. The cooked shrooms are used to make little dumplings. I didn't have time for this, so used cêpe-filled ravioli instead. Have frozen the shrooms to use later.
The soup is beautiful and tasty.
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Recipes: Chinese Cooking (Foods of the World)
By Time-Life
Time-Life - 1973
Instructions badly presented. Quite quick to make. Tasty, and improved with a bit of sambal.
The instructions said to soak the noodles for five minutes in cold water. After more time than that, they weren't very soft at all, so I drained and poured some hot water over them. But for only a few minutes so there were still a bit chewy.
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