friederike's Reviews
3 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 3Sort by: Title 
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Excellent, excellent! Of course I've already confessed earlier that I haven't yet come across a mussel recipe that wasn't pleasant, but this was really a keeper - aromatic, yet not overpowering the mussels, a great balance!
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Very delicious! My MIL made this last night, and it was really good! She's considering mixing the mascarpone with the meat sauce directly because she had a few bites of mascarpone with too little meat sauce or spinach, but I didn't even notice.
Edited 30. October 2016:
I made this lasagna tonight, and I get why my MIL was considering mixing the mascarpone through the meat sauce - it's simply impossible to spread it in a single layer, scattering small bits of mascarpone on each layer with the help of two teaspoons is the best you will manage - and it simply doesn't look nice, as you can see from the photo. My first thought was to add a little milk, but I'm not sure if you wouldn't add too much liquid that way, and of course that would be an extra step, and more dishes to wash.
Definitely remember to defrost the spinach, otherwise you won't be able to layer that either (you might even want to chop it, if you don't mind the extra step). Although not mentioned, I squeezed most of the liquid out of the spinach, and also added a finely diced carrot to the meat sauce (never miss a chance to add extra vegs!). Also, keep an eye on the lasagna, mine browned pretty quickly, so I had to cover it with aluminium foil again for the last ten minutes or so.
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Quite a nice dish. You can eat these as a dessert, preferably with some vanilla ice cream on the side, or as a side dish for a main course - it goes particularly well with strong flavoured meat, braised beef, mutton or game, or something like that.
We used all the spices (lemon zest and cinnamon, as well as cloves and bay leaf - the latter two were optional); for a dessert you could indeed omit the cloves and bay leaf (though it's by no means necessary), but for a side dish I would definitely add them. The recipe also uses 250 ml red wine, and then requires you to add water until the pears are covered. As we're used to recipes that exclusively use red wine, we used 500 ml red wine which we filled up with water (another 250 ml).
One thing I would want to add to the recipe is that they are even nicer if you take them out the sauce after they have cooked, keep them warm, and reduce the sauce to a syrup, about 20 min. You can serve them either warm or cold.
Edited one day later:
I upgraded this dessert to a crumble using this recipe - the idea was good, the execution wasn't. Still, something to keep in mind for the next time.
I also found that I liked how the pears had soaked in the red wine syrup over night; also, the syrup with all it's spices turned out to taste like mulled wine - not really surprisingly, if you think about it. We finished the pears but still have some red wine syrp left over - I wonder if that would still go with something else - chocolate mousse, perhaps?
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