friederike's Reviews
6 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 6Sort by: Title 
| Date | Rating
BBC Good Food
(October, 2009)
Billingsgate School Fish Pie : page 70
This one was nice but tasted less of fish and more of other spices than my usual, very basic fish pie; also, it was definitely more work. I may repeat it, but chances are that I’ll rather hang on to the basic version...
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Nice. I would change a few things, but none of them is dramatic. I would probably add an egg (or perhaps two) to make the fish cakes stick better, and I would add more lime zest to the mayonnaise – I tried lime juice instead, but BF complained that that made the mayonnaise turn too sour (I didn’t even notice). Also, while I quite liked the dominant taste of the peas, I would probably use more fish and fewer peas to make the cakes have a stronger taste of fish.
Neither of us could be bothered with cutting chillies, although they probably would have been a good idea.
Edited to add:
The recipe is available online here. You can also review it here.
I tried a similar recipe, Salmon Cakes with Lemon Mayo from Olive: 101 Quick-fix Dishes, but I liked this version better.
Edited 8 January 2016:
We made these again last night. I used pangasius instead of trout, and as I had read several reviews on the BBC website saying the fish cakes were bland, I added quite a bit of dried dill. The resulting fish cakes were quite nice in taste - I didn't taste the dill at all, but I guess it helped anyway ( I would expect potentially bland fish cakes to taste even blander with a characterless fish as pangasius).
However, the texture was a complete failure - they already fell apart before they hit the pan! The only thing that helped a little was deep-frying them on high heat in lots of oil, but I only made two of those before I gave up, tossed them all back into a bowl and added an egg, and that really made a difference (I would still recommend deep-frying, though, if only for the crispness). Is there anything I missed that every proper Englishman knows about making fish cakes? Like, should I have chilled the fish cakes before frying them, is that the reason why I failed? I might actually give that a try some day...
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Fruity Lamb Tagine : page 37
Wonderful dish! Easy to prepare, visually attractive and delicious in taste; and on top of that it falls into what BF calls the 'fire and forget'-category of dishes, giving you a whole hour to prepare other dishes and clean up before your guests arrive…
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Leek, Cheese and Bacon Tart : page 33
Basically this is a variation on my usual recipe of very basic Leek Tart, except that it features soft cheese with garlic and herbs and foregoes the egg-milk-cream mix. On the one hand I like the addition, on the other this might have been the reason why the crust didn’t become crisp at all (BF suggested a rating of only 3 stars at this point) – then again, an egg-milk-cream mix contains even more liquid, so we probably just didn’t give it enough time. It wasn’t quite enough for four, though.
We made this tart with (defrosted) mussels and shrimps instead of bacon, and the combination worked well, too.
Edited to add:
The recipe is available online here. You can also review it here.
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The good news: it's incredibly easy to prepare (just throw everything into a roasting tin and you're nearly done), it's beautiful and distinctly autumnal (it's the cover dish, for that matter), and BF and my guests last night loved it.
The bad news: I didn't. I was a bit disappointed because the flavours of the ingredients didn’t come together. What the sense of that? I thought cooking was the art of combining ingredients and creating something new. Instead, the chicken tasted like chicken (like a very tender chicken, though), the squash tasted like squash, the walnuts tasted like walnuts, and the sage, well, the sage was burnt and didn’t give off any flavour at all.
Edited to add:
The recipe is available online here. You can also review it here.
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Thai-spiced Steamed Mussels : page 114
This recipe is nearly identical to the Mussels with Coriander Cream, Thai Style in Olive 101 Quick Fix Dishes, which is why I will cross-post my review here:
Mussels are always delicious, and I would probably find it hard not to award a 5 star rating to any mussel-dish that keeps it simple. This one is no exception. With coconut cream, fresh coriander and a hint of green curry, it's a welcome change to our usual dish of mussels in white wine.
I was careful with the green curry paste as I didn't want the sharpness to overpower the taste of the mussels, but that wasn't the case; using one teaspoon shouldn't be any problem. Also, we used coconut cream instead of coconut milk, which was a good move, but not enough, for my taste; I would have liked to have a thick sauce not unlike garlic sauce or mayonnaise for dipping. It might be worth it to either try to make an additional sauce based on coconut cream, or to add less white wine and use coconut milk for cooking instead.
You can serve this as a main for two persons, or as an appetizer for up to 6, I guess (the book suggests it is a main dish for 6, but that's humbug).
*****
Thai-spiced Steamed Mussels uses red curry paste instead of green one, chicken stock instead of white wine, and spring onions instead of a red onions (we used normal onions anyway). Additionally, it uses a red chilli, less garlic (2 instead of 4 garlic cloves) and more coconut milk (400ml instead of 142ml). I suspect that these differences won’t make any difference, except for the quantity of coconut milk, which I suspect will be far too much – we probably used no more than 300ml liquid in total for Mussels with Coriander Cream, and even that was a bit too much in my opinion. Using a total of 700ml liquid you’ll end up cooking your mussels, not steaming them. Another slight difference is that you add the garlic and spring onions at the end of the cooking process, without frying them. This is probably a question of personal preference, but I love the taste of roasted onions.
Recipe originally published in Economy Gastronomy by Allegra McEvedy & Paul Merrett. Don’t buy this book, this dish is anything but economic (app. 6 Euros per serving; serves 2, not 4, see review above).
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