friederike's Reviews
4 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 4Sort by: Title 
| Date | Rating
Preserve: Over 100 Delicious Recipes (Cookery)
Apricot Ratafia : page 125
Absolutely brilliant! Quick to assemble, great in taste and really versatile! We've already had it as a drink, and as a dessert (leftover bit of walnut ice cream served with apricots, almonds and a little ratafia as sauce); I can also see me making this in jam jars to get smaller portions you give as presents.
I did my best to use only ripe apricots in a good shape. I've spotted a few apricots where one half was darker than the other and I'm not really sure what the cause of this could be - have they just taken on some of the dark colour of the brandy, or were they a little overripe? I'll report back in a few days/weeks should that be the cause.
Of course I didn't have a wide-necked screw-topped 1.2 litre bottle, though I had a 1 litre one; I just used all of the apricots, nearly all of the almonds and sugar, and approximately 500ml brandy.
Variations: Definitely add a handful of raisins! I could also imagine a few spices, if you like, something like cinnamon or clover. You might want to consider halved almonds (in length) instead of almond slivers, but I guess that's a question of personal preference.
Edited 22nd March 2012:
We still have a little Ratafia left - I once nearly threw it away because all the apricots turned brown, but actually, that's down to the brandy - they're still perfectly edible, and when I served some Ratafia during a dinner recently, our guest was very glad to go home with the recipe.
useful (0)
Blueberries in Kirsch : page 92
Very delicious, though quite heavy on the alcohol. We had expected that the blueberries would soften, but they didn't, on the contrary: they actually turned hard! Not a big deal, though I would have preferred them to be soft.
I'm a bit at a loss what to do with the blueberries and the kirsch. So far we had the blueberries over ice cream, but the kirsch is too thin to use as a sauce. To be able to drink the kirsch, you should eat the blueberries first, as they might spoil otherwise.
useful (0)
Strawberry and Champagne Conserve : page 28
Very delicious, just that I didn’t really taste the champagne. I actually used sparkling wine instead, but I don't think that was the reason. It was just plain strawberry jam, basically. Very nice, straight-forward strawberry jam.
useful (1)
Tarragon Vinegar : page 110
Very nice, very delicate tarragon flavouring. Unfortunately, you can still notice (though only faintly) that I used a very cheap, very sharp vinegar (and my local supermarket you can only get very cheap, or moderately expensive vinegar, nothing in-between), so that's a small drawback.
useful (0)