friederike's Reviews
9 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 9Sort by: Title 
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The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen
By Nigel Slater
Fourth Estate Ltd - 2007
A Deep, Sweet Dipping Sauce : page 116
Not particularly impressive, not bad either. Actually, the whole sauce didn't really do anything for me. Be careful not to cook the sauce too long lest it become some sort of caramel (happened to us when we tried to recycle the sauce on the third day).
Meant to be served with the Thai Fish Cakes, but you could probably use it for any other dish you want to serve with an Asian-inspired sauce.
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Chocolate Brownies : page 325
Divine! It took an hour to bake instead of the half hour announced, but hey, who cares when it results in such chocolate goodness? A perfect brownie recipe.
Edited 24 September 2011:
I made this today again and didn't bother to check my own review. I baked it only 10 min longer, and it ended up being pretty gooey on the inside (when testing I thought it was just melted chocolate). I prefer a proper brownie texture; next time I'd bake it for an hour again. Served together with the Caramelised Lemon Cake, a perfect combination of sweet and sweet-sour, chocolate and fruit.
Pictured: Last piece of cake, just seconds before final meltdown.
Edited 28 October 2012:
This time, the brownie spent 50 minutes in the oven when I thought I'd have to take it out to prevent it from drying out. I loved it the way it was, DH thought it was a tad too dry. 45 min next time?
We served it as a 'grand dessert' with some raspberry coulis, Lemon Mousse and Lavender Honey Ice Cream. The ice cream and brownie were great in combination, the rest got lost a bit, even the raspberry coulis we had specially made for the brownie.
Edited 24 November 2012:
Don't bake in an convection oven. The brownie was pretty dry along the top and edges.
Edited 15 December 2012:
Whoops. Because we were in a hurry and I took over halfway through, we nearly forgot to add the butter and the sugar. As a result, we managed to beat all the lightness out of the eggs, which resulted in a very thin, crisp chocolate cake and nearly resembled a very crisp cookie more than a cake. Baking time 55 minutes.
Served with Toasted Almond and Candied Cherry Ice Cream for the classic chocolate-cherry-combination.
Edited 24 March 2013:
Served as a spring version this time, making a hedge with half pieces of Merci and adding some paper flowers. Very impressive and a lot less work than the Mondriaan Cake!
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Grilled Chicken with Harissa and Mint : page 203
It was so easy that it'll be hard not to remember how to prepare this dish. Unfortunately, however, it was slightly tasteless and looked nothing like the picture.
Admittedly, we changed it slightly. I distrust my overhead grill (it always gets me things burned within minutes), and DB had bought chicken breasts instead of chicken legs, which I just baked in the oven at 200°C. And I forgot the mint - my bad, but then again I had expected the main flavour boost from the Harissa anyway.
The recipe made me think of Roast Chicken with Harissa from Moro - a much better recipe, probably mainly because you let the meat marinade a few hours. Also, I didn't really know what the yoghurt did in there.
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Hot Chocolate Puddings : page 52
The Chocolate Fondants we made recently made me think of these hot chocolate puddings I made years ago. They were quite nice, the recipe definitely worked very work, it's just that I'm not a fan of chocolate fondants.
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Pork Chops with Mustard Sauce : page 51
Very, very delicious! In a way, it's just a variation of the classic pork with apples-theme (or even pork with pears), just without the fruit - at least all of those I prepared always contained their compulsory dosis of mustard. In our case, the meat was just a tad dry (our fault), and we added a spoonful of sugar as it was a bit sour.
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Pumpkin and Tomato Laksa : page 333
The soup we had last night was very delicious, but it wasn't quite the soup described in this recipe. Not quite.
My alarm bells went off when I read that I was supposed to make a paste that included lemon grass. Lemon grass seems to be the one ingredient with which many cooks don't seem to be that familiar, at least that is what you start to think when you see how it is often used by non-Asian chefs. These fish cakes on lemon grass skewers is one example, the paste with lemon grass in this recipe is another.
Unfortunately, lemon grass is way too hard and woody to be chopped into a paste. A few years ago I attended a cooking workshop on Thai food, and they explained that lemon grass should only be used like bay leaf or a cinnamon stick.
So once I knew for sure that this paste wouldn't work (I like to give recipes the benefit of doubt), I started all over again, and made a paste of only garlic, ginger, chilli lime leaves and coriander leaves. This worked a lot better, only that it was too little mass even for my smallest food processor. Just chop all of the ingredients well and you'll be fine. The lime leaves you can either leave intact (as in Asian cooking), or remove the leaf vein along the centre and then chop them. I omitted the coriander roots as they might face the same issue as the lemon grass, and I used three dried bird's eye chillies for lack of fresh ones, which was just perfect for us. I still used the lemon grass, but I just cut it once (so I would fit in the pot) and simmered in the soup. And I used lime juice instead of lemon juice.
The pumpkin was wonderful, cooked yet with a bit of bite. Unfortunately, the cubes were way to big for in a soup. Either you need to cut them into smaller cubes after steaming, or you need to start out with smaller cubes, but then don't forget to reduce the steaming time!
DH thought that the coconut flavour was too strong; I think that was more likely because the pumpkin wasn't strong enough. I definitely would have liked the soup to have a stronger pumpkin taste - the pumpkin is actually only added at the very last moment. I would suggest using the water you used for steaming to make the stock, or use the stock for steaming and then fill up to 500ml again.
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Delicious, just the right thing for an evening in front of the TV. We had to turn on the grill to make them really crispy though. According to the recipe, this dish serves two; but with some fries and vegetables (yes, vegetables) and three extra chicken wings it was more than enough for three.
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Thai Fishcakes : page 114
Really, really nice! This is one of the dishes that makes you think that somebody must have spent hours in the kitchen, when in fact it was pretty easy (I should give this recipe to my mother. She reacts to practically every culinary compliment with the comment "And it was so easy!").
That said, I wouldn't serve it as a main dish (truthfully, Slater actually serves it as an appetizer himself, it's just us who didn't realize). The fish cakes have a wonderfully complex taste. It's very impressive for the first few bites, but after that you can't help yourself thinking "And now what?". I think you can even serve 2 cakes per person, meaning that you can even serve this dish to six instead of four, as long as your (real) main dish is substantial enough.
The sweet dipping sauce didn't really make the cut for me. I didn't even need any sauce at all, but if, a quick mix of e.g. fish sauce, rice vinegar and water would have worked just as fine.
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Vietnamese Beef Salad : page 191
Very delicious! Watercress is a really good idea, it's peppery taste complements the salad very well. If you can't get watercress, rocket is probably the best substitute.
The dressing was very good. I used only the juice of half a lime instead of a whole one which was a good idea. The dressing could have used a little more chilli, though that will really depend on what kind of chilli you use (we used a large one as we couldn't get bird's eye chilli).
I was worried that it wouldn't be suitable as a lunch box salad - the grated carrots could dry out, the beef of course has a limited shelf life; but actually it worked quite well. Admittedly, we cooked the beef until it was done, just to be on the safe side. DH also mentioned that he would have liked to see a little more beef next time.
A lot better than the Thai Beef Salad we made before.
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