friederike's Reviews
8 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 8Sort by: Title 
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101 Healthy Eats ("Good Food")
By Jane Hornby
BBC Books - 2008
Artichoke, Olive and Lemon Pasta : page 70
Basically it was pretty nice - if there had not been the lemon. BF and I were sceptic from the start, not because we do not like the taste of lemons, but because the juice of a whole lemon seemed like far too much for that little bit of other ingredients. We started with the juice of only half a lemon - and oh boy, we tasted nothing but lemon in the end! Even worse: the combination of the saltiness and texture of the parmesan invoked some extremely unpleasant associations.
Nevertheless, I believe this recipe has potential and could even reach a 4 star rating - just limit the lemon juice to a few drops only, or even omit it completely. If necessary, you can replace it by oil and/or cooking water, both should be fine. Most of the lemon flavour should come from the zest, which has a stronger lemon taste anyway with the added benefit of not being sour.
Also, we used half the amount of pasta and shared the sauce between the two of us - just about enough. If you want to serve this dish to four persons, remember to double all ingredients except for the amount of pasta.
Crosspost. I found that the exact the same recipe was published online. I crossposted my review here.
useful (0)
Chicken and Orange Salad : page 98
A really nice, spring-ish salad! It serves 2 as a main meal, or 3-4 along with something else - we had it with a few Cauliflower and Cumin Fritters with Lime Yoghurt, and it served 3 perfectly. I didn't add the fennel - raw fennel has a strong anise-y taste I don't like, but braising the fennel unfortunately doesn't get rid of the taste, just the crispness. I can imagine that raw fennel would have been a good idea - at least in really fine cut slivers.
useful (1)
Chicken Hoisin Wraps : page 40
A very delicious and quickly prepared fake version of Peking Duck, if you have chicken leftovers from another dish. We tried using Oyster Sauce once because we ran out of Hoisin Sauce - don't, it doesn't work at all.
useful (0)
Gingery Compote Crunch : page 196
I'm not really sure how to rate this. If I only look at the result, I'd tend to give it a 3-star rating because it's really plain - but it's really easy and really quick, too, and for that little amount of effort you put into it, it's actually quite good! Real crumble is of course always better, but nowhere as easy.
We substituted the peaches with pears, and used frozen raspberries as frozen berries - neither could stand up to the flavour of the apples and ginger. Blueberries might have worked. We didn't have ginger jam but used 3 tbsp candied ginger in syrup.
I wasn't happy at all with the instruction to use a microwave - this isn't even a 'quick fix dinner'-cookbook or something similar, so I don't see any reason at all not to use an oven (you can see I'm not a friend of microwaves). We baked it in the oven instead, which wasn't a problem at all as I baked it while we were having the main course, but I had to find out myself how long I needed to bake the fruit. I did 30 min total for the apples and pears (could have been slightly shorter), and 10 min for the berries.
Definitely serve this with ice cream or crème fraîche or a custard or vanilla yoghurt, or anything similar, it'll need it.
One day later:
Doesn't re-heat well; the crunchy muesli had turned soggy and stayed that way - it tasted more like a muesli bar than anything else.
useful (0)
Roasted Squash and Goat’s Cheese Gnocchi : page 142
I made this with selfmade gnocchi today, and it was perfect - even BF, who isn't really wild on squash, enjoyed it a lot. The combination of flavours was great, the timing was just right, only the proportions were a little off - I'd suggest more goat's cheese and perhaps more squash. Furthermore, it were rather 3 servings than 4 so remember to add a little more of everything.
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Spicy Cucumber Salad : page 104
A really nice salad! I omitted the garlic, because I just didn't see raw garlic work in this salad.
It had a distinct Far-East-Asian flavour. We had it with Roast Chicken with Harissa, and the combination of the two, Middle Eastern and Far Eastern didn't work well together - something too keep in mind, and entirely my own fault I guess.
Edited to add:
I made the very similar Cucumber Salad from the Time-Life book Chinese Cooking (I added my review to the German version I own), and that version is a lot better than this one!
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Sticky Maple Pork with Apples : page 52
Really, really good! Comparable to Nigel Slater's Pork with Pears, but much better! It had pork, it had apple, it had plenty of that sweet, savoury and sticky sauce, it was just really good. And it was quick, too!
The biggest problem here was getting the timing right. I had cooked the pork a bit too long, making it slightly dry and tough. My suggestion would be to keep the pork rather undercooked because you can still correct that at the end when you add the pork to the apples. Also, make sure the apples are still on the crunchy side when you add the pork (see above).
I was afraid that 2 tablespoons would be too much mustard, but it wasn't, it was just right. Serve with potatoes and a salad.
Edited 30 August 2011:
Turns out my suggestion doesn't really work, because by the time you return the pork to the pan you will already have added a lot of liquid, and thus you would cook instead of fry the meat. So that means that there is little more you can do than cook the pork well, keep it warm and only return it to the pan at the very last minute, serving immedeately.
useful (1)
Vegetable Tagine with Chickpeas and Raisins : page 148
Nice but not particularly mind-blowing. It needs a lot more spices than specified (try using the double amount), and I felt that the sauce was too much liquid too - either cut back on the amount of liquid added, or try to make the sauce thicker one way or other.
Edited to add:
It also tastes nice cold, especially on such hot days as these. Definitely double the amount of spices and add some salt.
useful (1)