friederike's Reviews
6 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 6Sort by: Title 
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Crazy Water Pickled Lemons: Enchanting Dishes from the Middle East, Mediterranean and North Africa
By Diana Henry
Mitchell Beazley - 2006
It was hard to review this dish. I didn't have the impression that something had been done with the plums and the figs, that something had been added - until I came to that one plum that tasted of nothing but lemon (lime) zest. When I asked DH what he thought of the dish, I said he quite liked it - though everything he said following that gave me the impression that he didn't, citing amongst others all the points mentioned above. So I guess there's just too much doubt to bother with it again. Interestingly enough, Ms. Henry seems to like the combination of figs and plums (and cardamom!), as she lists a recipe for Roast Figs and Plums in Vodka with Cardamom Cream in another of her cookbooks.
We didn't make the yoghurt pannacottas but served the fruit with Greek Yoghurt instead, as she suggests - and we probably wouldn't have used yoghurt in the panna cotta anyway, as that had already gone wrong once before. We also omitted the honey as there was so much juice leftover.
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The mashed vegetables and cinnamon onions were quite nice; personally, I'm not much of a mashed vegetables fan but DB loved them. The lamb was nice, but we didn't taste the harissa at all. We'll have the rest of the dish tomorrow and we'll see if marinating them overnight has made any difference.
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Lavender, Orange and Almond Cake : page 35
In the beginning I simply thought the cake had turned out okay and it was just not to my liking - even though I had only used very little orange juice, it already seemed to be way too much, and it needed a lot longer in the oven than expected (70 min instead of 40 min, and I had only made a small cake using half a portion!), but other than that it seemed to be fine, more or less. I just didn't like the texture of the cake - it felt granular and tasted greasy.
But when I asked DH what he thought, he also mentioned the greasiness, saying it seemed like the butter hadn't been able to stick to the rest of the ingredients. It was then that I realized that the problem was that the batter had curdled. The recipe mentions that that might happen in a very nonchalant way, which is why I thought it was expected and not at all a problem, and it advises you to just add the flour a bit quicker. Unfortunately, that didn't help at all. On the contrary, the recipe contains so little flour, that it hardly had any effect at all. And I only used half of the orange juice!
Two stars, but only because it's not completely unedible.
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My mother-in-law recently made this cake, with a slightly adapted cream - no orange flower water, cream instead of mascarpone, more Greek yoghurt. It was very delicious! I especially liked the idea of serving the cake with a orange-flavoured cream. The cake itself wasn't too strongly flavoured, otherwise it wouldn't have worked. Definitely to be repeated!
I had to do some research on this recipe as neither of us owned this book but we were pretty sure than it was copied from somewhere. My MIL's original source was this one (Dutch), but there are also similar recipes here and here.
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Pearl Divers' Rice : page 79
This could have been 5 stars - but as is, it only merits 1. Weird, huh? I had a hunch that it would go wrong - I read the recipe at least 5 times to be sure that I didn't miss a line anywhere saying 'add some water'.
Unfortunately, though, water was really necessary. Cooking the rice in water for 4 min, and then essentially frying it for another 15+ minutes won't get it cooked. Instead, the entire rice ended up partly uncooked and partly burnt black - not the "dark-brown crust ... at the bottom of the pan" that is described. I'll probably give it another try tomorrow as the flavour of the rice was really nice; though I will check other pilaf-recipes first, or just add some water to get it going for at least the first 10 minutes or so.
Served with Harissa-Marinated Chicken with Red Grapefruit Salad, which in theory made a really great combination!
Edited 10 April 2014:
I made it again, this time shortly heating the 150g rice in the butter/oil, then adding 300ml boiling water and half the amount of all the spices (except for the cardamom pods, I used 4 of those), cooked it for 15-20 min - the result was a very nice rice, and a lot easier too! Next time I'd probably do the same, but tamper with the amounts of the spices - perhaps something like 6 cardamom pods, 2 tbsp rose water, saffron and 3 tbsp honey?
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Quite nice, but for some reason I would have expected a salad to contain at least some vegetable. To be honest, I hadn't even realized that the salad lacked veggies until I was about to serve it.
Unfortunately we had run out of harissa, so I was able to add that. Also, instead of marinating and grilling the whole chicken filets and then cutting it into stripes, I decided to cut it first so that it could marinate better (smaller pieces = more surface that touches the marinade) and then stir-fry it. Even though I lifted it out of the marinade with a slotted spoon, the marinade got burnt really fast; so I might actually give her method a try next time. Even so, you'll need to pat the meat dry before grilling, as it's the honey and the pomegranate molasses that caramelize in the heat. You could also consider not adding both of these to the marinade and to add a little pomegranate molasses to the salad dressing instead (don't add any extra honey beyond what the dressing already contains).
DH thought it was a little bland, but I think that was the lack of harissa; I actually quite liked it, but I would add some grilled vegetables - probably courgettes and aubergines, and possibly some extra salad dressing for the veggies.
Edited two days later:
My goodness, I must have been blind! The salad as described above is actually served on a bed of watercress - so much for the lack of veggies. It's also served with Greek yoghurt, something else I missed the first time around. Both of these ingredients make it a more interesting and balanced dish, both in terms of flavour as nutritionally.
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