friederike's Reviews
7 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 7Sort by: Title 
| Date | Rating
vegetarian
By alice hart
- 2000
The combination in itself was very nice, but I found it very difficult to season well. I used a lot of salt, which was a good thing, but I also used too much lemon juice, even though I didn't even use the full amount. It could have used more lemon zest and more pecorino (grana padano, in our case). Also, we used one tin of artichoke hearts, and I think using more, and possibly better quality (not tinned) ones would have helped. I was very pleased, however, with how incredibly quickly this salad came together.
useful (0)
One thing right at the beginning: We substituted baby aubergines with normal ones, cut into pieces to resemble the size of baby aubergines, and substituted Thai basil with normal basil. I don't think it made a noticable difference.
Unfortunately, the dish was quite disappointing. The aubergines were heavy with fat and didn't take on any of the flavours of the other ingredients. There was too little seasoning in general; it probably would have been just fine for just the bok choi, but not with another major ingredient added. Also, where did the word 'braise' come from? Everything was either fried or deep-fried, and simmering something for a moment in a few spoonfuls of liquid is not enough in my opinion to constitute the dish as a braise.
useful (0)
Gorgonzola Sauce : page 240
A really nice recipe for one of my favourite pasta dishes - Pasta with Spinach and Gorgonzola Sauce. In contrast to Nigel Slater's Spinach with Blue Cheese and Pasta (incidentally my first review on Cookbooker!), this sauce really does work.
The only problem I had was preparing the spinach, which isn't described in this recipe. I just wilted the leaves in a pan; unfortunately, they ended up being too watery. Next time I would fry the spinach in olive oil with a little garlic.
useful (0)
Grilled Vegetable Pizza : page 174
What a mess! More or less everything that could have gone wrong, did.
It started with the dough. Although it felt very nice, it didn't rise a bit. I was afraid that that was due to me using an old paket of yeast, so I started all over with a brandnew paket of yeast. The resulting dough had barely risen any more than the previous one, and was only just enough for two rather small pizzas (20cm diameter - it looked like a lot less). Though who knows, perhaps we didn't make them thin enough, though I wouldn't know how.
Then the vegetables: a fennel and one courgette (zucchini) is more than enough, or even more than you can use on these pizzas - the second courgette was entirely superfluous. And even though we grilled the vegetables for a few minutes longer, the fennel wasn't done when we served the pizza.
Then when we grilled the first pizza, the whole thing was drowned in the liquid coming from the vegetables and the cheese. We grilled it another 3 minutes, but the pizza remained soggy.
Last, we had prepared both pizzas at the same time as I knew that the dough would dry out if we didn't. By the time we were ready to grill the second pizza, it was impossible to slide off the pizza into the hot pan, and we ended up with a kind of pizza stir fry in our pan. Not what was intended!
Tastewise, the pizza was okay though undersalted.
Edited the next day to add:
We served the leftover topping as a side dish to the Coq au Vin, which worked well, especially due to the rosemary. So at least it was good for something!
useful (2)
Wow, unexpected! I really enjoyed this salad, which actually is a kind of elaborate Salad Caprese: tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, nectarines and garlic. Yes, you read right, nectarines and garlic, and it was especially this combination that blew my mind. It worked extraordinarily well!
Something else that made this salad outstanding is the recipe for basil oil hidden in the instructions - a great recipe to use for any salad, with pasta, or just to dip bread.
We actually used wild peaches instead of nectarines, though - partly due to availability, but partly also because they were just ripe, yet still on the hard side, and therefore not very sweet - DH was worried that really ripe fruit would be too sweet for this salad. For him, this issue remained, he didn't like the combination of mozzarella with sweet fruit, and suggested to use goat's cheese instead. I'm not always that much of a fan of goat's cheese, but I could see a blue cheese working here, as blue cheese often works well with fruit.
Another issue DH had with this salad (he was the cook today) was that it was pretty vague on the amounts of ingredients. Yes, it said '12 heirloom tomatoes', but even the tomatoes shown in the photo were so diverge in size that you could probably mean anything from 150g (cocktail sized ones) to 1500g (larges ones) - and the correct amount does matter to mak the salad balanced.
Although you can serve this with some bread as a main dish on a warm summer night, I would rather recommend it as a starter on ditto warm summer night. This is a Skye Gyngell recipe, by the way.
useful (2)
It tastes just as bland as it looks. Which shouldn't necessarily come as a surprise, I guess, if you look at the ingredients: peas, barley, broad beans and eggs, flavoured only with two twigs of mint. We substituted haloumi for feta, and barley for bulghur - this might have had an influence, of course, but actually I doubt it - none of the ingredients substituted has a distinctly different flavour.
I think the best you can do in this case is to drastically reduce the amount of grain and replace it with flavourful (and colourful!) veggies like bell peppers, possibly fresh or sundried tomatoes. And *gasp* bacon. Or chorizo. You got me thinking here...
useful (1)
Winter Squash and Corn Chowder : page 122
Very delicious! Our soup was just slightly too hot, probably because DH added Tabasco in addition to the dried chilli - use either of the two, but definitely add one of them, it made the difference between a good and a very good soup. With more liquid resp. less filling, you could also serve it as a vegetarian appetizer.
useful (0)