friederike's Reviews
8 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 8Sort by: Title 
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How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food
By Mark Bittman, Alan Witschonke
Wiley - 2007
Avocado Salad with Ginger and Peanuts : page 51
To begin with, I'll issue a warning. Yes, this is only a simple salad, but still, you need to expect some 1-2 hrs preparation time. You might need noticeably less, though.
I became quite annoyed at the cooking instructions of this recipe. You are instructed to cook the vinegar with sugar and ginger, "as the dressing bubbles gently and thickens, about 5 minutes". After 5 minutes, this dressing is nowhere even near thickening. The recipe continues, "When it gets noticeably syrupy, remove from the heat, cool, ..." It took 40 min for the dressing to become syrupy, and when it finally did, I cooled it au bain marie, and it became hard and sticky. Whoops. I had to add 2 large tablespoons of water and reheat and recool it to get the consistency I wanted.
The bottom line was that once you've made the salad, it's actually quite nice, provided that you don't eat too much of it. It's not well suited to be served as a whole meal, but's it's nice, and something rather unusal as a side.
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Breaded Sautéed Cauliflower : page 281
Very similar but quite a bit nicer than the sautéed (or boiled?) cauliflower with a layer of breadcrumbs that I used to eat as a kid. Unfortunately, quite a bit more work as well.
It's a bit unfortunate that Bittman doesn't give any indication whatsoever as to cooking times. I cut my cauliflower into large florets and parboiled (or rather parsteamed!) them for 5 minutes in several batches - this wasn't enough, 6 or 7 min would have been better.
Once they were cooled down and dry, I then cut them into small florets - more surface, more crust! It's also a lot easier to get small florets covered in flour, egg, breadcrumbs etc. (this is assuming you are using plates - bowls might work better for larger florets).
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Carrot Salad with Cumin : page 45
A very nice and simple salad. Basically, it’s just your regular carrot salad with some extra zing. The flavour of the cumin is quite strong, though, so don’t prepare this too often unless you really like it. Goes well with Middle Eastern and South Asian dishes.
Edited 14 May 2014:
I made this today again and made the mistake to grate them using the coarse grater - carrot salad is considerably nicer if it's finely grated carrots. Also, I served it with Bus Station Kefta with Egg and Tomato, which is quite similar in taste, so the salad didn't have the punch I had hoped for.
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Deviled Eggs : page 180
Very nice in principle, but using the amount of mayonnaise yielded a very dry mass; so dry in fact that my food processor was hardly able to mix it properly. I added some Quark (see this recipe for more information on what that is), and later on some cream and then some milk. Furthermore, I only added 3/4 of the mustard required (but I also used Dutch mustard which might be a bit stronger). Also, in the beginning I had only added half of the required amount of chilli (substituting the cayenne); the more cream and milk I added, however, the weaker the tang of the chilli became, so I added a little more. So in conclusion, the idea is good, but you will need to follow your instincts.
I had actually hoped to achieve something like these Deviled Egg Chicks, but that didn't work out at all - they fell over, the caps slid off or crushed into the cream.. and some point I just gave up and served the eggs as halved eggs. Not that that has anything to do with this recipe, though.
Served as part of a buffet with a spring version of these Chocolate Brownies, Mondriaan Cake, Spiced Nuts, and carrots with Aubergine Dip and Spundekäs'.
See Queezle_Sister's review of pressure cooker boiled eggs for a really cute Deviled Egg Chick!
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Nice, but with several mistakes. First, he mentions that the aubergines should preferably be small aubergines – he doesn’t mention that the recipe won’t work properly if they’re not. He instructs you cut the aubergines crosswise (but not completely), fill it with mayonnaise-dressing and then grill them on both sides until the skin is black. Apparently, he supposes that the aubergines will be cooked by now, but that’s not the case if you use normal aubergines. If you do, I’d probably grill them first to be able to skin them, then slice them and think of some way how to grill the slices with the mayonnaise on top of them, or make a lengthwise (?) cut to fill the aubergine slices with mayonnaise.
Second, I always learned that you’re supposed to soak saffron in a bit of hot water before use (and use the water too). Bitmann doesn’t suggest that and seems to think the saffron would dissolve in the mayonnaise. They didn't completely, nor did we actually taste any saffron (but then again perhaps we didn't use enough?)
I was at Ottolenghi’s in London last week and had ‘Roasted aubergine and red pepper with saffron yoghurt, coriander, preserved lemons and almonds’ (amongst others), which was infinitely better. Does anyone know if that one’s been published in the Ottolenghi cookbook?
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Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Garlic : page 273
I don't like Brussels sprouts. I really don't like Brussels sprouts, it's one of the few (if not only) vegetables I try to avoid. So imagine my face when today DH came home with a bag of Brussels sprouts! Because I read a few very positive reviews about roasted Brussels sprouts, I decided to try this recipe - and it was good (for Brussels sprouts)! Now all I need to do is convince everyone I know to never ever boil them.
The small print: DH thinks that the roasting time in the oven was a little too long, resulting in slightly mushy sprouts and burnt garlic. I'm not quite sure about that, I would have thought that the mushy sprouts would be a result of being sauteed for too long and roasted too little. Either way, next time keep a close look on the sprouts, and remove the garlic in time, if necessary.
We forgot to add the balsamic vinegar, which is a bit of a pity. We might try this recipe again (and hopefully remember the vinegar part), or we might try this recipe, which is the online version of Ina Garden's much lauded recipe.
Edited the next day:
Actually, I made a mix of this recipe and the Ina Garden one because I was too lazy to be bothered to saute the sprouts first. So instead I just placed them in the oven, mixed with olive oil and salt; however, I enjoyed the garlic from this recipe, so after 10 min roasting time, I added a few small crushed cloves of garlic. And I was curious about the balsamic vinegar, so when the sprouts were done after 25 min, I added a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar.
The texture was a lot better this time, it definitely wasn't as mushy. I felt the outer part was crunchier yesterday, though DH thinks that was only because they were already slightly burnt. DH also thinks that the vinegar flavour was slightly too strong; it might have been too much for the amount of sprouts we made. All in all, however, it was better than yesterday, and a lot easier as well.
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I probably messed it up a little – I forgot to set a timer while roasting, and then remembered all of a sudden when things with the main dish were a little hectic, and just turned off the oven without testing the cauliflower. Principally, though, I very much liked the idea of this dish, although I would need to test it again. I would prefer softer raisins, so remember to soak them in hot water for a while before adding them. Adding (roasted) almond flakes might work well, too.
Edited 10 March 2012:
It's really good! It tasted partly roasted, partly steamed - maybe because it shared the oven with the Chicken with Caribbean Stuffing. I soaked the raisins in very little hot water so that they softer but not completely soft - actually, I think first soaked and then roasted for the last five minutes would be best, a little like in the Baked Vegetables with an Aubergine Sauce. And I used red wine vinegar this time because we were out of balsamic vinegar, but next time, balsamic will definitely be my vinegar of choice.
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Warm Chickpea Salad with Arugula/Rocket : page 73
BF loved it, I found it just okay. The dressing was very nice, even ‘sophisticated’, but I disliked the fact that the rocket (or rather the lamb's lettuce we used instead of rocket) was prone to become limp due to the heat of the chickpeas.
Also, I felt it was a little dull due to the lack of interesting main ingredients - chickpeas and rocket (or lamb's lettuce) just isn't enough. I preferred the very similar Chickpea, Goat’s Cheese and Rocket Salad (with tomatoes) from Delicious Magazine (May 2009); perhaps I might make it with the Bittman-dressing next time.
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