friederike's Reviews
8 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 8Sort by: Title 
| Date | Rating
Grains
By Molly Brown
Hardie Grant Books - 2014
Oops. We had this dish end of November, but it appears that I forgot to review it. I did note that I wanted to give a 3 star rating - I vaguely remember it to be an unexpected combination, but yet boring in taste. I'm not a great fan of steamed, soft cauliflower, and in a risotto there's so little to bite on anyway (or rather: if you can bite on something, chances are that something has gone wrong).
useful (0)
Very, very delicious; this would definitely merit a 5 star rating if it were a little more presentable. In any case it's going straight into our repertoire.
There are only minor issues to mention, such as that it was all just a tiny bit too soft (but then again I roasted the pumpkin at least 7 min longer than instructed, and DH was a little late for dinner), and that it was a wee bit salty - even though I did add salt and only used half a stock cube, like I usually do. I have actually no idea where the saltiness comes from!
I briefly considered replacing the stock with coconut milk; I'm glad I didn't, it was nice the way it was, though it probably would have been nice with coconut milk as well. You can easily substitute the cream/yoghurt with coconut milk to make it vegan.
Edited 16 November 2015:
You can also omit the salt and chili peppers and use harissa (homemade or storebought) instead. We added the harissa at the very end, after we had put aside a portion for our nearly 9 month old kiddo. Funny enough, though, grandma came to babysit today, accidentally grabbed the wrong container (I should have marked them better, I guess), and gave him a little of our slightly spicier version - turns out he liked it well enough!
useful (0)
Interesting, but really not worth the effort. Prepping takes a lot of time: Cook the spinach, then chop; chop the onions, then fry; cook the potatoes, then mash; skin the mackerel, then chop; make the fish cakes, then let rest for 30 min; then coat with flour, coat with egg, coat with oats or oatmeal, fry - that are a lot of actions just to make a few fish cakes.
Regarding their taste, it was nice to try something different, but I thought they contained way too much potato mash, making them slightly bland in taste and definitely too soft. I'd prefer them with less potato mash or even no potato mash at all (saves an extra step), and perhaps with a mix of a fresh fish and smoked mackerel.
I liked the spinach, though, and I also liked the oats. Turning them in oats made them crisper than oatmeal, though you need to be slightly more careful not to burn them. I also enjoyed the horseradish mayonnaise (though we didn't have fresh horseradish, we omitted the crème fraîche and added the horseradish cream straight to the mayonnaise).
We also omitted the watercress; as I knew that I would still have half a bag of spinach leftover it seemed silly to buy something extra; we made creamed spinach instead.
useful (0)
As often with curries, this wasn't a dish you'd enjoy for its good looks, but it was very delicious nonetheless. You will have to stir regularly to prevent it from burning. I used only one fresh chilli as that normally produces an acceptable level of hotness, but in this case it wasn't hot at all. I added extra ground chilli and lots of pepper. Next time I'll use two fresh chillis.
The only pity was that the essential item that really made this dish wasn't actually part of the recipe but a mere serving suggestion: the cucumber raita. I looked at several recipes on the internet and then decided to make my own version using quark and yoghurt (I would have used Greek yoghurt but we already had the quark and I needed to use it up), a cucumber (seeded), a squeeze of lime/lemon, salt, pepper, and lots of mint.
Edited 4 February 2016:
Very mild if you omit the chilli peppers. If serving as a main course, I would add extra veggies, ie. a few roasted/fried tomatoes, and maybe a handful of raisins. For the cucumber raita, about half a cucumber, grated or finely chopped, should be enough; if grated, be sure you get rid of most of the liquid before adding to the other ingredients.
Edited 2 July 2017:
Don't add garlic to the raita, you'll end up with a zaziki instead!
useful (0)
Basically Paella, without the seafood.
It's very delicious (I probably would have given a four or five star rating), but we made one mistake that made it hard to see if by doing so, we actually remedied a mistake in the recipe. What happened was that DH asked me to place the chicken on top of the rice, and I did that and then covered the pan again, without asking or checking the recipe. But according to the recipe, the dish should have cooked uncovered from that point onwards, and therefore we ended up with too much liquid, and DH then decided to cook it a little longer, about 10 min, until most of the liquid had cooked away. By that time, the rice had turned to mush; obviously not a good idea both to cover the dish, and to solve this by boiling away the liquid instead of just draining it (even if you loose some of the juices/flavour). BUT: the chicken legs were just right, not dry; at least mine wasn't. My suspicion is that if I hadn't covered the chicken, it wouldn't have cooked through, and this was also why I didn't even think about checking the recipe (DH later complained that his chicken leg actually was a tad dry; but then again, he ate late and had turned off the heat but hadn't moved the pan off the heat, so it continued cooking and the bottom of the rice got a little burnt).
Other issues: it's really fat. The chicken will release a lot of fat, you probably shouldn't add any more fat and/or pour away some of the chicken fat. And it's ridiculous to cook the peas separately, just add them to the main dish like you would for any other propper paella.
useful (1)
@ bunyip, if you read this, could you do me a favour and check the recipe in your edition? See below.
Thanks!
===
Not the very best I've eaten. In fact, it was quite plain before we added the yoghurt and coriander leaves, and also some mint. It contained too much tomato, either tomato concentrate or canned tomatoes (or both), which produced a slightly acidic flavour. Omitting the tomato concentrate and/or using fresh instead of canned tomatoes should help, though this was less of an issue once we added the yoghurt and herbs.
It also suffers from a few major translation errors, at least in my Dutch version. The introduction states that it is "also delicious with 'rode pepers' and aubergine"; the list of ingredients mentions '1 rode peper' to be added with the onions, and '1 rode chilipeper' to be added with the lentils and tomatoes. The thing is - all of the above mean chilli peppers, even though at least once (if not twice) I would have expected it to mean (bell) peppers. Also, it doesn't make sense to write 'also delicious with ...' if '...' is already in the recipe, does it?
useful (0)
Similar but slightly more elaborate (and laborious) version of a family recipe. I quite liked it, if only because it was a little different. The dressing didn't work at all, though, or rather: it was way too much. I only made half of it, and even then we still have half of that (so one fourth of the original quantity) leftover.
I used my pressure cooker to cook the beans (I used pinto), and failed miserably the first two times (one batch ended up as mush, the other was severely undercooked with a few mushy beans inbetween).
useful (0)
A very delicious soup - in fact, in terms of flavour this definitely merits a 4 star rating, but I had several issues with the recipe.
First of all, I would definitely not describe it as 'elegant', on the contrary. Our first association was Snert, a coarse (but very delicious) Dutch pea soup. Nor did it look elegant - it had a coarse texture, even after I had pureed it with a hand-held blender, and it was light brown instead of white.
Then, the blending process: puree this soup with a potato masher? Really? Even the bacon cubes? You must be kidding! As just mentioned, I used a hand-held blender, and even then the soup stayed coarse. Not a bad thing, just not what was promised.
Last, flavour: I used the cream, and I wouldn't do it again, the soup is heavy enough by itself, and I didn't like the sweetness added by the cream. I actually made the soup a day in advance which was really helpful as there was a lot of fat and keeping the soup in the fridge overnight meant that it was easy to get rid of some of that fat. Alternatively, you don't really need to add any olive oil when frying the carrot, celery and bacon, as long as you add the bacon first (I always forget).
That said, I've cooked comparatively few recipes with grains, especially beans, and I liked this one. I might try the very similar version with skordalia from The Olive and The Caper soon.
Edited a week later:
This soup was actually a lot better than the version with skordalia from The Olive and The Caper. It's a bit more complex, but has more depth of flavour. However, if you want a vegetarian version, then substituting the bacon with skordalia (and the chicken stock with vegetable one) is the way to go!
Edited 24 November 2016:
We made this soup again, but chose not to purée it - and I actually quite liked it that way! Upgraded from three to four stars.
useful (0)