| Very delicious! I used four large onions (about 600g total), cut into rings, instead of the shallots. After the cooking time given in the recipe, they weren't cooked through yet, so I added a little extra wine and cooked them another half hour or so.
We filled three tartlets made with Ottolenghi's shortcrust pastry with the onions to serve as an appetizer; this was nice but not terribly exciting. The remainder (just enough to fill a fourth tartlet, if we had wanted that) we served with the West Country Pot-roast Chicken with Apples and Cider. |
| To die for. Really, this was brilliant. It was a lot of work, but it was very rewarding, too. We let the turkey braise just a bit too long, but the squash was just perfect. I'm sure she wrote the recipe with Thanksgiving in mind, as the portion sizes are really much too big. |
| The chicken breasts were a little dry, but I suspect that was my fault (I possibly fried them for too long and/or the lid didn’t fit properly and/or the pan was too large and I forgot to reduce the space with parchment paper). Otherwise the flavour was nice. I would have preferred it to be a little creamier, and I might replace the yoghurt (I used thick unstrained Greek yoghurt, by the way) with coconut cream next time. Oh, and add some extra spices! We served this with rice and Carrot Salad with Cumin. |
| Very nice! I found it a little complicated to prepare, but it probably didn’t help that I had time pressure, only two stove tops instead of the four I needed, very little space, and I was babbling on the telephone for quite a while!
We had too much sauce, although I blame myself for adding too much water in a rush. Also, the fish fell apart, but I suppose that would have been due to the fact that it was cod and not monkfish (Alan Davidson describes monkfish as being 'firm, white and lobster-like' in Mediterranean Seafood, and cod as 'falling into large flakes' in The Oxford Companion to Food); nevertheless, cod was the more environmentally-friendly choice so I'm happy with that.
I cannot support Molly Stevens' suggestion to cook the pasta first and then add the pasta water to the sauce, as your pasta will dry out and cool in the meantime, and by the time the fish is done it won't soak up any sauce any more. I would have expected her to know.
You’ll have half a fennel bulb left, which you can slice and then fry/cook with some rosemary and lemon juice to serve it as a very small side dish (add another fennel bulb for a proper 4-6 person side dish). |
| 5 stars, no doubt. It's a very easy dish, but produces excellent results. The meat is juicy, the flavours interesting yet balanced. The only thing I might change next time is that I might cut back the amount of orange zest a bit. A very christmassy dish, if that's your association with oranges and spices.
We served this with wild rice and grilled aubergines and courgettes with Harissa and some leftover lime yoghurt from the Cauliflower and Cumin Fritters with Lime Yoghurt - very delicious, though the Harissa just might be too strong. However, the dish didn't taste as Middle Eastern as I had expected with all the spices. Instead, I would recommend some baguette and a chicory salad to go with the dominating flavour of oranges. |
| I can only agree with everything the two previous reviewers posted. And cadfaels menu suggestion sounds really good!
There was just one issue we had: she didn't write anything about how the ribs were cut. In the section about buying short ribs she presents the two different kinds of short ribs available, both of which are bought in one large piece. Later on in the recipe she gives hints that the ribs have been cut into pieces as she mentions that the rib pieces should be arranged into a single layer, etc. Can anyone enlighten me about what she means? |
| It’s a huge piece of meat, so when she says, ‘rub with coarse salt’, use your own good judgement how much salt you use. I used far too much, and it showed, luckily only in the sauce.
Apart from that, it was extremely delicious – at least tastewise. The meat, unfortunately, ended up being pretty tough, and I have no idea why. As for now, I’m happy to blame the circumstances (tiny microwave oven instead of the proper thing, a clay pot with a mind of its own instead of our Le Creuset Dutch oven), but I do hope this will change once we find a new flat. BF at least was very happy with it, but then again, he’ll be happy with any large piece of meat.
We had this with the Roasted Garlic Mash from BBC Good Food, May 2009.
Amendment 12. Jan. 2010:
Instead of just plain re-heating, we braised some of the meat for dinner for another hour or so; this time in a pan on the stove. What a difference! For all but one small part the meat was much tenderer than it had been the night before. So it is very likely indeed that the braise failed due to the oven and the clay pot. But how could one hour have made such a difference? |
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