friederike's Reviews
5 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 5Sort by: Title 
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Tender: v. 1: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch
By Nigel Slater
Fourth Estate Ltd - 2009
A Dish of Baked Celery and its Sauce : page 216
Slightly disappointing. To be honest, I'm not that much of a fan of celery, but still..
First of all, for such an easy dish it took ages to make, and then the resulting dish just tasted like.. well, celery. As if we had spent hours doing nothing!
The sauce in itself was quite delicious, but it didn't have any flavour of its own (duh, it was a Béchamel made with the cooking water from the celery), which meant that it couldn't stand up to the overwhelming flavour of the celery. A better dish would have balanced its flavour, I believe!
useful (1)
A Pot Roast Pheasant with Celeriac Mash : page 206
We actually only made the celeriac mash to accompany the Coq au Vin, with flat beans as another side dish. It was very delicious, and a good choice as a side dish for a veryrustic poultry dish!
Served with Scallops with Ginger Sauce as a starter and Apple Pie with an Almond Crust and David Lebovitz' Vanilla Ice Cream as a dessert - an excellent menu for a sophisticated dinner!
useful (1)
A Simple Stew of Onions, Beer and Beef : page 354
Quite nice. We chose this recipe as it was quick to prepare and we could let it simmer while painting our bedroom - by the time we had finished painting, it was the perfect meal you would want to eat after a day of hard work. I'm not a big fan of beer, but after hours of braising you couldn't taste any anyway.
In my opinion, though, the apple sauce was quite superfluous. It was too much - I had used only three (albeit large) apples instead of the 5-6 required, and ended up with lots of apple sauce after I had finished my meal - with a scoop of ice cream it would have made it the perfect two-in-one dish!. And to be honest, I just preferred a dollop of cranberry sauce with the stew.
As accompaniment I would suggest something crunchy, as the meat is already extremely soft. Think rosemary roasted potatoes, think a gratin (think Potato Pear Gratin, another reason to omit the apple sauce!), and perhaps a salad to go with it to add a light component too.
Edited 7 January 2014:
This has become one of our standard dishes. It's really easy to make, and very delicious! You can also adapt it easily by using other herbs (or even spices), or adding other ingredients (ie. apple slices or raisins).
We used trappist beer until now and never had any issues, but today it somehow smelled strange and tasted bitter. Either the beer changed (though highly unlikely) or it is something we just never noticed before. In any case, you can just as well use other types of beer - Guinness would be particularly suitable, as would be cider.
We made Rösti today to go with it, which was a really nice combination, the Rösti was crunchy, and just as rustic as the stew.
Edited 6 July 2014:
We made this using a Belgian brown beer (Leffe bruin), and it was very nice, and no bitter flavours at all. Very nice! Also decided to upgrade this dish from 4 to 5 stars, because we've made it so often.
useful (1)
A Soup of Cauliflower and Cheese : page 189
A classic combination, though this one turns out more like a cauliflower-scented, slightly liquid fondue - not necessarily a bad thing, though...
Edited to add:
The flavours get stronger on the second day - I can really recommend to prepare it a day in advance!
useful (1)
Baked Vegetables with an Aubergine Sauce : page 53
Extremely tasty! Full of flavour and very delicious! I had some issues with the preparation, however.
First of all: take your time. Making the aubergine cream will take a while, and if you don't have a large oven that fit's two trays of veggies, such as me, you will have to prepare one after the other. That is not necessarily a problem; just be aware of it. You can easily prepare the aubergine cream a day in advance, then all you'll need to do is chop the veggies, throw them into a baking dish, off into the oven and you're done.
Slater didn't give an indicator how long the aubergines would need to become soft. Some of my aubergines were quite soft after 10-15 min, others weren't. I guess it helps making really deep, regular cuts and using lots of oil, at least I suspect that that was the difference between my different aubergines. All in all I think they spent at least 25-30 minutes in the oven, perhaps even longer.
Then the baking time for the other veggies: He estimates 45-60 minutes, we baked our veggies for at least 1 hr 15 min, and even then some of the courgettes weren't really soft. Some of the peppers and onions, and especially the raisins lying on top (15 min) were burnt. Possibly this was partly due to the fact that the baking dish was stuffed full with veggies - but actually I was glad that at least half of the dishes' veggies actually fit into my 23x30cm baking dish (and that didn't need to feed 4 but only 2 today). So, if you have a larger baking dish (or even two of them), go for it. You might also want to consider to chop more and bake shorter.
Because I forgot that I had only used half of the veggies I added all of the cumin, homemade harissa (from Modern Moroccan), raisins and pine kernels/almond flakes, but that was a very useful mistake as it gave some extra flavour. The courgettes actually fell away a bit, tastewise, but had a nice texture, and all in all it was great. Great mediterranean side dish, great vegetarian main dish.
Edited the next day:
Making the aubergine cream a day in advance really is a good idea. Yesterday the mint was hardly noticeable - today it made the cream taste very fresh!
Edited 30 December 2012:
Definitely try to make the aubergine cream at least a few hours in advance so that you can chill it - makes a great contrast to the hot and spicy vegetables. You might need to puree the cream.
Edited 7 December 2017:
For 5-6 pers we used 3 aubergines, 2 red and 2 green peppers, 2 onions, 2 enormous zucchinis and maybe 4 tomatoes?
useful (3)