friederike's Reviews
4 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 4Sort by: Title 
| Date | Rating
Snowflakes and Schnapps
By Jane Lawson
Murdoch Books - 2010
Lasagne Verde : page 146
This is somewhere between a 3 and a 4. It tastes nice, but it's also quite oily and therefore very heavy. I'm not sure why this is the case - yes, you add milk, cream and lots of cheese, but even the ragout of minced meat and milk on its own already looked very oily.
In the end, it's a lot of work to prepare it, and I don't really think it's worth it. I like the idea of a Lasagna Verde, but in the end, I think I would either stick to a normal lasagna, or go in search of another recipe.
Edited 3 March 2013:
Downgraded to 3 stars. It was so heavy that after the meal we felt like having swallowed a stone. Not recommended unless you find a way to drastically cut the fat content.
useful (0)
Meatballs with vodka dill cream sauce : page 142
I actually quite liked this dish! It wasn't too bland for us, though that might be due to the fact that I accidentally added 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg instead of 1/4 teaspoon.
I normally always use half the amount salt and/or stock cubes called for. In this recipe, I used half the amount of salt in the meatballs, but the full stock cube for 430ml water. DH consequentially thought that the stock was too salty; I might just add more water next time. There was also just a bit too little sauce, though that might be less of a problem if you serve the dish with potatoes instead of pasta.
I also learned something I'm really happy with: I started out constantly moving the meatballs in the pan, with the result that they started falling apart. Don't; let them rest for 1-2 minutes before you move them. Even though it'll look like they'll stick to the pan and burn, they won't. The important thing is that you keep the temperature low. Also, I think letting the meatballs rest for several hours before frying them really helped them develop their flavour.
Like redjanet, I think the flavour of the vodka added at the end is a bit too strong; after I had taken out the meatballs, I brought the sauce to a quick boil to get rid of the alcoholic flavour.
Served with Cranberry Compote and buttered tagliatelle, as suggested.
Makes about 45 meatballs; serves six.
useful (1)
Pork in Milk with Polenta Crust : page 116
The resulting dish was very, very nice, but the recipe was sometimes a little vague, especially in relation to the sauce.
It didn't say anything about covering it with a lid while it simmers, which is what you typically would do with a braise. This very similar recipe for Pork Cooked in Milk with Bay Leaf and Cinnamon, however, specifically says not to cover. This would also make sense as the sauce shouldn't be too liquid. It didn't mention boiling the sauce to reduce it either. We covered the dish for the first hour or so, then uncovered, and reduced the sauce a little later on, and ended up having lot's of sauce, and it wasn't even too liquid but I'm not quite sure if the result shouldn't have been rather more the 'caramelised, nutty nuggets'-version Moro describes.
The meat ended up being very nice and juicy. I also put that down to the fact that we used pork shoulder and not leg (hamlappen), which might be too lean and dry out quickly.
The polenta was very nice, too, and worked very well with the sauce. It didn't develop a crust, though I think we could have fixed that by turning on the grill for a few minutes.
We served this with Savoy Cabbage with Garlic and Juniper, and it worked very well.
useful (1)
Winter Vegetable Crumble : page 49
As several of the book reviews on Amazon (both .com and .co.uk) mentioned the excellent Winter Vegetable Crumble, we thought we should give it a try. And in fact, it was very nice - though it wasn't as mind-blowing as you would expect after reading the reviews at Amazon.
I really loved two aspects: the crumble and the sauce. The crumble wasn't really crunchy, but I loved the flavour of the parmesan combined with ground hazelnuts (which we used as we ran out of ground almonds - try it, it's really an unusually successful accident!). And the sauce was just really good in taste.
The weak point were the veggies themselves. The recipe uses four different types of root vegetables, and you definitely didn't necessarily taste that; they all had more or less the same flavour and texture, and it didn't really help that they were all coated in sauce and buried in crumble. We had the dish as a main, but as the veggies were near indistinguishable, it was a bit one-dimensional as a single menu item. Next time, I would probably serve it as a side dish and not bother with a variety of half-used vegetables but just pick one or two.
Last, the minor issues: next to being nearly indistinguishable, the vegetables were also too soft - I would reduce their cooking time by several minutes, and also take into account how long they sit in the hot water before it starts boiling.* Also, we had to raise the oven temperature to 200°C to get everything baked and golden brown in 20 minutes.
The dish also contained bacon/pancetta cubes. They were nice, but not really necessary, and you can easily omit them to make the dish vegetarian.
(*) I'll have to admit, though, that this is exactly how I boil potatoes - put them into a pot, bring the water to a boil, and only then set the timer to 20 min.
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