friederike's Reviews
4 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 4Sort by: Title 
| Date | Rating
Website: BBC recipes
Yes, I do realize that Chilli con Carne isn't really Mexican, but TexMex at best, but it was a nice change from the empanadas and Baleadas we've had during the last few days (I seem to be thinking that most of the Central and South American countries will drop out in the group stage - Mexico already proved me wrong last night!).
Anyway, about this dish: I enjoyed it. I made a few changes, using about 450 g peeled and chopped tomatoes instead of the tomato concentrate and the passata, and slightly more beans (500 g instead of 400 g).
I had no idea how much '2 squares 70% dark chocolate, grated' was supposed to be - I know chocolate bars where that could be anything from 10 g to 100 g. Because years ago I made a chocolate-based main dish that went horribly wrong, I decided to start out with just a little, about 10 g, and then take it from there. It was fascinating to notice that even that little completely changed the flavour of the dish, making it a lot more earthy, and quite unexpected (with some eating experience you'll probably know what to expect if a dish contains onions, carrots, beef, beans - add chocolate to that equation and it will turn it into something completely different).
Edited 18. January 2016:
I used 1/2 tsp chilli and 1/2 tsp hot paprika, and it turned out quite a bit hotter than I expected. Luckily, kiddo (at 10.5 months) didn't seem to mind at all! He had a bit of a problem with the green pepper and some pieces of carrot as he wasn't able to chew them yet, but other than that this dish worked surprisingly well. Served with white rice for the adults, and potato-fennel mash for the little guy. We omitted the chocolate and the sour cream, mainly because that ended up on the second page of the recipe and I had stopped reading at that point.
useful (0)
Basically, this is a recipe for braised cabbage, with a serving suggestion of grilled salmon - really, there's not much the recipe says about the salmon. The braised Savoy cabbage, however, was really nice, and I'm especially glad I found this recipe as I don't have a lot of recipes for Savoy cabbage.
I used four slices of bacon as English bacon rashers are usually way thicker than Dutch ones, and I might use 6 next time. I used half a large Savoy cabbage, shredded, and also braised it quite a while longer, about 17 min, but I guess that depends on how al dente you want your cabbage to be. When I wanted to add the cabbage, I noticed that all the butter had already been soaked up by the bacon and onions - don't be afraid to add another knob of butter before you add the cabbage, it'll need it. The vinaigrette was too strong, too dominating for my taste; I thought it was too mustardy and also a little too sour; next time, I would add a little oil (or perhaps even melted butter?), mainly to make it thinner. That said, the cabbage is just as nice without vinaigrette.
Served with plain rice as I forgot to buy potatoes - something like roast potatoes, or maybe boiled new potatoes might go nicely with this dish.
Edited 2 August 2015:
We used a pointed green/white cabbage as we couldn't get a savoy cabbage - savoy cabbage is so much nicer!
useful (0)
Quite nice and very easy! I used only six small potatoes for the two of us to serve with Grilled Salmon, Braised Cabbage with Bacon and Onions, though five probably would have been enough as well. I also used one garlic clove, and dried tarragon instead of fresh rosemary as I felt that tarragon would go better with the Savoy cabbage and the salmon. And it did! I really liked the flavour of the potatoes, especially the garlic.
Unfortunately, though, the potatoes didn't get as crisp as I would have hoped, and definitely not as crisp as my usual recipe of Oven Fried Potatoes with Oregano and Lemon from The Olive and the Caper. I wonder if it had made a difference if I had used floury instead of waxy poatoes.
useful (1)
Extremely simple, extremely quick, and quite delicious! I'm only not very sure if they really tasted 100% like what shortbread is supposed to taste - they actually rather reminded me of normal butter cookies.
Some of them I sprinkled with lavender sugar instead of normal caster sugar, which was a nice accent, but not really noticeable. I guess I would have to replace some of the caster sugar in the dough with lavender sugar as well to get a more distinct lavender flavour.
useful (0)