friederike's Reviews
1109 recipes reviewed. Showing 1 to 50Sort by: Book Title | Date 
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Jamie's 15-Minute Meals
By Jamie Oliver
Michael Joseph - 2012
The dish itself, the flavours, at least how I made it, that's a solid four star rating - it was delicious! Everything else - the time management, the style of writing, the layout, - oh, and did I mention time management? - is an utter failure, one star only.
Let's see why. This book promises you'll be able to prepare the recipes within 15 min. In these 15 min, you should: 1. make a curry paste, from scratch; 2. cook rice, with spices; 3. make a yoghurt sauce; 4. prepare and cook the actual curry (this includes grilling the cauliflower in batches before adding them to the curry); 5. heat up pappadums. Honestly, just from reading the recipe, I estimated it at about an hour.
It turned out to be way more than that, because the recipe does not state how long the vegetables (mainly the cauliflower, actually) need to cook. Looking at comparable recipes, such as this one, it's easy to see why - the cauliflower needs to cook for 30 min, and that's excluding all those other steps!
I didn't even have most spices for the curry paste in house; I just used about 1.5 tsp of ready curry spice mix. I skipped grinding everything in the kitchen machine and just fried it directly. And I also didnm't add the juices from the pineapple can, because that's sugar syrup, why for heaven's sake should I put that in a curry? It turned out to be on the sweet side anyway.
Serves 6 rather than 4, and this is a working link.
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My Personal Collection
By friederike
- 2000
The shortcrust pastry was excellent, the filling was nice, but one thing went wrong pretty badly - it didn't bake at all. The recipe says to bake at 175 C in a convection oven for 45 min, but when I checked, it looked like nothing had changed except for the puddle of juice that had formed at the bottom of the oven. 8 min under the grill at least gave a golden brown colour, but the apples were only lukewarm, neither hot nor cooked, and I had little hope for the dough below. So (once our fish pie had left the oven) I put the apple pie back into the oven, 30 min at 200 C normal oven modus, and it turned out fine, though still wet and soggy at the bottom.
Next time, I'd use
- less apples; say 600 g instead of the original 1 kg
- larger pieces of apple; ie. walnut-sized instead of hazelnut-sized
- half the amount of lemon juice - if using fewer apples, you need to reduce the amount for the filling to 2 tsp lemon juice, 2 tsp cornstarch, 2 tbsp sugar
- 30 min at 200 C (which is what nearly all sweet pies do in Angela Boggiano's book Pie)
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bpuc-EKAV3m/
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Website: Springlane
Not too bad. The reason why I'm giving a two star rating nonetheless is because although this recipe is actually titled "Nie wieder matschige Kartoffelpuffer! So werden sie garantiert knusprig" (something along the lines of "Floppy potato pancakes? Never again! This is how they'll get crisp, guaranteed!"), it doesn't say a word about two crucial factors: how much heat will you need, and how much fat. Admittedly, my guess is that spelling out how much fat you need would only unneccessarily heighten the risk of cardiac infarction, which is already high enough given how much fat you need for baking these pancakes - I noticed that they only turned out well if I used lots of fat, and I ended up using about half a pack of lard (ca. 125 g). I also had to add an extra egg half-way through the baking process as the pancakes kept falling apart.
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Website: JamieOliver.com
Be warned: it's a lot. I made half a recipe, and half of that (= a quarter recipe) was enough for the four of us to be served with spaghetti on two nights, so enough for 8 servings.
It tasted very nice, and both of my children enjoyed it a lot. It reminded me a bit of a Bolognese sauce, probably bacause of the carrot and celery sticks; I didn't have leeks on hand, so I didn't use any. I guess you could also add in other vegetables (cauliflower? broccoli?) as long as they are cooked, which probably will happen anyway. It tasted well-seasoned while in the pan, though once served with spaghetti it needed a lot of salt (and yes, I cook the spaghetti in salted water).
If you want to go down the use-this-as-a-tomato-sauce-substittution-road, remember to freeze the sauce in small quantities.
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Website: BBC Good Food
Very easy, and fantastic in taste! We used spare ribs, as this was what our butcher recommended, and it was very delicious, albeit heavy in fat (obviously). I omitted the star anise and used 9 damson plums, and the dish could have used much more plums; I'm pretty sure you could also make this with prunes.
Served with rice and Sesame Pak Choi - while pak choi goed really well with the pork, the execution of that dish was awful.
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Website: BBC Good Food
This was awful, oily, and using bad technique. I would have expected this to be stir-fried and steamed (because why else would you use a wok?), and 'medium heat' does not work in that context. Also, you'll add a total of 4 tbsps of oil - way too much! And last, don't heat sesame oil, and don't use 2 tbsps of it.
Served alongside Braised Pork with Plums - wonderful!
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Website: The Daring Gourmet
I actually only had a little more than a pound (500g to be precise), so I reduced the amount of sugar and spices accordingly (I used 150 ml /115 g of sugar - 100 ml brown sugar, 50 ml white - instead of the 175 ml it should have been, but the brown sugar looked like it was finer, and thus denser than the white one). I also used piment.
To my surprise, the plum butter was already cooked and reduced just four hours later - I guess that's because I used much less plums, but probably also because I use a small slowcooker with a hole in the lid (supposedly to prevent overcooking), while I think I can spot an Instant Pot used as slowcooker (no holes) in the photos of the recipe, so that will probably also factor in regardless of the quantity.
Tastewise, it's a solid five stars, it's addictive! I'll try to make a larger portion next weekend, let's see how that goes. And it was also wonderful that I hardly had to do anything, much easier than most other jams.
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
In terms of chocolate, this cake is serious business. Such a load of chocolate (meant in a good way!)! The banana pales a bit in comparison, but is still there, subtler than in a normal banana bread. Nice texture, too.
I weighed and measured my bananas. With skin, they were about 145 g, without skin 120 g. Two bananas mashed were one cup, so to get a little more than one cup I mashed 2.5 bananas instead of 3 (= 300 g skinless banana). And 1/2 cup cocoa is 50 g. I used the smaller form, which was just right.
Edited 26 August 2018:
I've decided I prefer these cakes separated; I'd rather have a normal banana bread, and a non-banana chocolate cake. It's not like the combination doesn't work, it's just that it doesn't bring out what I want from a banana bread - although the texture and level of chocolateyness is divine!
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Website: Allrecipes.de
Very simple, very delicious. Makes a soft chocolate glazing. Also usable as cake filling.
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Zoku Quick Pops
By Jackie Zorovich, Kristina Sacci
Zoku LLC - 2011
Nice, but not in any way comparable to the others we've had until know. Taste before you freeze them -I used more than double the amount of honey (instead of agave syrup) with the kiwi. For the cherry, I had accidentally bought blackcurrant juice instead, so I used that, and I didn't mix it with apple juice (why would I? didn't really get that). In any case, blackcurrant went well with kiwi, if unexpected.
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Very, very delicious! I only made the strawberry part, though.
I had a few issues with the strawberry recipe. After puréeing them, I put them through a sieve - and absolutely nothing got stuck in the sieve, all the little seeds passed right through. I tried again with a tiny tea sieve, but this time nothing passed through, so that didn't work either. I then used a folded cheese cloth, and that strained out about half of the seeds. In the end, they didn't really bother me all that much, so I might just skip that step.
Because of all that sieving, I measured and found out that I only had 120 ml of strawberries instead of the required 155 ml, and so had to purée another few (I even started out with more than instructed, and yet...). Next time I'd probably purée 220-250 g strawberries (though only if I'm planning to strain out the seeds).
Last, I thought it wasn't sweet enough (though this will definitely depend on your strawberries, so taste!), so I added another 2 tsp sugar.
Edited 25 July 2018:
I made it again, strawberries only, without sieving, and while the seeds were noticeable, they didn't bother me. And it's super-delicious, really!
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Really nice! I only made raspberry ones, though.
I used Greek yoghurt instead of sour cream as that was what I had, but in hindsight buttermilk might have been nice as well, or a bit of both. I didn't measure the raspberries after sieving, but judging from how full the popsicles were it seemed about just right.
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Very nice! They even taste quite creamy (unless you take a bite, in which case you'll notice the water cristals). I used honey instead of agave syrup, and used nearly double the amount. The subtle honey flavour was very nice, but I think it could have been even sweeter, as the flavour of the peaches (well, nectarines) didn't really come out well. Maybe also add a little simple syrup next time?
Half a recipe was enough for four popsicles of 60 ml each.
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Website: Serious Eats
A really delicious pastry, crisp even on the bottom, and according to my husband it wasn't even that hard. Off to go buy her book...
Used in the Freeform Peach Pie.
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Website: Serious Eats
I have a confession to make - this galette was so good I not only licked my own plate, but also those of my kids.
There are only two minor things we'd change; one is that it's too much sugar - we used a bit less than instructed, and even that was a bit too much once the galette had cooled down. The other is that my husband wasn't pleased that a bit of the starch was still visible (he's a perfectionist - I wouldn't even have noticed if he hadn't pointed it out). He suggested to use the starch directly on top of the (very impressive!) pastry.
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Website: Two Sleevers
Very nice. I was very glad that the chicken pieces (we used chicken legs and thighs) turned out both cooked and not overcooked. We actually skipped the last part with butter and cream, and it was very nice. Served with rice* and broiled cauliflower.
(* I had actually hoped that I could make the rice in a small bowl above the chicken, but that didn't work as the chicken legs were in the way. Might work with a higher rack and a not as tall bowl)
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Website: Serious Eats
Nice, but the dressing was pretty overwhelming, especially since we had only added half the anchovies (to the salad, and all anchovies in the dressing). Also, there's an anourmous amount of dressing, I don't think you'll need all of that. Last, just tell me again how much salt you're supposed to add to the potatoes - 1/2 cup?! 8 tbsp?! What for? Either you'll taste it and the potatoes are oversalted, or you don't, but then you're wasting money and polluting the environment.
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Website: BBC Good Food
Good basic recipe.
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Website: Pickled Plum
Very refreshing lemonade! I think we used less lemon juice (my husband made it), but then again it's hard to tell when the amount of lemon juice is given in lemons, not in tbsp/tsp or ml.
Edited to add:
Hubby confirmed that he used one lemon less than indicated, and about double the amount of sugar. Tastes best diluted 1:1 with sparkling water.
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Der große Lafer: Aus dem langjährigen Erfahrungsschatz eines leidenschaftlichen Kochs: 60 beliebte Klassiker...
By Johann Lafer, Johann Lafer, Michael Wissing
Graefe Und Unzer Verlag - 2010
Oh bullshit! Big words about how you can recognize a great cook by the look of his home fries, but no clues whatsoever how to make them well (which means crispy, to me) - high temperature? low temperature? any indication about how long it might take? Nope. I was lucky I started early, I think I fried them for about an hour. Only at the very end I raised the temperature to very high, but that only works if you have a single layer of potatoes.
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Website: Simply Recipes
We made these a while back, so my memory is slightly hazy, but I think we really liked them but found them unsuitable as a main dish because they're, well, an appetizer. Very delicious, but not very filling, and if you try and eat a main dish sized amount of these, you won't want to eat them all that soon again. Not to mention the lack of vegetables.
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Website: Serious Eats
I normally roll my eyes if I ask my husband for input for our weekly meal planning, and he comes up with yet another recipe from Serious Eats, like he does most times - far too often, I find these recipe too complicated, and only to achieve a minimal improvement over the usual version of the same dish (I haven't reviewed most of these dishes, so you won't find them in my review history). This recipe is different. It's just soo, soo easy, and really delicious, an absolute keeper (we omitted the chili peppers, though)!
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Modern Moroccan
By Ghillie Bhasan
Hermes House - 2003
For some reason, cooked carrots and salad just don't work in my mind - but once I realized that I simply needed to mentally file this dish as a vegetable side dish, it was actually very nice. Personally, I prefer the carrots a bit more on the al dente side, so 10-12 min steaming is probably better, and I didn't need the whole amount of spices.
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Website: Serious Eats
This is an excellent cake, and you definitely wouldn't expect it to be gluten-free. I tried both versions; the one with icing was the absolute winner. I don't know why, but the one with syrup tasted bitter and looked unappetizing (see photo) - perhaps I did something wrong? I double-checked the recipe, bit it didn't say anything about not bringing the syrup to a boil, or seaving out the grated lemon rind before pouring it over the cake, or anything likewise...
I love the idea of using oranges instead of lemons!
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Pie
By Angela Boggiano
Cassell Illustrated - 2006
This seems to be an English version of Kapsalon - lots of things that are delicious on their own because they're heavy on the fat are thrown together in one dish, and the result is... not really delicious, because it's just to much. This pie is nothing but cheese, bacon, and puff pastry, with a fig leaf of potato thrown in.
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Website: The Cooking Jar
Quite nice, but a little dry, possibly because Ididn't get the salmon out of the oven in time; but I suspect the whole dish is probe to being dry ad it doesn't really have a sauce, and what's a pasta dish without a sauce?
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Betty Bossis Kuchen, Cakes und Torten
By Betty Bossi
Verlag Betty Bossi AG - 1995
Nice and moist coconut cake - even my husband enjoyed it, even though he isn't a big fan of coconut cake.
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Website: BBC Good Food
Just saw that I've never reviewed this recipe! Nice dish, though we've never made the celeriac mash, just the braised beef.
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Delicious (NL)
(February, 2014)
The cheese sauce was very delicious; but the recipe did't include a red sauce but just uncooked passata. While we are always grateful to skip any unneccessary steps, making a red sauce isn't one of them. The problem is that passata is quite watery and sour, which cooking solves by evaporation and caramelization. Unfortunately, we weren't able to taste either the cheese sauce or the spinach. It didn't help though that we used frozen spinach and seasoned it with lemon juice.
We served this as a lasagna instead of cannelloni, no need to fiddle around stuffing the pasta.
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Website: Serious Eats
We made these for Christmas morning - brilliant! Really enjoyed them, especially since you could just pop them into oven without any work (not that I would know, ha!). DH's only complaint was that making the dough was quite a bit of work, though, more than expected.
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Website: Tasty
Surprisingly tasty, actually. There's one major flaw - the recipe only calculates half an aubergine per serving - that was what my one year old (12.5 months!) daughter ate in one sitting (admittedly, we think she's going through a growth spurt, but still...). My guess was that this was an trick to keep the calorie count down, so I was surprised that I didn't find any mention of calories at all (not that I would care).
Anyway, we roughly doubled the recipe and used five aubergines (we needed five servings instead of four), 500 g minced meat (a mix of beef and pork), one onion, four cloves of garlic, no garlic powder (why?!), about 450 g mozzarella, some parmesan and this Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter, and this worked out well.
Next time, I'd roast the aubergines a little longer; also, try to roast them immediately to prevent them fron turning brown (or add lemon juice). A melon ball spoon makes things much easier, and also allow your tomato-meat sauce to simmer longer and cook it until quite dry, as the aubergines will supply more liquid than you'd otherwise enjoy.
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Weihnachtsbäckerei: Meine Backrezepte für die Weihnachtszeit
By Bernd Siefert
Tre Torri - 2014
Very nice. The vanilla flavour wasn't very strong, though I'm not sure if maybe my vanilla pod was too small (and whether or not he meant vanilla sugar with 'ground vanilla' - never heard of such a thing). Next time I'd add lots more vanilla, maybe even a few drops of vanilla essence (or would that be heresy?).
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Website: The Black Peppercorn
I actually merged this recipe with my usual recipe for red cabbage with apples, or rather: I made red cabbage as usual, but instead of cooking it on the stove for an hour plus, I cooked it in the pressure cooker for about 30 min (10 min pressure cooking time, but let's be realistic, it's more than just that).
And I'll have to say that I'm not impressed. For one, pressure cooking cut back somewhat on time, but absolutely none on workload, secondly, because the cabbage wasn't even as soft as I had expected, and last, because even though I had used nearly exactly the same recipe (I used 50 ml less water because I anticipated that less would be able to evaporate in the pressure cooker, and I forgot to add sugar, but added that afterwards), the cabbage tasted much blander than I'm used to. Next time I be back at the stove again.
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Grains
By Molly Brown
Hardie Grant Books - 2014
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.
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Website: Sorted Food
Disgusting, just plain awful! Way too many flavouring ingredients, and to make matters worse, they weren't even fully cooked!
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Website: BBC Good Food
It's nice when done well, but it's definitely not easy (not in the meaning of 'not complex'), and it contains several mistakes.
1. Both the potatoes and the aubergines need to be fully cooked. Baking the moussaka for 10 min will only allow the cheese to melt, not cook the vegetables. Grilling the aubergines (esp. without oil on them) won't cook them; it'll only get them partially charred (a.k.a. burnt). I grilled one aubergine, and baked the second one with a little olive oil in the oven, 20 min at 175 degrees C - much better (and less work!). The potatoes need to be fully cooked and cut into thin slices (5 mm max) if you want to have any chance of having more than one layer (I used 5 large-ish potatoes and barely managed two layers in two small casseroles).
2. If you want to end with a layer of aubergine, don't specify to start with a layer of potato, then aubergine, then meat sauce.
I didn't have mixed spice, so I used 1/4 tsp cinnamon, allspice and nutmeg each, and about 1/8 tsp each of coriander, cloves and ginger (all of them ground). I forgot to add the creme fraiche, but we just added it at the table, which was nice as well. I do like that you can prepare this dish in advance and only need to pop it into the oven for 10 min (though you'll probably need more than that when taken straight from the fridge).
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Website: Serious Eats
We didn't actually add any of the spices, we only used this recipe for parboiling and roasting carrots and parsnips as the spices wouldn't have worked well with the Finnish Meatballs with Allspice, Sour Cream and Lingonberries; but as such, it was a very nice side dish, and very easy, too, given that you could parboil them in advance and then just pop them in the oven when needed.
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Einfach Hausgemacht
(Autumn, 2017)
The idea is very nice, the execution - just awful! So many details are wrong with this recipe, nearly all of them a question of quantity and proportion.
First of all, the marinade for the salmon consists of 2 tbsp lime juice, 1 tsp honey and 3 (!!) tbsp soy sauce. The salt content of a good brand of soy sauce is about 16-17 g per 100 ml; my generic German supermarket brand contains 21.8 g/100 ml! That's 9.8 g salt in the marinade, or 2.5 g per serving!! I used 1 tbsp, and that was just right, shouldn't have been more.
Then, the lentils: onions, carrots and celery is a nice addition and is, as mirepoix, indeed the foundation for plenty of dishes, but 4 onions, carrots and celery stalks each for a recipe with 4 servings? A bit much. Last, for the 300 g lentils and aforementioned veg you're supposed to make a dressing consisting of 4-5 tbsp balsamic vinegar and 2-3 tbsp honey - I added less than half, and I already thought it was awful, esp. awfully sweet. I threw the lentils out; I might make them again without dressing (or in any case without that dressing), or just plain rice and a veg.
The recipe also calls for parsnip to be cooked with the lentils; I omitted them outright as that didn't really seem to match the elegance of the rest of the recipe. However, River Cottage has a surprisingly similar recipe with puy lentils and parsnips (up to including a honey dressing!).
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One-pot dish that you can easily prepare in advance; just follow the recipe, but stop before adding the yoghurt, pasta and feta. Too bad I only realized this after I had already added the pasta; (possibly) as a result, the pasta came out slightly overcooked while the rest had dried out a little.
We couldn't get orzo and used fusili and chopped cannelloni instead, (which might have been another reason the casserole dried out, if the fusili and cannelloni needed more liquid than orzo would have) and used quark instead of yoghurt.
I'm also not sure yet what to think of the flavours; three kinds of tomatoes can't make up for the fact that it's still just tomatoes as the only vegetable added, and I'm not sure I liked the balance between the spices (esp. cinnamon - generous 1/2 tsp too much?) and feta.
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Website: JamieOliver.com
You'll need two cans of tomatoes instead of one, and we used mascarpone instead of ricotta.
Edited 25 January 2018:
Bake the aubergines instead of frying them, saves you a lot of work. Although my kids (my son) liked the dish as a whole, neither particularly enjoyed the aubergines, and I do understand why - as a child, I wouldn't have liked them either (slimy texture, gah!). Just remember to serve with sonething extra in the side, i.e. bell pepper slices, and tell them to ignore the aubergine.
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Website: Betty Bossi
Not really a cake, merely a chocolate glazing, but simple and very good.
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Website: Springlane
Disgusting. I actually made this cake twice, because I had forgotten to add milk the first time around, which resulted in some kind of semi coconut omelette. The first was way better than the second.
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Pressure Perfect: Two Hour Taste in Twenty Minutes Using Your Pressure Cooker
By Lorna J. Sass
William Morrow Cookbooks - 2004
This is basically a two-part recipe: part one, cook otatoes in pressure cooker, part two, proceed to make mashed potatoes like you would with any kind of cooked potatoes.
For such a recipe, using a pressure cooker to cook potatoes is just plain silly. Because pressure cooking is less forgiving, you'll need to cook all potatoes more or less the same size, which will take more effort than plain cooking them on the stove, and because you'll need to factor in extra time for reaching and releasing pressuer (not to mention chopping!), you're not actually gaining anything.
As for part two, we used these amount as guidelines (though didn't measure anything precisely), and it turned out way too liquid. We threw it away.
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This was really nice! I did two things differently: I used two 400 g (~14 ounce) cans of tomatoes, simply because 15 ounces sounds like a lot and I didn't bother to convert units until after I had added the tomato, and I used just 1 tbsp instead of 3-4 tbsp of chili powder - I don't even want to know how hot it would be otherwise!
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Very nice, but you really must use fish stock, otherwise it's just rice with random shrimp in it. We used only half a pound small shrimp (large ones, to me, are prawn - or is that just me?), and seasoned with salt and a bit of sugar; the latter to counteract the balsamic vinegar. Be careful with the lemon zest. And no need to finely chop the anchovies, whole will do (they will indeed dissolve during the cooking process). I didn't use her recipe for the basic risotto part but instead stuck to the tried-and-tested Pressure Cooker Risotto in 7 Minutes. Served with Chargrilled Broccoli with Garlic (without the chilli).
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Website: Smulweb
This is actually the recipe that is printed on the bag of Quaker oatmeal. We made it a lot when my son learned to eat, around 8 months and older. We omitted milk, salt and sugar, which I wouldn't recommend for non-babies.
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Website: Simply Recipes
DO NOT DO THIS.
Really, I mean it. The workload isn't any less than when making chicken soup the normal way, in a pot on the stove. The cooking time (incl. pressure building and pressure release, but excl. prepping!) is maybe half of what it would be on the stove, but then again simmering on the stove doesn't require any of your attention anyway (you could actually argue that doing a quick release requires more of your attention than the whole simmering on the stove-process would). The comfort factor is gone as you'll miss that smell of chicken soup filling your house during cooking. And worst of all: the chicken will come out tough! It was so bad that I actually threw out the bird pretty quickly.
I used only 2 tsp salt (as well as slightly different vegetables: onion, carrots, celeriac and leek), and at least that part worked out well.
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Pure Simple Cooking: Effortless Meals Every Day
By Diana Henry
Ten Speed Press - 2009
Quite nice, but only because I used about half the amount of butter for the whole amount of basil and tomatoes since the Black Olive Butter I made a few weeks ago wasn't strong enough at all.
That said, I actually don't know how much basil I used, but the leaves on our not-yet-quite-dead basil where tiny anyway; and I used slightly more dried tomato (4 pieces were 26 g, and I added one extra at the last moment), so in reality I probably just used double the amount of tomatoes, or more. I was wondering whether I should have used air-dried tomatoes or dried tomatoes in oil (which is what I did); in the former case, 25 g air-dried tomatoes to 75 g butter might actually work.
Served with salmon, rice (pasta would have been better), and tomato and red bell pepper salad, with strawberries as dessert - quite a red menu by pure coincidence!
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Great Vegetarian Cooking Under Pressure
By Lorna J Sass
Cookbooks - 1994
Actually 3.5 stars - 4 from DH, 3 from me.
It tasted fine, but I thought it was a little bland texture-wise, it all seemed to be one big mush (it wasn't mushy, but I would have preferred the cauliflower florets to retain some bite, for example). Maybe adding a few chopped roasted nuts might help. I planned to add frozen peas, but forgot; I'm not sure adding them for the last few minutes would have cooked them long enough anyway. I also worried if this dish would be cooked within the given time frame, and it did.
I didn't have a 'mild curry' (I guess this is supposed to be one of those bland, non-descript spice mixes you can get everywhere), so I used 1.5 tbsp garam masala, 1 tsp turmeric and 1/4 tsp salt. DH later complained that it was too acidic, and when I couldn't come up with any really acidic ingredient (except for tomato concentrate, I guess?), he thought that maybe I should have used more salt. Point taken. I also omitted the pinch of cayenne, though adding that probably would have worked well, too.
One thong I enjoyed by this dish is that it is a one pot-dish, meaning that you don't need to make rice or anything else, and you don't even produce that much cookery ware that needs to be washed.
We served this with yoghurt stirred with mint and oil (Greek yoghurt would have been better).
Edited a few days later:
Nah, terrible. Not worth it.
useful (1)
Website: Serious Eats
Quite a nice dish, though I'm not sure I'd call it 'the best' - rather a good weekday dinner. We cooked them under the broiler - who knows, maybe grilling them would have helped?
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