A curious combination of pizza and quiche. Using yeast, the crust is that of a pizza,; the filling is that of a quiche, with a 2 cm layer of onion, some bacon and topped off with a mixture of egg and crème fraîche - but just a little of that, not as much as usually with a quiche.

The result was nice, but not particularly wowing. I thought it used way too much onion - 1 kg onion (or even less) would have worked at least as well (and believe me, it's less work, too - I was surprised how much onion I ended up with). I used only 200 g of crème fraîche, which seemed to work well enough, and 250 g bacon, which even could have been a bit more. And I also fried the onions considerably longer than 10 min, until they were just slightly soft.

This was actually meant to be my French contribution for the FIFA 2014-challenge (and actually I was planning to make a Quiche Lorraine, but then decided that I wanted it to contain onions), but now I wonder whether a onion quiche isn't perhaps more typical of the southwest of Germany. A quick search led me to near-identical recipes from both countries...

Oh, wow! Excellent pie! Very full of flavours, the best proof that vegetarian food doesn't need to be dull at all, on the contrary.

Very delicious, incredibly moist! It's a bit like a carrot cake, it's not like you'll realize that your actually eating vegetables (DH claimed that he could very vaguely taste the courgette; I'm don't think I did).

The glaze wasn't visible as a glaze; instead it had been absorbed by the cake - it seems that there was too much liquid in proportion to sugar. I wanted to write that the glaze isn't strictly necessary as it only provides an extra sugar coating for an excellent cake that doesn't need it - but instead the lemon juice adds a layer of extra moisture that was actually quite interesting. If you want a real glaze, though, you'll have to use more icing sugar.

I used hazelnuts instead of pecans/walnuts/almonds and was very happy with this choice. I also accidentally used 1 tsp baking soda and 1/2 tsp baking powder, but that didn't really matter.

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?

Great variation of an otherwise classic Christmas cookie recipe.

A very nice, very simple dish. Watch out, don't let the zucchini/courgettes cook for too long!

We served them alongside Hake with Cider, and this combination worked very well.

Meh. The pumpkin was nice, the cod (our substitute for zander) was nice, but there was hardly anything that connected the two. The dill pesto surely didn't, on the contrary, I don't know what that was doing in this dish. And it didn't even look appealing!

Added 10 October 2011:
We fried another few pieces of cod and re-heated yesterday's pumpkin and rice when I thought of adding a little sesame oil and soy sauce instead of using the dill pesto, plus using a few drops of butter from the fried cod - and it was soo much better!

Actually, this is more of a dip than a salad, although you can also eat it as a side dish. I hardly tasted any tomato, except for a slightly sweet taste, and just a faint hint of aubergine. The rest was spice, spice and garlic; in a way, we joked, it was like a spicy garlic mayonnaise but with much better nutritional values.

It was extremely delicious, and you can be sure we'll make this again, be it as a side dish or as a dip. We used homemade Harissa and served it with Mutton Leg Chops with Ginger and Pomegranate Salsa and buttery couscous, and it went together really well.

Crosspost. Exact the same recipe was also published in Ghillie Basan’s other Moroccan cookbook, Modern Moroccan.

Edited 11 March 2017:
It's a good idea to steam the aubergine in batches, especially when using larger amounts than given. I also only chopped everything this time, and I think I prefer the puréed version.

Gah, this was horrible! White wine I can imagine, red wine just was a recipe for disaster. Even worse, apart from the red wine, it lacked flavour and was pretty watery even though I hadn't even added all the water - I had to add a lot more tomato concentrate, a quarter cube of stock and more savory to make something of it. Plus points for incorporating cabbage, but that's the only positive I can find, unfortunately. We used savoy cabbage, and white beans from a glass which I only added at the very last moment to heat through.

Very delicious! Our soup was just slightly too hot, probably because DH added Tabasco in addition to the dried chilli - use either of the two, but definitely add one of them, it made the difference between a good and a very good soup. With more liquid resp. less filling, you could also serve it as a vegetarian appetizer.

Very delicious, though on the salty side of things. I'm afraid there's little you can do as it's mainly the black beans that are so salty, but try to cut salt wherever you can, eg. omit the salt in the marinade, use water instead of stock in the sauce, and possibly use just a little less of the black beans.

It was extremely delicious - but you'll have to like it, and not eat too much too quickly, as it is really fatty. But then again, hey, what did you expect, it's pork belly! We were slightly disappointed that we didn't manage to get a really good crust; not even when we placed it under the grill today (day 2). Yet, in the end, it was still very delicious without.

I'm also not too sure what to think of the apples - they were nice, yes, but they felt more like a side dish as they only touched the pork belly once everything was plated and served - not that that necessarily is a bad thing. Also, the sugar that was sprinkled on top of the apples didn't really caramelize, not that that was a surprise - you can better sprinkle it around the apples to make that happen.

We didn't make the polenta but opted for traditional choice, plain boiled potatoes. I was glad to have the salad, as the very flavourful dressing provided for a sauce the pork didn't deliver. If I'd serve this with polenta I would definitely make sure to make a sauce for it!

Served with Pumpkin with Rosemary on Rocket with a Plum Vinaigrette, with Elderflower Sorbet and Blueberry Ice Cream as a dessert.

It's very delicious - but only for the first three spoonfuls or so. After that, it becomes sickening sweet. It helps a lot to serve this with a tangy sauce (i.e. cranberry sauce), but I wouldn't serve it on it's own. I doubt that the sour cherry sauce given in the book is tangy enough to counterbalance the sweetness of this ice cream, but we haven't tried that yet.

We had intended to serve this mousse together with Sour Cherries in Syrup and the Kahlúa Chocolate Mousse for DH's birthday dinner; I'm glad we tested the both ice cream and mousse recipes before. Apart from the sweetness issue, the white chocolate ice cream couldn't hold up against the mousse; the mousse definitely required something fresh. I'm lobbying to pair the mousse off with with the Orange and Szechwan Pepper Ice Cream or maybe the Chocolate-Tangerine Sorbet - we'll see what he'll decide.

Chorizo-flavoured textures...

The punchline actually says it all - all we tasted was chorizo, carried by various textures. To make things worse, it didn't actually work as the cabbage needed to cook for 20 minutes, not 3. Admittedly, we used half a pointed white/green cabbage, not a Savoy cabbage, but I don't think that made a difference - the Savoy cabbage in this recipe needs to be cooked 15-20 minutes as well. I don't really see the point of this dish, to be honest.

A very delicious soup - in fact, in terms of flavour this definitely merits a 4 star rating, but I had several issues with the recipe.

First of all, I would definitely not describe it as 'elegant', on the contrary. Our first association was Snert, a coarse (but very delicious) Dutch pea soup. Nor did it look elegant - it had a coarse texture, even after I had pureed it with a hand-held blender, and it was light brown instead of white.

Then, the blending process: puree this soup with a potato masher? Really? Even the bacon cubes? You must be kidding! As just mentioned, I used a hand-held blender, and even then the soup stayed coarse. Not a bad thing, just not what was promised.

Last, flavour: I used the cream, and I wouldn't do it again, the soup is heavy enough by itself, and I didn't like the sweetness added by the cream. I actually made the soup a day in advance which was really helpful as there was a lot of fat and keeping the soup in the fridge overnight meant that it was easy to get rid of some of that fat. Alternatively, you don't really need to add any olive oil when frying the carrot, celery and bacon, as long as you add the bacon first (I always forget).

That said, I've cooked comparatively few recipes with grains, especially beans, and I liked this one. I might try the very similar version with skordalia from The Olive and The Caper soon.

Edited a week later:
This soup was actually a lot better than the version with skordalia from The Olive and The Caper. It's a bit more complex, but has more depth of flavour. However, if you want a vegetarian version, then substituting the bacon with skordalia (and the chicken stock with vegetable one) is the way to go!

Edited 24 November 2016:
We made this soup again, but chose not to purée it - and I actually quite liked it that way! Upgraded from three to four stars.

Very nice cookies! The texture was very good (crunchy yet fluffy), and then you had those chunks of chocolate... recommended!

Very nice, but I still prefer my both MIL's version (gotta ask her where her recipe's from), and the relatively similar Three Green Vegetable Soup. Quite liquid, if you like that, and needs to be salted heavily.

BF loved it, I found it just okay. The dressing was very nice, even ‘sophisticated’, but I disliked the fact that the rocket (or rather the lamb's lettuce we used instead of rocket) was prone to become limp due to the heat of the chickpeas.

Also, I felt it was a little dull due to the lack of interesting main ingredients - chickpeas and rocket (or lamb's lettuce) just isn't enough. I preferred the very similar Chickpea, Goat’s Cheese and Rocket Salad (with tomatoes) from Delicious Magazine (May 2009); perhaps I might make it with the Bittman-dressing next time.

A very nice cake, goes well with coffee (haha :) ). I used zwieback and normal (not toasted) walnuts; you can probably tweak this recipe to make it suitable for people on a gluten-free diet as my guess is that it's easier to substitute the zwieback than it would be to substitute flour. I forgot to measure the quantity of the syrup and just poured everything over it, but luckily that wasn't a problem. I really liked the structure of the cake.

Because of the spices, it reminded me very much of Christmas and I'm considering making the cake again in December, though I would then probably use another syrup, i.e. vanilla, cinnamon or cardamom syrup, and perhaps even coat it in a layer of chocolate.

Very nice. It was slightly too sweet in the beginning, though the addition of a little salt quickly resolved that. I made it as a lunchbox for DB, and to my surprise even the grated apples held well. I didn't make my own mayonnaise as described in the recipe, so it was a bit difficult to estimate the amount of mayonnaise to be used, but I guess in the end that's a matter of taste anyway. And I should have mixed the mayonnaise, yoghurt and seasonings before adding the apples and veggies, not after.

I was surprised that there seem to be two ways of preparing Waldorf Salad: those with celery sticks, such as in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian or in The Scandinavian Cookbook, and those with celeriac, such as this one. I've never before heard that you would prepare Waldorf Salad with anything else than celeriac before, so of course I'm absolutely convinced that this must be the original version :)

Brilliant drink. It's fairly unusual (with cucumber, grapes, melon and ginger, amongst others), but these ingredients combine surprisingly well.

You might find it a little on the sweet side, in which case you could use a very dry sparkling wine, or replace it with white rum and sparkling water altogether (white rum might be a good idea either way). Don't use Ginger Ale for the alcohol-free version, much too sweet; rather use sparkling water.

Add the mint early on in the process, so that its flavours are absorbed into the drink as well - such a shame to use it only as decoration. Basil would work perfectly well, too.

The recipe is actually a punch - but why not serve it as a kind of white sangria, by adding more liquid in proportion to fruit? One of the reasons I really enjoyed it is that I can see it as a drink on a lazy afternoon on the balcony just as well as served during a flashy garden party. And with all its green ingredients it definitely is an eye-catcher!

Very delicious! Watercress is a really good idea, it's peppery taste complements the salad very well. If you can't get watercress, rocket is probably the best substitute.

The dressing was very good. I used only the juice of half a lime instead of a whole one which was a good idea. The dressing could have used a little more chilli, though that will really depend on what kind of chilli you use (we used a large one as we couldn't get bird's eye chilli).

I was worried that it wouldn't be suitable as a lunch box salad - the grated carrots could dry out, the beef of course has a limited shelf life; but actually it worked quite well. Admittedly, we cooked the beef until it was done, just to be on the safe side. DH also mentioned that he would have liked to see a little more beef next time.

A lot better than the Thai Beef Salad we made before.

Nice but not particularly mind-blowing. It needs a lot more spices than specified (try using the double amount), and I felt that the sauce was too much liquid too - either cut back on the amount of liquid added, or try to make the sauce thicker one way or other.

Edited to add:
It also tastes nice cold, especially on such hot days as these. Definitely double the amount of spices and add some salt.

Edited 7 January 2015:
I made this again and used the double amount of spices - much better already, but still not particularly impressive. But even so, it is so easy to make that I guess it will end up being a standard on our weekday dinner menu. I forgot to add less liquid, but solved that by using the cooking liquid to cook the couscous, which works quite nicely.

I would also suggest changing the ratio of the vegetables - I don't think courgette/zucchini works particularly well in this dish, though I'm not quite sure substituting an aubergine for one of the courgettes would make it any better. Definitely add more raisins, perhaps one or two bell peppers, and possibly more chickpeas?

Upgraded from a 3 to a 4 star rating.

Very delicious, very aromatic dish! Works just as well as a side dish and as a very simple main dish, if you serve it with some extra vegs.

Edited 30 March 2012 to add:
Very delicious. Contrary to what I thought I didn't have any sweetcorn in the cupboard, so I substituted it with more peas and carrot. I accidentally added 2 tsp whole cumin instead of 1/2 tsp, so I omitted the ground cumin at the end, but I added about a 1/8 tsp ground cardamom (which was a bad idea) and a 1/16 tsp cinnamon (which was good). The cashew nuts will be quite soft if you cook them along with the pilau - I would rather recommend roasting them in a seperate pan and adding them right at the very end.

Served 2 1/2 - 3 as a sole main course, so follow the advice above for an extra vegetable dish if it's supposed to be dinner.

Very delicious, but the title isn't correct. Instead it should be something like 'Braised Veal with Roquefort, Sage and Fried Pears'.

We didn't use veal but pork, and that probably was for the better. The meat was already slightly dry - veal would have been a lot drier yet. I think you could either use a t-bone steak to prevent this from happening, or fry the steak, braise the onions at the same time in a pan, then assemble and place under a grill to get the cheese melted. Speaking of cheese, the roquefort was too strong for this dish, though again pork could keep up better than veal would have done. I would suggest using a mild blue cheese or equal amounts of roquefort and mascarpone, or just mascarpone exclusively, as is the case in Falling Cloudberries very similar Pan-fried Veal Chops with Lemon, Sage and Mascarpone (might try that one later this week). Finally, the sauce: could have been a lot thicker!

Yet, all in all, very delicious and well worth the effort if you have the time!

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?).

Very nice, though not quite as nice as the Brioche we made these past two weekends - or maybe we're just getting spoiled already?

The dough was really sticky, and judging by the weight of the dough when I started braiding, I probably added snother 200 g or so of flour during kneading. With one full recipe, I made a three braid loaf with raisins and four single-braid loaves without raisins. I used 75 g pre-soaked raisins (for half a recipe, I divided the dough by weight), and it definitely could have had more; I think maybe 110 g of raisins. My husband even suggests 150 g raisins, and I'm pretty sure my toddler agrees with him, even though - or maybe because - then you'd have raisins with bread instead of bread with raisins.

Unfortunately, though, we used too high temperatures for baking. My dear husband let me sleep in (bless him!), and because I hadn't printed the recipe for him and he has ample experience with sour dough bread and very little with challahs and the like, he coated the bread with egg instead of milk and preheated the oven to 250 C.

Nice, but not very impressive. Would have been a 3.5 if we had the chance to give half ratings. The main problem was that it tasted too much of yoghurt with a bit of cucumber and garlic, instead of a cucumber and garlic sauce based on yoghurt - the emphasis was in the wrong place.

DH, who made the tzatziki, felt that it was a bit too dry. It's ironic, as he didn't have the time to let the cucumber dry; instead, he just removed the pits as being most moist part. Instead of the usual Greek yoghurt, we used Turkish yoghurt from our local vegetable store, which seemed to be thicker, though both contain the same amount of fat, 10%. Of course these might be the reasons for the sauce being too dry, though I wouldn't expect it to make such a difference.

Served with Harissa Chicken and Sweet Potato.

Similar but slightly more elaborate (and laborious) version of a family recipe. I quite liked it, if only because it was a little different. The dressing didn't work at all, though, or rather: it was way too much. I only made half of it, and even then we still have half of that (so one fourth of the original quantity) leftover.

I used my pressure cooker to cook the beans (I used pinto), and failed miserably the first two times (one batch ended up as mush, the other was severely undercooked with a few mushy beans inbetween).

I loved this one. It's easy to make, and extremely delicious: the fish was moist and literally melted on our tongues - just the right thing for a hot summer's day, and just the right thing to serve to impress your guests. Just leave out the syrup; you won't need it, you'll have enough juices coming along with the fish.

Edited 8 December 2015:
I have no idea which fish we used last time, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't trout - trout just doesn't work with these flavours, it's too earthy and too strong. The lime and the ginger barely had any chance, and anything they could add to the trout's earthiness was acidity and pungency, neither of which would work well. But I could see this working well with cod, I might try that.

Rating downgraded from 5 to 3 stars.

I wondered whether I was doing anything wrong - instead of 24 cookies I managed to get approximately 16 large and 30 small/bite-sized cookies out of the dough. I noticed that the dough made with oat flour dried out quickly and this influenced how thick you were able to roll out the dough - but in the end this didn't matter at all. They were really easy to prepare, and with a little parmesan or at least sea salt you could probably also serve them as crackers in their own right. Especially heart-shaped ones :)

The smoked trout cream was very delicious, and the whole combination just came together really well. A really good choice, and well worth the extra work!

Served as part of a buffet for eight, together with Nectarines with Ricotta and Parma Ham, Papaya Salad, Aubergines with Sweet Harissa, Beef Canapés and Roquefort in Belgian Endive Leaves.

Very delicious and nicely flavoured, but the recipe could have been written better.

I found that cooking all vegetables in one large pan was very hard to do, respectively would have meant that many of those would hardly ever be browned due to lack of contact with frying pan; I therefore opted to use two pans instead of one. I did that, and once they didn't need my attention anymore, I began setting out the dough. I was pretty surprised that once that was done, the dough then was supposed to rest in the fridge for at least 30 min - in that case, it would have been smarter to start out with the dough, and then continue with the vegetables. Unless the whole point was that the vegetables need to cool down, in which case I would have liked to know that.

Last, you're instructed to place the dough around and on top of the tart, bake it, then turn it around - but the photo shows a tart which hasn't been turned around. We decided not to turn it around either, and that's what I also would recommend to do - the filling isn't that pretty to see (not that it's disgusting either), and this way the crust stays fresh and does not get soggy, even if you keep the tart for the following day.

What I would recommend instead is slightly different: prepare the vegetables a day in advance. If possible, use about 1.5 times the amount of vegetables, cook, then use a third of that with some extra tomatoes to make a pasta sauce. Let the rest cool down and set aside for the following day. If kept in fridge, remove them as soon as you begin to prepare the dough so that they have time to come to room temperature, then use to make the tarte.

Oh, this was wonderful! Sweet and fresh, and a little soggy puff pastry to go... DH longed for a somewhat dryer, crunchier pastry, but I didn't mind at all. It was vaguely similar to the Shallot Tarte Tatin we made last year but not as sweet. Works equally well as an appetizer and as a side dish, is fairly easy to prepare and looks simply stunning (the photo has a slightly yellowish tint). Absolutely recommended!

We served it with Lemon and Oregano Chicken from Falling Cloudberries (review coming up soon), and it worked very well. I could also imagine this with something more robust, lamb for example.

Basically, this is a very nice sauce. I do find pure tomato sauce a little boring, so I added some fried chopped onions and mincemeat during the last ten minutes (could be earlier, though). Adding the mincemeat meant that the sauce lost some its simplicity of taste and tasted slightly less velvety; perhaps adding flakes of bacon and some red or green pepper might be a more suitable choice to spice up this sauce. Or try it as it is!

Otherwise, I think it's a very good sauce that you can also use for other pasta dishes - e.g. make some extra sauce and use it as a tomato sauce for lasagna the following week (bring it to a boil and fill it into a large jar - my guess is that this way you should be able to keep the sauce some 2-4 weeks).

The same recipe has already appeared in other blogs, as Deb acknowledges, for instance Orangette, Rachel Eats and The Amateur Gourmet. Originally from Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.

Edited 7 March 2010:
Ah, I gave it another try (what else should you do on a Sunday evening when you originally had other eating plans) and I was disappointed again... This time it didn't taste very velvety, or at least not velvety enough to make up for the fact that it was actually quite plain. It made a great base for my favourite spaghetti sauce, though, with onions, garlic, red and green bell peppers, ham and ...

Edited 24 January 2012:
I actually canned a few jars of tomato sauce back in July 2011 - just poured the boiling hot sauce into sterilized jars up to the rim and closed them properly - and then used them in a pasta dish this week. The sauce was delicious as always, not a bit spoiled, and made DH crack jokes that it had 'ripened', and that next time we should use oak barrels.

In any case: this can make an ideal gift for people who will be short on time or cooking resources for a while - kids going to college, people under time pressure to finish a project, new mothers, people whose kitchen is getting renovated and who have to rely on a camping pit in the meantime (they'll need it for the pasta..), you name it.

Edited 29 June 2013:
On second thought... Read this before you decide to can any tomato sauce.

Meh. The pastry crumbled into pieces (and what luck that we had plates, originally we had planned it as an on-the-road-dinner!), and it tasted really really strange. I didn’t like the taste of the texture, if you understand what I mean (a crumbled tart doesn’t need to be too bad if you have a plate anyway, the texture can – theoretically – still have a nice feel in your mouth – this one didn’t), but additionally it contained a lot of cinnamon which I didn’t like.

The filling tasted not only boring, but a little like an uninspired pasta sauce - as bad as it can get! If the rest would have been better I probably would have considered giving the tart another try and making it with the Tomato Sauce with Onion and Butter next time, but I won’t. It looked nice, though. Sad that that’s the only good thing to say about it.

a.k.a. Risotto Margharita (tomato, mozzarella, basil).

It was quite nice, but could have been just a bit more exciting for my taste. I needed more stock (I only made half a recipe, and needed about 400 ml extra), but maybe it would have helped to use a slightly smaller pan. I also used the juice from the tomato seeds (peeled and de-seeded the (washed) tomatoes above a bowl, then sieved that stuff).

Edited a day later:
I made the second half of the four servings today. This time I used a bit more rice and consequently also a bit more stock; I also added about half a garlic clove, two extra tomatoes (resulting in about 550 g of tomato weighed before peeling and de-seeding instead of 250 g), and 125 g instead of 75 g of mozzarella. Overall, it was a little more interesting. It was definitely more creamy (mozzarella!), and although the garlic clove wasn't noticeable, I'm sure it also spiced things a bit up (everything savoury is more delicious with a little garlic added to the mix!). Next time I would even use a whole garlic clove, or rather two cloves for the whole four serving dish.

Edited 5 August 2017:
I made this risotto using my pressure cooker (see this review for how that worked), but also changed a few things. Main change: Instead of cooking the tomatoes with the rice, I chopped them into eighths (they were large) and roasted them at about 150-160 C for about 1 hr 15 min with just a little oil, and added them at the very end. I think next time I'll even cook 250 g tomatoes (skinned and deseeded) with the rice, and oven-roast another 500 g tomatoes as I did today. And as recommended the last time, I added two cloves garlic, a little fresh thyme and fresh oregano to the rice before/while cooking.

Guest post by DH:

In contrast to 100 Great Breads, this book contains a lot of tips, technique and background on baking bread. If anything, this book makes it slightly difficult to distinguish between essential techniques for baking bread and the maybe-not-quite-so-essential techniques, meaning you can easily spend 4-5 hours getting your bread dough 'just so'.

The description of kneading, however, is very well done and the dough, when put through all its paces, looks very well and healthy. The resulting bread is risen very well and evenly, and has a good and uniform crust. The taste could've been slightly less bland, but this may be a problem of the flour we have.

Rich, but very good!

It actually wasn't as good as it could have been, and that was all my fault: I made half a recipe, which meant I should have used about 12-14 ladyfingers, but I still had so much coffee and cream leftover that I decided to just finish the pack and add a third layer of ladyfingers. They just barely fit the bowl (it was overflowing dangerously!), and I still had a little bit of cream leftover, but I felt good about having used nearly all of it. But once we started eating, it turned out that the dessert consisted nearly entirely of ladyfinger and that there was very little cream. So what I should have done is just leave it at two layers and pour all the cream over it - nevermind it that would have resulted in a thick layer of cream, that's actually just what you want.

I was also sceptical about the cream - it was so liquid, I didn't expect it to become very thick. But it did! And it was really good in taste.

Last: it really was quite easy; I'll definitely make it again.

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.

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?

This is hot, really. And very delicious, with coconut milk and lime and coriander.

I used Vindaloo Curry Paste instead of Thai Red Curry Paste, but I don’t think that made a difference. Use 2 tbsp. of curry paste instead of 3 if you want it less hot. Make sure that you know how much work cutting 3 carrots into juliennes is before you decline any offers of help. And cut the broccoli into small florets, otherwise you’ll have to cook the curry longer.

And did I already mention that it was hot?

Really, really nice! This is one of the dishes that makes you think that somebody must have spent hours in the kitchen, when in fact it was pretty easy (I should give this recipe to my mother. She reacts to practically every culinary compliment with the comment "And it was so easy!").

That said, I wouldn't serve it as a main dish (truthfully, Slater actually serves it as an appetizer himself, it's just us who didn't realize). The fish cakes have a wonderfully complex taste. It's very impressive for the first few bites, but after that you can't help yourself thinking "And now what?". I think you can even serve 2 cakes per person, meaning that you can even serve this dish to six instead of four, as long as your (real) main dish is substantial enough.

The sweet dipping sauce didn't really make the cut for me. I didn't even need any sauce at all, but if, a quick mix of e.g. fish sauce, rice vinegar and water would have worked just as fine.

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/

Tastewise, this was most definitely 5 stars. However, it wasn't really a tarte tatin - you were supposed to turn the pie upside down once it was nearly done, add butter and sugar and caramelise the top. The result was fantastic (it tasted just like sticky toffee apple!), but it just wasn't what a tarte tatin was supposed to be (as far as I know).

Also, the dough wasn't completely done. To be honest, that only annoyed me during the first bite, after that I didn't even notice. The top was slightly burnt, but that might have been us, setting the grill too high.

Oh, and it wasn't enough: The two of us just gobbled up the whole thing in one evening. Didn't even manage to take a photo.

Edited 5 June 2012:
I don't remember the dough being soo sticky last time as it was today! Clumpy and soggy and wet, not even remotely something you would be able to roll out! We had to add quite a lot of flour to achieve that. Also, be careful with your grill in the last step - we left it under the grill for just too long, maybe as little as thirty seconds, and yet is was burned black in some places.

Edited 25 April 2014:
180°C and 10 minutes extra produced a beautiful pie crust. We skipped the grill, but that might have been a mistake. Next time I'll allow the sugar to turn golden brown before adding the apples; that should do the trick for the apples.

Very delicious!

I had some problems with the short crust pastry (as usual). It didn't seem to come together that easily, but remembering this pastry, I ignored the suggestion to add some milk, and time proved me right.

I did, however, leave it in the fridge for several hours instead of 30 minutes, so when I wanted to roll it out, it was much too hard. That wasn't really a problem, I had the time to let it get to nearly room temperature again. It was still quite hard but manageable when I started rolling it out, but when I finished, it was not only soft but also very sticky. I had to roll it out again, using a lot more flour this time.

Once I had filled the spring form pan with both the pastry and the filling, I considered cutting away the part of the pastry that stuck out (ca. 2 cm). I'm glad that I didn't as the filling rose and the pastry shrank, and in the end it came out just perfect.

The pastry had a distinctly eggy flavour - if you don't like that, just use another recipe for sweet shortcrust pastry. Other than the pastry, it was absurdly easy.

I used this template for the decoration - just place it on the cake, dust with icing sugar, carefully push the icing sugar on the cross aside and remove the paper cross with some tape.

The garlic was overpowering; other than that it was nice. I didn't actually taste any tarragon (probably due to the garlic), but the others did.

Served with a rocket salad, and Beetroot and Potato Salad with Smoked Mackerel and Honey Chicken Salad for lunch.

I was looking for something to make tonight when I noticed this recipe - it's precisely what we've been making for years. It's not very special, but it's nice, fast, and super-easy; in fact, it's one of the first dishes I was taught as a kid. Serve with rice or potatoes and a salad.

Very delicious. Be careful with the lemons; juice of one lemon is slightly too much, our dish ended up being just a bit too sour; you might consider using only half of the juice and perhaps some grated zest. Also, the lemon quarters are mainly for decoration, so you could easily skip those.

Like most meatball dishes, you can prepare this well in advance; just follow the instructions until just before you add the meatballs to the sauce, then re-heat the sauce when you're ready.
Depending on how big the meatballs/kefta are, 30 min total cooking time might be a bit too long. In my case, 450g minced meat rendered 23 meatballs. We used beef instead of lamb.

Served with Grilled Aubergine in Honey and Spices; both were very delicious but might be just too similar (lemon juice).

DH absolutely loved it; I think there are other, nicer braises. In addition, the proportions were off.

The dish didn't say how much water to add exactly, except that it had to cover the meat. In our case, that was 600ml. The meat wasn't soft after 1 1/2 hours, we had to let it simmer another hour to get there; we left it uncovered during that time as there was still an awful lot of liquid. I'm glad that we did that as the amount of sauce we had eventually was quite right (if not still too liquid). We prepared the dish for four persons instead of six, so we didn't use 1.2kg chuck steak but only 700g, only half a preserved lemon, and 20g fresh ginger (partly to substitute for the ground ginger we had run out of). We also used 250g frozen peas (instead of the 1,2 kg fresh and shelled peas), and yet the dish looked like a pond full of duckweed!

I'm afraid these just didn't work for us. Flavourwise, they were a little dull. I think a clove of garlic and a little pepper, maybe also mint instead of coriander, would have worked wonders for the sauce. The potato cakes also could benefit from spices, or at the very least serve them alongside something else.

The biggest problem however was frying them. Either the heat was too low and nothing would happen for ages, but making the flame (we cook on gas) just a tiny bit larger made them get burnt nearly immediately!