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.

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!

I came across a beautiful photo of this dish on Pinterest, read that it combined rose and rhubarb, and I knew immediately that I had to give it a try. It's from a blog written in Polish, of which I don't understand a word, but luckily, there's Google Translate.

I didn't follow the recipe for the shortcrust pastry as I didn't have sour cream (and to be honest, I'm not quite sure I would have dared to do that - sour cream in a shortcrust pastry?). Instead, I used the Sweet Pastry from Ottolenghi, which worked perfectly.

I made the rhubarb and the rose 'custard' according to the recipe. I put custard in parenthesis, as it's not really a custard, rather an egg-mascarpone cream. Unfortunately, the very last sentence is pretty bungled by Google Translate so I can't say for sure if the cream should be heated, but I'm quite sure that the recipe says it should only be cooled, then poured into the pastry. This is very unfortunate, as at least in my case, the cream was completely liquid, and there was no chance at all that the rhubarb would stay in top. Just in case the cream was meant to be cooked I tried that as well, but to no avail. I'm wondering what might have gone wrong - is her 'one package of mascarpone' considerably more than mine (250g)? Did she actually use less than 2 egg yolks? Or maybe you need to use gelatin (the last sentence actually mentions gelatin, but I understood that to be used for any juices the rhubarb released)?

All that said, flavourwise, it's absolutely fantastic! Really brilliant! It's a bit of a shame of the custard/cream, but if you omit (one) egg yolk, and/or add gelatin, it just might work.

It was very delicious, and deep-frying french beans was definitely new to me, but it took fairly long to prepare (a lot of cutting work). Also, though I'm sure that it's a very interesting dish, in taste it was dwarfed by the strongly-flavoured Stir-fried Squid with Garlic and Chilli. I would suggest serving it with fish.

Edited to add:
I made the same dish using Chinese Cuisine: Szechwan Style and noted several things about both versions.

A very simple yet elegant dish! The balance of flavours was excellent, the fish was cooked just right, and it was easy and quick tp prepare!
The only problem we had was that the fish didn't fit into our IKEA steamer - and that the steamer tilted over because all the weight was placed on one side of the steamer. We cut the fish in half lengthwise so we could balance the steamer with two parts, and that worked very well. Alternatively, just use two fish.

We served this with Stir-fried Baby Bok Choi with Garlic, an excellent match!

Extremely delicious! We bought two small trout of 200g each, and used the cooking time the fish monger advised (ten minutes as opposed to 25), and it turned out perfectly cooked! We did have the idea that you really had to try to get both fish and sauce on the same chopstick to taste the together, and we wondered if that would have been different if the fish had been larger and had to be cooked for the full 25 minutes, but in the end, it didn't matter, it was delicious as it was.

We used just a little bit (approximately 1 tsp) of Hot Chilli Oil, but it definitely could have been more.

Served with Gai Lan with Oyster Sauce, a well-suited combination.

Fun fact: If the Chinese title of a dish is given, I always try to translate the title. I didn't manage to make sense of it this time. The first character is given as 'dry; first hexagram; warming principle of the sun, penetrating and fertilizing, heavenly generative principle (male)'. The other three are fairly straight forward: 'to stir-fry before broiling or stewing' 'sea perch, sea bass' and 'fish'.

Edited 22 September 2012:
We used a salmon trout (400g) today - for some reason, it felt like less fish. We talked about how you could scale this dish to serve it to more guests yesterday and considered using larger fish - turns out that any larger fish than this won't fit in our wok.

It tasted very similar, though both of us are pretty sure we had less sauce, which is strange as we didn't change the recipe in any respect. In consequence, it wasn't any hotter, though we used two tsp hot chilli oil as compared to one yesterday.

So-so. It tasted of salt and little else. And yet, I could see it working if you reduce the amount of salt and serve it as part of a larger buffet with several aromatic dishes to which this dish will serve as a contrast.

Fun facts:
I was a little stumped with the Chinese characters. The first one means 'wine, alcoholic beverage'; the third and fourth mean 'fish fillet'. The second, however, came up as 'slide, glide, slip; to skate, escape' - while I can see why you would use some of these adjectives for a fish dish, the meaning didn't make sense for the title of the dish. That is until I discovered a nearly identical character with the exact same pronounciation that is sometimes spelled like the character above, and means 'to steam / quick-fry / stir-frying, but with cornstarch added'

Not too bad. It was a bit of a shame that what you tasted most were the artichokes, or rather: the fact that they came from a tin. Pity. For this dish its definitely worth it to use fresh artichoke hears, regardless of what the authors uses. You might also consider using more (fresh!) artichoke hearts to give them a dominant position within the dish.

We used broad beans as well instead of peas as we didn't have enough of the latter; peas work better in this dish.

Served with Sherry Rice and Turkey Schnitzel with an Almond Crust (family recipe).

It was nice, but it wasn't anything special and it involved a lot of work. Unfortunately, preparing several different kinds of vegetables will always involve a lot of cutting, but this recipe insisted on pre-cooking each ingredient individually 'to retain its flavours', only then to simmer them together in a casserole for 20 minutes until the vegetables/flavours 'are blended'. Hello? Have I missed anything?

If you'd like to give this dish a try, I would just fry all the vegetables together from the start on, robust veggies first, more delicate ones towards the end. You'll save yourself a lot of unnecessary work.

Nice, but not quite what I've known as satay. In fact, it's just plain chicken (no marinade or other addition of spices!) with peanut sauce. The peanut sauce in itself is very nice, I especially liked the addition of kaffir lime leaves. DH thought that the sauce had too little oomph, I think he'll add more fish sauce and possibly some chilli tomorrow. I might go look for an 'authentic' satay recipe, the kind I knew as a kid.

Who knew this is an Algerian dish in origin? I've made a few different versions of Shakshuka in the past, i.e. from Smitten Kitchen and Plenty, and I'm pretty sure I've made the one from Jerusalem as well, I just haven't reviewed it yet. Of all these, I probably liked the one from Plenty best.

This version contains a lot of peppers and onions, and very few tomatoes, which I think is a shame - it works best with tomatoes as main ingredient! Also, the eggs where fully cooked, not runny after 10 minutes, though I think that's strongly dependent on how hot your pan is (i.e. medium bubbles vs small bubbles).

Hard to rate. We started out whisking it with a fork; unfortunately, the sauce started to curdle. As we didn't have any eggs leftover, we added a spoon of mayonnaise in an attempt to rescue the sauce. Also, we switched to an electric handmixer. It looked good ad first, but later on it curdled again and made an enormous oily mess on our plates. Also, 1 tsp of salt is much too much - add half and then taste first (actually I do this all the time, but apparently DH doesn't).

Quite nice and very, very easy. It contained a bit too much butter for my taste, although I'll have to admit that I saw too late that the net weight of the of sardines was 85g, not 100g as I had assumed. Next time I'd just start with 40g of butter, and add the rest bit by bit. It will need a lot of salt.

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?).

Not a success. It's being presented as (quote DB) 'the best thing since sliced bread' - but it's just not a very nice dressing, and far too complicated. And yes, they write that you need to practice this a few times to get it right - but who would want to practice a salad dressing? Really, I've got better things to do...

Nice, but I actually wasn't able to taste any of the ingredients other than the chicken, except for perhaps the kaffir lime leaves, which I had used instead of some of the bay leaves*. It was a bit of a pity of the coconut juice, which is relatively expensive for an ingredient you don't even taste.

Served with with Chilled Cucumber Salad and Soy-Dipped Radish Salad.


*) I used kaffir instead of bay leaves as I suspected that the recipes calls for bay leaves only because they are more readily available than kaffir lime leaves - the book was published in 1999 in the United States by a Taiwanese publisher. I'm still not yet entirely convinced that kaffir lime leaves aren't the more authentic choice, especially as the some of the other recipes in this book are more adapted to a Western palate than I would have wished.

What a mess! More or less everything that could have gone wrong, did.

It started with the dough. Although it felt very nice, it didn't rise a bit. I was afraid that that was due to me using an old paket of yeast, so I started all over with a brandnew paket of yeast. The resulting dough had barely risen any more than the previous one, and was only just enough for two rather small pizzas (20cm diameter - it looked like a lot less). Though who knows, perhaps we didn't make them thin enough, though I wouldn't know how.

Then the vegetables: a fennel and one courgette (zucchini) is more than enough, or even more than you can use on these pizzas - the second courgette was entirely superfluous. And even though we grilled the vegetables for a few minutes longer, the fennel wasn't done when we served the pizza.

Then when we grilled the first pizza, the whole thing was drowned in the liquid coming from the vegetables and the cheese. We grilled it another 3 minutes, but the pizza remained soggy.

Last, we had prepared both pizzas at the same time as I knew that the dough would dry out if we didn't. By the time we were ready to grill the second pizza, it was impossible to slide off the pizza into the hot pan, and we ended up with a kind of pizza stir fry in our pan. Not what was intended!

Tastewise, the pizza was okay though undersalted.

Edited the next day to add:
We served the leftover topping as a side dish to the Coq au Vin, which worked well, especially due to the rosemary. So at least it was good for something!

It tastes just as bland as it looks. Which shouldn't necessarily come as a surprise, I guess, if you look at the ingredients: peas, barley, broad beans and eggs, flavoured only with two twigs of mint. We substituted haloumi for feta, and barley for bulghur - this might have had an influence, of course, but actually I doubt it - none of the ingredients substituted has a distinctly different flavour.

I think the best you can do in this case is to drastically reduce the amount of grain and replace it with flavourful (and colourful!) veggies like bell peppers, possibly fresh or sundried tomatoes. And *gasp* bacon. Or chorizo. You got me thinking here...

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.

Quite nice. The only thing I would really change are the tomatoes - next time I would use more, and I would probably use small ones, roast them first as described, and add them just a few minutes before the risotto is done. As it was now, the tomatoes disappeared into the risotto with hardly a trace.

It was difficult to taste the tomatoes and (though not quite as difficult) the spinach, because it was just a bit too salty, though that's always tricky to get right with risotto. Also, I had to add more liquid (possibly because I made only half a portion), and I used part stock, part water for the extra liquid - only water would have been better.

Edited a day later:
I made it again, this time using small tomatoes, roasted for 20 min instead of 10, and added at the very last moment - much better! I also used less stock and more water, and only added extra salt and pepper to the tomatoes, not the rice - it was still slightly salty, but not too much. Last, I used 1.5 times the amount of spinach, not removing the stems, and the amount was fine too. I noticed the stems a little bit, but not enough to make me want to remove them the next time.

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.

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)

Handheld pastries with an interesting filling. These empanadas contain minced meat (should be chopped, actually), cumin, chilli, olives, raisins and hardboiled egg. I quite liked the filling when I tried it before making the pastries; once they were in the pastries, for some reason they made me think of curry. I think it was the combination of cumin, spicyness, raisin and the hardboiled egg. Both the egg and the minced meat turned just a tad dry because they were cooked twice, but not too bad.

The pastry itself was hard to work with - it was really hard, more or less like pasta dough, and if I'd have a pasta machine, I probably would have used it. But once you had it rolled out thinly enough, it was absolutely great, easy to transfer to the baking tray, didn't tear, etc.

Things I changed: I omitted the green pepper, ground achiote and fresh coriander, I used black olives instead of green ones (this is what most online recipes did), and in the pastry I substituted half of the butter with lard.

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?

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.

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!

Such a typical Slater-title, isn't it? This is a fairly simple, straight-forward crumble recipe. I liked that the amount of crumble was sufficient - often there is too little crumble for too much fruit. I would have wished that the apples had been just a bit sweeter and more caramelised, they were just a bit too sour for my taste.

We added blackberries, but they were hardly noticeable, unfortunately. We served the apple crumble with the cardamom cream from Roast Figs and Plums in Vodka with Cardamom Cream, a perfect match!

9 April 2013:
Apparently we used a larger dish this time, as there was too little crumble. Also, it turned out a bit dry.

... hereforth known as 'Qumble' (or 'Quumble'?)...

This was a really nice dish. It's not a lot work, though peeling and cutting the quinces is always more than you'd expect it to be, but the best thing is that you can prep it so that all you need to do is just pop it in the oven (once the quinces are cooked you won't need to worry about them turning brown).

The recipe didn't mention whether or not you would need to cover the quinces while they cook; I believe they do need to be covered. I covered them partly, and found that they were close to being burnt after only 15 minutes. So close the lid, check regularly and perhaps add a little water (I also thought they tasted a little dry, which is no wonder when all the liquids had evaporated, but I was the only one at the table who thought that). The quinces might not need to cook the full 25 min anyway, but if you prepare them in advance, it's best to cook them till they are really soft, and add an extra 5 min baking time to warm them up.

I made these in a wide 32 cm pan, and I felt it could have used a little more crumble, but again, I was the only one at the table who thought so. Definitely serve with something on the side, ice cream or something like that.

Strip the watercress of its leaves and discard the stalks? Ms Kapoor, you’re not serious, what will left of the watercress? Hardly anything. I chose to ignore this direction and just used the watercress including the stalks (perhaps this is a misunderstanding, and she meant some tougher stalks that were already removed?). I used smoked salmon instead of bacon, and it was very delicious! Be careful with adding salt, though.

Quite a simple recipe of which you should expect that there's nothing that really could go wrong. Well, the timing was very wrong. The salmon was done within the time given, while the tomatoes were nowhere near roasting. 20-30 minutes should do a much better job than 5 minutes.

Otherwise, using fresh herbs probably really makes a great difference in this dish, and if they tell you to keep the filo pastry covered with a wet cloth, do as you are being told.

Crosspost: This recipe was republished in the December 2010 issue of the Dutch version of Delicious.

Worked very well, in contrast to most other shortcrust pastries I've made until now. It didn't really taste spectacular, a little more salt and sugar wouldn't hurt I suppose, but it did a nice job. What else can you want?

Very delicious, but two problems: it didn't say how much sugar to use, and it didn't say that it was nothing more than an appetizer with two portions! Looks like I'm going to bed hungry tonight.

Tastewise, it was very delicious., but the flavours could have been slightly stronger. We guessed one tablespoon sugar, but it could have been more, along with some salt. Visually, I preferred it without the goat's cheese, but then it probably rather would have been dessert.

Quite nice, but too much capers (nearly a whole glass!), and a lot of work in relation to the quantity of food you'll get; but I guess that's inherent to this type of food. I'd at least double the quantity to make the effort worth it.

My major point of critique however is more of a technical kind: you can't re-use bits and pieces of puff pastry by rolling it out again, you just can't. And guess what they're suggesting.... Not that it was necessary anyway, I got 30 empanadilla's out of 320g (7 sheets) of puff pastry, they suggest using (and re-using) 500g.

I fried the ham along with the onions - I'm not sure it made much of a difference, though I might have had if I had only used half the amount of capers.

I actually just cooked the corn the usual way, and served it with the chilli butter instead of normal butter and salt. DH loved it; for me it didn't do anything, I felt it made the corn taste less creamy. I didn't melt the butter but just mixed the chilli and salt with the butter at room temperature, then put back in the fridge. I could see us using the remains of the butter for steaks or chicken wings.

Served with Fig-Stuffed Roast Pork Loin with Fig and Balsamic Jam (reviews to follow) and leftover fennel - not the bests of all combinations, but the corn needed to be eaten...

A very nice and simple soup with a deep flavour. Roasting the cauliflower and the onions really helped enhance the flavour (I had DH guessing the ingredients, and he insisted that there still had to be something else).

My cauliflower took about 50 min to roast; the onions were already at about 35 min, so I carefully took them out. Alternatively, you can also just cut them into rings, that should help as well. Keep some extra stock at hand; I thought the soup was too thick, next time I would add some extra stock.

Toast the bread as much as possible, they will get soggy pretty quickly otherwise. You could also just toast them lightly, cut out the stars (or whichever other shape you prefer), and then finish toasting them in a pan with butter and salt for some extra flavour. We didn't add any extra salt to the soup; after all, I already seasoned the cauliflower before roasting, and I definitely wouldn't add any extra salt if you toast the bread in butter and salt.

Crosspost: website

Very nice. They retained their crispness for quite a long time, also due to the sugar coating (smart trick, will remember that), but as I already baked them beginning of December, and didn't bake other cookies until two weeks later, they didn't even make it to Christmas. :)

Due to the spices, they are distinctly Christmassy, though not necessarily so much that you couldn't eat them during the rest of the year - though that might depend on what you're used to as well.

In flavour, this clearly was a 5 star dessert. The rich custard that perfectly complemented the flavour of the rhubarb, the crunchy sugar - just brilliant.

The only problem was that the custard didn't get firm, and I'm not exactly sure, why. I might be that we didn't cook it long enough, though I thought we did. I noticed that other recipes such as the very similar one in Flavour First cook the custard au bain marie a second time once it has been filled into the ramekins. To be honest, if possible I would rather try to avoid this, I remember doing it once and thought that it was such a hassle, and with the shallow creme brulee ramekins it'll be an extra hassle. Instead, I was wondering if I could cheat next time by adding a little gelatine .

The exotic version of Eton Mess...

A really, really nice dessert! It's also very easy, and can be prepared well in advance and then assembled at the last minute, but it does require a little planning in advance for the meringues. The acidity and the texture of passion fruit worked well to counterbalance the sweetness of the mango, meringue and cream. I was a little worried that the vinegar and the cornstarch would be noticeable, but luckily, they weren't.

There is only one thing that wasn't entirely right, and that was the amount of cream - 250 ml cream for 8 servings would have meant that there'd only be one or two spoonfuls of cream per serving - I used nearly double that amount, and it was great. I also used double the amount of passion fruit, equaling half a passion fruit per serving. Also, you're supposed to assemble the pavlova and then chill in the fridge for at least one hour - I didn't do that because it would only make the meringue soggy; instead I chose to assemble the pavlova right before serving.

I made half a recipe and made four smaller pavlovas instead of a large one serving four; each pavlova had an approximate diameter of 9 cm.

Edited 23 July 2014:
We made this again last night. For some reason, the meringues didn't turn out as beautiful as the last time. They were sticky on the bottom, and looked smaller than last time. Perhaps it was the humidity, perhaps my oven wasn't warm enough (80°C instead of the 120°C it could have been), perhaps it was both.

Really delicious salad! I hadn't really expected this as it is seems like such a weird mixture Northern European potatoes, dill, mustard, rocket with prawns and avocado. But it was really nice! I substituted the mustard powder and part of the oil with real mustard and it was fine.

DB had this as his lunch box salad. He thought it was slightly boring as none of the ingredients came forward as 'the star of the show', another Masterchef favourite quote. It's not a bad salad, it's just that we've had so many more salads that were a lot more interesting.

According to DB, this is a salad with with very strong flavours; some of them even too strong. The dressing was too salty (what can you expect with 4 tbsp fish sauce and no oil?). It probably would have been too sour too if I had added all of the lime juice required - I used the juice of one lime; 100ml would have been approximately the juice of three limes. And he thought the salad contained too many shallots, though I only used 2 of the 4 required! I also used a mix of rocket and other strong-flavoured leaves, which was a good choice as iceberg wouldn't have been able to hold up against the other flavours. I used only about 250g of meat instead of the 600g required, which was fine; you'll need to adjust the cooking time, of course, or skip placing it inthe oven altogether.

All in all, a nice salad if you like strong flavours, but the ratio of ingredients definitely needs to be tweaked. We added some oil to the dressing today, let's see how that goes.

Update:
Apparently the addition of some oil (lots of oil!) and a few less shallots is all that is needed to make this a really good salad.

A nice salad and a brilliant way to use leftovers of chicken and rice. I was surprised, though, that this salad didn't contain a single vegetable; but then again, nor do most potato salads.

Serves 2 as a lunchbox/meal. You can also omit the chicken and use more cashews and raisins to serve as a fancy rice side dish. Or substitute with tofu or anything else for a vegetarian version.

DB enjoyed this salad a lot, especially the combination of broad beans with mint and bacon. I found the addition of stripes of iceberg salad slightly strange (though I didn't try it, can't really tell) - it surely made mixing more difficult. All in all a nice salad.

The haloumi didn't really work. We cut it into 1cm thick slices, as instructed; yet by the time one side was grilled, the other had already cooled of. Needless to say, it was cold (and rubbery) within five minutes once we added it to the salad.

The salad itself was very delicious, very fresh and aromatic. I wonder whether it might be a good idea to substitute the haloumi with (salted, not grilled) mozzarella. I forgot to buy olives, but actually I didn't miss them.

Serves 4 as a side.

A nice, simple salad. Be careful not to add too much lemon juice.

The good news is: it tastes really nice. The bad news: the quantities don't work out at all.

I grated a medium sweet potato - that resulted in about a cup of grated sweet potato, definitely not two cups (luckily I was trying to get rid of two sweet potatoes anyway). So I made the rest of the recipe according to the instructions, but ended up with so little that it was hardly enough for two servings! We didn't eat them as burgers (ie. with buns), though, I guess that might make a difference. For two, I'd about double the quantities, for four, quadruple them.

I also made several smaller patties/pancakes instead of large patties.

I didn't make the tahini yoghurt but used the leftover of this dishes' mint yoghurt sauce, which worked quite well.

As I still had some 'stoofperen' (cooking pears poached in red wine) leftover from yesterday, I decided to give them an upgrade with this crumble recipe.

I'll admit, I was sceptical right from the start. This recipe uses way more butter and sugar than my trusted go-to-recipe from Ottolenghi. I didn't add any water for that reason, as I figured the mixture would contain more than enough fat/liquid, and that turned out to be true - it didn't crumble nicely in my fingers, the dough actually immediately turned into large lumps which I then had to break up into smaller lumps to get anything resembling crumble. As soon as this mix hit the oven, the butter melted and the dough spread out, turning all my neatly separated crumbles into one big mass of dough. Not a crumble at all! And even worse, when I took them out of the oven again, they weren't even crunchy! Luckily, that changed again once they cooled down a bit, and they ended up being really crunchy, actually. Looking at how the dough behaved, I wouldn't be surprised at all if this recipe used the same ratio of butter, sugar and flour as a chocolate chip cookie recipe.

But alas, it was still a failure - it was way too salty!

It was delicious, an interesting variation and certainly visually very attractive - but given that I had spent nearly 3 hours in the kitchen for this one dish only I was somewhat disappointed. I served it as a main dish but it's too monotonous for that - I'd rather serve it as a side dish, but only if it involves less work. We have about half of the filling left over, and I will try using ready made puff pastry instead of filo pastry - that should save about one hour's work. Alternatively, you can also just serve the red cabbage filling as is - it's a nice way to cook it with the sultanas, the nuts (I used hazelnuts) and the marmalade.

So-so. I think what I disliked most was the effect the baking in the aluminium foil had on the quinces - they became slightly dry with a strange side flavour, not to speak of that burnt part on the bottom. The clove was only noticeable the moment you actually took a bite off that part of the quince. And last, it was just very difficult to eat, and not elegant to serve.

I did enoy the honeyed yoghurt, though of that there would have been too little - we shared one quince (this season's last one!), and of course I forgot and made the whole quantity of yoghurt instead of just a quarter (I always do).

Compared to the Poached Quinces with Rose Water Syrup from two weeks ago, the latter was definitely better. It might be an idea to give this recipe another try and just poach the quinces instead of baking them. Or what about blanching and grilling the quinces?

Very delicious cake! We used the Battenberg batter to make this (in concept actually very similar) Mondriaan Cake, and it worked very well. We made four times the basic batter and then split it up into different portions. We made two cakes, and have a lot of leftovers of the coloured pieces.

Because we used chocolate as glue and as coating, we opted for almond and vanilla instead of orange and lemon. I was also a little afraid that the colour of the cake would influence the perceived flavour (especially in the case of blue), but luckily, that wasn't the case. And believe me, everyone wanted a slice of this cake!

Regarding the workload, it was doable, but not something I would do again very quickly. Although, the rubik cube is really nice..