friederike's Reviews
1109 recipes reviewed. Showing 1101 to 1109Sort by: Book Title | Date | Rating | Recipe Title 
The Cook's Book: Techniques and Tips from the World's Master Chefs
By Jill Norman
DK Publishing (Dorling Kindersley) - 2005
A lot better than our last attempt at Aïoli. I'm not quite sure why; it's probably just a detail we overlooked, such as too cold eggs, or not whisking quick enough in relation to how quick we add the oil - that topic is really covered well in this book. The only issue I have with this recipe is that it contains too much garlic - 2 or perhaps 3 cloves should be enough.
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Tender: v. 1: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch
By Nigel Slater
Fourth Estate Ltd - 2009
A classic combination, though this one turns out more like a cauliflower-scented, slightly liquid fondue - not necessarily a bad thing, though...
Edited to add:
The flavours get stronger on the second day - I can really recommend to prepare it a day in advance!
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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.
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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!
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Slightly disappointing. To be honest, I'm not that much of a fan of celery, but still..
First of all, for such an easy dish it took ages to make, and then the resulting dish just tasted like.. well, celery. As if we had spent hours doing nothing!
The sauce in itself was quite delicious, but it didn't have any flavour of its own (duh, it was a Béchamel made with the cooking water from the celery), which meant that it couldn't stand up to the overwhelming flavour of the celery. A better dish would have balanced its flavour, I believe!
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Tender: Volume II, A cook's guide to the fruit garden
By Nigel Slater
Fourth Estate - 2010
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.
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The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen
By Nigel Slater
Fourth Estate Ltd - 2007
Not particularly impressive, not bad either. Actually, the whole sauce didn't really do anything for me. Be careful not to cook the sauce too long lest it become some sort of caramel (happened to us when we tried to recycle the sauce on the third day).
Meant to be served with the Thai Fish Cakes, but you could probably use it for any other dish you want to serve with an Asian-inspired sauce.
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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
It wasn't too bad, but it wasn't particularly impressive either. And what else can you expect of pasta, a can of tomatoes and some flavouring?
I didn't dare cook the pasta in the sauce directly - I cannot see how that would work, as you'd need to add a whole litre of stock to the sauce - and then you'll end up with what, tomato soup? So I omitted the stock and cooked the pasta seperately.
Fine for a weekday dinner in a really busy week, but otherwise I wouldn't bother.
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