The cake is not too bad, actually. Of course, it's sugarfree, and therefore not (very) sweet, and I'd definitely be disappointed with it as my birthday cake, but what does my son know? (I don't think it'll pass with his three-year old niece. I guess we'll have to give her a piece of the adult's cake).

It didn't really rise, though, and I'm not sure why. Lack of sugar shouldn't have anything to do with it, should it? I used 2 tsp of baking powder for just two handsful of batter! Will probably make cupcakes on the big day, as the cake looks pityfully flat even in our smallest cake dish.

Edited 25 March 2016:
I forgot to comment on the baking process. This is another baking recipe, similar to this one, where I suspect that the author had little idea of what she was doing. First you are instructed to mix flour, spices and baking powder; then to add the butter and rub it between your fingers until the mixture looks like fine bread crumbs - this latter step is a technique for making shortcrust pastry (hint: banana cake does not contain a shortcrust pastry. Not even this particular recipe.). Then you are instructed to mix the mashed bananas and the egg (= the wet ingredients) in a separate bowl, and at the very end, fold them into the flour mixture - classical muffin making technique, with the exception that butter is a wet ingredient and was supposed to go into the second bowl.

To make matters worse, the raisins go in one bowl, the walnuts into another - that doesn't make sense. Also, the walnuts are optional and can be added either finely chopped or ground - but if ground, they would change the ratio of dry vs. wet ingredients, the same way you can often substitute part of the flour with ground nuts of your choice.

Sometimes I think it's too bad Ms Rapley didn't ask a cook or a nutrionist (or both!) to help her write this book.

The whole blog including this recipe has moved to the blog Sweet Happy Life, so my review moved on as well.

A lovely dish from one of my favourite regions, though I replaced the pine nuts with equally suitable almonds.

One caveat: make sure that all pieces of meat are covered with liquid while cooking, otherwise you'll end up with small bits of the meat being dry. If this hadn't happened, I might even have given a 5-star rating.

Serve with rice or couscous. You could add extra liquid to prevent the chicken from drying out, and then cook couscous in some of that liquid, just as done in Chicken and Couscous One-pot.

Edited to add:
The recipe is available online here. You can also review it here.

A healthy, delicious, and extremely easy dish - just put everything in a baking tray, bake, add some extra ingredients and you're done!

Easy, quick and delicious.
Use for e.g. Creamy Pesto Chicken with Roasted Tomatoes.

Nice dish, works both as a vegetarian main and as a side dish.

Edited to add:
The recipe is available online here. You can also review it here.

Wonderful dish! Easy to prepare, visually attractive and delicious in taste; and on top of that it falls into what BF calls the 'fire and forget'-category of dishes, giving you a whole hour to prepare other dishes and clean up before your guests arrive…

The good news: it's incredibly easy to prepare (just throw everything into a roasting tin and you're nearly done), it's beautiful and distinctly autumnal (it's the cover dish, for that matter), and BF and my guests last night loved it.

The bad news: I didn't. I was a bit disappointed because the flavours of the ingredients didn’t come together. What the sense of that? I thought cooking was the art of combining ingredients and creating something new. Instead, the chicken tasted like chicken (like a very tender chicken, though), the squash tasted like squash, the walnuts tasted like walnuts, and the sage, well, the sage was burnt and didn’t give off any flavour at all.

Edited to add:
The recipe is available online here. You can also review it here.

Very nice, definitely a new dish for my growing repertoire! The chicken was juicy and tender, the couscous creamy and very aromatic. We had carrots sautéed in apple butter (a variation of the Glazed Sautéed Carrots in The Cook’s Book) as a side dish, which was delicious, but any other root vegetable would have worked just as well.

Quite similar to Chicken with Saffron, Raisins and Pine Nuts from the same magazine, same edition

Edited to add:
The recipe is available online here. You can also review it here.

Very delicious. In fact, the combination of flavours would have been worth a 5-star-rating if there hadn’t been so many smallish things to improve.

We cooked the Thai glutinous rice according to the package instructions, not according to the recipe, and it didn’t really work as it should have; there was too little water, and when the rice was finally cooked, it was more of a porridge with too little texture. Nothing of this is related to the recipe, of course, but if you do decide to make this dessert for guests, make sure that you know how to cook the rice. I might try normal dessert rice next time.

Furthermore, the rice was a little tasteless and watery. I would suggest cooking the rice in the coconut milk, perhaps adding the golden caster sugar half-way through the cooking process to prevent the sugar from becoming too caramelised. All in all, the rice could also have been sweeter; but if you decide to go for a sweet rice, serve only small portions of rice.

The sauce, then again, could easily have been a little more sour. The orange juice is superfluous, in my opinion, as it easily superimposes the taste of the mangoes; instead, liquidise the mango and add orange juice (or mango juice!) or water only when really necessary to reach the consistency of the sauce. Also add more lime juice – I think it’s just that contrast between a sweet, sticky, heavy rice and a fruity, light, and slightly sour sauce are rather desirable.

We left out the passion fruit and mint leaves entirely, but I’m sure they form a perfect addition.

PS: Curious? Check out the recipe here.

Nice. I would change a few things, but none of them is dramatic. I would probably add an egg (or perhaps two) to make the fish cakes stick better, and I would add more lime zest to the mayonnaise – I tried lime juice instead, but BF complained that that made the mayonnaise turn too sour (I didn’t even notice). Also, while I quite liked the dominant taste of the peas, I would probably use more fish and fewer peas to make the cakes have a stronger taste of fish.

Neither of us could be bothered with cutting chillies, although they probably would have been a good idea.

Edited to add:
The recipe is available online here. You can also review it here.
I tried a similar recipe, Salmon Cakes with Lemon Mayo from Olive: 101 Quick-fix Dishes, but I liked this version better.

Edited 8 January 2016:
We made these again last night. I used pangasius instead of trout, and as I had read several reviews on the BBC website saying the fish cakes were bland, I added quite a bit of dried dill. The resulting fish cakes were quite nice in taste - I didn't taste the dill at all, but I guess it helped anyway ( I would expect potentially bland fish cakes to taste even blander with a characterless fish as pangasius).

However, the texture was a complete failure - they already fell apart before they hit the pan! The only thing that helped a little was deep-frying them on high heat in lots of oil, but I only made two of those before I gave up, tossed them all back into a bowl and added an egg, and that really made a difference (I would still recommend deep-frying, though, if only for the crispness). Is there anything I missed that every proper Englishman knows about making fish cakes? Like, should I have chilled the fish cakes before frying them, is that the reason why I failed? I might actually give that a try some day...

Very hot. Taste the sauce before adding that one last chili pepper, it might not be necessary. Goes well with, err, lots of plain rice and a cold beer. Otherwise very delicious, and super quick, especially if you have already prepared the Green Seasoning in advance.

Slight disappointment. I had expected something as good as the Vegetable Pilau I hade made a few months ago, but this dish tasted quite disbalanced. DB compared it to an orchestra that made sufficient noise (read: was tasty/aromatic enough), but that noise wasn't guided properly as to produce a nice harmonic tune.

Granted, we had to use tomato purée instead of real tomatoes because BF had secretly eaten them up (all of them!), and then (whisper) he actually used the whole double-sized tin (140g)!! Consequently, the dish tasted too much of tomato purée, a slightly sour taste, but also the taste of the curry (we used mild madras) or perhaps the tumeric was too strong. Halfway through the meal we had the idea to add some rasped coconut to balance the spices a little more, which worked a little.

Next time we´ll definitely use fresh tomatoes, even if that means going out to the store again, and cut the curry and tumeric by half, and then see how it goes. I do believe that the basic idea is very nice.

Oh, by the way, would you like to try it out for yourself? Get the recipe here and post your recipe here.

A wonderful and sophisticated vegetarian tart, ideal for picnics and the like.

Crosspost. Exact the same recipe was also published in the BBC Good Food magazine, June 2009 edition.

Very sophisticated ten minute (ehm, okay, 15 minute) pizzas. I absolutely loved the taste, it was fresh, varied, and it definitely showed that you can combine mozzarella with more than tomato and basil.

Our naan-bread was quite soggy, though. I liked it, the same way I I like a Domino's pizza once in a while. But I can also imagine that some might prefer something more crunchy. Baked/grilled baguette might be the solution here, and also makes it possible to serve it as finger food at your next party.

Beware that the quantities of the ingredients aren't completely right – we used only one instead of two courgettes and had some courgette leftovers, while the mozzarella was just enough. So that's a four star rating instead of five...

Crosspost. The online version of the recipe as it appeared in the BBC Olive magazine (but not in the BBC Good Food magazine), August 2009 edition.

A lovely dish from one of my favourite regions, though I replaced the pine nuts with equally suitable almonds.

One caveat: make sure that all pieces of meat are covered with liquid while cooking, otherwise you'll end up with small bits of the meat being dry. If this hadn't happened, I might even have given a 5-star rating.

Serve with rice or couscous. You could add extra liquid to prevent the chicken from drying out, and then cook couscous in some of that liquid, just as done in Chicken and Couscous One-pot.

Crosspost. Exact the same recipe was also published in the BBC Good Food magazine, June 2009 edition.

Nice. I would change a few things, but none of them is dramatic. I would probably add an egg (or perhaps two) to make the fish cakes stick better, and I would add more lime zest to the mayonnaise – I tried lime juice instead, but BF complained that that made the mayonnaise turn too sour (I didn’t even notice). Also, while I quite liked the dominant taste of the peas, I would probably use more fish and fewer peas to make the cakes have a stronger taste of fish.

Neither of us could be bothered with cutting chillies, although they probably would have been a good idea.

Crosspost. Exact the same recipe was also published in the BBC Good Food magazine, Oct. 2009 edition.

Slight disappointment. I had expected something as good as the Vegetable Pilau I hade made a few months ago, but this dish tasted quite disbalanced. BF compared it to an orchestra that made sufficient noise (read: was tasty/aromatic enough), but that noise wasn't guided properly as to produce a nice harmonic tune.

Granted, we had to use tomato purée instead of real tomatoes because BF had secretly eaten them up (all of them!), and then (whisper) he actually used the whole double-sized tin (140g)!! Consequently, the dish tasted too much of tomato purée, a slightly sour taste, but also the taste of the curry (we used mild madras) or perhaps the tumeric was too strong. Halfway through the meal we had the idea to add some rasped coconut to balance the spices a little more, which worked a little.

Next time we´ll definitely use fresh tomatoes, even if that means going out to the store again, and cut the curry and tumeric by half, and then see how it goes. I do believe that the basic idea is very nice.

Crosspost. Exact the same recipe was also published in the BBC Good Food magazine, July 2009 edition.

The good news: it's incredibly easy to prepare (just throw everything into a roasting tin and you're nearly done), it's beautiful and distinctly autumnal (it's the cover dish, for that matter), and BF and my guests last night loved it.

The bad news: I didn't. I was a bit disappointed because the flavours of the ingredients didn’t come together. What the sense of that? I thought cooking was the art of combining ingredients and creating something new. Instead, the chicken tasted like chicken (like a very tender chicken, though), the squash tasted like squash, the walnuts tasted like walnuts, and the sage, well, the sage was burnt and didn’t give off any flavour at all.

Crosspost. Exact the same recipe was also published in the BBC Good Food magazine, Oct. 2009 edition.

This one was just okay. I wasn’t exactly wild about it (but then I’m not that much of a fan of fennel), and it didn’t help that the chicken ended up being a little dry.

Crosspost. Exact the same recipe was also published in Olive magazine, August 2009 edition. And in the BBC Good Food magazine, July 2007 edition, apparently. Sneaky!

Just okay. It was quite bland, so the following day we doubled up the amount of ginger and garlic and marinated the tofu a little longer and yet it was somewhat bland. Roasting the sesames probably would have helped, too.

Crosspost. Exact the same recipe was also published in the BBC Good Food series cookbook, 101 Store-cupboard Suppers.

Ah, another variant on the 'grilled salmon steak with vegetables and potato'-theme; see my Grilled Salmon with Watercress Cream Sauce for more on that. This one was extremely delicious - the best one so far!

It did have two deficits, though - you won't need 2 courgettes for 2 people, 1 or 1 1/2 are enough, and it took us more than 3 minutes to cook the courgettes, 20 minutes or so was more realistic. That's not really a problem, though, as long as you know it. The moment you've set the potatoes to cook, begin with slicing the courgettes and start frying them immediately. Then you'll have a great dinner ready in 20-25 min total cooking time.

Crosspost. Exact the same recipe was also published in the Olive: 101 Quick-fix Dishes cookbook.

It all started with a weird cultural problem. One of the ingredients are runner beans. I looked up runner beans on Wikipedia and found an entry on runner beans - brilliant! The only problem was that although it stated that this article covered the runner bean, also known as the scarlet runner bean, it said nowhere that there was also the common Green bean, known as runner bean in British English. I searched the whole city for scarlet runner beans, only to find out, once at home, that the BBC means green beans, haricots verts. Is that a problem of the BBC or of Wikipedia, or just my own? I bit of all of the above, I suppose.

So, what about the quiche, then? I must admit that I forgot to add the courgettes - blame it on the runner beans. And I was very sceptic about that bit of adding 300 ml milk (far too much!) and 25 g flour (ugh, don't want a floury tasting quiche) to the filling. But surprisingly, the filling was neither too liquid nor did it taste floury, on the contrary: it tasted surprisingly light. Do take care that you don't overcook the peas though - try adding them a few minutes later than the other veggies. And there's no need to use cherry tomatoes, normal tomatoes cut into eight pieces do just as well.

I made a Pâte Brisée, a French Shortcrust Pastry as a base, and it went together very well.

Edited 9 June 2015:
Restaurant quantities. I mean, really, 85 g each of courgette, beans and peas? Peas is easy, as are beans if you're able to buy them loose, but courgette? I therefore used a whole courgette (about 320 g), one package of green beans (200 g), two normal onions and 200 g cocktail tomatoes. To make up for that, I used 30 g flour, 350 ml milk and 3 eggs instead of 2. In other words: in terms of quantities, I didn't stick to the recipe at all.

The result did have a few flaws, which I'm afraid might be connected to what I just stated. The beans were slightly undercooked, and DH thought the eggs were still too liquid (I didn't). Because I used more vegetables than indicated, I also fried them for ten instead of five minutes, but that may not have been enough (I'll admit that they weren't soft yet at that stage, I thought that'd come while baking).

Still, I actually do enjoy this dish, and I suspect you can use it to throw in all your vegetable leftovers (broccoli would probably work really well). I also think you could probably combine it well with the Courgette, Chilli and Mint Pizzas, as you'll need less than a whole courgette for either of them, and the dishes are so different that it won't even be boring to eat courgette several days in a row.

Basically, it is quite a nice dish and coud have received a 4 star rating, but it needed more seasoning as well as that special extra to make it a little more interesting tastewise, and some of the instructions just weren't quite right.

First of all, I've never come across a recipe for two persons that instructs you to use half an egg for one thing and half an egg for another - why just not double all the ingredients (should not be a problem technically in this case) and write the recipe for four servings?

Second, it's quite difficult to get the fish cakes right. Making four cakes from ca. 450g of mass will make you run the risk of getting too large fish cakes that are mushy on the inside and/or burnt on the outside. Make six to eight smaller, thinner cakes and you'll be fine. Also, fry them on a relatively low temperature, e.g. medium or medium-low, for at least several minutes, preferably without turning and tossing them the whole time.

Season them well, but most importantly, add something extra to the mayonnaise - a tiny bit of chilli, for example, or perhaps some coriander, to give it some extra zing. Something like the Chilli-Lime Mayo from this recipe (online version here) would work quite well.

And finally, serve it with extra vegetables, it'll be boring otherwise - good quality cherry tomatoes worked quite well for us.

Crosspost. Exact the same recipe was also published in the Olive: 101 Quick-fix Dishes cookbook.

Basically it was pretty nice - if there had not been the lemon. BF and I were sceptic from the start, not because we do not like the taste of lemons, but because the juice of a whole lemon seemed like far too much for that little bit of other ingredients. We started with the juice of only half a lemon - and oh boy, we tasted nothing but lemon in the end! Even worse: the combination of the saltiness and texture of the parmesan invoked some extremely unpleasant associations.

Nevertheless, I believe this recipe has potential and could even reach a 4 star rating - just limit the lemon juice to a few drops only, or even omit it completely. If necessary, you can replace it by oil and/or cooking water, both should be fine. Most of the lemon flavour should come from the zest, which has a stronger lemon taste anyway with the added benefit of not being sour.

Also, we used half the amount of pasta and shared the sauce between the two of us - just about enough. If you want to serve this dish to four persons, remember to double all ingredients except for the amount of pasta.

Crosspost. Exact the same recipe was also published in the BBC Good Food series cookbook, 101 Healthy Eats.

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.

The potatoes were undercooked, the herbs and spices hardly noticeable, and the whole thing just didn't combine together well. A very ill conceived recipe.

Let's start with the potatoes. I was aware that this could happen, and sliced them very very thinly - ca. 2mm. Additionally, I boiled them for several minutes instead of draining them immedeately. You can probably cook them for 8-10 minutes without worrying. However, even if they had been cooked well, it would have been a shame that they were wet, being covered in white wine. I would have wished them to become crisp chips, baked in olive with sea salt and rosemary!

Then the spices. As I said, you hardly tasted them. A tiny bit of garlic here, one bite with a hint of saffron there... not what I would have expected. But had they been stronger it probably wouldn't have helped as the combination of flavours was just too much. Fish with white wine and saffron - yes, I get that. Fish with lime and coriander - good idea too. Tomatoes with saffron, fish/seafood and, err, rice - Paella. But fish with all of the above? And then I'm not yet even mentioning the pine nuts (which I omitted anyway). And if this weren't bad enough - even if the ingredients would have worked together, if they had been strong enough to be tasted then the sheer mass of them would have eliminated any taste of fish.

The fish in itself was fairly nice (though slightly bland if a fish can ever be bland), but I'm afraid that was a happy coincidence.

PS: Oh, and the pancetta... white wine, coriander, tomatoes, saffron, pancetta, lime, pine nuts... hmm...

Reminded me very very much of the Baked Vegetables with an Aubergine Sauce from Nigel Slater's Tender, though neither as delicious nor as well-thought through.

Both recipes instruct you to bake vegetables in the oven and add harissa, cumin and nuts half-way through. Slater accompanied this with a wonderful aubergine dip that would have been a good addition to this recipe, too.

Furthermore, in this recipe they suggested bite-sized pices of butternut squash and red and yellow peppers for the same amount of time - of course the butternut squash wasn't ready yet when the peppers were. Additionally, they didn't mention anything about splashing a bit of oil on top, something that I've noticed makes the veggies cook much better.

On the other hand I have to admit that I couldn't find any harissa and I didn't have the time nor the recipe at hand to make harissa myself, like I did the last time. So we just followed a recipe found on the internet and used the main ingredients without really making harissa - the real harissa last time was much better.

This may look like your usual pasta-with-salmon-wednesday-night dish, but I learnt a few lessons from it. One, for some reason I never used Parmesan (though I fried chopped onions instead), and I loved the idea of melting the parmesan in the cream to make a really cheesy sauce. Two, often I don't used fresh herbs as it's simply too expensive to buy them and then use them just as garnish. In this recipe, the basil is so much more than just garnish, it really adds something to it.

Really delicious! We slightly adapted the recipe as we had bought lamb joint instead of shoulder, and therefore followed the instructions of our butcher regarding the cooking instructions. Also, we ran out of ground cumin, and as cumin is difficult to grind we just used whole cumin instead. Everything worked well, the meat was really tender and the sauce very delicious!
We ended up serving the pomegranates scattered on top of the meat, not on the salad, that seemed to work bettter. We served the lamb with a slightly adapted version of Pilau from Noshe Djan, an excellent combination!

Nice. I'm not entirely sure the sugar (syrup) was necessary. In any case, don't just add sugar, won't work.

I only made part of this recipe, the (very impressive looking) topping, and used the recipe of a friend for the rest of the cake. And as I had quite some problems with the instructions for the topping, I was actually quite glad I could rely on my recipe for the rest of the cake.

The biggest problem was that you're supposed to heat 200g sugar and juice of one lemon in a saucepan until the sugar just begins to caramelise. However, given the quantities, in reality the sugar will never caramelise, only dissolve in the juice. I ended up doing the whole thing again, only this time adding only a few drops every now and then, adding the rest of the juice only once the sugar did begin to caramelise, and this worked so much better!

However, if, as instructed, you start out with this step and only after that begin to peel and slice the lemons, you might run into trouble again, as you will be busy for a while and the caramel will cool down and harden; luckily not too much in my case, but why risk it? It's so easy to just turn around the order in which you're doing things.

Then the caramel started leaking out of the springform tin I was using; not so bad while I was preparing the batter, but a lot worse while it was in the oven - I was glad I had placed a baking tray below, just in case. Just something you should realise, use another type of tin if you can.

Last, in the end I wasn't able to see the lemon slices at all - which for me had been the whole reason to make the topping. Perhaps it would help to not let the sugar caramelise at all (mine was a light brown before and after baking), but it would probably work even better if you used oranges (or clementines for size) or blood oranges instead. That said, even if invisible the topping was very delicious on top of an excellent cake, which is whyI'll give it 3 stars.

I had to use double the recipe my friend gave me to be able to fill the 23cm springform tin, but apart from longer baking times this wasn't a problem at all.

Served together with Nigels Slater's Chocolate Brownies, a perfect combination of sweet and sweet-sour, chocolate and fruit.

It's not exactly the first dish with Pork and Apples (and Mustard!) I've been making; and of all four, this one included, three are from the BBC (surprise, surprise!). And it's really not that different.

One important difference was the quantity of liquid added in relation to what it should be as a result - you don't need the 200ml stock at all. It's probably enough to just add the mustard and crème fraîche, carefully heating both (be careful with the crème fraîche to prevent it from shifting!), perhaps add a few spoonfuls of water and that's it. Additionally, if you use that much iquid, you tend to overcook the pork because you might hope that the sauce will thicken if you cook it just a bit longer - nope, it won't.

Of all previous versions (Pork and Apple Braise, Normandic Skewers and Sticky Maple Pork with Apples), I definitely most enjoyed the Sticky Maple Pork.

We served this with Maple Pecan Beans - a good combination, in a way, because the maple combined very well with the combination of apples, pork, mustard and sage (and pecans), but less so with the beans.

Hmm. I wasn't really convinced. I'll admit I'm not a fan of chocolate fondants - I'd rather have chocolate mousse, chocolate ice cream or a brownie. But apart from that - the dessert tasted very heavy, but it wasn't very rich in flavour. Even though we had used a good quality chocolate, it tasted like pretty cheap stuff.

Additionally, we noticed too late that the recipe yields 9 fondants (why 9?) - by then, we had prepared half a recipe and filled 2 1/2 moulds with the resulting mixture. This resulted in much longer baking times (15 minutes +), which, again, is something we only figured out later. Not the best premises.

We served it with cranberry sauce, which was a good choice. Caramel sauce and sweet ice cream only would have added even more sugar.

Nice, but not particularly impressive. We substituted watercress with rocket, and added a little less avocado than required. It was interesting in that it combined all kinds of different flavours/textures, sharp and bitter and sour and creamy flavours (rocket/watercress and chicory and lime and avocado), but that also meant that you were constantly switching between these flavours, as opposed to them having melted into one another.

Very nice, though to be honest you didn't taste the vodka - you might just as well just fry the chorizo before serving them.

Served with Pears in Parma Ham as an appetizer.

Edited 8 November 2013:
We had the rest of the chorizo today and only fried it - it ended up being hard and crisp, as opposed to the softer chorizo from a few days ago. So apparently even if the vodka does not impart a lot of flavour, it does help in keeping the chorizo soft, if that's what you like.

Very nice recipe! I used 2:1 preserving sugar, meaning I used 1 part sugar and 2.2 parts quince juice; I also made one half with a little rosewater, and the other half without. I really enjoyed the addition of the rosewater, I will do that again.

I was about to make the Smoked Haddock Chowder, when I realised it was an awful lot like Cullen Skink, which we had dubbed 'liquid fish pie'. So I chose to make this chowder instead. This chowder, then again, is a lot like Salmon Chowder with Whisky - I guess at some point every dish will remind you of some other dish you once had, right?

It's a very, pretty basic chowder, one you can whip up quick enough for a midweek dinner and doesn't require any excursions to the fish monger. DH actually prefers the Salmon Chowder, as he thinks that one has a little more flavour (probably the addition of the tomato), but what I enjoy about this one is the lemony flavour and the fact that it contains two kinds of fish (salmon and, in our case, pangasius), and that the fish didn't end up being dry, which it always does in the Salmon Chowder.

However, it actually took about 10-12 min until the fish was cooked instead of the 3-4 minutes mentioned in the recipe - I guess this really depends on how large your chunks of fish are. The recipe also doesn't mention what type of potato you should use - I used floury ones.

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.

Similar to the (original) Cranachan we made a year and a half ago, and about just as good.

Again, you need to be really careful with the oats - I let them burn on my first attempt, but luckily it's easy to just toss them out and start again. Remembering the other recipe, I didn't use the cheap clear, runny honey we had, but our good-quality heather honey, and that really made a difference (we used a cheap whisly, however - now I'm curious how it'd taste with a, say, earthy Tallisker).

I was surprised to see that you were supposed to mix the oatmeal through the cream, as I remembered that the other recipe differed in this respect - in the end that didn't matter, both versions are nice. And I noticed that this version used a mixture of single cream and Greek yoghurt (which we substituted with Quark), not solely double cream.

We actually used 2 oranges and 2 blood oranges (would have used 4 blood oranges if we had had them). I could actually see this recipe work with quite a number of fruits. For some reason, pomegranate is the very first that comes to my mind; mango would probably work as well.

Edited 20 March 2016:
I made this again, though this time I mixed all ingredients (except for the oranges and some of the oats) a few hours in advance instead of just moments before serving - and the flavours just disappeared! I could hardly taste any whisky, nor honey nor anything else! I think they used their time to meld into one big flavour, while I prefer to taste them seperately. So whip the cream beforehand, but assemble everything a la minute.

WHY didn't I read the comments? The finished dish itself was good and definitely has potential, but the recipe just didn't work! The thing is - you don't add any proper liquid. None. At all. Granted, the puréed tomatoes are slightly liquid, but other than that? Not at all enough to either cook the lentils nor the broccoli. I had the recipe printed (without comments, of course) and at a certain point I started adding glugs of water. Once I read the comments, I added whole glasses of water.

If making again (and I'm planning on making this again), I will probably indeed double the spices (it tastes very spicy in the beginning, but definitely mellows down once you add the broccoli, chickpeas and spinach!), use coconut cream and a can of coconut milk (with another one as backup), and I might actually also use sweet potatoes, I like the idea. Pumpkin would probably also work. Or add both (broccoli and pumpkin)!

Edited 18 July 2017:
I've made this a few times since, and with the changes described above (excl. the sweet potato/pumpkin), it makes a decent weeknight dinner.

I used two large sweet potatoes this time, pressure-steamed and added at the very end; at the very last moment I realized that it would probably be best to use them as a substitute for the chickpeas. As usual, I forgot to add the sesame and cashew; I also forgot the spinach. DH thought something was missing, and it might well have been the cashews.

We used beef mince instead of lamb (does that make it a Milkmaid's Pie?), and about 2/3 of a can of tomatoes, as I had run out of tomato concentrate. We also served it as 'Deconstructed Shepherd's Pie' tonight, as I was in a rush and didn't have the time to bake it in the oven - as all ingredients were already cooked through, why not?

The result was delicious, but a little flat - unsurprisingly, if you've read the comments below the recipe. We ate half today and will eat the other half tomorrow, properly baked as it should be, with lots of cheese added, we'll see if that makes a difference.

Edited later on:
Yes, it does.

Edited sometime in autumn 2016:
Don't make the potato purée according to that recipe - it uses way too much butter! Just make it the way you always make it.

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).

Good basic recipe.

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.

Just plain ugh. VERY strange combination of flavours. Too strange, actually, for my taste. The Pepperonata was far too sweet to combine well.

Quite nice, but can be improved upon. It's very heavy, slightly bitter (though that might be due to the very dark chocolate), and the Earl Grey tea was hardly noticeable (that is to say: DB tasted it, I didn't) even though I already used double the amount of tea. I will probably make it again tomorrow with stronger (and perhaps even more) tea, and with double the amount of eggs, just to see if it makes it any lighter (today, I used 100g chocolate for 2 eggs, always one egg per person). I might even try Lapsang Souchong instead of Earl Grey. I'll try to get other chocolate, too - the one I used today had cocoa nibs in it and didn't really become liquid when I melted it.

We didn't make the Orange Blossom Cream, I hope to try it tomorrow. I could imagine using rose water instead of orange flower water - orange flower water always makes me think of soap!


Edited one day later to add:
As announced, I made this recipe again, albeit, for testing reasons, only half the recipe with a quarter of the given amount of ('normal' dark) chocolate (50g chocolate for 2 eggs). Additionally, I added 2 teaspoons of sugar, and whipped it together with the egg yolks until they were nearly white, at least five minutes. You could really see how the volume of the egg yolks expanded!

Unfortunately, once I added the chocolate, this effect seemed to be gone again. I am thinking whether it might have been better not to use a kitchen machine once you've added the chocolate. In any case, don't use one once you add the egg whites!

The resulting chocolate mousse was wonderfully light but tasted slightly eggy and not very chocolatey. Perhaps I should aim for an egg-chocolate ratio somewhere in between...

PS: Still didn't taste any Earl Grey... I used Earl Grey again because I was afraid the smokey taste of Lapsang could be too strong, but now... Alternatively, coffee would probably work, or orange zest, or mint, or rose water (?)...


Edited another three days later to add:
I used 75g chocolate per 2 eggs and served them in cute little cups to my guests. To my great surprise, the mousse was just as heavy as the first version! Very delicious, though, just not quite what I had expected given my experiments during the days before..

Tastewise, I ignored the Earl Grey and added some cardamom (nice spice!) and a pinch of salt to make the flavour come out more. I was planning to serve it with rosemary cream, but in the end I didn't.

Yes, I do realize that Chilli con Carne isn't really Mexican, but TexMex at best, but it was a nice change from the empanadas and Baleadas we've had during the last few days (I seem to be thinking that most of the Central and South American countries will drop out in the group stage - Mexico already proved me wrong last night!).

Anyway, about this dish: I enjoyed it. I made a few changes, using about 450 g peeled and chopped tomatoes instead of the tomato concentrate and the passata, and slightly more beans (500 g instead of 400 g).

I had no idea how much '2 squares 70% dark chocolate, grated' was supposed to be - I know chocolate bars where that could be anything from 10 g to 100 g. Because years ago I made a chocolate-based main dish that went horribly wrong, I decided to start out with just a little, about 10 g, and then take it from there. It was fascinating to notice that even that little completely changed the flavour of the dish, making it a lot more earthy, and quite unexpected (with some eating experience you'll probably know what to expect if a dish contains onions, carrots, beef, beans - add chocolate to that equation and it will turn it into something completely different).

Edited 18. January 2016:
I used 1/2 tsp chilli and 1/2 tsp hot paprika, and it turned out quite a bit hotter than I expected. Luckily, kiddo (at 10.5 months) didn't seem to mind at all! He had a bit of a problem with the green pepper and some pieces of carrot as he wasn't able to chew them yet, but other than that this dish worked surprisingly well. Served with white rice for the adults, and potato-fennel mash for the little guy. We omitted the chocolate and the sour cream, mainly because that ended up on the second page of the recipe and I had stopped reading at that point.

Basically, this is a recipe for braised cabbage, with a serving suggestion of grilled salmon - really, there's not much the recipe says about the salmon. The braised Savoy cabbage, however, was really nice, and I'm especially glad I found this recipe as I don't have a lot of recipes for Savoy cabbage.

I used four slices of bacon as English bacon rashers are usually way thicker than Dutch ones, and I might use 6 next time. I used half a large Savoy cabbage, shredded, and also braised it quite a while longer, about 17 min, but I guess that depends on how al dente you want your cabbage to be. When I wanted to add the cabbage, I noticed that all the butter had already been soaked up by the bacon and onions - don't be afraid to add another knob of butter before you add the cabbage, it'll need it. The vinaigrette was too strong, too dominating for my taste; I thought it was too mustardy and also a little too sour; next time, I would add a little oil (or perhaps even melted butter?), mainly to make it thinner. That said, the cabbage is just as nice without vinaigrette.

Served with plain rice as I forgot to buy potatoes - something like roast potatoes, or maybe boiled new potatoes might go nicely with this dish.

Edited 2 August 2015:
We used a pointed green/white cabbage as we couldn't get a savoy cabbage - savoy cabbage is so much nicer!

Very nice orange cake. The only problem was that the cake didn’t soak up the juices very well, and I didn’t have a lot of patience to splash a little juice on in every so many minutes. It ended up being quite dry, though I am sure that if you succeed with soaking, it’ll be quite nice (I actually think I succeeded the first time I made this, some fifteen years ago, which is why I kept on returning to this recipe).