friederike's Reviews
1109 recipes reviewed. Showing 1101 to 1109Sort by: Book Title 
| Date | Rating | Recipe Title
Yan-Kit's Classic Chinese Cook Book
By Yan-Kit So
Dorling Kindersley Publishers Ltd - 1987
Very easy to make, and very hot. Very cool! We made this to make Braised Fish Hunan-Szechwan Style and it was great!
useful (1)
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'
useful (1)
Not impressed. It was quite salty (obviously), but didn't contain enough spices to make it interesting. Also, I would have expected it to be crunchy (probably because of the salt-and-spice association), but that wasn't the case.
useful (0)
A Year in my Kitchen
By Skye Gyngell
Quadrille Publishing Ltd - 2008
Uh. We were having guests last night, and as the recipe advises to prepare the jellies the day they are being served as they could become too hard otherwise, and suggests that they'll need only 1-2 hours to set, I took a risk, and failed. The jellies were nowhere near set. Even when I went to bed another four hours later, I still found them too wobbly.
We had them for dessert tonight, and they werent hard at all, on the contrary - very difficult to get them out of the moulds in one go. Also, the rosemary was too strong, and lesser so, they were a bit sour and bitter - in a good way if you had just a bit, but too much for a whole dessert.
If you want add things as decoration, anticipate that they will float instead of sink to the bottom, and that therefore you will have to turn the jellies twice - once to get them out of the mould, a second time to turn them right side up again. I used a slice of blood orange in one of them and a tiny twig of rosemary in the other one. I also used a tray with heart-shaped ice cubes from Ikea (one similar to this one), but it was very hard getting them out in one piece. Would have been such a nice idea for Valentine's Day, but then who wants to serve a broken heart?
useful (2)
Website: Yummy Lifestyle
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.
useful (0)
Zoku Quick Pops
By Jackie Zorovich, Kristina Sacci
Zoku LLC - 2011
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.
useful (0)
Really nice! I only made raspberry ones, though.
I used Greek yoghurt instead of sour cream as that was what I had, but in hindsight buttermilk might have been nice as well, or a bit of both. I didn't measure the raspberries after sieving, but judging from how full the popsicles were it seemed about just right.
useful (0)
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!
useful (0)
Nice, but not in any way comparable to the others we've had until know. Taste before you freeze them -I used more than double the amount of honey (instead of agave syrup) with the kiwi. For the cherry, I had accidentally bought blackcurrant juice instead, so I used that, and I didn't mix it with apple juice (why would I? didn't really get that). In any case, blackcurrant went well with kiwi, if unexpected.
useful (0)