friederike's Reviews
1109 recipes reviewed. Showing 101 to 150Sort by: Book Title 
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Website: Springlane
Not too bad. The reason why I'm giving a two star rating nonetheless is because although this recipe is actually titled "Nie wieder matschige Kartoffelpuffer! So werden sie garantiert knusprig" (something along the lines of "Floppy potato pancakes? Never again! This is how they'll get crisp, guaranteed!"), it doesn't say a word about two crucial factors: how much heat will you need, and how much fat. Admittedly, my guess is that spelling out how much fat you need would only unneccessarily heighten the risk of cardiac infarction, which is already high enough given how much fat you need for baking these pancakes - I noticed that they only turned out well if I used lots of fat, and I ended up using about half a pack of lard (ca. 125 g). I also had to add an extra egg half-way through the baking process as the pancakes kept falling apart.
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Website: Spiegel Online
Quite nice small pastries with a filling of prawn, tomato, red pepper, lime and coriander, but with one major drawback: the pastry cup didn't bake properly, was soggy and made it thus impossible to eat this as finger food, if that was what you were planning to do. Luckily, we did not, so it was less of a problem for us. I do wonder if they would have turned out differently if I had used a metal muffin tin instead of a silicone one.
Other than that, they tasted quite nice. DH thought that there was too much pastry, or that the pastry was too thick (depends on how you frame it) - in any case, that there was too much dough in relation to filling, and he does have a point with that. I had rolled out the pastry as thin as possible, so the only thing I can think of is omit the pastry lids.
The dough was also a bit of a pain to work with, it tore very easily, but it tasted nice once it was baked. However, it took the empadhinas a full 30 min to bake, which meant that the prawn had started to turn a tad dry.
Looking back, what I would do next time is bake the pastry cups and fry the filling separately, then assemble at the very end. Omitting the lids gives you more pastry to make cups anyway, which you'll need - I think we still might have about a quarter of the filling leftover, even though I managed to make the full 16 pastries. We had 14 of these pastries for dinner (just the two of us), though for an appetizer I would definitely serve not more than two per person, and certainly not four.
Fun fact: I just looked up the meaning of the recipe - turns out 'Camarões' is Portuguese for Cameroon! If I had known that, I would have kept this recipe for the day of the match between Brazil and Cameroon in two weeks. Empadinhas simply means pastries, similar to the Spanish term empanadas.
Edited 22 May 2015:
I made these again, this time using store-bought pastry which I rolled out until it was quite thin, and then placed in a muffin tin - this worked really well! Some of them still turned out a bit soggy, and using a muffin paper liner didn't help - drying the pastry before filling might help a little, as might coating it with an egg yolk before you pre-bake it - will have to try both of these methods next time.
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Spanish Food and Cooking (Food & Drink)
By Pepita Aris
Lorenz Books - 2003
Simple, delicious and low-fat, what more can I ask?
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Delicious side dish. As it consists of meat and beans, it doesn't really count as a vegetable dish, so make sure you get your 5-a-day somewhere else.
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Tasty, although the chicken seemed to be prone to dry out – be careful not to let that happen by frying the chicken as little as possible.
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It took us much longer than originally planned to prepare this dish, so beware. Of course, part of that was due to the fact that we had to scale and gut three sea basses (eeks!), something we had only done once, years earlier. But the risotto also took a lot more time to cook than expected. This could have been a problem as the fish had to be kept warm in the meantime, but luckily, all went well on this account.
All in all, it was a nice dish, but not as stunning as I had hoped. Perhaps our expectations had been exaggerated due to all the effort we had taken, but the dish just didn't match them, especially the rice - it was too salty (I thought), too liquid and still not yet perfectly done. Next time we won't add all liquid in one go, as instructed, but we'll add the broth ladle by ladle, as you're supposed to do with risotto.
The fish tasted wonderful, as did the Allioli (and my colleagues will hate me tomorrow!).
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Nice, but I wasn't particularly impressed. Oranges in a salad are always a great idea, but the rest just was a bit boring. We used an expensive olive oil as we thought it would really make a difference in a salad - not in this one. I guess we'll reserve it for simple green salads in the future, and for simple tomato dishes.
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Nice, but pretty simple tastewise. I didn't really get why they would make us fry the raw potatoes - even after a total 30 minutes cooking time, not all of them were cooked through properly. I would suggest boiling them for about 10 minutes, then let them cool and cut into slices, all of this preferably the day before. Also, add more onions and possibly some bacon or chorizo for extra flavour!
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While I was preparing the dish, I was actually quite positive - it seemed like a nice dish, and it involved little more than a few easy steps of prepping making it an ideal dish to prepare a day in advance. Unfortunately, the time needed for baking was far off - we had two small trouts of 200g instead of 500g, and had to bake them at least 10 min longer than indicated. But even worse, the filling tasted dull, and the flavours of the filling and of the earthy-tasting trout didn't combine at all. Additionally, though I really liked the idea of chopped nuts, I never knew whether I was chewing on chopped nuts or grates, so I wouldn't recommend that again for a hard-to-grate fish. We'll probably use the rest of the filling tomorrow for a bell pepper.
Edited a day later:
Not recommended for bell peppers either. I think the problem with the filling is that it combines so many so very different flavours - tomatoes, sun-dried tomatoes, rice, nuts, even ginger - what's that doing in there? - that it doesn't have a 'direction' to go to.
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Website: Sorted Food
Disgusting, just plain awful! Way too many flavouring ingredients, and to make matters worse, they weren't even fully cooked!
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Sophie Grigson's Country Kitchen: 120 Seasonal Recipes
By Sophie Grigson
Headline Book Publishing - 2003
I made the South-East-Asian Version, and additionally I substituted mackerel for haddock. Strange enough, the mackerel was dominant, the ginger and chilli hardly discernible, and the pumpkin had completely disappeared. Additionally, I'm not entirely sure I enjoy the taste of pureed smoked fish in a soup. Chowder with bits of smoked fish, yes, but not necessarily pureed.
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I made this with a few small changes - I used an onion instead of leeks or spring onions, and I omitted the smoked salmon and added a few drops of truffle oil. The onion was definitely too strong in taste, leek or spring onion will probably work better. The truffle oil was very nice, but be careful not to use too much, should be just a few drops. And be careful with salt as well.
My main problem was that I accidentally used too much cream, so after 12 minutes, I still had a lot of liquid cream covering the egg; it was only because I poked around I knew that the egg had set. Unfortunately, the egg yolk had been covered by the cream as well, and wasn't quite as runny as I had hoped.
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Soepkalender
By Anya van der Wetering
Uitgeverij Snor - 2011
Apparently, generations of Germans are (or were) suffering from a rutabaga-trauma, as for many years during and after World War II, there was nothing else to eat but a very basic form of rutabaga stew (rutabaga cooked with nothing but water). Even if you smell a more refined soup like this one, you instantly understand why - the smell isn't very pleasing.
It tastes a lot better, though, slightly reminiscent of cabbage, though it's very hard to pinpoint the specific flavour of the rutabaga amidst the other ingredients - I guess rutabaga just doesn't have a very strong flavour in itself. The dish as such is very nice, very simple and down to earth, a typical winter soup, and at 1 euro per kilo, it's a bargain as well.
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I'll admit I took a gamble with this soup, and I lost. I mainly chose this soup because I was curious how chicory would taste as a soup, and I guess 'curious' is also the best description I can find for the result.
The main problem is that it is bitter, and little else; where in other recipes you add honey to add some sweetness, or you braise it to neutralize the bitterness, there is nothing to counteract it in this recipe. You might try to save it by braising it instead of cooking, but it might be slightly bitter even then, and I'm not sure you really want to add sugar or honey to this dish...
Well, it was worth a gamble...
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I liked it; DH complained that the recipes used too much Roux, making the soup very heavy. Also, and I have to admint he is right here, it tasted slightly sour, which I think it due to the mustard; we had added an extra tablespoon of mustard to make the flavour more pronounced, but maybe we shouldn't have done that.
Other than that, we decided to fry the leeks instead of adding them raw, used slightly less flour, and skipped cooking the soup for ten minutes - it seemed thick enough.
As you're not adding an ingredient that is a very obvious flavour-giving main ingredient, remember to use a good quality stock, you will notice the difference. Also don't add too much salt until you have added the bacon.
As all of the recipes so far, this one was simple, and very easy to prepare. I think it has potential to develop into a refined soup if you tweak it here and there - less roux, perhaps more cream, less leeks and bacon, and possibly replace some mustard with mustard powder?
Fun fact:
The title is a slightly silly pun on a Dutch expression: "to know where Abraham gets/buys mustard" (weten waar Abraham de mosterd haalt) is a common way of saying that that person is an expert in a specific area.
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Website: Socialphy
Honduran tortilla wraps
I'm going to focus on the combination of ingredients in this review - as I unfortunately didn't have the time to make the tortillas myself, there is little else here what would really qualify as cooking.
I liked all the ingredients separately, but everything combined was too mushy for my taste. It didn't help that even the feta I got at the Turkish greengrocer's turned out to be a creamy variant, creamier than what I would have gotten in the supermarket.
We served these with Honduran Mango Avocado Salsa, which provided some much needed texture and freshness.
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Snowflakes and Schnapps
By Jane Lawson
Murdoch Books - 2010
I actually quite liked this dish! It wasn't too bland for us, though that might be due to the fact that I accidentally added 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg instead of 1/4 teaspoon.
I normally always use half the amount salt and/or stock cubes called for. In this recipe, I used half the amount of salt in the meatballs, but the full stock cube for 430ml water. DH consequentially thought that the stock was too salty; I might just add more water next time. There was also just a bit too little sauce, though that might be less of a problem if you serve the dish with potatoes instead of pasta.
I also learned something I'm really happy with: I started out constantly moving the meatballs in the pan, with the result that they started falling apart. Don't; let them rest for 1-2 minutes before you move them. Even though it'll look like they'll stick to the pan and burn, they won't. The important thing is that you keep the temperature low. Also, I think letting the meatballs rest for several hours before frying them really helped them develop their flavour.
Like redjanet, I think the flavour of the vodka added at the end is a bit too strong; after I had taken out the meatballs, I brought the sauce to a quick boil to get rid of the alcoholic flavour.
Served with Cranberry Compote and buttered tagliatelle, as suggested.
Makes about 45 meatballs; serves six.
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As several of the book reviews on Amazon (both .com and .co.uk) mentioned the excellent Winter Vegetable Crumble, we thought we should give it a try. And in fact, it was very nice - though it wasn't as mind-blowing as you would expect after reading the reviews at Amazon.
I really loved two aspects: the crumble and the sauce. The crumble wasn't really crunchy, but I loved the flavour of the parmesan combined with ground hazelnuts (which we used as we ran out of ground almonds - try it, it's really an unusually successful accident!). And the sauce was just really good in taste.
The weak point were the veggies themselves. The recipe uses four different types of root vegetables, and you definitely didn't necessarily taste that; they all had more or less the same flavour and texture, and it didn't really help that they were all coated in sauce and buried in crumble. We had the dish as a main, but as the veggies were near indistinguishable, it was a bit one-dimensional as a single menu item. Next time, I would probably serve it as a side dish and not bother with a variety of half-used vegetables but just pick one or two.
Last, the minor issues: next to being nearly indistinguishable, the vegetables were also too soft - I would reduce their cooking time by several minutes, and also take into account how long they sit in the hot water before it starts boiling.* Also, we had to raise the oven temperature to 200°C to get everything baked and golden brown in 20 minutes.
The dish also contained bacon/pancetta cubes. They were nice, but not really necessary, and you can easily omit them to make the dish vegetarian.
(*) I'll have to admit, though, that this is exactly how I boil potatoes - put them into a pot, bring the water to a boil, and only then set the timer to 20 min.
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This is somewhere between a 3 and a 4. It tastes nice, but it's also quite oily and therefore very heavy. I'm not sure why this is the case - yes, you add milk, cream and lots of cheese, but even the ragout of minced meat and milk on its own already looked very oily.
In the end, it's a lot of work to prepare it, and I don't really think it's worth it. I like the idea of a Lasagna Verde, but in the end, I think I would either stick to a normal lasagna, or go in search of another recipe.
Edited 3 March 2013:
Downgraded to 3 stars. It was so heavy that after the meal we felt like having swallowed a stone. Not recommended unless you find a way to drastically cut the fat content.
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The resulting dish was very, very nice, but the recipe was sometimes a little vague, especially in relation to the sauce.
It didn't say anything about covering it with a lid while it simmers, which is what you typically would do with a braise. This very similar recipe for Pork Cooked in Milk with Bay Leaf and Cinnamon, however, specifically says not to cover. This would also make sense as the sauce shouldn't be too liquid. It didn't mention boiling the sauce to reduce it either. We covered the dish for the first hour or so, then uncovered, and reduced the sauce a little later on, and ended up having lot's of sauce, and it wasn't even too liquid but I'm not quite sure if the result shouldn't have been rather more the 'caramelised, nutty nuggets'-version Moro describes.
The meat ended up being very nice and juicy. I also put that down to the fact that we used pork shoulder and not leg (hamlappen), which might be too lean and dry out quickly.
The polenta was very nice, too, and worked very well with the sauce. It didn't develop a crust, though I think we could have fixed that by turning on the grill for a few minutes.
We served this with Savoy Cabbage with Garlic and Juniper, and it worked very well.
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Snacks + Lunchgerechten
By Brancq-Lepage, Isabel
Terra - 2007
Eeeuw! It was just simply disgusting. It's a quiche of puff pastry, with a filling of just 1 red pepper, a few slices of chorizo, and 4 eggs and 300g creme fraiche. In other words: 1 part veg/sausage, and at least 6 parts egg/dairy. In an effort to turn around proportions, we used more veg (courgettes as we had forgotten to buy red peppers) and chorizo, but kept the rest the same, thinking that would make it all right. In the end, the creme fraiche appeared to be the main problem, making the quiche heavy, fatty and tasting of nothing.
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Website: Smulweb
My husband loved it, and I liked it, though I prefer my usual recipe with onion, cream and a splash of soy sauce (yes, really!). Both of us claim that the respective favourite recipe helps the most in bringing out the flavour of the chantarelles, so I guess it comes down to mere personal preference...
Served as a side dish with Ossobuco, mashed potatoes and a salad of rocket, walnuts, gorgonzola with a sweet fig vinegar dressing.
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Website: Smulweb
This is actually the recipe that is printed on the bag of Quaker oatmeal. We made it a lot when my son learned to eat, around 8 months and older. We omitted milk, salt and sugar, which I wouldn't recommend for non-babies.
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Smoothies, Blends and Shakes
By Suzannah Olivier, Joanna Farrow
Southwater - 2005
Very nice milkshake. It's obviously very easy to make and is very delicious; as DB put it, it begins with banana and ends with raspberry.
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Again, a very delicious smoothie, but slightly too sour for my taste. I still have one glass left, I'll probably add some sugar (or rather syrup to make sure it dissolves). We used frozen raspberries which meant the smoothie was half ice cream, half beverage, just something to keep in mind. Also, serve immediately as it has a tendency to separate slightly.
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It's a very simple recipe, and yet the proportions weren't right at all. We used a whole mango instead of half a mango, and yet all you could taste was banana, with a very, very slight hint of mango. Also, we didn't use any honey at all, and yet it was sweet enough - it definitely shouldn't be any sweeter than that.
DB had his with muesli and sesame seeds, I had mine with in milk softened wheat bran (wheat bran - withot milk - and sesame seeds is was is recommended in the recipe), and both additions worked well.
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
Basically, this is a very nice sauce. I do find pure tomato sauce a little boring, so I added some fried chopped onions and mincemeat during the last ten minutes (could be earlier, though). Adding the mincemeat meant that the sauce lost some its simplicity of taste and tasted slightly less velvety; perhaps adding flakes of bacon and some red or green pepper might be a more suitable choice to spice up this sauce. Or try it as it is!
Otherwise, I think it's a very good sauce that you can also use for other pasta dishes - e.g. make some extra sauce and use it as a tomato sauce for lasagna the following week (bring it to a boil and fill it into a large jar - my guess is that this way you should be able to keep the sauce some 2-4 weeks).
The same recipe has already appeared in other blogs, as Deb acknowledges, for instance Orangette, Rachel Eats and The Amateur Gourmet. Originally from Marcella Hazan's Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking.
Edited 7 March 2010:
Ah, I gave it another try (what else should you do on a Sunday evening when you originally had other eating plans) and I was disappointed again... This time it didn't taste very velvety, or at least not velvety enough to make up for the fact that it was actually quite plain. It made a great base for my favourite spaghetti sauce, though, with onions, garlic, red and green bell peppers, ham and ...
Edited 24 January 2012:
I actually canned a few jars of tomato sauce back in July 2011 - just poured the boiling hot sauce into sterilized jars up to the rim and closed them properly - and then used them in a pasta dish this week. The sauce was delicious as always, not a bit spoiled, and made DH crack jokes that it had 'ripened', and that next time we should use oak barrels.
In any case: this can make an ideal gift for people who will be short on time or cooking resources for a while - kids going to college, people under time pressure to finish a project, new mothers, people whose kitchen is getting renovated and who have to rely on a camping pit in the meantime (they'll need it for the pasta..), you name it.
Edited 29 June 2013:
On second thought... Read this before you decide to can any tomato sauce.
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
Very delicious, although it only served three decent portions instead of four to six. We used two chillies of whatever sort they might have been, and the dish was agreeably hot. but not too hot. There could have been more feta, as this was the dish's only source of salt - and I'm curious if some mozzarella for extra creaminess would have worked too. Getting the poached eggs safely into the pan was hard (albeit not as hard as poaching them in water), and we didn't manage to let them float beautifully - but then again it was very delicious!
Edited to add:
We've had this dish several times since - on one hand, it's very handy as it uses a lot of ingredients you'll have on hand anyway, and DB enjoys it a lot. On the other hand, I like it less and less, and I think it's due to the sourness of the canned tomatoes that makes me think of vomit. I made the Shakshuka in Ottolenghi's Plenty to compare, and what should I say - I enjoy that version a lot more, DB a lot less.
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
What a brilliant thing to make! I've always wanted to make something like this, but I always suspected that it would be complicated and tiresome. And actually, it isn't! If you work efficiently and use two pots instead of one, you can have most of your work done within twenty minutes!
Of course you shouldn't do what Deb tells you not to do, and that is not checking on them while they are simmering in syrup - of course that is precisely what I did. Looks pretty cool when it's burnt, but that's about it (luckily I had enough oranges around to give it another try).
I noticed that they take quite long to dry - at least 24 hours, with the fan in the oven turned on for several hours. Without fan they will still be pretty sticky long after that. Don't stir too much while they are simmering, or they will break into pieces too small to place on your rack. Expect one rack per two oranges - I actually blanched the peel of four oranges the second time I did this and froze half of it, we'll see how they are after thawing. And if you like you can also coat them with sugar while they are sticky - tastes good and looks great!
Edited 26 January 2014:
I made these again. I bought a fairly large navelina orange, and a few smaller moro blood oranges. This made me think that perhaps the last time the proportions were off as the size of the orange has a considerable influence on the amount of skin. The navelina orange weighed 335 g whole, it's skin weighed 78 g. The blood oranges weighed only about 130 g each, and the skin weighed 30 g. So it would have been quite a difference if I had used either four large oranges (skin weight 320 g) or four small ones (skin weight 120 g).
Also, the skin of the navelina orange was thick, meaning it would perhaps benefit from boiling a little longer (= more sugar syrup). The skins of the blood oranges were thin and very short (= small orange), which made it very fiddly, but they also dried a lot quicker.
I decided to make two batches of oranges, using 4 ounces (115 g) of sugar and water each for the navelina orange and the same amount of sugar syrup for two of the blood oranges. Both boiled about an hour and 15 minutes, though the navelina was already starting to get burnt while the blood oranges didn't. The blood oranges turned out beautifully but I think the oranges could have boiled a little longer.
Given that the sugar syrup for the blood oranges contained the double amount of sugar (115 g) compared to the orange skins (60 g), I would stick to this ratio the next time I make orangettes again, perhaps even adding a bit extra sugar syrup when the orange skin is very thick. Remember that ideally you'll be able to let them dry for 48 hours!
We served the orangettes as part of our Big Mac dessert: store-bought Lebkuchen (photo) as buns, Cinnamon Ice Cream patties, store-bought cranberry sauce as tomato ketchup, mint leaves as salad and the orangettes (sans chocolate) as french fries - it looked really good!
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
I'm not really sure what exactly it is that we did wrong. We used four (not really smallish) bananas, and the batter turned out quite liquid. We had to bake it a full 1 1/2 hours, and well, it's not really what I hoped it would be. What did we do wrong? Too many bananas?
(DB suggests not using any butter at all, but somehow I don't buy that...)
Edited 14 August 2013:
I finally dared to make this recipe again - I mean, two 5 star ratings can't be that wrong? This time I used only 3 rather smallish bananas, and lo and behold, the cake turned out perfectly! DH had been very happy with last week's Banana Nut Bread, but found this recipe even more convincing. It's very dense (which I like), very moist and has a distinct banana flavour.
I had a look at the proportions. Assuming that a mashed banana is about 80 ml, the Banana Nut Bread contains about 20% banana in relation to the rest of the cake (excluding nuts); with three bananas, this Smitten Kitchen recipe comes in at about 25% banana and if you use four bananas, you'll even get 30% banana in your cake. That's roughly a 1 in 5, 1 in 4 and 1 in 3 ratio, respectively. No wonder I failed miserably the first time around, there was just too little cake to make it work.
Edited 17 June 2017:
We used 3 small bananas and half a large one and ended up with 270 g banana (peeled). The banana bread ended up being light and fluffy; you could probably use more banana than that. I thought the spices were a bit too strong.
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
Very delicious, and very quick to make!
The crumble was very delicious and crisp, the strawberries and rhubarb were nicely done, but just quite a bit too sour. Use less lemon juice, and unless you use really sweet strawberries I would add one or two extra tablespoons of sugar. I accidentally added the pinch of salt to the crumble instead of the fruit, I don't think that mattered.
I would have thought that the rhubarb needed to be cooked longer than those delicate berries, but that wasn't the case at all - nor does the Apple Rhubarb Crumble from Marie Claire, coming to think of it. And the choice of fruit really makes a difference, Deb's strawberry-rhubarb crumble really screams Summer!, while the Marie Claire apple version is a lot less boastful about it...
For those Europeans among you: we used 500g strawberries, minus the wrotten ones, and this turned out fine.
Edited 28 April 2014:
We used 430 g rhubarb and 470 g brilliantly sweet strawberries (according to some unit conversion website the recipe calls for 226 g rhubarb and 680 g strawberries). We really liked this proportion of fruit, but because we used more rhubarb than called for, we should have used more sugar also, or less lemon juice.
The crumble also tasted just a bit weird. I think it might have been either the baking powder, or the corn starch, or both. Next time I'll omit the baking powder entirely (why would you need it in the first place?), and possibly reduce the cornstarch to 1 tbsp, or even none (you don't really need that either).
Edited 3 May 2014:
We made this crumble again today to test our assumptions (suffering in the name of science). We did as I suggested in my last edit, omitting the baking powder entirely and using only 1 tbsp of cornstarch. Furthermore, we used the juice of just a quarter lemon, the same amount of sugar, and slightly less fruit (380 g rhubarb and 420 g strawberries, same proportion as last time). The result was a lot better, though there is something to say for the cornstarch - we ended up with a strawberry soup. So keep the cornstarch in there. Sourness and sweetness were nicely balanced, though only if you serve it with ice cream; if you don't, I'd add a little more sugar.
Edited 11 May 2016:
It's that time of the year again, isn't it? So, this time: No baking powder in the crumble, in the filling no salt, 1 tbsp cornstarch, about 480 g rhubarb, 400 g strawberries, not all juice a lemon (half a lemon? 3/4?), and about 175 g sugar - perfection! Served with vanilla ice cream; could probably have a little (tiny bit!) extra sugar without ice cream.
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
This dish (and the previous review) was so intriguing I just had to try it! And it's really quick and delicious! Think of a warm raspberry fool, unfortunately without the crème brûlée crust I had hoped for.
We used crème fraîche and half the amount of sugar mentioned, which was a good balance for us (though I thought it was a pity that it turned so runny, but I guess there's nothing to be done about that).
We had to keep it under the broiler for at least five minutes, but that's probably also because the broiler wasn't hot enough, and once we passed the 2 1/2 minutes, were checked it every 30 seconds or so, afraid to get it burned.
Probably works just as well with other berries such as blueberries or brambles. Serve in individual ramekins, just like Queezle Sister did - the alternative just doesn't look as nice...
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
We actually didn't do the salad but made the eggs and served them topped with a little salmon roe, served right after midnight (well, ok, right after having a glass of champagne and firing off some fireworks). And the eggs were nice! We left out a few ingredients, partly because we didn't have them (such as Worcestershire sauce) or because we thought it wouldn't go with the roe (such as Tabasco). The result was very nice and worked well.
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
Hmm. Maybe my expectations were just too high, but I had expected something more. In fact, I had expected something similar to Bitman's Roasted Cauliflower with Raisins and Vinaigrette, or perhaps even something better. I had the idea that this dish lacked flavour - maybe it was the whole cumin that didn't impart as much flavour as ground cumin could have done. Maybe it was the pomegranate I omitted when I discovered that the one we had was too old to be used.
Serve as a side dish.
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
Nice, but not much more than the sum of it's ingredients: mashed banana, nutella and a hint of cinnamon (we didn't add the pistachios). Still, enjoyable enough, and healthy enough to trick you into thinking you can have more than one portion...
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
Hmm. I baked this cake on Saturday and took it to a picnic on Sunday. It was very delicious, but not quite what I had hoped; I had already tasted some of the cake on Saturday, scratching off a bit that had stuck to the baking pan, and that stuff was really delicious, crunchy on the top and juicy on the bottom (before turning). In contrast, the cake as I served it on Sunday was nice in taste, but didn't have a very strong pineapple flavour. The cake was nicely textured, but for my personal liking it could have had more pineapple in relation to cake.
On the other hand, DH was really happy with the cake. He thought it was really nice, the flavours were nicely balanced, it was very juicy and it looked great (which it really did). He lobbied for a 5 star rating, I had a 4 star rating in mind. I asked him how this cake compared to the Walnut Cake with Coffee Syrup I had baked recently. I thought that both cakes were nice, but the coffee cake had the more intriguing texture; DH actually preferred the pineapple cake. I decided to pass a Solomonic judgment and give both cakes a 5 star rating; they do have their fans.
Modifications:
I thought granulated was coarser than normal sugar, so I used only a 3/4 cup instead of a whole one. I had mulled over in which container I should bake the cake. In the end, my best spring form baking tin seemed to be the best option, also because of how easy it would be to retrieve the cake from the baking tin and take it to the picnic in one not-too-squashed piece. Yes, I can hear you think "ouch". Apparently even my best spring form baking tin isn't able to withhold the caramel from leaking out of the pan. On the plus side, if the caramel hadn't leaked, the cake might have turned out way too sweet.
I wonder how the cake would have turned out if I had left it upside-down until just before serving. That would effectively have prevented me from sprinkling over the rum, but it might have kept the upper part crisp. This seems like enough reason for further investigation (hurrah, more cake!).
Edited 1 April 2014:
I made this cake again, this time using canned pineapple as the one I wanted to use had gone bad. I hardly noticed a difference! I still thought that the pineapple flavour could be stronger, though, but I realised too late that perhaps it would be a good idea to reduce the pineapple juice to syrup and add that? Not sure if it would work, but it just might.
This time I used a very wide pan I also often use for tarte tatins lately. It's 11 inch wide, which seems really wide for a cake; on the other hand, that means that you'll end up with a high fruit to cake ratio, which is great. This time we had a slice right away (when it had cooled), and it was great, juicy and sweet around the pineapple, crisp on top. I'm storing it unturned this time.
Not sure if you can see, but I made a different pattern this time - you could interpret it as clover with three leaves. Maybe I need to dip a few of the pineapple pieces in food colouring before I put them in the pan?
Deb ends the recipe with the remark 'Cake may be made one day ahead'. What she actually means is: Cake should be eaten by the end of the second day, as it doesn't hold well and will be way less delicious after the second day.
Edited 22 September 2014:
Hmm, not quite sure what went wrong. The cake was a catastrophe! It was mushy and soggy, in some place it even seemed to be totally underbaked (even though I had tested if it was baked in several places), it wasn't sweet, and some bites even tasted slightly salty, like a mineral water that's a little heavy on the minerals. It might be that the last few I used only half the amount of salt, while I know I used the full amount this time. But what with all the other stuff going wrong in this cake?
Downgraded from 5 to 3.
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
We only made the salsa fresca, not the chicken. The salsa was really very nice! We used it to make vegetarian tacos, also using this cucumber radish salsa, corn, guacamole and sour cream, and all the components complimented each other really well!
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As soon as I saw QS's review, I knew I just had to try it. Unfortunately, I messed it up a little - I soaked the tapioca way longer than 30 minutes by accident - more like two hours or so (don't ask). The resulting pudding was quite solid/not liquid enough, the tapioca pearls weren't as defined as I would have liked them, and I think that soaking them for too long may be the culprit. Otherwise this is a really great dessert!
One thing I also learned was that fair trade coconut milk is worlds away from normal/cheap coconut milk, way better and more coconutty in flavour!
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Like Deb, I used goat's milk and made cajeta, not dulce de leche - goat's milk is delicious!
Nice, but unfortunately it took quite a while longer until the milk turned to a caramel-brown colour than the recipe described; and once it was dark enough to be filled into a jar, it would have been way to hard when cooled down! What I did was that at that point I added quite a bit of goat's milk until I got the consistency I wanted.
Also, I added a vanilla pod and a cinnamon stick - unfortunately, the cajeta took on way too much cinnamon flavour. Next time I would recommend using only the vanilla pod.
I made the cajeta to use with these Pineapple and Banana Crepes, but honestly, a simple caramel sauce would have sufficed as well.
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This seemed like the perfect refreshment for this hot afternoon. Unfortunately, we thought it was both too sour and too sweet. We added the rest of the coconut milk (another half cup), but that didn't really help.
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This might have been nice if it didn't contain avocado, which made the whole thing mushy and diverted from the clear, crisp flavours of the other ingredients.
I did use a lot of substitutes - normal sesame oil instead of toasted sesame oil, a small amount of miso soup powder (sieved) instead of miso paste, only toasted white sesame seeds instead of white and black sesame seeds; but actually I don't think any of these substitutions really had a large impact (not even the miso soup powder!).
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I was planning to write that this is really delicious, but involves a great amount of prepping, as I don't have a mandoline and therefore cut the vegetables by hand. Then I read that other reviewers shredded the vegetables for the slaw, and I slapped myself for not realising that I should have used the kitchen machine to shred them. OMG.
We used lemons as we didn't have any limes, and feta and cilantro, and served with avocados and sour cream, and it was really good. Charring the corn above the flame of my gas-stove went really quick (way quicker than charring peppers), though I didn't really notice that the corn was charred, flavourwise.
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Agreed with Zosia - a great but easy dinner! We served it with rice and corn on the cob; I'd probably add a salad if the kids had been old enough to eat it.
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In terms of chocolate, this cake is serious business. Such a load of chocolate (meant in a good way!)! The banana pales a bit in comparison, but is still there, subtler than in a normal banana bread. Nice texture, too.
I weighed and measured my bananas. With skin, they were about 145 g, without skin 120 g. Two bananas mashed were one cup, so to get a little more than one cup I mashed 2.5 bananas instead of 3 (= 300 g skinless banana). And 1/2 cup cocoa is 50 g. I used the smaller form, which was just right.
Edited 26 August 2018:
I've decided I prefer these cakes separated; I'd rather have a normal banana bread, and a non-banana chocolate cake. It's not like the combination doesn't work, it's just that it doesn't bring out what I want from a banana bread - although the texture and level of chocolateyness is divine!
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Smart cooking met de magimix
By Julius Jaspers
- 2005
Very delicious. The only issue we had is that we added the juice of only half a lime instead of the whole one required, and even that was nearly too much.
To be served tomorrow together with carrots and Spundekäs' as another dip, Spiced Nuts, Deviled Eggs, Chocolate Brownie and Mondriaan Cake.
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Slow Cooker Cookbook: Over 220 No-fuss Delicious One-pot Recipes for Relaxed Preparation
By Catherine Atkinson
Lorenz Books - 2008
MAJOR fail. My cooking, that is, not the recipe. I made this with my brand new Colombian black clay pot slow cooker. Apparently, this clay pot allows quite some steam to escape, and unluckily it only appeared to me to check the amount of liquid after, uhm, six hours or so, shortly before dinner time. By then, the chicken was completely dry and distinctly dark brown, while the bed of onions was only covered halfway with cider. And it didn’t help that I was busy playing a game while cooking the potatoes, and only found out about the ‘pause’-button afterwards. Oops.
On the other hand, I’ve rarely laughed so much during dinner, and do you know what? In spite of everything, this was really delicious! Good enough to earn a 4 star rating. I’m definitely going to do it again, albeit in a different pot/pan (or with more liquid), slightly shorter cooking time (four to five hours, as recommended), and perhaps a slightly lower temperature (100°C in the oven, or on the stove).
I served this with Bavarian Cabbage (white cabbage with caraway, from Ich helf Dir kochen), and it went along really well.
Edited 5 November 2018:
I thought I'd give this another try, now that I have a proper slow cooker. Terrible! The chicken was dry, the sauce runny and sour - no wonder, it contains cider and sour cream , and it won't thicken if you add the sour cream immediately after taking out the chicken, and before you have the chance to reduce the sauce; also, cooking 30 min on high in slow cooker modus doesn't help, at least not in my Instant Pot.
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Theoretically, this dish was very delicious. Practically, I have no idea why the meat (brisket, I think?) didn't become tender although I stewed it at 90°C for a total of nine hours. It didn't help that the recipe instructions were silent on the specifics of stewing…
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Very, very delicious.
After all the doomed braising experiences with my clay pot (see both the Tarragon Chicken with Cider and the Provencal Beef Stew from this cookbook. as well as the Zinfandel Pot Roast with Glazed Carrots and Fresh Sage from All About Braising), I decided to play it save this time and to use my wok (simply because it's the largest pan at hand at the moment and has a glass cover, good for checking the temperature without lifting the lid) on the stove, to be able to control temperature and steam escape. And guess what - it worked! For 'High' on a slow cooker, think 150°C/300°F, or about level 4 on an electric stove, for 'low', let it simmer very gently, which is about 93°C/200°F, or level 1 on an electric stove.
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I substituted the yellow mustard seeds with coriander seeds, and used only two tomatoes instead of five, and less juice than instructed (half a lime instead of two).
It was very delicious, although it wasn't quite what was described. It had a tendency to burn, and I had to stir it every 10-15 minutes to prevent it from going wrong, and I had to add extra liquid. It didn't really need 2 1/2 hrs. for cooking, so we ate it after 1 1/2 hours (read the cooking instructions on the lentil packaging), and although we served it with a warm naan bread p.p., it was rather a light meal instead of the 'filling supper' that was promised.
Nevertheless, it was very delicious, and I´ll surely make it again, either as a light vegetarian meal, or as side dish for Indian food. The coriander seeds were a good substitute, although I would crush them first before adding.
Crosspost. Exactly the same recipe also appears in Complete Vegetarian, only that the title differs slightly, it's Tomato and Lentil Dhal with Toasted Almonds.
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Hmm... it had quite a strong alcoholic flavour (I even guess the alcohol hasn't evaporated completely), and while I'm all for cooking with any kind of alcohol, this wasn't entirely pleasant. I guess the problem is a combination of three factors: 1. The alcohol should evaporate - you only want to get the flavour, not the alcohol as such - it's the chicken that supposed to end up 'drunk', not you; 2. It probably would have been less of a problem with wine or beer, but with Tequila (or Vodka in our case), the strong alcohol flavour is no big fun; 3. It completely lacked other flavours. The fun of cooking with alcohol is that it gives depth to the other flavours in the dish. However, if there are none (and seriously, none, no herbs or spices simmered together with the chicken, a big mistake in the first place), then there's little good the alcohol can achieve.
The only thing I keep wondering is how it was possible that the alcohol didn't evaporate, even though we kept the dish simmering for several hours (we actually don't own a slow cooker, we just let it simmer in a clay pot - any large pot would do the job). My suspicion is that because it was covered the whole time, the alcohol just went back into the dish.
Last, we had to add a lot of water to make sure everything is covered, which made for a very liquid sauce; it was a bit silly to turn the chicken in flour before frying, if you then proceed to braise it (all the crispness you get from the flour is gone once you submerge it in liquid), and the instructions were quite complicated given how simple the whole process actually was.
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