kateq's Reviews
558 recipes reviewed. Showing 551 to 558Sort by: Book Title 
| Date | Rating | Recipe Title
The Williams-Sonoma Collection: Muffins (Williams-Sonoma Collection (New York, N.Y.).)
By Beth Hensperger
Free Press - 2003
These muffins, with a few modifications, are fabulous. I took my cues from "Culinary Chronicles" and left the nuts out of the topping and used a cup of sour cream and 1/2 a cup of milk in place of the buttermilk in the batter. I added a bit of brown sugar to both the streusel and the batter. I used butter in the streusel but substituted canola oil for the melted butter in the batter. The resulting muffins were moist, tender, not overly sweet and the recipe really allows the flavor of the blackberries to shine. I think this will also work wonderfully with other berries/fruits and with orange or lime rind.
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Good muffin. I substituted canola oil for the melted butter--much moister muffin and a little healthier. One and a half times the recipe makes ten large muffins.
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Excellent muffin--not overly sweet, lots of fruit and the fruit flavor shines. Happily my pears were just right, firm but really sweet.
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You Say Tomato
By Joanne Weir
Broadway - 1998
I ended up with truly delicious tomato paste--but not without a fair amount of tweaking of the recipe. First, what is a "case" of tomatoes? I had a huge box of farm tomatoes which I peeled and cored. I pureed them in the blender and my first batch (12 cups of puree) I started as directed. I quickly realized that if I kept the heat low, it would be days, not hours, before the mixture thickened. I raised the heat to medium/medium high, gave it a stir periodically and when it was quite thick, I spread it out on a foil covered, rimmed cookie sheet and put it in the oven. While that batch "baked" I pureed another 8 cups or so of tomatoes, brought it to a rolling boil, lowered the heat a bit and let it reduce--this took all told not quite 2 hours. By then, the mixture in the oven was really thick and lovely. I put the second batch in the oven and spread the first batch out to cool. I then packed it into small ice cube trays (to end up with about a tablespoon sized cube from one tray and teaspoon sized cubes from another). When all was done, I ended up about 24 ounces of really delicious tomato paste. It may sound like a lot of effort, but it really wasn't. Once I got the hang of it, it went very quickly. And the resulting tomato paste is sweet and without the sort of metallic, overly strong flavor of the tinned stuff and much fresher tasting than the stuff that comes in the tube. And because the farm markets sell these big boxes of "seconds" at bargain prices (and lots of my seconds could have been sold as 'firsts'), it's a remarkably cost effective process.
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Zahav: A World of Israeli Cooking
By Michael Solomonov, Steven Cook
Rux Martin/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt - 2015
In search of some undemanding (not a lot of clean-up or effort) comfort food, was quite happy with this. I made this in the laziest fashion possible--that is to say I had a package of frozen minced onion and another of frozen minced carrots and peas (ok--the peas were a bit of a finesse), two pounds of lovely very lean ground round and --voila--a recipe. The thing that is amazing is that the little hit of cinnamon is magical It really does sort of transform this from plain old ground beef to something a bit special. I ground in some good pepper and added salt but didn't play. Followed the rules--and now I know, next time, I could add some garlic, some other bits of whatever, but this is good basic beef for stuffed peppers or pastel. And off I go to make stuffed peppers and put the rest of this beef away till I'm ready to make pastel.
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This is a very simple way to do stuffed peppers. Cover the bottom of your baking baking dish with tomato sauce, place the hollowed peppers in the dish and fill them with a mixture of the "Seasoned Ground Beef" (reviewed separately), rice and egg. Top off with some more sauce and bake. Simple as it is, it works perfectly. In some recipes, I have found it necessary to steam the peppers first. Not necessary here. After baking for 75 minutes in a moderate oven, they were fork tender and quite delicious. As noted in the review of the beef, it could use a bit more spice, garlic, but really quite delicious.
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This is a meat pie made with Boureka dough or puff pastry. I had croissant dough and used that. It calls for lining a baking dish with pastry, filling it with Seasoned Ground Beef (reviewed separately) and eggs, top with dough, chill till dough is firm and bake. Because I was suspicious that the meat filling would made the bottom crust gummy, I made a mini version following the instructions and didn't like it. I made a larger portion with just a top crust and like it very much but for the small quibble that the filling should be a bit spicier, more garlicky.
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Truly excellent Hummus--extraordinarily smooth
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