The Ducks Guts' Reviews
154 recipes reviewed. Showing 51 to 100Sort by: Book Title | Date 
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The Good Cook: Soups
By Time-Life Books
Time Life Education - 1980
Quite possibly the most boring soup I have every eaten. It might have worked if I had used the beef stock instead of the bean water (both recommended in the recipe) but I will not bother unless I get a glut of pumpkins and probably not even then. There are much better pumpkin soup recipes out there.
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Beef & Veal (Good Cook)
By The Editors of Time-Life Books
Time-Life Books - 1978
The recipe looked wonderful but the end result was too bitter for one member of the family to eat. I remembered afterwards reading somewhere not to use undiluted wine in stews & casseroles as it would make the dish bitter, and they are right. In "The French Kitchen" the author states that wine is normally broken down with water or stock since it is highly acidic. Also, I cooked it in the oven covered, and I am sure the alcohol didn't totally burn off. Took the leftovers to work the next day for my lunch and spent the next half hour feeling slighly intoxicated.
useful (2)
Grains, Pasta & Pulses (The Good Cook Series)
By Time-Life Books
Time-Life Books - 1980
Terrible. Far too sweet. Only one member of the family could eat it.
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Vefa's Kitchen
By Vefa Alexiadou
Phaidon Press Inc. - 2009
Good, despite having a 1/3 teaspoon of smoked paprika added in by mistake, as well as the allspice (bottles look identical to each other). Took 3 hours at 80 C (trying out the low temperature cooking method). Quinces are scary to core, so cooked them in the microwave first for a couple of minutes so that the knife wouldn't slip on the hard flesh.
Forgot to say that I also added in the quinces as the same time as the meat. From past experience, quinces can take longer then you expect. I also used ghee instead of butter - butter tends to burn when browning meat, I find, but that is probably the cook.
useful (1)
Italian Family Cooking: Like Mamma Used to Make
By Anne Casale
Ballantine Books - 1984
No. But, realistically, a family that doesn't like vegetables is not going to go "oh, yum, broccoli and pasta, my favorite". It's back to stirfying it with beef and oyster sauce.
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This is the recipe that I always use for pesto. Wonderful and freezes well. Be very careful browning the pine nuts as they burn if you walk away from the stove, even if just for a minute.
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If you make your own pasta, this is an excellent means of getting the family to eat leafy greens without complaining. The spinach colours the pasta, but doesn't flavour it greatly.
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Excellent, very detailed instructions on how to make your own pasta. She gives methods for either making it fully by hand, or else by using a food processor and a hand-crank pasta machine. I use a Kitchen Aid now to make the dough, but have used the food processor instructions in the past and still use them as a guide whenever I make pasta (not as often as I should) and always use the pasta machine instructions, rather then the ones that came with the machine.
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The Top One Hundred Pasta Sauces
By Diane Seed, Robert Budwig
Ten Speed Press - 2004
Delicious, easy and quick to make. I make this recipe as it is, no substitutions or change in the method - it really is a good recipe.
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Comfort food, easily made in emergencies, and cheering to eat. This is the type of recipe you only have to make once, and after that you can make it from memory with subsitutions. I always brown the sausages first, just because we prefer them that way and certainly don't skin them.
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Yes, a very good pantry recipe. We leave out the parsley (not being parsley eaters). The variation with the anchovy and chilli works well. I do find 'tho, that the sauce really only makes enough for 2 or 3 servings, but that could be just greed.
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Another good recipe for ingredients that will keep a while (helps if you only want to shop once a week or fortnight). I only use 1 onion instead of the 2 cups of chopped onion and often only use ordinary strong chedder for the cheese, but it still works. I also change the method around a bit, cooking the peas and bacon seperately to the pasta and then mixing it all together just before serving. I find cooking the pasta with the peas and bacon as she recommends makes it very slightly gluggy, but that is a personal preference.
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Bento Boxes: Japanese Meals on the Go
By Naomi Kijima, Laura Driussi
Japan Publications Trading - 2001
Good.
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I substitute a 85g tin of flavoured tuna (lemon pepper or other) for the horse mackerel and mint for the shiso leaves. Its a good recipe.
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Delicious, although I must confess to adding a dash of oyster sauce. Don't leave the noodles draining in the colander for too long - they solidify into a solid lump, impossible to stir fry.
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Really nice. Comfort food in a lunch box.
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A little dry. They needed a dipping sauce.
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We didn't like it, but I think this is personal taste, not the recipe.
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Too salty, but that could be the brand of soy sauce I used.
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I halve the sugar as otherwise it is very sweet. Also, half the recipe makes enough for 3 servings.
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The Perfect Scoop: Ice Creams, Sorbets, Granitas, and Sweet Accessories
By David Lebovitz
Ten Speed Press,U.S. - 2007
This is a good recipe, but as written in the book, you must let it soften a bit before serving. I use 3 whole eggs instead of the 5 egg yolks, and for my oven 150 C for about 3 / 4 hours is fine for the rice pudding. Pureeing half the mixture really does make a big difference to the final icecream.
useful (1)
A great hit with the only person who took milk in her coffee. Fun to make.
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Definately one to remake, but perhaps with a little less brown sugar.
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Everybody liked this one. The mixture was too thick for my Sunbeam ice-cream maker to churn, so next time I will try substituting the half and half with full-cream milk instead.
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Good, but not as good as I expected. The recipe doesn't specify what type of banana (probably a good thing as I only know two) but perhaps he was using a better cooking banana then I was.
Still, a delicious icecream.
useful (1)
Digby Law's Pickle & Chutney Cookbook
By Digby Law
Hachette Livre NZ Ltd - 2006
No matter how tempting, do NOT cook the vegetables. Just follow the recipe (note to self).
Very good family pickles.
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Recipes From World Vision
By World Vision of Australia - Shepparton Branch
World Vision of Australia - Shepparton Branch - 1981
Good and freezes well.
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Very good recipe - this is the glace fruit type of fruitcake, with minimal flour.
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Listed as "Australasian", but it can't be really. This recipe must have kept students and first-time-away-from-home alive for years all over the planet. A can of tuna, a can of sweet corn etc etc served with rice - better then instant noodles (probably more expensive tho).
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Iris Country Fare
By Lyndall Muellar and Robyn Boyce
Winifred West Schools - 2002
Contributor: Geoff Janz. Very good family recipe. I don't like drumsticks, so a couple of breasts get thrown in as well. Reheats well.
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Very good robust cake. Good for picnics. The "1 carton" of sour cream is 300 ml.
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Tacos
By Mark Miller
Ten Speed Press - 2009
Very good. I substituted spring onions for the red onion and it worked.
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Wonderful and fresh. I simmered the sauce down to 1 cup to make a thicker sauce (for nachos), which took about 15 to 20 minutes as I had used ordinary supermarket tomatoes, not Roma.
Also the dry-roasing and rehydration didn't seem to work on my dry chillies (which were from China) so had to throw those out and resort to a spoonful of sambal oelek. Still delicous but probably not authentic Mexican. And the oregano - had to use a handful of fresh ordinary oregano from the garden.
Still, after all that it was a big hit which says something for the recipe.
useful (1)
Vegetables (The Good Cook Techniques & Recipes Series)
By Time-Life Books
Time-Life Books - 1979
Lovely light soup. The lemon juice is essential and the chicken stock must be real - no stock cubes. Use a gentle heat or the microwave to re-heat.
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Coffee Cakes: Simple, Sweet, and Savory
By Lou Seibert Pappas, Maren Caruso
Chronicle Books - 2006
Good cake. A bit of a disaster initially, as I had substituted frozen blueberries for the strawberries which made for a much longer cooking time. Pulled it out at 40 minutes and most of the cake was still raw. However another 40 minutes at 160 C and it was fine. Definately the cook's fault.
The book ONLY uses American measurements, so a bit of time was spent Googling the conversions. There is a Table Of Equivelents in the back of the book, but it doesn't have the dreaded stick of butter which is so hard to remember if you don't bake often.
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Ken Hom's Chinese Kitchen: With a Consumer's Guide to Essential Ingredients
By Ken Hom
Anova Books - 1996
A good dish. Works fine without the meat and with other vegetables.
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OK, but not brilliant.
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Winter fare. Very good, but I only put a litre of water in at the most. Works well with gravy/stewing beef if you don't feel like oxtail.
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Nice light meal if you add a couple of packets of soba noodles into the soup. I don't cook them seperately. Bok choy works fine if you don't have any nappa cabbage.
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Very good family dish. Easy, and as Ken Hom writes, you can substitute your own favorite ingredients.
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Very good and easy to make. I use Carnation Evaporated Milk instead of the coconut milk, but that is just a family tradition from the in-laws.
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Good, but I think the recipe from Wei-Chuan's "Chinese Cuisine" is better. Even that one, I have modified using a packet of "Soy Chicken Mix" from the Chinese shop and weighing the various spices / herbs in it. Some of them were a bit tricky to identify.
However, this is a good recipe and easy to make.
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Fabulous way of cooking chicken in hot weather. Easy and the chicken is always moist and tender. Cook it in the cooler part of the day and leave in the fridge for a meal that night when it is too hot to cook and you don't want to heat the house up any further.
The Cantonese-Style Dipping Sauce on page 131 is the favorite to go with it, but I usually do a couple of others as well, Thai or European. I have served it with home-made mayonnaise, but that was a little bland.
This recipe (or method, really, I suppose) is sometimes known as Velvet Chicken.
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Nice, but not worth the effort. It's a good dish to make once, just for the history, but I haven't made it again.
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Delicious. A family favorite, always requested. I soak the lily-buds , wood ears and black mushrooms (Shiitake), especially the last, before cutting up and use the Shiitake soaking water with a chicken stock cube instead of Chicken Stock. Reheats very well for dinner parties.
useful (4)
The Hungarian Cookbook
By Susan Derecskey
William Morrow Cookbooks - 1987
Better as a snack. They are a lot of work, but they are worth it. Use the smaller European plums, a little bigger then cherry plums, and don't overbrown the breadcrumbs.
useful (1)
The French Kitchen
By Diane Hokuigue
Methuen (Australia) - 1983
Excellent light potato dish, not at all heavy. I don't add the cream, but I do use full cream milk.
useful (1)
The Food of China: Authentic Recipes from the Middle Kingdom
By Periplus Editions
Tuttle - 1997
I've never had the lobster for the second half of this dish (too much of a coward), but the chicken is good.
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The smoking oil burns the spring onion and ginger into the fish. A very little sesame oil (1/2 teaspoon?) added in is even better. The fish only takes a few minutes to cook.
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Instead of commerical sweet and sour saouce, Chinese red vinegar works fine. I don't put the dried prawns in, although it probably would taste better with them.
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