| Amazing flavor - the complex spiciness from the curry and cardamon, with the excellent fruit flavors from apples, figs, yellow raisins, and apples, tempered the potential gaminess of lamb. The result was a very thick stew. Because there were so many complex ingredients, each bite contained emphasized a different flavor.
This took me about 2 hours to have it cook all the way through. The recipe says it makes 6 servings. I made just shy of a double batch, and the 11 people at our meal only ate half of it.
This recipe is a definite keeper. |
| This recipe involves first preparing chicken broth with herbs, lemon, and garlic, and then using this broth to cook potatoes. I used some lovely little red-skinned potatoes. Preparing this dish put a wonderful aroma in my kitchen, but the effect on the potatoes was minimal. The potatoes clearly tasted good, but how much better than boiled in water? To us, just a bit better. |
| Very easy to prepare, and a delicious side dish. I used green cardamom, and it gave a fairly strong flavor which I liked. Some thought the rice was strong on its own, but everyone agreed it was great with a strongly flavored main dish (I served this alongside the curried chicken and vegetables, also from this cookbook and reviewed here).
I carried out the initial steps - onion saute, rice saute - in a sauce pan and then transferred it into my rice cooker, along with chicken stock (better than bullion) and lemon zest. Fragrence while cooking was amazing, and the rice cooker approach worked well. |
| A delicious chicken dish, and it looks beautiful!
This is the dish that is pictured on the front cover - and 13-daughter exclaimed as we cracked the bread sealing the pot - wow - it looks just like the picture!
The most interesting thing about this dish is its use of preserved lemon. I found a jar at my local "pars" market - a mideastern shop. It was called lemon pickles. You cut off the peel, boil it in sugar water, and add it to the broth. It gave the dish a very subtle exotic flavor.
I liked that this dish uses a lot of vegetables. I couldn't find small onions in my market, and so just used a large one, sliced. I also halved the garlic (2 heads instead of 4).
The meat was very succulent, the broth delicious, and the vegetables cooked perfectly. This is a lot of work, though, as you must brown the vegetables and chicken before assembling, and assembly requires the extra bread-like stuff that seals the lid in place. |
| This is a very simple soup to put together - and it probably took me only one hour, start to finish. I also really liked that it is fresh and low fat.
The recipe tells us to puree the soup, and the best I could do was an old food processor. I was in a hurry, and didn't do a very good job of the puree - still rather chunky. We might have liked it better with a smooth texture.
We tasted this as the original recipe and the version with Parmesan cheese. Both were good, but there seemed to be something missing.
Two of us rated this 3, and two of us rated this a 4. I decided it was on the low side of 3.5, so setted for 3. |
| This is an easy recipe to prepare, and very fun for each person to open their "papillote". The combination of chicken and vegetables was well balanced. The flavor was good - not really hot, but very nice. It could easily be spiced up by additional curry powder.
I substituted chicken thighs for the breasts, and used frozen peas.
We will definitely be making this again. |
| This is a very basic vinaigrette - red wine vinegar, olive oil, and mustard. Given that this is a French cookbook, I used my (French) Maille Dijon Originale mustard. I was afraid this mustard would be too strong, but it worked perfectly.
Everyone loved it - it needed a bit of pepper, but is easy, and extremely versatile. I could imagine lots of variations with addition of various herbs. |
| I tend to be a purist - nothing is better than unadorned steamed broccoli. But I decided to fancy up the broccoli this time, and I'm glad I did.
This easy recipe makes broccoli that combines garlic and lemon zest, and just the tiniest hint of mint. On the down side, it also includes a fair amount of butter (which I halved).
Son (15) gave it a 5, daughter (12) didn't like the smell, but I also loved it, so we compromised on a 4.
I think if you had family members who don't like broccoli, this recipe might allow you to convert them. |
| I've never before made gougeres, or anything like it. It seemed so odd to me to boil water&milk, mix in flour, etc. Dorie Greenspan cautions the cook about how the ingredients go together, and her advice was right on.
Our batch only puffed a bit - like a cookie - but I think it was my fault. To get enough flour, I had to combine all-purpose, bread, and a bit of whole wheat. We will try these again when the pantry is full. |
| This is a pretty typical recipe for hummus. It does instruct you to take the little green thing out of the center of the garlic (which I did), and it used the standard chick pea-tahini ratio. I compared 4 recipes before selecting this one - I like that there was no addition of oil. Adding cumin was suggested, but optional. I added it, and found that the hummus was very well flavored. It was excellent with a fresh baguette, cucumber slices, and avocado. |
| This was a delicious full flavored soup. It was prepared with whole milk, There was great leek flavor, and it wasn't too rich. Brussels sprouts were added to the soup, and croutons and grated cheese were passed to put on top.
This was the first course of a cookbook club, and it set a high bar. I was surprised at how good the Brussels sprouts tasted in the soup.
This recipe is definitely a keeper. |
| This barley dish had a lot of fresh and crunchy vegetables. It had a lovely flavor, and the barley was a good texture. This was a side dish in a cookbook club dinner with all courses prepared from this cookbook. This seems to be a versatile recipe and could be modified by many different additions. |
| Simple and good.
I love a 2 ingredient recipe - this one calls for lemon juice and olive oil. We substituted lime juice (suggested as an option in the cookbook). The cookbook was a little unclear about how much oil to use, we used approximately 2:1 oil to juice ratio.
I should also mention that this cookbook lists its salad dressings under "viniagrettes", which always slows me down when using the index to find the correct page. |
| Either you love beets or you do not. This recipe is unlikely to convert you if you fall into the latter category, but if you like beets, you are likely to enjoy this.
Beets are first roasted, then are peeled, sliced, and marinated in a mixture of lime juice, honey, and herbs. We left ours in the refrigerator over night. The lime and honey were detectable, and nicely complemented the earthiness of the beets. |
| This was OK, but the other roast chicken recipes in this book are better.
This is an easy and straight forward dish. A bed of vegetables is prepared in a dutch oven (after a bit of sautée in EVOO), the salted and peppered chicken placed in the pot, and roasted at high temperature with the lid closed. Herbs called for were bay leaf, thyme, and rosemary.
The difference here is that you add 1/2C Armagnac (or cognac or brandy, I used cognac because it was what we had).
The aroma was heavenly, the chicken moist, and the vegetables nicely cooked. But the sauce that resulted from the roast chicken was disappointing. The cook is instructed to add 1C water, and stir until it is thickened. Huh? The recipe called for no thickeners. I tried following the instructions, and then added a bit of Wondra flour to actually make it a bit thicker. |
| Great apple flavor. As described by AJ, the batter more or less just coats the apple chunks. It becomes a lightly texture with great rum flavor.
We used a combination of jonagold (not great apples) and granny smiths. The cake seems adaptable for all sorts of apple varieties.
I had difficulty telling when the cake was done baking. I had used a 9 inch rather than 8 inch springform pan. The cake had baked 55 minutes before I took it out. The top was still sticky, but it tasted really great. Next time I will cook it a bit longer. |
| The concept here is that zucchini masquerades as pasta in this refreshing summer salad.
Added to the zucchini is cucumber, onion, lemon, nut oil, and a lot mint. I didn't have a sweet onion, so diced a regular yellow, and soaked it in cold water for an hour. It was not hot at all, so that did the trick. I didn't have pistachio oil, and so substituted hazelnut oil. The nut oil was very subtle.
I was happy to use up some zucchini with making this, but my kids didn't really like it. If it were crunchier, it would be better. I did like the mint and lemon combination.
**update** The recipe warns you not to make this ahead, and so I almost tossed the leftovers. So thankful I didn't - I might like it more today. Maybe this is a better adult salad than a kid's salad, and it makes a really nice lunch on a hot day when you decided to skip going to work ;) |
| This made a very light salad dressing with a delicate flavor. I used hazelnut oil (in place of olive oil, as suggested in the recipe), and served it on a salad made with lettuce, cucumber, pear, and craisins. It was great, perfect with the fruit. |
| The combination of flavors and textures, along with ease of preparation, propels this recipe to a "5". In place of brioche, we used a rich fig bread (from Costco). We used a home-made marmalade (lime kumquat), and of course drizzled the nutella on top. Each of these three simple ingredients is wonderful, but the combination is more than the sum of its parts. Just fabulous. |
| YUM YUM YUM.
It was my plan to prepare enough to serve some with dinner tomorrow. I scaled up by 50%, so should have had enough for six servings (and there was a lot). I served some to my husband and 15-yr-old son, who had already eaten dinner. Somehow, ALL the beans disappeared, none for tomorrow!
Part of the wonderful flavor comes from pancetta, some comes from the butter. These are not what my doctor had in mind when she said to eat more vegetables, but they were amazingly delicious. |
| This side dish could easily also be a main dish. A pumpkin is stuffed with an amazing array of wonderful things - including bread, bacon, sausage, cheese, herbs, and cream. My friend has prepared this several times - although butternut squash generally tastes better, preparing this in a pumpkin gives you the lid to keep it closed, and it turns our moister.
This dish was prepared with butternut and acorn squash for our cookbook club. It was a lovely side dish. |
| A simple and very delicious roast chicken. The cook is advised to put a slice or two of bread under the chicken, in the roasting pan. This holds the chicken above the juices, and becomes a delicious snack after roasting. We used carrots, potatoes, and an onion, nearly the end of this summer's CSA.
Two options are presented to the cook for finishing off the chicken. You can either leave it in the pan, or, like I did, put it on the cutting board with the breast down (and tail up). I selected the second choice, as this was supposed to get juice back into the breast meat. Indeed, the chicken was perfectly cooked, and the breast was moist.
The vegetables were really awesome - again perfectly cooked.
I rate this a "4", as I'm hoping to test all of Dorrie's roast chicken recipes, and am leaving room in the rating scale for something totally awesome.
The ingredient list calls for 2/3 C dry white wine, but I only found one place where 2-3T were suggested. I think the rest was intended for the cook!
By the way, after reading AJ's review of chicken breasts, and her endoresement of Costco's organic chicken breasts (which we do not have here), I purchased costco's whole organic chicken, which I used here.
That bit of bread under the chicken -- its good enough to just eat that (and toss the chicken). |
| Simple and very good. This is the easiest way to prepare rhubarb (short of eating raw, dipped in sugar). Rhubarb is tossed with sugar and some orange zest, and baked. The rhubarb retains more of its structure than if it were a pie filling, or prepared on the stove top, and its a bit on the tart side (in a good way).
I usually freeze chopped rhubarb, thinking I'll use it in the winter, but it typically looks terrible, and so I throw it out. I'm thinking that freezing batches of this roasted rhubarb might keep better, and it would give me something that could be served in a variety of ways.
The recipe suggests serving with yogurt or on a cake, great ideas, but we put a bit on ice cream (vanilla), and that was good, too. |
| This is a simple set of instructions - slice up your grape tomatoes, drizzle on olive oil, salt, pepper, add garlic and rosemary, and roast. The temperature is low, and the time called for long.
I used this strategy to slow roast a pan of roma tomatoes. Because they were much larger than grape, it of course took a lot more time. After four hours (bedtime), I turned the oven off. In the morning - perfectly reduced tomatoes.
Nerd that I am, I weighted them before and after. The four hours removed 50% of the water, and a small taste showed that it intensified the flavor considerably. I've packed them away in the freezer for our inevitable cold weather.
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| Socca is an amazing and addicting thing, and it needs only one uncommon ingredient - chick pea flour.
I made this to reward my daughter's performance at her gymnastics meet, and my basis for comparison is the recipe at the David Lebovitz web site (see my other review). I think I like the Lebovitz version a bit more -- it is flavored with cumin rather than rosemary. Also I tried following the instructions to cook this in cake pans. For me this was really difficult - they stuck in the pan and broke into tiny pieces when prying them out. The remainder I cooked in my cast iron frying pan - and it worked better.
If you have chick pea flour, make these using any recipe. You'll love their crunchy goodness. |
| Excellent chocolate flavor (13 daughter rates a 5, probably her brother agrees). These were served in lovely puff pastry shells. Very rich chocolate flavor. |
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