Queezle_Sister's Reviews
56 recipe(s) reviewed. Showing 1 to 50Sort by: Title 
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Website: Epicurious
Good flavor, and a light texture. My comparison is home-made granola from the 1970s, which I recall as requiring a lot of oil. In contrast, this takes just 1/4C oil (I used coconut oil), plus an egg white. I cleaned out the older nuts from my freezer, using filberts, walnuts, pecans, and almonds. I baked mine for 40 minutes, and only the edges were browning. After cooling, the non-browned portion had large clumps. I really like that this is easy to make and healthier than prepared granola. Next time I will add the called-for sesame seeds.
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Surprisingly good and well balanced.
I substituted 1C edamame for the fava beans - cooked them, ground them in the food processor, and mixed in arugula, Parmigiano-Reggiano (grated), lemon zest, lemon juice, and olive oil. After grinding these up, you mix in some less-ground-up beans and some chopped arugula.
I found that this dish needed twice the lemon juice and twice the olive oil.
Kids and husband were surprised at this. It was devoured in an appetizer-only dinner - with ciabatta bread instead of crostini.
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A perfectly ripe avocado - I was going to offer avocado sandwiches for dinner, but the kids convinced me that they really needed hamburgers. This recipe was a bit of a compromise.
The burgers are flavored with Worcestershire sauce, thyme, salt and pepper. I used Jarlesberg cheese instead of swiss. It was a predictably good flavor combination.
This isn't something you really need a recipe for, but sometimes its good to have a nice set of instructions.
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This was OK, definitely quite edible, but not as good as I had expected. The best pieces had become browned during the roasting, and then had balsamic vinegar caramelize on them. There were some of those pieces, but in others the balsamic vinegar seemed to have just carbonized. Next time, I would do the final step in a cooler oven (maybe 350 instead of 425).
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The perfect dessert. Pear roasted to silky tenderness, the sweetness balanced perfectly with balsamic vinegar. Then a kiss of honey and a bit of pepper -- just to jazz it up.
I'm so grateful for AJ's review of this recipe (see the link). I prepared these a bit ahead of time, and let them sit for about 15 minutes after roasting.
The recipe suggests either goat cheese or manchego - we had both, and I chose manchego.
Really, really delicious.
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I prepared this sauce in an attempt to recreate the "breakfast lasagne" from Masterchef (July 20 2014). The sauce turned out well. I am bolder and more confident in my spicing. It also worked fine on my camp stove and gave me an excuse to break in my new all clad D5 sauce pan.
I broke lasagne noodles int squares, cooked, and layered with sautéed mushrooms, the sauce, and grated Parmesan cheese, and finally topped with an egg. Pretty decent dinner, the boys had seconds.
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A nice idea, but lots of flaws with the recipe. Here, a whole cabbage is grilled on a beer can, essentially the vegetarian version of beer can chicken. The biggest problem is that a cabbage hollowed out to hold a beer can turns out to be a great insulator. And with a beer can in the middle, it takes forever for the cabbage to cook. And - if you could find a cabbage as large as called for in the recipe, the lid would not fit over it on a normal full-sized Weber charcoal grill.
We prepared two smaller cabbages, and still had to do a lot more hollowing out to get it far enough onto the can for the grill's lid to fit. We cooked it four times as called for, and then finally let it go over night. The next day it still required another hour on the cook top.
The nice aspect of this recipe is that it is a vegetarian version of pulled pork. You put a good BBQ sauce over the cabbage (I cooked it in a slow cooker, on high, for about an hour after the extended grilling). Served on a bun with cole slaw, my vegetarian colleagues were really happy with this meal.
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Either a dessert or breakfast - this interesting recipe starts with glutinous black rice, and it uses coconut milk and a long cooking time. The final result is not terribly sweet, but it is thick and rich tasting. I found a bit more salt and a tiny bit more sugar made it more to my taste.
As per the reviews on Epicurious, I gave the rice a soak before cooking (about 7 hrs soaking), and the total cooking time was about 2 hrs. I agree with other epicurious reviewers - it is a bit thin. The kids didn't like it, I think the black color makes you think it should taste a bit chocolately. But I enjoy glutinous rice, rice puddings, and coconut, and I image I'll revisit this recipe.
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This was a simple recipe, and I think it suffered from my having really fresh and very high quality cumin. Carrots are cut diagonally, tosses with olive oil, salt, and cumin seeds, and roasted. The 1.5 tsp cumin seeds was overpowering, but I had just opened a new bag from Penzy's. I am guessing that if I had store-bought, the flavor would have been about right.
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Mine was mushy and not smooth - and I'm inclined to blame my old and non-powerful food processor.
The instructions were easy to follow, and I liked how simple this recipe was. But mine turned out very watery - to the extent that I drained it in a sieve before serving. It was eaten, and I rather liked it after adding ample pepper, but nobody at my house would have mistaken it for mashed potatoes.
I have to admit that partly I made this because lajaxon is from Eureka CA, and my husband and I are HSU grads.
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Delightfully crunchy!
I prepared this when visiting my mother, and not all ingredient were on hand. No celery - nor cider vinegar for the dressing. Nonetheless it turned out very well, and is something I will prepare again.
A fresh fennel bulb is chopping into small pieces, and small pieces of apple (and celery if you have it) are combined, and dressed with a simple olive oil-vinegar (I substituted rice for cider) dressing.
As per suggestions on epicurious, I also added crasins and I allowed the salad to marinate for 2 hours before serving.
The salad had a mild anise flavor, but nice sweetness from the apple and the crasins. I will make this again.
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A lovely cheese fondue -- made just the way its supposed to be made (gruyere, emmental cheeses, pinot grigio, kirsch, and a bit of nutmeg).
My kids had never had cheese fondue, and it was requested by my son. It was fun, but I was reminded that cheese is not supposed to be part of my diet!
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Today's epicurious recipe of the day hit my email in-box as I was contemplating how boring I had become with breakfast. I had chia seeds in my cupboard and yogurt, but had to modify by substituting pineapple juice for blood orange juice, and fresh peach slices for the fresh orange.
The result was not very pretty (but then, how pretty is oatmeal?), but I enjoy the gelatinous texture that results when chia seeds are incubated in a liquid. I also like the crunch of their seed coats. I am trying to use up peaches, and the slices of good tree-ripened peach was great. I also like the yogurt mix-in.
The only issue for me was that a single serving is a bit small for my breakfast appetite. Other than that, this is an interesting, and I suppose nutritious, approach to breakfast.
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Quick, healthy, and delicious - this soup has more of a south-west vibe than a mexican vibe - and has a wonderfully flavorful broth.
Cooking starts with a purchased roasted chicken. In addition to removing the meat, I used the carcass to make my own chicken stock. This easily doubles, and was an excellent selection at a work party (very popular).
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An explosion of fabulous flavor! This dish has a lot of very rich (cream filled) sauce with chunks of chicken that marinaded in a spiced yogurt and broiled.
The chicken could easily be eaten alone, the flavor of the spiced yogurt (before it touches the chicken) might transform your idea of delicious yogurt, and with the sauce its pretty close to heaven!
Note we used only 1C cream, not 2, and used 1% milk for the other half.
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Powerful flavor, great moist meat, and a perfect base for tacos. A paste is prepared using two types of dried chili peppers - its worth seeking out a hispanic market to find the right ones. The Ancho chilis give flavor with not too much heat, while the chilis de arbol are very very spicy. Reviews on epicurious say to at least double the spices, and I did. My pork went 6 hrs with salt and the chili paste, then I cooked it at 300˚F until it registered 190˚F inside. Also as per epicurious reviews, I swapped the beer for orange juice. After cooking, my sauce was very thick; I thinned it with a bit of water, separated the fat, and mixed it with the shredded meat. Served this with pickled onions, radishes, and Tomatillo-Chipotle salsa, and offered both corn and flour tortillas. Great party food.
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Light, moist, and a deep not-too-sweet flavor!
I love zucchini in baked goods - moist without the fat. This cake includes cocoa and chocolate chips for the chocolate flavor, and used up a pretty big zucchini. Flavor depth is enhanced by the addition of powdered coffee. The coffee flavor was not obvious, but it gave the cake a great flavor.
12 slices were consumed by 5 people - after dinner - it really was that good.
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A nice moist cake, which used up about 9 oz zucchini, and hid it well. The inclusion of walnuts and chocolate chips gave it flavor and texture, and made this cake appealing to the adults and teenagers in the house.
I discovered I was nearly out of butter, and so for half the butter I substituted coconut oil. There was no obvious coconut flavor in the final product (though I think it would have been great), and while I think the batter was softer than it would have been with butter (because my room was mid-80s, and the coconut oil was very soft), it does not seem to have detracted from the final product.
I baked this in a bundt pan, and felt that I had no need for frosting or glaze.
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This easy recipe means you can have a well balanced dinner on the table in just over an hour - and most of it hands-off time.
Vegetarians - the miso-glazed vegetables are reason alone to check out this recipe!
The root vegetables are roasted in a very nice glaze. We used carrots and beats, couldn't find turnips (with greens or without). At the end, the greens are cooked and mixed into the root vegetables. A review on epicurious warned against roasting red beets with the other vegetables, we disregarded and it came out just fine. Pretty red - but find - maybe try this for valentine's day?
The recipe calls for skin-on chicken, but next time I will try it will skinless.
These root vegetables were used through the rest of the week, and were especially delicious inside a tortilla for lunch.
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I've always before opted for the "or sour cream" option, not being able to find Creme Fraiche in Utah. But finally I decided to try making it - and truly - it couldn't be easier. Lots of recipes around the internet appear the same - heavy cream innoculated with buttermilk, 1-2T/C. I used 2T for 1.5 C of cream. As promised, it had thickened nicely at about the 18 hour mark, and it tastes rich with a pleasant tang.
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Very nice salad - and I'm sure it will be much better when we can get tasty tomatoes. My mint is growing like crazy, and I'm happy to find something other than mojitos to make with it!
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This took about 15 minutes longer than the recipe said to cook, but our seeds were fresh and pretty wet. The product is delicious! Even blackened as ours turned out, they are addictive! Be especially attentive to stirring at the end.
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This might be my favorite summer drink - barely edging out the gin & tonic.
A dark and stormy is very simple - dark rum, ginger beer, and lime. But if you look around you'll find that the proportions vary a lot. Another variable is the ginger beer - some are mild, and others are very strong.
This particular Dark & Stormy recipe calls for 2 oz rum and 5 oz ginger beer. The lime is merely a wedge. To my taste, I like a good amount of lime - it seems to balance the ginger - and this is too little. I tried it, and then squeezed in another 1/4 lime.
I used Ginger People ginger beer - its the first time I tried it and it is pretty intense. I might prefer a drink with a slightly milder ginger beer and more lime. Of course, I probably need to experiment more ;-)
We have tried this drink with two dark rums - Cruzan blackstrap rum and Gosling's Black Seal. We cannot buy the blackstrap rum in Utah, and I've been pleasantly surprised at how much I like the Gosling's.
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Reading the reviews of this recipe told me that people loved the herb crust on their tuna, but not so much the Lemon Aioli over couscous. So - I simple made the spice mixture and seared the tuna.
The spice mixture was fennel, coriander, and black pepper - toasted in a frying pan - then ground up and kosher salt added. The aroma was amazing! As per instructions, I rinsed & dried my tuna steaks, brushed them with oil, and then rubbed in this spice mixture. I then seared the steaks.
Some eaters at my house do not care for rare tuna, but I slightly over-cooked their fish, which made it dry. But the properly cooked steaks were juicy and flavorful. This was a nice change from my typical soy sauce ginger marinade for seared tuna.
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This was a delightful dish! The fish is marinated in a cilantro-pepper mixture and then grilled, and served with pickled red onion. Flavorful but not too spicy.
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This recipe was fairly easy to prepare, and it came out great. I was looking for something I could prepare to give to friends a neighbors, and auditioned this recipe. I do not have fleur-de-sel, but I do have sel-de-mar, a lovely french sea salt, which I sprinkled on the product.
I live at high altitude, and prepared this by cooking to a lower final temperature (10 degrees lower for my 5,000 foot elevation). The product solidified nicely, although it was not so easy to cut up. Sticky knife, despite buttering, but not too bad. Easier if one person cuts, and another person separates the cut up squares.
I think this is a keeper, and will likely be in the gift boxes I deliver to my friends.
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Who doesn't love a smashed potato? These were enhanced by liberal use of Rhode Island grown garlic. The potatoes (I used a mix of red skinned and yukon gold) were steamed, then added to a frying pan with sautéed garlic and fresh thyme. The people I was eating with are oil-adverse, so in place of the extra olive oil that was recommended to add at the end, I instead mixed in some warm milk. These were very flavorful, and enjoyed by all.
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Simple and quick. Chicken sausages and baby bell peppers are grilled with a honey-mustard sauce brushed over it. The calorie level and flavor depend a lot on the quality of sausages used. We found chicken red bell pepper & spinach sausages with only 6 g fat in each.
An odd thing in this recipe - it calls for brushing everything with milk (??), and then sprinkling with salt and pepper. Milk seemed pretty randon - I think a bit of live oil might have helped the salt and pepper stick a bit better.
We served this with rice, after grilling it outside on the gas grill. The kids loved it - I thought it was OK.
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This is a very decent version of Hopping John. We substituted Andouille for the Kielbasa, cooking them prior to cutting up and adding to the soup. The flavor was good, but perhaps needed more salt.
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This makes an excellent light dessert. Egg whites are beaten and a separate bowl with egg yolks, lemon, buttermilk, flour, and sugar is mixed then folded in with the whites.
I modified this by also adding the lemon zest. The meyer lemons are milder than the standard ones, but it still came out delicious!
This is great to prepare when visiting relatives with lemon trees!
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Simple syrup - sugar, water, and in this case, mint - can't get much easier than that! This recipe is designed for a variety of beverages, such as the Mojito.
In this recipe, you boil the mint with the sugar water for 2 minutes, then drain (and press to maximize syrup extraction). The result has a nice yellow-green color, but only a mild mint flavor. Next time I will try one of the recipes that calls for a longer incubation time.
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My daughter has recently been obsessed with thoughts of mashed potatoes, and it was her #1 request for her 16th birthday dinner. I took this as an opportunity to purchase a ricer, and followed the instructions in this recipe. They really were perfect potatoes (though I was a bit disappointed at how much work it was to rice them). Yukon gold potatoes are boiled with garlic, riced, then hot whole milk and butter added. What could be more simple?
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Simple to prepare, these onions add a nice crunchiness to tacos. We prepared these with Chili-Braised Pork Shoulder Tacos, and look forward to using them in sandwiches for the rest of the week.
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Quick and Delicious!
Pork tenderloin cut into medallions are such an easy dish; this recipe really brings them to a new level with a simple sauce composed of chicken broth, white wine, yogurt, garlic, and fresh herbs.
On a friday evening, I needed an easy meal and didn't want to hit the grocery store. So I substituted half a regular yellow onion for the leeks, and non-fat greek yogurt for the sour cream. My chives are celebrating the arrival of spring by producing lush growth, and I doubled them in the recipe. My poor taragon, on the other hand, is barely emerging, so we used dry. And I used home-made mustard.
We served this with brown rice and Brussels sprouts, and DH and DD wanted more sauce to put over their rice - next time I would increase the sauce.
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Pot stickers are not simple - lots of vegetable chopping, then forming the dumplings, and cooking. This recipe uses Bok Choy (which I love), pork, etc. I watched a YouTube video for help - instructions for Japanese dumplings on the Cooking With Dog series:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8MBX-SXnmg
I found it wasn't too hard to form the pleats, although I probably spent 2 hours forming about 35 dumplings, and cooking them.
I found it difficult to keep the pot stickers from sticking to the pot (ha ha). Really, I did. But by dislodging them during the first few minutes of cooking helped.
We didn't care for the recommended sauce, and so made a ginger-soy-sesame oil sauce instead.
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Sweet with vanilla and cinnamon, cooked apple slices, and an eggy custard.
This one did not puff up as much as others I've made, and be cautioned - its too much to do on a school day morning.
What adds to the time is an extra step where apple slices are baked in the pan (with butter). The batter is poured over the top, sprinkled with a bit of brown sugar, and baked.
Really excellent flavor, albeit a tad too sweet.
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A very good pumpkin waffle. I followed advice from reviewers on epicurious to add extra pumpkin, and I also boosted the spices. I also used half coconut oil and half butter for the fat.
To me, a waffle should be crispier than these were, but if you can get past that, then these had wonderful flavor.
I served them with this cream cheese-maple topping and it totally made the waffles sing.
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Nice soft rice pudding, cooked on the cooktop. My mother had a pint of "light" cream (just barely more fat than whole milk) that she wanted used up. It was a bit of a scramble to find a recipe that matched her cupboard, but this fit the bill. We used jasmine rice, and cooked the rice (in milk, with sugar and salt) for more than an hour (low simmer). Two egg yolks then provided some thickening, however I found that I had to cook it for more than 10 minutes before I observed thickening, not the 2 minutes described in the recipe. I mixed in a combination of raisins and craisins, and it was an interesting surprise, this combination of sweet and sour-ish dried fruits.
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Simple, and a great contrast in flavors!
In this salad, the beets are roasted, and separately, the greens are cooked, chopped. Composition: greens-beets-feta cheese. The combination of feta and beet root was completely amazing.
Our family of four were unanimous in voting this a "5", something that occurs rarely.
So - beets in your CSA box? Look no further - this cooks up all but the stems, and you are in for an amazing treat.
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So simple, and yet so amazingly good!
The general strategy is to first cook at a very high temperature (500˚F) to caramelize, and then at a lower temperature (325) to cook them through and bring out the sweetness.
My only disappointment with this recipe is that the carrots cook down so much, and they taste so good, you want more. We cooked a pound, and three of us dispatched them in no time.
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Just the basic roasted cauliflower - with olive oil, salt, and pepper. I think this is the best, when its simple. We all love this.
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This was a fine recipe for a simple thing to cook. I used dry rosemary because I didn't have any fresh. Fresh would have been much better. Nevertheless, the potatoes did crisp up and also cook through in the suggested time. I should add that the garlic became fairly burnt, so you might want to cook it at a slightly lower temperature.
Nothing exciting, a basic recipe, but it works.
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As the reviews on epicurious said, the marinade didn't add much. I followed the advice of reducing the marinade and serving it as an optional sauce. I do like the combination of citrus with salmon, but there is likely a better way than this to achieve it.
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Very flavorful! This pizza was prepared by my 17 yr old son. It was a little complicated - onions and sausage had to be cooked first, the dough was supposed to be very thin, etc. But he did an excellent job and the result was spectacular. This is a pizza without tomato sauce, and you'll never miss it.
This is a pizza deserving to be prepared again!
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Amazing! Having had bad childhood experiences with collard greens, I was a bit reluctant to try this. However I so loved the Kale recipe in Zuni Cookbook, I thought I should give the general category of winter leafy greens another look. And boy am I glad I did. Both adults raved, and the teen & preteen thought it was OK.
I did follow the epicurious reviewer's suggestions to boil only 10 minutes, and I used the full amount of garlic and lemon. Don't forget the salt and pepper.
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Delicious - but not enough salt. My husband made this for my daughter's birthday - and I wish he had either read lemonaidesandwich's comments or the comments on epicurious. But even underspiced, it was quite nice, just needed generous use of the salt cellar.
I will come back to this recipe next time I'm hankering for hearty food.
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This is the best recipe I found in 2016. I have served it three times, and each time, the guests have found it amazing.
Raw Brussels sprouts and chopped up and mixed with raisins and a vinaigrette. Crostini are spread with ricotta, this mixture, and then lemon zest and toasted pine nuts are added on top.
We find its easier, and just as good, to mix the lemon zest right into the sprouts mixture.
Just try it, and you too will be hooked.
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Comfort food --- with hidden vegetables.
This spaghetti squash is cooked, and mixed with pre-cooked sweet Italian sausage, bell peppers, onion, garlic, and marinara sauce (I used Prego). Its then stuffed back into the squash shell, sprinkled with Parmesan, and baked.
My kids (13 and 16 yrs old) couldn't get enough of this. Its not the healthiest dish (meat), but probably its still 80% vegetables, so not too bad. I will definitely make this one again.
It would also work well for a pot luck.
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Delicious and easy-to-make quick bread. This epicurious recipe is very highly rated, yet the comments made consistent suggestions. I followed those suggestions - reducing sugar from 3 to 2 cups, adding a bit of extra pumpkin, and adjusting the spices (less ground cloves and additional ground ginger). We also added both walnuts and chocolate chips (1C ea for 2 loaves). For some batches, we also added a bit of molasses.
Last spring I purchased a little pumpkin plant for my husband. He planted it in the compost heap, and in fall, harvested more than 15 large blue-colored pumpkins (australian). They are the most delicious pumpkins I've cooked, and we are having fun putting them to use.
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My DH prepared this for my birthday. Crust from crushed macaroons, an ice cream-like body from Italian meringue and whipped cream (with lovely chocolate, toasted almonds, and amaretto), and the very best chocolate sauce I've ever had in my life. Wow!
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