Queezle_Sister's Reviews
1394 recipes reviewed. Showing 51 to 100Sort by: Book Title | Date 
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Website: Maangchi - Cooking Korean
Some people call this "korean sushi" - its similar in that Nori is used to make a roll that contains sushi rice. But the rice isn't prepared with vinegar, and it used marinaded cooked beef, yellow pickled radish, carrots, and spinach. Its delightful!
My son learned to prepare this in college, and treated us to a wonderful meal.
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Website: The Little Epicurean
My son is a panna cotta expert - he made this recipe but cut the gelatin in half (it turned out very good - but might still need a biit less gelatin), and he cut the sugar in half. Next time he will add a bit more sugar back to it, and further cut back on the gelatin.
The brittle - WOW! We disagreed on whether it was good with the panna cotta - for me, I loved it - gave a crunchy thing to eat alongside the cool smoothness of the panna cotta.
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Website: Cooking
I prepare black-eyed peas every year for new years day, and so when this recipe hit the NYT web site, I was excited to try something new. I couldn't find their suggested purple-hull peas, and substituted black-eyed peas (which was suggested in the recipe). I found the flavor to be too sour - probably from the greens. I wonder if I added too many greens? The recipe specified mustard greens. I am probably too much of a botanist, because I thought about the fact that there are many different mustard plants. My market had gorgeous turnip greens, and so I went with those.
Next year back to my old standard.
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Website: Food Network
I've read about roasting bones or meat prior to making a broth, and finally did it. I basically followed these instructions, using chicken necks. Roasted in the oven (450) for about an hour, along with carrots and onions, filled the house with an amazing aroma. Following roasting, into the pot with a lot of water - and (deviating from the recipe) - a pound of chicken feet. The feet supply gelatin which gives the broth an amazing mouth feel. An hour of cooking, and draining out all the solids gave us a both that both smelled and tasted great.
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Kyotofu: Uniquely Delicious Japanese Desserts
By Nicole Bermensolo
Running Press - 2015
A very nice panna cotta-like dessert. However, it was a bit too stiff - one should back off the amount of gelatin slightly. Also my son (who made this) added a lot of vanilla - maybe 1 tsp - and it gave the pudding a delicious flavor.
Note that this pudding uses both soy milk and heavy cream, though much less heavy cream that the standard panna cotta. Also the syrup on the top required an ingredient that we could not find in our local Japanese market (kurosato tiles). I think one could substitute a molasses mixture, but we found the pudding plenty flavorful as is.
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Brownies with miso!
The recipe says that miso gives these a buttery flavor, but I kinda think its the 7 oz of butter that performs that function. These are very different brownies. They are not fudgy, but nor are they cakey. They had a very soft and delicate crumb (and were very good for my daughter, now 17, after she had her wisdom teeth removed).
There is a lot of chocolate in these brownies, and a lot of butter. I don't think I would make them again, but I am glad that I tasted them.
Again - prepared by my son home for the holidays - and in his second year of college.
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Miso in a cheesecake?? You bet! I do not really care for cheesecake, but this thing was amazing. Only a bit of white miso, but it added an umami note that was there if you looked for it. What was also nice is that it was not terribly sweet. We used a combination of raspberries and blackberries, and skipped the sieving step to remove the seeds. And I should not be saying "we" but "he" - this was prepared by my son, who is home from college.
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The Complete Asian Cookbook
By Charmaine Solomon
Tuttle Publishing - 1992
I am not a huge rice fan. Lets just get that out there. And I did not follow the instructions to use long-grain, as I had plenty of short-grain rice on hard.
But this was so easy and delicious! You sautee onions, garlic, add the rice, and then water. You also add some garum masala. Then after its cooked a while, you add an array of finely diced vegetables. At the end, as an option, you add fried almonds and sultanas (raisins). We skipped the almonds, but used all the other ingredients.
This rice has a surprisingly flavorful taste, especially when considering that no broth was used.
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Website: Food Network
We veered a bit from this recipe in that we used fresh spinach and some kale and swiss chard. We chopped it very finely. It didn't turn out as liquidy as any of the restaurant Saags I have tried, and it was fresh and delicious.
Note that if you can be patient and really brown the paneer, it becomes so delicious!
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Website: Saveur Website
This is a how-to. Paneer is essentially ricotta that is pressed to make it firmer. My son prepared this paneer for a christmas Saag Paneer.
We were careful to use full-fat locally produced milk, and fresh lemon juice, and it was delicious.
Note that after draining in cheese cloth, it will be very very soft. Don't worry - you will go through another pressing step. We needed to press ours twice to get it to a correctly firm texture.
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Website: Epicurious
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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Website: Cooking
This is a simple dough, though with at least twice the ingredients as tortillas or pizza dough. Its a yeast dough that also includes eggs and some yogurt.
The instructions were a bit confusing. I was to broil them on a pizza stone, and wait until the bottom was brown. For me, the top burned before the bottom was browned, but perhaps I didn't warm the pizza stone up enough. Nevertheless, it was easy enough to cook till the top was browned and bubbly, flip, and cook the other side.
Once done, we were to brush with melted butter. The results (that were not burned) were tasty. Its been a long time since I've eaten Indian food out, though, so I cannot comment on how it compared to restaurant dishes.
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
My husband prepared these as a main dish which we ate along side a big salad. The biscuits were large and super flavorful. Do be warned, though, that they are not an all-purpose biscuit, though they might be nice along side a fairly simple soup (e.g. carrot). The recipe was a bit involved, as it entailed caramelizing onions first. As is typically the case, its hard to judge just how many biscuits are required, and I think we had too many onions, which led to very moist (but still delicious) biscuits.
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Website: Kalyn's Kitchen
A small lean pork roast in a wonderful sauce and enough red onions for everyone! I had purchased one of those multi packs of pork roasts at Costco, and so my son tried this recipe. It calls for spice mixes, but we substituted rosemary, garlic granules, thyme, salt, and pepper.
The result was moist and flavorful.
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Website: Epicurious
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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Website: Epicurious
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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Website: Epicurious
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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Website: Love From the Oven
If you are looking for a special sweet brunch dish, look no further - this topping, on these pumpkin waffles, are the bomb.
This syrup combines the creamy deliciousness of cream cheese with maple, cinnamon, and pumpkin. We enjoyed it on these waffles, and think it would be amazing even on plain toast.
Happy fall!
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Website: joy the baker
Delicious! I didn't have pumpkin pie spice, but instead tried to wing it (I mean, really, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and ginger, right?). The walnuts are all on the top, it used one stick of butter (1/2C) and didn't have chocolate chips. The bread is moist, it tastes good, but I wish it had nuts throughout it.
I did cut down on the sugar (called for 1C lt brown sugar, I used 2/3C white and a dollop of dark molasses). Daughter was disappointed (maybe not sweet enough) but its perfect with a cup of coffee.
We have 15 blue austrailian pumpkins, courtesy of my husband's green thumb. Turns out they taste great!
click through the photos to see a picture of these interesting and delicious pumpkins.
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Website: Epicurious
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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Website: Cooking
Incredible. This recipe was amazing - - - sausage, vegetables cooked very slowly, tomatoes added, etc. Really a deep flavor - so much more than the sum of the parts.
I did use fresh tomatoes instead of canned, which led to a runny sauce and meant that it took almost twice as long to cook. Nevertheless, it was well worth the wait.
The family ate thirds!
I have made this again several times - its the recipe that nobody forgets. So delicious. Even with canned tomatoes.
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Website: The Kitchn
This was a pretty quick and very fun project. I was very happy to (finally) have a stand mixer. The detailed instructions on the Kitchn web site were very helpful. The decorated cookies would make lovely holiday gifts for the neighbors, and I hope I remember to use peppermint extract. The decorations were put on by dipping toothpicks in food coloring, and swirling them through the uncooked fluffy cookie material.
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Website: The Kitchn
Day 3 of Kitchn's baking school, and we prepared this lovely custard. The only step I didn't do was the final sieving. I tried, but couldn't force any of the custard through the small openings, and so gave up.
Very rich and delicious - this is versatile stuff and good to have confidence in making.
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Website: The Kitchn
Preparing this recipe was part of a 20-step baking course offered free on www.thekitchn. I have previously made gougeres, but I had no idea what I was doing, and the recipe seemed insane to me. This time, the instructions were really well laid out, and it came together easily. I liked that the science behind this was explained - moisture from the eggs leads to the big expansion and the empty middle.
One thing I think I did wrong was to bake on convection. Mine were very brown 20 minutes into cooking, and they had two more baking stages left (at decreased temperatures). I ended up taking mine out a bit early.
Delicious on the second day when I prepared pastry cream to go inside!
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Website: Cooking
My garden, on the plate. Oh how delicious - this risotto captures the garden-fresh tomato and basil flavor, and elevates them.
I also want to say that an induction cooktop is a risotto-cooker's best friend. In the past, I've tried to make risotto on my gas cooktop. I have to admit that I also purchased new pots and pans, but this time, it cooked so evenly that preparation was no sweat.
Tomatoes are added both as grated pulp and finely diced. basil added at the end. We served this with a simple avocado-kale-spinach salad, and it was a very satisfying dinner.
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Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Cafe (Mollie Katzen's Classic Cooking)
By Mollie Katzen
Hyperion - 2002
Low sugar, zucchini, and a cup of soy protein - when thought of as those terms, this was a great bread. But when compared to a standard rich and sweet quick bread, it might be considered lacking.
If you are looking for a quick bread that leans strongly toward healthy, this is a great place to start. If I make it again, I might use cardamom and lemon zest instead of the cinnamon-nutmeg flavorings used here.
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Website: The Kitchn
By this time of the summer, its easy to tire of your garden's bounty, and many years we have left many tomatoes still on the vine. This recipe is a good one for taking care of the late cherry tomatoes. The spice mixture was very good, but somehow, it didn't really seem like a curry. Garlic, ginger, garam marsala, cumin, coriander seeds, cayenne, and turmeric - what was missing? I am not sure, and while we enjoyed it, I do not think I would have labeled the dish "curry".
I would probably have given it a 3 1/2 if that had been an option.
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My Paris Kitchen: Recipes and Stories
By David Lebovitz
Ten Speed Press - 2014
This dish was pretty good, but not amazing. The recipe was nicely written, however the greens-sausage part was a bit too runny, and it just didn't have much of a wow factor. It is, however, a highly versatile recipe - and could be switched up to match one's pantry.
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Website: Food & Wine
Not too sweet, but with a pretty good flavor. However, the recipe is not written well (the flour is never added if you follow the instructions). I had well-aged bananas and too much flax meal (daughter requested then didn't like it), so this recipe seemed to fit the bill. I don't think I've found the perfect banana bread recipe yet.
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Website: King Arthur Flour
Nobody could tell that a big old zucchini was hiding in this cake... It is fudgy without being overly sweet; we skipped the frosting, but a small scoop of vanilla ice cream would set it off so nicely. It comes together quickly, bakes in a 9 x 11 pan, and so makes a large amount of cake.
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Latin Grilling: Recipes to Share, from Patagonian Asado to Yucatecan Barbecue and More
By Lourdes Castro
Ten Speed Press - 2011
A rich cake, baked in a Bundt cake, has a texture similar to a pound cake. It had a bit of rum in the batter, as well as vanilla instant pudding. After baking but while still in the pan, a rum syrup is poured over the cake and allowed to soak in. Finally, a Lime icing is applied - note that this was varied by addition of a bit of rum!.
The resulting cake was super moist and super flavorful.
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A simple salad that celebrates the avocado. Red onions are marinated in red wine vinegar, making a crunchy onion pickle. It is then mixed with sliced avocado, and a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper. It was just delicious.
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Some bacon, onion, spices, and black beans with white rice. This was a flavorful side dish that we really well with the other dishes from this chapter (pork, avocado salad, grilled plantains).
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A butter and brown sugar glaze, balanced by some vinegar, is spread over the plantains and then they are grilled. They are split down the middle, and grilled skin-side down. I've never had plantains prepared this way, and wow - they were delicious!
Note that this recipe also has a very handy table - it compares three ripeness stages of a plantain in terms of composition (how much starch or sugar), the best cooking method, and the best seasoning).
This was prepared by a friend for my cooking club - and it was a knockout. Really delicious.
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The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making
By Alana Chernila
Clarkson Potter - 2012
This makes a nice sized batch, and the tortilla cook up quickly and remain flexible. I think the secret is the fat - which here is butter and coconut oil.
I've been making flour tortillas from various recipes, and two important steps have emerged. These are (1) let the dough sit - really - the flour goes from sticky to nice; and (2) cook in a hot pan - for me that is a setting of 7/10 (induction) on a heavy cast iron frying pan. Its OK when they balloon up - no need to pop - it takes care of itself.
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Website: Cooking
This was not as good as I had hoped. It was a bit too salty, and the flavor of the corn was lost. Of course that could have been the cook's fault ;)
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Website: The Kitchn
Study snack - this came together easily, with coconut oil, popping corn, sugar, and salt. I was not quick to stir the mix in my hot pan, and ended up with a wide range of sweet on the popped kernels. But I think this is one of those recipes that requires practice.
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Website: King Arthur Flour
These are very rich, a bit crunchy on the outside, and very smooth and soft inside. A bit of espresso powder helped them to have a bitter edge, which is how I like my chocolate.
My son is home from college for a couple weeks, and prepared these for us. He was amused by making a flour-free cookie from a web site with the word "flour" in its name. I think next time I'd add walnuts.
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Website: Afgan Kitchen Recipes
Flat breads filled with spinach and scallions. Heavy on the garlic (yum), this dish really worked. Don't forget the yogurt sauce; we also served with hummus.
My son had tasted this dish at a farmer's market in Palo Alto, and so recreated it at home. The bread part is almost exactly a tortilla, but prepared with olive oil. We didn't make the potato filling, only the spinach.
I recommend cutting way back on the oil for the final frying of the filled bread. A tasty and unusual dish.
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Website: Chow
Tart, sour, and rich all at the same time. I'm super picky about coleslaw, and was surprised at how much I like this one. The recipe includes sour cream, which we just happened to have on hand. It also specified to salt and drain your cabbage for at least an hour. I had only 45 minutes, and so squeezed the cabbage with paper towels to remove some of the water.
This recipe was prepared to accompany this recipe's ribs. A perfect meal after a 6 mile mountain hike.
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Website: 101 Cookbooks
This is a bare-bones recipe that is infinitely adaptable to the vegetables on hand. We used kale, brown rice, poached egg, za'atar, capers, and salted yogurt. It was a bit bland, and I think it needed some sort of sauce. A bit of miso-ginger sauce would have elevated it.
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Website: Cooking
A wholesome and filling salad - with one of my favorite ingredients, beets. I substituted barley for the farro, and for the fresh herbs, used parsley, mint, and tarragon. The salad flavor was complex - the fresh herbs really added a great note. A bit of crunch from walnuts, some salt from feta - really quite spectacular. Would award it 4.5 if I could.
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
A slightly grown-up fudgsicle - easy to make - and oh so good! I added about 1/4 tsp espresso powder, but otherwise followed the recipe to a T. The perfect hot summer treat.
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Website: Cooking
This recipe actually worked, and the tortillas were delicious.
In the past, I tried pressing tortillas using masa that had already been made (could purchase in the refrigerated section of the hispanic market). However, I could never get the tortilla to release from the plastic that you use to line the press.
This time I changed two things - I used a bag of masa harina and prepared it according to this recipe, and instead of plastic to line the press, I used parchment paper. I am pretty sure the parchment made all the difference in pressing, but the resulting tortillas were delicious.
My only quibble with the recipe is that it states that its enough for a taco party. That is true if your party is only for three people! The three of us had no problem demolishing the tortillas, which we used to prepare Smitten Kitchen's charred corn tacos, which I previously reviewed here. It was a delicious summer dinner.
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Website: Smitten Kitchen
Really sweet, but then, what did I expect?
It was great fun to broil the marshmallows and grind them up in my blender. The sour cream helped give it a deeper flavor. I made a half batch, and divided it up into four small servings. That was just perfect for a lazy Sunday.
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Website: Cookie + Kate
Its not bacon. But you might be able to fool someone, and its really easy to prepare.
I've seen these vegan faux bacon recipes for a while, and finally decided to try it (looking forward to BLT season if only my tomatoes would ripen!). This recipe used only soy sauce, liquid smoke, and maple syrup. It looked like a pretty soupy mess before I put it into the oven, but came out nice. It needed more like 15 minutes for me, and I turned my oven off and left it in the cooking oven for an additional 2 minutes.
This has rapidly become my daughter's favorite snack food, but my vegan friends at work were not as impressed.
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Weber's Charcoal Grilling: The Art of Cooking with Live Fire
By Jamie Purviance
Sunset Books - 2007
This produced a delicious pork rib, though the recipe would benefit from more clear instructions on grill temperature - or meat temperature as the cooking progresses.
The recipe includes a rub (delicious), a mop (applied during cooking), and BBQ sauce (also delicious). The ribs came out looking drop-dead gorgeous, and the aroma and flavor were spot on. However, ours was done cooking in what the recipe would say was only 2/3 the amount of time. Perhaps a charcoal grill is different from an oven, and we should have used fewer briquettes? Perhaps the meat would have been more tender and more flavorful with slower cooking, but the flavor of these brought no complaints. Prepared by my DH and my DD (dear daughter).
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Simply Ming: Easy Techniques for East-Meets-West Meals
By Ming Tsai, Arthur Boehm
Clarkson Potter - 2003
This dish made a pleasant dinner, and surprisingly, I had nearly all the ingredients at hand. The recipe calls for marinading your salmon with this, which was wonderful.
The salmon cooking technique was interesting - broil with skin side up - and watch to make sure the skin does not burn. This is a great method as it keeps the fish really moist. It was the first time using my broiler, and I was cautious to put the broiling pan at the middle of the oven, but the skin almost burned. I ended up flipping the fish to top side up for the final 2 minutes, and it turned out really well.
The other component to this recipe is the Umeboshi Rice. Umeboshi are small pickled plums, and on their own they are really salty, but cut into small pieces and tossed with the rice they were a great complement to the rich salmon. Probably this is a guest-worthy recipe.
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This marinade was wonderful - with sake, ponzu, white miso, and fresh ginger. In place of sake, I used Shaoxing wine (suggested on several food sites, such as chowhounds), and I realized once committed to the recipe that I had the wrong type of Ponzu. The recipe specifies ponzu that is not prepared with soy sauce. So, because ponzu provides a citrus flavor, I substituted fresh grapefruit juice.
Note that as with other recipes in this book, this recipe makes a lot of marinade. I prepared less than 1/2 batch, and it was plenty for about 1.5 lbs of salmon.
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Essential Pepin: More Than 700 All-Time Favorites from My Life in Food
By Jacques Pepin
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt - 2011
This is a very basic recipe - probably most of us wouldn't need a recipe for this. Cook pasta, sauté sausage, add vegetables, mix together. A bit of pasta water, some spices garlic and cheese and there you are.
We substituted wagon wheels for the ziti, and also added peas. It was tasty, quick, and even better because my husband prepared it.
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