Queezle_Sister's Reviews
1394 recipes reviewed. Showing 1351 to 1394Sort by: Book Title | Date 
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The Zuni Cafe Cookbook: A Compendium of Recipes and Cooking Lessons from San Francisco's Beloved Restaurant
By Judy Rodgers, Gerald Asher
W.W. Norton & Co. - 2002
The most exciting part of preparing this salad was hunting down and trying salt-cured anchovies. We had to buy a kg (see picture 2), anybody need anchovies? I was careful to follow the instructions on page 514 - it really answered all my questions about how to filet, etc.
The salad was delicious. The dressing had a good salty/sour/cheesy taste, and the croutons were very very good.
useful (1)
Website: All Recipes
This is a very reliable recipe, and one I've been enjoying since my childhood. Although this is not a pretty thing, it makes an awesome cake that sort-of floats in a thick chocolaty sauce.
How many rich-tasting deserts use only 2 T of oil for the entire 8 servings? No eggs, either. So I like this because its fairly low fat, but lots of flavor.
Note: I bake this for about 5 minutes less than they suggest. I think this results in a generous amount of the pudding. Cooking longer, or letting it sit for a long time, changes the ratio between sauce and cake, and not in a good way.
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Another important step in my culinary education from using Zuni is to learn to cook polenta. I started with a search for the type of ground corn described by Judy Rogers, no luck, but found a lovely polenta from Italy (not cheap, but see the cute package in picture 2). I cooked it as instructed - soft simmer in a big heavy pot for an hour - but the next step was to put it in a double boiler, and my double boiler is too small. I used the improvisation suggest: I placed my largest pyrex pan in the oven, filled it with boiling water, and placed the pot into the water. I didn't like the idea of the plastic-wrapped lid, and so skipped it. I found that a 300˚ oven made for a steamy environment, and wow - the polenta really did become very creamy - and no skin formed. I also like that you can hold the polenta like this for hours - so very flexible and forgiving.
I've not prepared polenta from scratch before, so I cannot compare, but this tasted really excellent. Surprisingly excellent.
No fresh corn, though, so I used frozen sweet corn (Costco - which is very tasty), and I also added some black pepper. Very comforting - good food for after a day of cross country skiing.
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This was a very easy dish to prepare, and it was beautiful. For me, this dish was also an education. It called for thinly sliced bresaola, an Italian air-dried beef. I had never tasted this before, and found it at our small Italian market (Granatos). Wow - lean and smokey, this sliced beef is a treasure!
For this recipe, the bresaola really shows its stuff. Its paired with sweet Fuyu persimmons, fresh fennel, and a bit of dressing.
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I love sweet potatoes, and so was excited to try this recipe. As with southerncooker, I was unable to "swirl the pan" to compact them into a single mass. In fact, even with my spatula, I couldn't get them to be a single patty of hashed potatoes. When I flipped them with my spatula, the pieces fell apart.
But oh - the flavor! So buttery, and the earthy sweet flavor of the sweet potatoes was great. Yum.
I used my well seasoned cast iron pan, but perhaps the technique here required a true non-stick pan.
Update: I tried the Ad Hoc strategy of rinsing the shredded sweet potatoes and then coating with corn starch. This helped them stay as cakes much better than the zuni recipe - but it turns out my kids prefer non-caked, just shredded browned sweet potatoes.
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Easy Indian Cookbook: The Step-by-Step Guide to Deliciously Easy Indian Food at Home
By Manju Malhi
Duncan Baird - 2008
Very nicely balanced dish - the ginger and chili peppers gave just the right amount of spice, and were complemented by the smoothness of potatoes and spinach. This recipe only took about 30 minutes, and this time could have been speeded up by cutting the potatoes into smaller pieces.
This would be an excellent dish with additional Indian sides, and we will make it again.
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The Zuni Cafe Cookbook: A Compendium of Recipes and Cooking Lessons from San Francisco's Beloved Restaurant
By Judy Rodgers, Gerald Asher
W.W. Norton & Co. - 2002
Preparing this dish was a 3-day process, much of it hands off. We prepared the herb/garlic/caper/lemon peel mix as per instructions, except I had to use dried sage and dried rosemary instead of fresh. Preparing the cut of meat to expose veins was a challenge for me; I seldom cook meat. In the end, I had several large segments opened up, but one big piece with no natural vein. Wanting to get the yummy mix into that part, I went ahead and cut a large slice right into the middle. As per instructions, I tied the meat up with cotton cord, wrapped it, and tucked it away in the refrigerator. The instructions say 1-3 days. I had planned this for Christmas dinner, but we delayed by one day, giving us 3 days of seasoning.
I prepared a mix of vegetables - fennel, parsnips, turnip, carrots, garlic, onio, and rutabaga.
I cooked the meat in my 12-inch cast iron frying pan, but there wasn't enough room for all the vegetables. I put the overflow into an 8X8 pyrex dish. After 1 1/2 hours, the vegetables had cooked down enough that I could combine them all.
I cooked for the suggested 2 hrs and 1/2 hours, and added chicken stock (made from a zuni recipe) in the last 15 minutes.
I prepared the pan sauce also as suggested, with vermouth. 1/3 C stock is also recommended here. I had saved the best drippings from the Zuni roast chicken, and used it here. The sauce was AMAZING.
My family of largely non meat eaters just loved this dish. They all wished we could give six starts. The rich herb mixture made the meat very flavorful. I especially liked the flavor from the fennel seed. The meat turned out moist and perfectly cooked. The vegetables were amazing. And the pan sauce was to die for.
This recipe looks intimidating because it takes a long time, but most of the time is sitting in the refrigerator. I highly recommend you try it.
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I've always wanted to try make mayo, but been too intimidated to try. Until now, that is.
We followed the instructions as given, and our second attempt worked. And it tastes pretty good. We compared it to "the Ojai Cook's Lemonaise", which claims to be #1 in taste in a New York Times taste test. We compared the two directly, and the commercial lemonaise had a predominant mustard flavor. My daughter, who claims to hate mayo, actually liked it, and we used it for avocado sandwiches for lunch.
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These scones are sweet, rich, and very tender. I love currents, and here they gave that zing of sweetness in every bite, which was nicely balanced by the tartness of the orange zest.
These were very easy to put together - only about 5 minutes. But I didn't give the recipe the full 5 stars because they were too rich, and perhaps a tad dry.
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The detailed instructions provided with this recipe were easy to follow, and the result was amazing. I started 2 days before serving with the preparation (jamming salt/herb mixture under the skin), and then cooked the chicken in a cast iron frying pan.
I have not roasted many whole chickens, and certainly not recently. I remember chickens sticking to the pan, and so I was nervous about flipping the chicken over half way through. But the instructions - to start with a hot pan and a dry chicken - did seal the skin, and flipping it over wasn't too much of a problem.
The only problem, from my perspective, was all the splattering grease. I'm very thankful for my self-cleaning oven.
The succulence of this chicken was amazing. Delicious and moist! My 15-yr old son has been unwilling to eat more than one bit of chicken for at least 5 years. But this, he ate, enjoyed, and even had seconds.
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Very delicious.
Wester's advice to carefully read, and re-read, the instructions were right on. The bread chunks require a lot of different steps, and you don't want to be catching up once the roast chicken is done.
I really loved the tiny bits of sweetness from the currents. My concerns about the recipe was that it wasn't clear how much salad greens to use, and the recipe at the end calls for vinaigrette, and I wasn't sure if this was something I was to have made from the instructions, or just a generic vinaigrette.
Everyone in the family loved this one.
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Crunchy, sweet-salty, nutty (almonds), and perfect.
This was the best Biscotti I've ever had. The recipe says that it gets better after a couple days - but I cannot imagine how one can let these wait.
I prepared a single batch to see if its good enough for the neighbors. I found that I had to bake the initial long rolls quite a bit longer than the 15 - 20 minutes suggested; probably I baked them 30 minutes and they were still fairly soft.
I didn't have the anisette that the recipe called for, and substituted Pernod, a french liqueur with a distinct anise flavor. The cookies had a lovely but subtle anise flavor.
Highly recommended!
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Of the four of us, one loved this dish, but the other 3 of us did not care for it, so it averaged to a 2.
I prepared this with canned tuna, capers, pine nuts, etc. I found that the capers accentuated the fishiness of the tuna, and not in a good way. I liked the pine nuts - to me they were the redeeming part of this recipe.
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This frittata is very different from the standard fare - more like a scrambled egg dish. This particular recipe started with sweet onions (I used a sweet red onion), and then pouring the eggs into the middle.
The best thing about this recipe is learning the technique - scraping the eggs into the middle, and letting it cook 5 seconds (while it spreads). I thought that the eggs turned out very nice and light - but the rest of the family didn't care for the rarer bits in the middle.
Perhaps I should have cooked a bit longer - I will certainly use this technique again.
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I tested this brine on the breasts removed from the intact chicken that I used for making broth.
I am not much of a meat cooker, and this was only the second time I've brined. This seemed to be a pretty gentle brine - salt, sugar, lots of water, and a crushed bay leaf. I incubated the two breasts for 2 days, rinsed, and cooked as suggested - dry off, brush with olive oil, and fry.
I was very pleased with the result. Delicious, and not at ll salty. This was much better than the other brine I used, years ago. I will use this again.
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Delicious potatoes. Lovely crunchy exterior, fabulously creamy interior. I used local (Idaho) butter potatoes - nice yellow color and great taste.
Previously, I made rosemary roasted potatoes by chopping up what every variety is at hand, dousing them in olive oil, and sprinkled rosemary, kosher salt, and pepper. This old method works OK.
Where the recipe from Zuni Cafe differs is that the potatoes are cooked first. I agree with the other reviewer that the amount of salt matters. I tasted the water, and added till it seemed salty to me, but in the end, the potatoes were a bit bland. And I agree with the other 2 reviewers, definitely needs longer cooking - and a hotter oven. I used 425, and cooked for an additional 10 minutes.
My complaint is that to make this recipe, you will dirty, and so need to clean a big pot for boiling, a collander, a bowl, and a roasting pan.
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Website: Eating Well
This dish was delicious, healthy, and well balanced. The one odd thing was that instead of boiling the gnocchi, it was pan fried. YUM! We substituted spinach for the chard. We also added a bit of thyme, because instead of diced tomatoes in italian seasonings, we used plain diced tomatoes. We will happily make this recipe again.
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Website: Epicurious
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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Vegetarian Epicure
By Anna Thomas
Vintage - 1972
This is a very simple recipe, but I think it has one fault. It requires that you first saute onions and garlic, then add 2 lbs of spinach, put the lid on, and cook it down. This causes a lot of liquid to come out of the spinach, but there is no step to drain this liquid. Therefore, when you add the eggs, its very wet. I cooked this an extra 10 minutes, and it was still runny.
Oh well... still ate it.
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The Zuni Cafe Cookbook: A Compendium of Recipes and Cooking Lessons from San Francisco's Beloved Restaurant
By Judy Rodgers, Gerald Asher
W.W. Norton & Co. - 2002
This recipe took a lot of time to put together, and the result was very dry. This recipe requires having peasant-type bread, day old, that you butter, line a custard dish, fill with roasted applesauce, and bake. I think its more appropriate to a restaurant, where day old bread might be a common thing.
Between the old dry bread, baked, and the dry applesauce, this desert really needed something wet on it - like a scoop of ice cream. If your roasted applesauce is wetter - maybe because you've used a moister apple, or live somewhere with a less dry climate, yours might turn out better.
The write up says that you should have caramelized spots, where the applesauce bled through the bread. Unfortunately, this applesauce wasn't going anywhere! I won't bother with this recipe again.
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This has become my go-to approach for applesauce. Its versatile, and delicious. Its also easy because once the apples are pealed, there is almost no additional work - just roast and then mash. I find the cooking time varies with apple type, but I have yet to make a batch that was less than delicious.
The first time I made this applesauce, I used a combination of fuji and gala apples, which I think was a mistake. The two apples required different cooking times, and took at least twice as long to soften as suggested in the recipe. Nevertheless, they did eventually soften and get the golden roasted color that the recipe described. I've uploaded a pictures showing the roasted apple sections.
The flavor, though, was exceptional. I will probably never again make the water-apple stove-top applesauce of my youth. In this oven roasting approach, the apples dried out, which gave the applesauce a very concentrated flavor.
The recipe suggested a bit of cider vinegar. I tried, and couldn't really see that it made a difference, so I omitted it.
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I prepared this salad because I had received fresh persimmons from a person with a persimmon tree. This salad features an unusual combination of ingredients. The endive, with its slight bitterness and good crunch, paired nicely with the sweet fuyu persimmon. I couldn't find any pecans, so I had to use walnuts, but they, too, were nice.
I served this salad to four people, two of us loved it, one doesn't care for nuts, and one thought the dressing needed more punch. If I could have given it 4 1/2 stars, I would have.
What I liked best was the unusual ingredients, and the play of sweet and slightly bitter flavors. I will definitely make this again when I have fuyu persimmons.
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This recipe provides excellent detailed instructions on how to make chicken stock. I looked for chicken feet, including the local Asian market, to no avail, and still was able to make great broth using a standard grocery store whole chicken. I followed the instructions (except no feet and no extra wings), and the resulting broth has an excellent bright chicken flavor. I really enjoyed following the instructions for how to remove the breasts. It made me feel like Julie in the move "Julie and Julia".
One concern I had was with skimming off the foam. I did this, as per instructions, stirred, and skimmed again. However, foam continued to come up, and I was unsure whether to remove it or not. I decided not to, and it seemed to go away, but I'd be interested to hear other people's thoughts on this.
This cookbook instructs us to do a lot of tasting, and in this recipe, to taste from the beginning. I was nervous about sipping a spoonful of water that contained a raw chicken carcass, but I did, and lived to tell about it. I found it instructive to monitor the development of this broth's wonderful chicken flavor, and I look forward now to trying recipes calling for high quality broth.
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Crunchy and delicious!
To maintain the spirit of this cookbook, I made sure to buy really fresh eggs, free range chickens. I prepared them two ways. I made an over-easy egg using Panko crumbs, and a sunny-side up using crumbs from an Italian Olive loaf (day old). I used the olive oil, thyme, and salt, and toasted them in my cast iron frying pan until they started to color.
For the over-easy, I sprinkled the additional crumbs when the egg was ready, flipped, and out. Then used the tsp of basamic, swirled, and poured over the egg. I t might not look that great (see my picture), but it was really amazing tasting. Crunchy, with a perfect runny yolk. The tsp of balsamic soaked into the crumbs. The bites that included the balsamic were fantastic.
Then, I prepared a sunny-side up for my daughter. It came out much more beautiful.
I really enjoyed my over-easy panko, but my daughter was nuts about her sunny-side up. She licked her plate, and asked for another. This is very unusual, especially when eggs are involved.
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This recipe combines white beans, prosciutto, tomatoes, onion, mushrooms, and spices. In keeping with the spirit of this cookbook, I used most of the tail-ends of my home-grown yellow, orange, and red tomatoes. I had to cook the beans with my pressure cooker (I live above 5,000 feet, meaning my water boils at a cooler temperature, and most beans need a lot of help to cook).
The recipe called for an end of prosciutto. I used 3 slices, and cooked it in a bit of water. This gave me a liquid to substitute for the bean liquid, which I had discarded yesterday.
This tasted really amazing. We ate it with some whole grain bread.
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The New Basics Cookbook
By Julee Rosso, Sheila Lukins
Workman Publishing Company - 1989
This is not the standard soda bread - it is richer (includes eggs and a goodly dose of sugar). The batter is very wet (no kneading), and you pour it into a cast iron frying pan and bake it. My only modification was use of rasins in the place of currents, and omitting the caraway seeds.
The instructions specify a 10-inch pan - believe it! I tried to bake in a 9-inch frying pan, and it slightly over-flowed the pan. It looked funny, but tasted fantastic.
I prepared this while visiting my sister-in-law, and because my cookbooks were all elsewere, I tried three different soda bread recipes. We had 25 people for dinner, and hands down, this was the winner.
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High Flavor, Low Labor: Reinventing Weeknight Cooking
By J.M. Hirsch
Ballantine Books - 2010
This was very tasty. I made one big mistake - I halved the amount of squash, proscuitto, maple syrup, but not the spices! Nevertheless, it tasted great. I baked it in very large pyrex baking dish, and after 45 minutes it was nearly black. Next time I will try baking at a slightly lower temperature.
I was impressed at how well the smoked paprika, cinnamon, and nutmeg went with this dish.
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This was a very quick meal - we were able to get home from the matinee (HP7), and dinner was on the table within 35 minutes. Mac and cheese is my kid's favorite, and they really like a recipe I invented that uses tofu. Here I tried to stick with the recipe (but I did substitute yogurt for the cream), and I was especially curious about the ginger in the sauce. I'd have to say that it was a bit bland. I doubled the hot sauce, and put in more ginger and more black pepper, but it wasn't exactly the flavor we were going for.
Summary: pluses are fast and includes a vegetable, minus is that its a bit bland. If I make it again, I'll use silken tofu instead of the yogurt, and a spicier mix with the cheese sauce.
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There is a lot of chopping in preparation, but by dicing vegetables to small pieces they cook quickly. I usually think of soups as something that cooks all day, but this one truly cooked up quickly. I was also intrigued that the recipe was very much a traditional mix of vegetables, but it included a healthy dose of ginger. The final product had only a mild ginger note, but the broth's flavor had surprising depth. Everyone in the family gave it a positive evaluation.
I did need to modify it a bit. The mushrooms had been commandeered for last night's dinner, and I didn't have regular potatoes, so I put in a sweet potato. It would have been even better had I had all the right vegetable.
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Postive aspects - these are easy to make. They take only a few ingredients and there is no fancy cooking technique. Another positive is that they look very nice and they do not taste too sweet.
I made these with Ghirardelli dark chocolate (60%), and I didn't scrimp on the other ingredients. But I think the two tablespoons of balsamic vinegar is just too much. It gives the entire truffle a sour note that competes with the cherry flavor, and takes away from the intensity of the chocolate. To my utter surprise, my children won't even eat them, and so I will send them to work with my husband to get rid of them. Quelle domage!
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This is a pretty easy recipe - it took me about 25 minutes, from start (getting out the pan) to served at the table. It was also good because it could shake me out of my pasta rut (tomato sauce or pesto). And it had a combination of ingredients that I love.
The final product was pretty good, but not good enough to go into high rotation. The melty goat cheese didn't look very appealing, and I had a difficult time tossing the pasta to combine all the ingredients. Nevertheless, it tasted pretty good, and my son even ate the leftovers for breakfast this morning.
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This salad was OK. I did make my own pesto, and used a garden-grown tomato. The usefulness of this recipe is that its a good reminder that a salad can be very simple. However, my whole family thought that the pesto/tomato combination needed more punch. It might be better with more salt, or pre-salting the tomatoes before adding the pesto.
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I really liked this recipe, and based on flavor, I should have awarded it a 5. But I down-graded it because of its high fat and low nutrient content.
I made several variations. First, I wanted this for finger food for a get-together, so instead of 2 inch squares, I made 1 inch squares.
Second, I couldn't find fig jam (darn those Utah stores!). So I substituted my own home-made tomato-ginger jam (recipe in the new york times). With the Manchego cheese, it was sublime.
Finally, I had never used puff pastry, so was a bit nervous. But it was super simple! YUM!
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This is an amazing recipe. We didn't have pre-grated carrots, but it was easy enough to grate up 2 large carrots. The beauty of bright green asparagus and orange carrot gave this salad real eye appeal.
However, this salad is so much more that eye candy. A dressing, which really was an amazing reduction using rice vinegar and other ingredients, set this recipe apart. My husband, a salad lover, said that this was the best salad he has ever had.
This recipe will be in strong rotation whenever asparagus is in season!
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Wow were these ever great! True to the description, the cookies were soft inside, and crackly on the outside. These are not inexpensive to make - they call for an entire tube of marzipan - but they are oh so worth it! The final product had only a subtle almond/marzipan flavor, but with the chocolate from the cocoa, the texture, and how easy they were to put together, this is a winner!
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This was the first recipe that caught my eye in this book. It just sounded so odd - mixing balsamic vinegar with ice cream!
I bought the ingredients (and using Breyers ice cream). Unfortunately, the oreos mostly "evaporated" before I had time to put it together, so I scaled back the recipe and made two different small batches. In one, I made it as suggested, and for the other, I tried gingersnaps as the mix-in. Both were amazing, but I think I liked the tiny zings of chocolate from the oreos (original recipe) more than my variation using gingersnaps.
This recipe will be made again - but next time I will do a better job hiding the cookies beforehand!
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This recipe was fairly easy and delicious. Instead of flatbread, we used pita, and could only find small whole wheat ones, so these were served open faced instead of rolled up. We also substituted swiss chard for the spinach. But WOW - the combination of flavors was great. If I made it again, I'd back off the onion a bit, and ramp up the mint a bit. Really delicious.
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This is the BEST corn chowder I have ever tasted, and true to its intent, it took less than 40 minutes to prepare.
My husband made this for our family last night, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. We followed the instructions except we cut the whole milk to 50% whole and 50% skim. Simmering the cobs in the milk did add a big fresh corn taste. The prosciutto crumbled on top really added a great punch.
My one complaint is that this is a HIGH FAT soup. Its true that it tastes amazing, but I'd prefer a great soup that is also low fat.
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This was easy (15 minutes to throw it together) and it tasted great. Grated fresh ginger gave each bite an extra zing. Enough to notice, but not so much that my kids wouldn't eat it.
And with only 1 egg and 1/3 cup oil, this was a pretty healthy quick bread. My kids loved this recipe and are always talking about it now!
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Website: The Kitchn
This recipe uses chickpeas to make a sandwich filling that is something between tuna salad and egg salad. Although I didn't have all the ingredients, I improvised (chickpeas, lemonaise, minced red onion, seasoned rice vinegar, salt and pepper). It was awesome! Great both on crackers and as a faux grilled tuna and cheese sandwich. And very healthy! This will definitely be a high frequency repeat in my family.
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How to Cook Everything Vegetarian: Simple Meatless Recipes for Great Food
By Mark Bittman, Alan Witschonke
Wiley - 2007
This was a good enough mid-week dinner. Both kids and SO liked it. It had pretty good flavor, and was filling and felt healthy.
I prepared this as directed, except I added a step of slightly burning the sauted onions. In this recipe, you saute vegetables, add a liquid, uncooked rice, and cooked chickpeas. I didn't think that there was sufficient liquid for the rice, and I almost added more. I'm glad I didn't, though, because it came out perfect. Start to finish I probably spent 45 minutes.
I will make this again, but probably following one of the several variations.
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I prepared this recipe, using the suggestion of adding blueberries and corn meal. It was amazing. The cornmeal gave an indescribable crunchy counterpoint to the sweet juiciness of the blueberry.
The other good thing is that the recipe is fairly low fat, and its quick baking. Try it!
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This is a pretty good roasted cauliflower recipe. My kids don't like raisins, though. Therefore, the family prefers roasted cauliflower with just oil, vinegar, salt and pepper. However, I like this recipe very much.
But the most important thing - roasted cauliflower is out of this world. It is nothing like steamed cauliflower (which I also love). Roasting firms up the cauliflower texture. I cannot make enough roasted cauliflower - each time I make it, it ALL gets eaten.
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New Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant
By Moosewood Collective Staff
Ten Speed Press - 1987
This recipe taught me that macaroni and cheese can be positively sublime. This recipe uses pasta shells, and a lot of cauliflower and tomatoes, and a bit of cheese, to make the most amazing dish ever.
I have made this dish at least 10 times. I find the spices are perfect, but I do cut down on the amount of butter, and I sometimes add extra cauliflower. I've also substituted elbow macaroni for the shells, and it came out great. Highly recommended.
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