Recipe Book Tweaking and Reviews!

[bron]

What is blood pudding? Please enlighten me!!!

[brazen20au]

blood pudding  

[bron]

Oh ok. we call it black pudding or morcilla in Spain.
I do like it now actually, especially the one from my husbands village made with lots of onion!

[judydawn]

Creamy Tomato & Salami Fettuccine, everyday cookbook page 89.

Easy to make and delicious.  Only tweaking I made was, after adding the tomatoes, water, cream and stock and cooking it for 10 minutes, I blitzed the mixture for 2 seconds on speed 5 as the tomatoes were too chunky at this stage for my liking.

I thought I might try a chicken and broccoli one instead of the salami next time but when I voiced my opinion to DH, he said why mess with it, it is perfect!  Won another one!! Thanks Karen for recommending this recipe.

We give it 5/5

[cookie1]

I've made a couple of batches of the Tomato (pasta) sauce.  The only difference to the recipe in the Everyday book is that I've added nearly a teaspoon of sugar to bring out the flavour of the tomatoes. It's lovely for pizza sauce and simply on pasta with parmesan or mozzarella.

[judydawn]

Nigel's Coq au Vin in the Mains section of this forum.

Absolutely loved this one and it will be on my list of dishes to serve up to friends.  Made a few changes to suit me but would be OK just as is for others.  I used 6 skinless, boneless, defatted chicken thighs (left them whole as they do break down during the cooking process) and because I didn't have any tomatoes, I used a tablespoon of tomato paste (this would add more flavour than a tomato anyway).  For the provincial herbs I made a bouquet garni with fresh herbs from my garden using 2 bay leaves, 3 sprigs parsley, 1 sprig of sage and 2 sprigs of thyme. I tied it all together and put it in with the chicken and removed it after cooking the mushrooms. There are no speeds given in the recipe so I cooked the chicken for 5 minutes on speed 1 with MC in place then once the wine was added I continued on speed 1 with the MC off as there is a lot of liquid there and you need to reduce it somehow.  When the chicken was removed and the mushrooms added to the liquid (again cooked on speed 1 with MC off for the 15 minutes) I put some extra vegies in the varoma dish (cauli, broccoli and pumpkin - small pieces) and these cooked whilst the mushroom sauce was cooking. I thickened this sauce with a small amount of cornflour (1 heaped tablespoon) mixed with some water and kept the chicken and sauce warm in the thermosaver whilst I cooked some potato for mashing.  I left the vegies in the varoma to keep warm whilst the potato was cooking and the chicken stayed hot enough in the thermosaver.

[brazen20au]

tonight we made 2 recipes - the curry vegie fritters and the baked beans from the new vegetarian book. the fritters are delish, the baked beans are STILL going... lol (we're up to 1hr 15 mins now)

Recipe Name: Curry Vegetable Fritters
Book Name: A Taste of Vegetarian
Tweaking details: I made mine gluten free and had to make a few substitutions due to not having what the recipe called for (just about to blog my version)
Review: YUM!!!! dh and i loved them. the kids owuldn't touch them of course lol (they won't eat any fritters of any kind, i have no idea why). we didn't have avocado & dh doesn't eat it so i quickly mixed some natural yoghurt and sweet hilli sauce which was good with it
i couldn't believe that the tiny amount of batter and huge amount of vegies would work but it did, wonderfully!. it makes a HUGE batch

i'm thinking that made in teaspoonfuls (which would be a complete pain to cook, i hate frying lol) it would make a quite elegant and trendy finger food for a party
Score: (out of 5*) 5

[brazen20au]

Recipe Name: Baked Beans
Book Name: A Taste of Vegetarian
Tweaking details: we made them as is with a few minor changes - used cannellini beans instead of navy, didn't have kombu, and used raw sugar instead of molasses sugar. it was WAY too salty, not sure we added too much stock powder but next time i wouldn't use the tamari and would add a few tspns of stock powder and more if needed. they took about 10 mins longer to cook with cannellini beans (out of the freezer) than the recipe said)

warning - this recipe does NOT make much. even doubling it would barely be enough for our family of 5 as a main meal.

Review: the kids loved them. dh said they were very nice except for the saltiness
Score: (out of 5*) 3.5 - reduced for the saltiness and the time to cook

[cookie1]

Recipe Name:  Arrabiatta Sauce   

Book Name: Everyday Cookbook

Tweaking Details.
I made no changes at all to the recipe this time as it was my first time making it. Next time I will add a little more chilli as we like quite a 'kick'.
Review
This was very nice over gnocchi. It had just the right amount of 'stickability' to the gnocchi. You could taste the bacon in the sauce. It was easy to make too. Very nice.
Score
I would give this 5 out of 5 as I'll make it many more times.

[cookie1]

Recipe Name:  Gnocchi

Book Name: Everyday cookbook

Tweaking Details
I didn't change this recipe at all. I did add the optional egg. I also cooked my potatoes in a saucepan on the hotplates, and then followed the TMX instructions.
Review
Very tasty, as good as any gnocchi I have made before. I found it great to be able to  do all the mixing and kneading in the bowl. One thing I did discover though was that the machine will not knead if the temperature in the bowl is over 60 degrees. Therefore I had to let the mixture cool a bit before I could knead it.
Score  4 out of 5

[judydawn]

Moussaka - Page 35 Gluten Free Cookbook (we have no intolerances to gluten or wheat but there are some nice recipes for everyone in this book).  Only other thing I have made from this book is the Chicken and Corn Soup page 21 which got the tick of approval too. 

A really easy dish to make and serves 6 people. I used 600g mince, only because that was how much was in the pack but followed the rest of the recipe as is except I did the bechamel sauce from the everyday cookbook.

Would be a good one to make ahead and freeze for later.

Will certainly be making this one again.

5/5 from us.

[CarolineW]

Recipe Name: Baked Beans
Book Name: A Taste of Vegetarian

Looking forward to getting my copy of the book in August.  I'll definitely give these a try - bearing in mind your modifications.

[judydawn]

Potato & Leek Soup Pge 72 Everyday Cookbook

Cooked as per recipe but added more potato.  Found it to be very salty so I think just 1 tablespoon vegie stock concentrate would be enough. Decided to add the cream into the blended soup to see if that would cut the saltiness (instead of swirling it on the top when serving).  This improved it a lot but I still felt it was lacking some oomph so sauteed some bacon and added that along with some chopped parsley.  I was then reasonably happy with it but I think I will add even more potato next time.

For me, 3/5 as I have tasted some absolutely delicious potato and leek soups and this wasn't one of them.

[judydawn]

I Love Bimby's Spiced Chicken & Sweet Potato -find it in mains on the forum

This is an excellent meal, low fat too.  I substituted the chicken thighs with skinned and partly deboned chicken marylands (cut in half at the joint) for a much cheaper meal.  The cooking time was still perfect.  I think I will double the sauce next time though as I am a real sauce lover and even if it is too much,  the excess can be frozen for something else. Seasoning was perfect.

5/5 from me and DH

[CarolineW]

Recipe:  Cheese and ham muffins

Book:  I've lost it at the moment, but I think it's called cooking for Kids, or school snacks, or something?  The booklet that came out a few months ago.

Rating:  2 out of 5

I had high hopes of this recipe, as it was nice & healthy, and likely to appeal to my daughter.  I followed the recipe exactly as I thought I'd mess about with it another time.  However, no-one in our family liked them.  We all agreed that it was the parmesan taste which was too strong/salty, and that perhaps with cheddar they'd be OK.  However, none of us is willing to give it another go.  And I have lots of them left over, that I'm using as dog training treats as we don't want to eat them.