Forum

Like all of you, I love EYB!  My cookbooks are remarkably dust-free since I joined EYB almost a year ago.  I know that hundreds, probably thousands of people have joined EYB since I did, but it still feels like I'm almost all alone here.  What do I mean by that?  I never see any comments/reviews from other members about specific recipes.  And maybe that's because no one else is cooking from the same books that I am.  I guess that's a possibility.  Or, maybe other members aren't writing reviews.  I know that I make a point of reviewing every recipe I cook.

One of the things I love about Epicurious.com is the reviews -- they can really make or break a recipe and steer you away from bad ones.  I especially like the Buzz Box feature on Epicurious -- I've found a lot of really fantastic recipes from that list.  I once asked Jane if it would be possible to have a similar feature on EYB -- maybe just a stream of recently-submitted reviews.  This was quite a while ago, when there were far fewer members than there are now and I guess there just weren't enough reviews to make this worthwhile. 

I'm hoping that this situation will change and that the revamped website will include such a feature.  In the meantime, I thought it might be kind of fun to include a topic in the forum on members' favorite recipes: oldies, but goodies and newly-discovered gems. 

To get things started, I'll add a few recipes that I've discovered in the last several months.  You'll notice that a lot of these recipes are vegetarian.  I'm not a vegetarian, but I do frequently eat meatless meals.

Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison (this is one of my all-time favorite cookbooks):

Cabbage Slaw with Spicy Greens

Red Lentil Soup with Lime

Beet Risotto with Greens

A Beautiful Bowl of Soup by Paulette Mitchell (A beautiful book! One of the best compilations of veg soups I've found)

Greek Spinach and Orzo Soup

Arabesque: A Taste of Morrocco, Turkey & Lebanon by Claudia Roden

Roast Cod with Potatoes and Tomatoes

The Spice Merchant's Daughter by Christina Arokiasamy

Basil Chicken

Fields of Greens by Annie Somerville

Fall Risotto with Chanterelles and Late Harvest Tomatoes

(You don't have to wait til Fall to make this: tomatoes are here NOW, and almost any kind of mushroom will work here.)

Simple to Spectacular: How to Take One Recipe to 4 Levels of Sophistication by J-G Vongerichten & Mark Bittman

Thai-Style Chicken Breasts in Foil 

I could go on and on, but I'll stop here for now.  If any of these recipes interest you, you can click on the link and read my review under Comments.  I hope some of you will join me in sharing your favorite cookbook recipes!

Yes, there is a bit of the desert feel when it comes to reviews or comments.  Perhaps in the newly designed site there will be more activity to start the trend.  

yes, reviews are very important to me as well.  Sometimes it might be because I am cautioned to reduce the salt or someone made a very fortuitous substitution which works for me.  And of course sometimes it just sounds like the recipe is not worth the effort.

As I use the site more I will try to leave as many reviews as possible and hope that other follow our lead:)

Yes, I agree, we would love it if more members posted reviews of recipes.  I think it is probably a critical mass thing - when we have more members, more people will be adding reviews, so more people will notice how useful the reviews are, so more people will review.  At the moment because so few recipes are reviewed, no-one is noticing that the feature is there.  I'm sure epicurious.com also had this issue when they started but as they are now 15 years old they have a good solid base of reviews.  Hopefully EYB will have even more when we are 15 years old.

I agree Laura that a reviews buzz feature on the Community page would help this along - unfortunately there haven't been enough reviews to keep it interesting.  But once the new site goes live in the next couple of weeks we will be starting a big PR push which should hopefully result in a big influx of new members so all activity on the site - ratings, reviews, blog comments and forum posts should increase significantly.

You can insert links in your Forum posts by clicking the link button, 3 from the right.  The only issue is you would need to also have the site open in another tab so you can copy the links in for each recipe.  You can go back and edit your post and add them if you like. 

In the spirit of adding recently discovered recipes, I have been cooking a lot this month from The Complete Asian Cookbook by Charmaine Solomon as it is Cookbook of the Month on Chowhound and we have all been sharing our experiences. I cooked a few recipes I'm not bothered about repeating but the ones I liked were:

Green curry of chicken (Kaeng khieu wan kai) on p.301

Chilli-fried cauliflower (Sambal goreng kembang) on p.232

Spiced grilled chicken (Singgang ayam) on p.184

Chicken curry with gravy (Kyetha hin) on p.276

Talking of Cookbook of the Month, once we gain critical mass on memberships, we would love to have a similar feature on EYB - members around the world cooking from the same book for a month and sharing their experiences.  Truly international cooperation!

I don't have any of the cookbooks mentioned - so I'd like to see a link to the actual recipes mentioned, not just the books. While I realize that isn't exactly what this site is about, as I wait for my very long list of books I'd like to see added, I'm interested in recipes and reviews, but while seeing and trying a recipe might entice me to buy the book, merely a reference to it certainly won't.

These recipes listed in these posts are all linked.  Just click on the blue recipe name and you will be taken to the recipe page.  Anything you see in blue on the Forum is a link, and generally also anywhere on the website.

Found a new one!  Grilled Peach Salad from The Herbfarm Cookbook is a winner!  Normally, my favorite way to eat a peach is standing over the kitchen sink, so the juices can drip into the sink and not onto my shirt.  However, not all peaches are worthy of this.  For those that are lacking flavor/juice, grilled is a great way to serve them.  This salad is spicy, flavorful and delicious!  Served it with a grilled pork tenderloin in a caribbean-style rub.  Great summer meal.  This was the first recipe I've made from this book, but after this success, I'm eager to try more.

A new fave at our house is Meat stuffed grape leaves from Vefa's Kitchen. We were looking for some way to use our own fresh grape leaves and found this one. We are using ground goat meat from the "goat ladies" at the local farmers' market. The light lemon sauce is just wonderful with it and was a new way of doing the lemon sauce for me.

I'm brand new here and as I become more acquainted with the site, I will add reviews.  I too like this feature on recipe sites I frequent and find suggestions for changes and/or substitutions from other cooks to be helpful.  I'm really looking forward to using EYB but I would like to see more of my cookbooks indexed.

I also make lots of vegetarian meals.  My 15 year old daugher is a vegetarian and although the other 4 of us in the house are not, we try to eat a vetetarian meal at least a few times a week.

Also, sorry if this is a dumb question but how do I review?  Do I do that by putting writing in the notes tab of a recipe?  Can everyone then see that?

Yes, you enter your reviews in Notes.  Currently anything you write in Notes can be seen by everyone though we plan to add private notes too so you can add comments you want just for yourself.

We are adding newly indexed books all the time (though not right now as we are rebuilding our indexer interface for the new website).  If you don't feel your books are going to get indexed fast enough, in the next few months we will be adding member indexing so you can index your own books and personal recipes if you want to.