Notes about Recipes in this book

• Roasted caperberries with bacon

  • Pinkone on May 30, 2018

    These are ideal to prepare before hand, and store in covered plastic container in the fridge until required. Simply pop in the oven and turn timer to 10 minutes, when needed. Leave the hostess with the mostess time to spend with guests.

• French onion tarts

  • e_ballad on December 21, 2019

    Excellent pastry, but found the filling to be a little lacklustre.

• Orzo with spice-roasted carrots, currants and pinenuts

  • e_ballad on December 25, 2016

    Incredibly easy & a go-to pasta salad at our place. A real crowd pleaser.

• Ham, barley and spinach soup

  • e_ballad on May 26, 2018

    We really enjoyed this, but that may be due to the nostalgia related to this dish, which strongly resembles my Mum’s ‘go-to’ soup. As much as we liked this, it doesn’t surpass my Mum’s recipe!

• Crispy noodle salad with chilli and spring onion vinaigrette

  • JanetteF on February 09, 2015

    made this heaps its really nice

• Celery salt and spice crusted salmon

  • e_ballad on November 11, 2020

    On page 66 of the “More Simple Café Food”, this was ok, but nothing especially memorable.

• Beef and chorizo pies

  • e_ballad on January 07, 2017

    Fairly simple but a wallop of flavour. Highly recommend.

• French chicken and mustard pie

  • e_ballad on September 25, 2021

    My kids aren’t super-keen on mustard, so I wound up reducing to 1 tblsp, which was perfect. 4 tblsp would have rendered this almost inedible.

• Pumpkin cornbread cake

  • e_ballad on December 02, 2020

    This went from ‘undercooked’ to ‘way too dry’ in a blink of an eye, so watch very carefully. On p89 in ‘More Simple Café Food’ section.

• Sweet ricotta cake

  • e_ballad on April 08, 2016

    Strongly suspect that there was a typo with the cooking time: recipe states 20 mins, whilst the cooking time was 1 hour 20 mins (or a bit longer in my oven!).

• Exotic sausage tagine

  • e_ballad on November 02, 2021

    Edible but nothing else to recommend this. Can be found in the ‘Simple Deli Food’ section, p50.

• Couscous and sweetcorn salad

  • e_ballad on July 15, 2017

    Good, but not wow-inspiring.

• Barley, pumpkin and feta salad

  • e_ballad on January 06, 2017

    Nice tang from the sherry vinegar lifted this salad. Great as leftovers too.

• Spelt and bean soup

  • e_ballad on April 05, 2020

    A hearty soup, though we found the serves were more like 4x, rather than 6x serves.

• Crunchy noodle, carrot and cashew salad

  • e_ballad on August 04, 2017

    As a family we don't often all agree on something, but this was universally disliked by everyone.

• Tamarind-glazed tuna

  • e_ballad on August 11, 2019

    Yum. Super-tasty & super-quick!