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Notes about Recipes in this book

• Spinach, pear, and frisée salad with smoked bacon and curried cashews

  • hillsboroks on October 15, 2014

    Wow! What a salad! The flavors and textures are varied and intense yet play off one another beautifully. This is a definitely a salad we will repeat.

  • Rinshin on June 20, 2015

    Flavor explosion. One of my all-time favorite salads. The curried cashews are addictive and I make them often as snacks with chilled rose or white wine.

• Star anise game hens

  • hillsboroks on July 26, 2014

    This is fabulous! My husband pronounced it the new recipe find of the summer. I used one game hen for the two of us and left the two halves in the marinade for the full 24 hours. I was also a little heavy- handed with the garlic and ginger when making the marinade adding half again a as much as called for. We cooked them on a charcoal grill using indirect heat and turned and basted them every 8 minutes for a total cooking time of 40 minutes. They turned a lovely mahogany color and were quite moist and delicious. I served them with the Grilled Eggplant With Sweet Miso Glaze from Cooks Illustrated Guide to Grilling and Barbecuing and fresh steamed green beens. We poured a crisp white wine blend from Abiqua Wind Vineyards.

• Whole grilled trout with apple cider butter

  • hillsboroks on March 21, 2015

    My husband brought home 2 nice native trout so I wanted to do something special with them for dinner and this recipe exceeded both of our expectations. The prep of the trout was easy. We skipped the flour on the outside and just oiled the skin with peanut oil since they were going onto a hot charcoal grill. Our trout were slightly smaller than called for so we grilled them 5 minutes per side and they were perfect. While the charcoal was heating I made the sauce and prepped the apple slices. Do not skip the apple slices brushed with honey and lemon juice and then caramelized on the grill! They really make this dish along with the subtle but fabulous hard apple cider butter sauce. We grilled the apple slices first and then the trout. This was pretty fast and easy and would definitely do nicely as a company dinner entree. My husband says this is the best trout dish he's ever had.

• Wok-seared albacore tuna with coconut curry

  • hillsboroks on July 24, 2014

    Good mild curry flavor that melds nicely with the coconut milk base. Next time I would add a little extra red curry, leave the lid off the simmering sauce to let it reduce more and cut all the veggies closer to the same size. I also would not add all the veggies at once. The carrots , zucchini and red peppers should go in first followed by the eggplant and the Napa cabbage last so that it doesn't over cook. All in all it was a good, fairly fast entree for a weeknight dinner and my husband really liked it.

• Chilled miso spinach

  • hillsboroks on January 29, 2017

    Very easy but gives a nice flavor twist to spinach. Also because it is served chilled and made ahead of time, it would be perfect when having guests over. We served it alongside grilled salmon using the salmon spice rub (AKA Rub With Love) from the Etta's Pit Roasted Salmon recipe also in this book. We will be making this on a regular basis now.

• Kasu zuke black cod

  • Rinshin on August 09, 2016

    Excellent recipe and standard preparation for making kasuzuke fish in Japan. You can use many types of fish for making this but look for sake lees (as in kasu) in Japanese markets. It's normally found in the refrigerated section with egg roll/spring roll wrappers, tofu, pickles. Sake lees can be frozen for eternity too. I freeze mine.

• Blue crab rémoulade with fried green tomatoes

  • Rinshin on August 09, 2016

    I halved the recipe. Instead of crab, used baby shrimp. Remoulade was perfect accompaniment to end of season fried green tomatoes. 3 min a side when frying tomatoes may not be enough time to get that golden crust. I would increase to maybe 5 min or more per side. Using buttermilk made it very easy for tomatoes slices to adhere to the flour coating.

• Triple coconut cream pie

  • MmeFleiss on October 16, 2015

    The Dahlia Bakery Cookbook uses 1 cup milk and 1 cup coconut milk for the pastry cream vs the 2 cups of milk in this book.