Notes about Recipes in this book

• Pasta with pancetta, leek & mushrooms

  • Breadcrumbs on September 16, 2010

    p. 127 Sept 2010 - First use of this recipe. Selected b/c I had mushrooms and leeks to use up. Came together quickly and resulting flavours were great. I'd definitely make this again for its ease and impressive results. Added some bacon as I didn't have enough pancetta.

  • Ro_ on May 04, 2020

    Found this fairly underwhelming. Too much leek and not enough sauce. Wouldn't bother repeating.

• Manchego & membrillo on olive bread

  • Breadcrumbs on July 16, 2010

    Membrillo is Quince Paste

• Baked chicken with aubergine, courgette & tomato ragout

  • Dinovino on April 14, 2016

    tasty, easy. quick

• Warm black pudding & quail's egg salad

  • tekobo on November 13, 2016

    Very tasty salad. The quail eggs can be a pain to peal but the yolks were lovely and soft and everyone loved them.

• Crunchy gooseberry crumble

  • tekobo on February 26, 2017

    Made freestyle - used No Flaming Raisins muesli, butter and demerara sugar. Blitzed in machine and added more muesli at the end to make sure there was some crunch. All munched up!

• Cherry tomato & feta kebabs

  • Ro_ on April 26, 2020

    These were fairly simple to prepare, the only issue being that the feta tended to crumble during skewering. Would possibly try with mozzarella balls next time. I didn't have fresh basil so sprinkled with chopped frozen.

• Sticky lemon chicken

  • Ro_ on February 18, 2021

    This was certainly very, very lemony! I was highly sceptical about the recipe's claim to be able to basically cook a whole (albeit jointed) chicken in a saucepan in about 15 minutes, and with very little liquid to boot, so I used chicken breasts. The resulting dish was nice, the honey was definitely needed for balance, but my partner said it was too lemony for him so I won't make again.

• Couscous, broad beans, peas & pancetta

  • Ro_ on August 19, 2020

    Nothing special, tastes exactly like the sum of its parts. There are other couscous recipes I prefer, with a bit more zing going on.

• Crunchy broccoli & cauliflower gratin

  • Ro_ on February 25, 2021

    There were some nice things here, particularly the crunch that the hazelnuts lent to the dish. But I wanted the sauce to be thicker and cling more to the vegetables, and I'd have liked more cheese (in fact I did grate some parmesan directly into the cream/egg mix, but it didn't come through that much). I'll probably stick with a more flavourful full-on cauli-broccoli cheese dish in the future.

• Sautéed potatoes with panch phora

  • Ro_ on February 08, 2021

    These were nice, but the panch phora didn't really stick to the potatoes so much as to the pan. I also found that the potatoes needed cooking a lot longer than the recommended time.

• Penne, runner beans & goat's cheese

  • Ro_ on October 30, 2019

    Substituted french beans for runner beans, and regular goat's cheese for rindless - no problems with either. Blanched the beans rather than just sautéeing them as suggested. The goat's cheese made a nice creamy sauce, and the addition of toasted pine nuts really made the dish. But overall, I probably wouldn't repeat it - nothing that special. Also it definitely doesn't make enough for 4 people as stated, I'd increase the quanities by quite a bit unless you're serving as a side dish.

• Beef fajitas with soured cream & guacamole

  • Ro_ on July 18, 2020

    The guacamole recipe was good. As for the beef: I quite liked the simple marinade, but I'm not totally convinced by cutting up the beef first and then cooking it. I think it's nicer when cooked in a larger piece and then cut up afterwards.

• Spaghetti with anchovy, garlic & parsley

  • Ro_ on October 26, 2019

    A nice enough pasta dish with simple flavours, but not knock-out. Not much to say about it really, it tastes exactly as you'd expect from the ingredients used. Worth using high quality olive oil for the final drizzle as you can definitely taste it clearly.

• Mussels in an aromatic coconut broth

  • Ro_ on March 02, 2021

    This was a solid mussels recipe, with nice flavours. It's just a bit of a pain that you can't cook it all together and need to put the mussels aside after the initial cook.

• Bacon, pea & goat cheese omelette

  • Ro_ on October 26, 2019

    I made this for breakfast since we had goat's cheese to use up and all the other ingredients to hand. It was nice: the goat cheese was definitely the predominant flavour, the bacon didn't come through as much as I had expected. This was good, but is probably more of a lunch recipe than breakfast (I skipped the rocket salad element for this reason). The basic method for the omelette - large pan on the hob over medium heat, followed by finishing it under the grill rather than messing about with flipping it - was a good one.

• Caramelised shallot & mushroom toasts

  • Ro_ on June 19, 2020

    Made this to use up some mushrooms. It was nice enough, but not amazing - kind of hard to eat as well, somewhere between needing a knife and fork vs your hands. The best thing about it was definitely the sweet caramelised shallots.

• Baked pork chops with a piquant sauce

  • Ro_ on October 29, 2019

    This wasn't that great. I was scepitcal about the time the sauce would supposedly take, and I was right to be: the onions & peppers needed way longer at the sautéing stage, and the whole sauce needed a longer simmer to get more depth of flavour. The textures and overall flavour were underwhelming. I ended up blitzing it in the nutribullet as I found the combination of still-crunchy peppers/onion with soft mushroom and tomatoes not very pleasant. The oven baked pork chops were nice though.

• Beetroot, goat's cheese & apple salad

  • Ro_ on September 23, 2020

    I liked this salad much more than I was expecting to, plus it was easy and quick to throw together (not sure it would stand up well to being made in advance though). I subbed walnuts for hazelnuts, since I had the former in stock and not the latter, and thought it worked really well. Partner also enjoyed it.

• Veal piccata

  • Ro_ on February 24, 2021

    Nice but not outstanding. I'd have liked the sauce to be thicker.

• Chunky chips

  • Ro_ on November 15, 2019

    Not a method I would repeat. I cut up my chips and put them in a saucepan in cold water until I was ready to par-boil them. After bringing them up to the boil and letting them cook for about 6 minutes further, they were way too cooked and many were falling apart. Partly my own fault: I should have checked on them sooner, but I didn't. Afterwards I followed the rest of the recipe to finish the cooking in the oven, but because they were breaking up I couldn't really flip them and toss them in the seasonings as directed (meaning they tasted a little bland) and also even after a longer cooking time than suggested, they weren't going golden on the outside, which is how chips should be in my opinion. Basically, I am not convinced by this idea of par-boiling chips first. I prefer my regular method of cooking them from raw directly in the oven for 40 minutes with plenty of oil.