Notes about Recipes in this book

• Summer vegetable gratin

  • macfadden on July 14, 2016

    I understand tomatoes have a natural sweetness, but between them and the caramelized onions it was a little too sweet for my taste.

• Carrot-ginger soup

  • mamacrumbcake on June 02, 2016

    Despite the fact that this is a beautiful and tasty soup, the vegetarians in the family have given it the cold shoulder, and so I probably won't be making it again. (They didn't even try it. Sad!) There is a decidedly gingery bite to this soup which verges on being too much. If you want something more subtle, don't use the full amount. With the warming ginger notes and the beautiful, rich color, this soup seems ideal for fall or winter.

• Farmhouse vegetable and barley soup

  • macfadden on March 26, 2016

    It's hard to mess up soup, and I wouldn't say that it was a disaster, but I really didn't like this. Despite the strong umami ingredients (dried mushrooms and soy sauce), I found the end result unsatisfactory, and apart from the peas it was very drab-looking.

• Classic Tuscan white bean soup

  • macfadden on February 28, 2016

    The broth was noteworthily delicious, but the beans never got past crumbly and underdone for me using the oven method suggested in this recipe. Next time I'll use canned beans (a variation suggested by the authors) or just cook them on the stove with a little baking soda.

• Black bean soup

  • macfadden on March 18, 2016

    This soup is delicious! The beans cook up quickly (about 45 minutes for me) from dry with their baking soda method without getting mushy or splitting open. It is a bit spicy from the dried chile flakes, and the mushrooms give it great flavor. The only change I usually make is using whole cumin seeds mashed up a bit in a mortar and pestle instead of ground cumin. I have also made it successfully with dried mystery mushrooms I got at an Asian grocery store, which are a much better deal than the dried porcini mushrooms the recipe calls for. I usually get about ten servings, though the recipe says it makes six.

• Curried lentil soup

  • macfadden on May 03, 2016

    This was fine soup. The curry flavor wasn't very strong, it really tasted like normal lentil soup, but the somewhat advanced age of my curry powder is probably partly to blame for that.

• Mushroom Bolognese

  • BigOrangeTiger on April 26, 2015

    My (not very foodie at all) partner said, 'it isn't very tomatoey'. Which is wasn't. But hey, still tasty. Will make again (but if he's after a tomatoey pasta sauce, I may add more tomatoes).

• Tomato and almond pesto

  • macfadden on July 12, 2016

    Tasty enough, but I didn't think it was better than regular basil pesto.

• Tabbouleh

  • mharriman on July 01, 2023

    I added cucumbers as I always include this ingredient in my Tabbuleh. The ATK version of this salad has more steps and takes more time than other Tabbouleh recipes I've used, but this one stands up to the others, and it's good enough to repeat.

• Quinoa, black bean, and mango salad with lime dressing

  • macfadden on August 06, 2016

    Pretty tasty. The lime makes it quite bright/acidic tasting, and the red pepper gives it nice crunch.

• Cuban-style black beans and rice

  • macfadden on July 31, 2016

    The beans had great flavor, but it called for adding a total of 2 1/2 tsp. of salt in the course of cooking, not counting the salt for the salt soak at the beginning, which is washed off. They test their recipes very carefully, so I don't think it's a mistake, but I started with just 1 tsp. and didn't think it needed any more, certainly not another 1 1/2 tsp. You might want to go slowly and taste rather than dumping in the amount they suggest all at once.

• Black-eyed pea salad with peaches and pecans

  • macfadden on August 08, 2016

    I used a spring mix instead of frisée, but otherwise followed the recipe and loved it. The basil and pecans really made it special. I thought the pecans were the best part, and will use twice as many next time.

• Shepherd's pie

  • macfadden on April 01, 2016

    I used water to deglaze the pan rather than wine, but otherwise followed the recipe and was pleasantly surprised. I usually don't care for fake meatloaf and fake shepherd's pie type things because they taste sort of muddy to me, but this was really quite tasty. I did find that it was rather a lot of mashed potatoes compared to the veggie crumble and mushroom bottom layer, which was quite thin. You may have quite a hard time making the top a perfectly clean layer of mashed potatoes without any of the reddish bottom layer getting through like in the picture in the book, but once it was browned under the broiler, it looked pretty nice, anyway.

• Mediterranean chopped salad

  • macfadden on July 15, 2016

    No surprises here, it's basically just a Greek salad with less lettuce and more of everything else, but it was very tasty indeed.

• Glazed carrots

  • macfadden on May 03, 2016

    Maybe I'm just not a fan of glazed carrots in general, but I found the salty-sweet ratio a bit off here. It was a bit too salty (it calls for 1/2 a teaspoon of salt, not to taste) for me. Also, contrary to what the authors say in the description, a nonstick skillet is not necessary. I used a stainless steel one with no problem.

• Crispy spiced chickpeas

  • macfadden on May 03, 2016

    These go in a delicious salad in the book, very tasty.