Notes about Recipes in this book

• Pork tenderloin with roasted tomatillos, poblanos & potatoes [Rick Bayless}

  • bwhip on February 01, 2018

    This was very good - quite spicy! I used one and a half Serrano peppers, and one probably would have been plenty. Great, smoky flavor from the roasted tomatillo sauce, and the pork and potatoes turned out perfectly. Prep was easy, flavors were excellent.

• Chocolate cookies with cocoa nibs & almond [Jenn Louis]

  • bwhip on October 24, 2017

    These were excellent. I wasn't sure what to expect when I started preparing them, and did a double-take when I saw no egg in the ingredients (I guess I was expecting a different type of cookie recipe). I left out the almond extract, since my wife doesn't care for it. The cookies turned out great! Very chocolately, with a wonderful additional textural element from the cocoa nibs. I really enjoyed these!

• Barely cooked salmon with leeks & red wine butter sauce [Eric Ripert]

  • bwhip on October 24, 2017

    Exceptional. The flavors and elegance of the dish are wonderful, yet the preparation really is fairly simple. Loved this one, and will make it again for sure.

• Scallion pancakes with a fried egg & zucchini-carrot slaw [Joey Beato]

  • bwhip on November 21, 2017

    Easy and delicious. The pancakes were really good. Nice and fluffy with great flavor and a bit of kick from the sambal. The slaw and egg were the perfect complement. Next time I’ll scale back the pancake recipe by half, as it makes a huge batch.

• Roast pork tenderloin with Chinese mustard sauce & broccoli rabe [Joey Beato]

  • bwhip on October 24, 2017

    This one was really delicious, and relatively simple to prepare. I couldn't find Broccoli Rabe, so I substituted Broccolini (which I roasted). The recipe for the mustard sauce makes a really large quantity - I think next time I'll cut that in half and it will still be plenty for the amount of other components in the dish.

  • EdM on July 16, 2019

    Great combination of three main elements, and result tasted good, but sauce didn't thicken enough. Not sure why, but could be I used broth instead of stock. Chinese mustard varies in strength, depending on brand - get a strong one. Sauce quantities can be cut in half, as in previous comment, and is still more than enough.

• Braised chicken thighs with long-grain rice, saffron, cipollini onions & San Marzano tomatoes [Linton Hopkins]

  • bwhip on December 15, 2017

    This was delicious, and prep was pretty simple. The recipe called for the skillet to bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes, but I found that the rice needed another 10-15 minutes than that to fully cook. I was using the Carolina Gold the author recommended.

• Swordfish with succotash, basil pesto cream & citrus compote [Bruce Moffett]

  • bwhip on August 04, 2019

    I’ve been wanting to make this one for a while - now I wish I’d made it sooner! Wonderful dish, my wife and I really enjoyed this. She said she wants it every week. That’s not going to happen :), but I’m sure glad she liked it so much. The hint of pesto in the cream sauce, along with the fresh citrus compote, made for a really interesting and delicious combination. My only fault with the recipe was that it neglected to call for seasoning the succotash. I added salt and pepper toward the end of that prep, otherwise that part would have been fairly bland. Looking forward to making this one again.

• "Merguez" lamb burgers with cucumber & ginger yogurt [Joanne Weir]

  • bwhip on November 25, 2017

    These were excellent! Delicious, juicy burgers with unique, interesting flavor.