• Sparkles75 on August 22, 2019

  In Australia the author isn't known like she is in New Zealand but I was confident that as a Masterchef winner she would know her flavours. I plunged in and ordered a few of her books to try out and have spent the last couple of months cooking through some of her recipes. The short verdict is that I would buy her next cookbook release without hesitation. When she has a good recipe it's generally a total knockout. Both her Apricot Loaf and Chocolate Orange Sherbet Slice are worth the price of the books alone. Not everything is perfect of course, at times I have found some of her instructions needlessly time consuming and I have also learnt to cut back on quantities of mustard, pepper and garlic given in recipes as she is generally very heavy handed there. Still, on the whole I feel apart from these minor nitpicks her recipes can be trusted and I will enjoy trying more of her recipes

Notes about Recipes in this book

• Buffalo chicken burgers with blue cheese sauce

  • hbakke on February 16, 2020

    Delicious and fairly quick to make. We made a half recipe which still made 4 burgers. The chicken and the blue cheese sauce were very tasty. I would make this again. I used Crystal hot sauce in place of Tabasco and did a short marinade of the chicken while prepping the rest of the ingredients.

• Bali beef rendang

  • hbakke on February 12, 2020

    As you can tell by the picture, the rendang didn't cook down until dry. I was worried that it would start to burn (and I was hungry and don't mind it saucy). This is a good, flavorful recipe. I used jalapeno and bay leaves as substitutions. Next time I would add more jalapeno. I used two very large chilies and it wasn't spicy at all. Oh, beware the turmeric...it stains everything (the food processor, the counter, apron, etc.)

• Cheesy pumpkin, bacon & cauliflower bake

  • hbakke on February 14, 2020

    This was the perfect comfort food for a dreary February night (although it's not a quick recipe). It was basically vegetables in a bechamel type sauce. Yum! The rosemary gave it a bit of a Thanksgiving vibe. Notes for next time: don't use "fan-bake", cut the butternut squash into smaller pieces, and ensure that both the squash and cauliflower are either completely cooked or almost there before putting it in for the final bake.

• Fragrant ginger beer pork

  • Sparkles75 on July 25, 2019

    We all loved this. I steamed broccoli and stirred into the pot before serving over rice.

• Chocolate orange sherbet slice

  • Sparkles75 on August 15, 2019

    This is a total winner! I'm not a huge Jaffa fan but this is very yummy. I did make a change, I used one block of milk chocolate and one block of 70% dark chocolate as we had children eating it. We found that combo perfect for our tastes. The topping was a tad softer than perfect but that is not the recipe's fault, I was 100g short. As written it would be great

• Creamy French chicken & vegetable casserole

  • Sparkles75 on August 15, 2019

    To be honest this was surprisingly a bit disappointing. I've made similar recipes for this dish before which have been delicious however we found this recipe a bit peppery for our taste and that detracted from the creamy delicate flavour. I had also reduced the mustard a tad. I think this would be a lovely recipe if you added pepper more cautiously than stated in the recipe. I will go back to my tried and true version though.

• Apricot yoghurt loaf

  • Sparkles75 on August 10, 2019

    If you like apricots this is a really delicious apricot loaf recipe. Very moist and flavorful. I will say that it took closer to 2 and a half hours in my oven to be cooked through so the baking time given was wildly off (for my oven at least) I loved baking it at the lower temperature though and the result was worth the wait. Not a hint of dryness whatsoever. I followed the authors suggestion and waited until the following day before cutting and it sliced like a dream. Going into keeper file.