I will say right off that, with a few notable exceptions, this is a very basic and, in some ways, bland recipe book. I think that out of the 7 recipes we purposely tried, 2 of them we will for sure do again as is, 4 of them we would modify before making again and the last one was actually just used as a guide, because by then we'd realized that the spices and flavours of the recipes as given are more mild than what we like.The cream puffs and the chickpea fritters were the ones that we would repeat no questions asked. They were divine!! The best is that they allow for interpretations, like turning the cream puffs into eclairs and mixing up the fritters as a dinner thing or even adding to them with other spices or flavours (I'm thinking that some ham cooked Into the fritters would be lovely!) From there, though, well.... It's not that anything was bad, it's just that, well, they didn't taste like much. We made the Chicken Tacos (pg. 66) for dinner one night and while the corn meal on the outside of the chicken pieces added a nice crunch, we would definitely add cumin and/or corriander to it as well as adding some garlic to the grilled veggies and skipping their version of avocado cream and sticking with a more traditional guacamole. Also, sour "cream" and salsa were a must! The bonus on this one was that is was only 20 minutes from prep to table, so this is a good weeknight option.
The next meal we tried was the Seafood Tart (p.88) with the Strawberry Roll (p.138) for dessert. After reading the instructions for the crust, I didn't even try to follow. There was NO way you could have rolled that out, so I simply pressed it into the pan and did a blind bake (where you bake the crust with nothing but something to weight it down before you fill and bake the filling). I'll be using a different crust recipe should I ever make this again. The filling was tasty, but again pretty bland. Some tarragon, dill or fennel would have worked so well with seafood, and I will deinitely add some sould I do this again. This would be lovely in the summer as it's quite light, so I was glad we had some roasted potatoes and a tomato and tarragon salad to go with it.
The strawberry roll was yummy, very reminiscent of a short cake (though that might be because I refused to fill the roll with sweetened cream cheese and used a dairy free whipped cream instead) however there is again no way that this worked the way the book said it should have. I don't know if I overcooked it, though I went with the least amount of time, or if they just used some really good photoshopping, but while their's was white, mine was yellow, and it was more like a meringue than a sponge cake. We have decided to modify that to make the lady fingers for a tiramisu, but more on that later!
The last recipe was, as mentioned, used only as a guide. It was a peanut butter shrimp and noodle dish that, with the addition of some curry paste and more veggies and garlic, was really good. For dessert, we had their coconut panacota (think coconut jello!) with spiced pinapple, that with the addition of some rum will make a wonderful deconstructed Pina Colada! Perfect for summer barbeques!
So there you have it. A couple of good recipes with a whole bunch more that need some fixing, but nothing horrible, so for someone who enjoys simple flavours or is looking for easy (I don't think Any of the recipes are more than a page long, and in a large type font to boot), this isn't a bad book. If you don't want to have to fart around adjusting things, well, at least it isn't in print any more I guess. Still, the cream puffs recipe makes this book worth it No Questions Asked!!!
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