Review of Tana Ramsay’s Family Kitchen

Posted on | July 4, 2007 | 5 Comments

Tana Ramsay’s Family Kitchen

Lovely looking book but recipes a bit impractical and quantities specified questionable.

I picked this up in Eason’s a couple of weeks ago and had a quick look through it. It looked great. Plenty of what seemed to be family friendly recipes and new ideas for breakfasts, lunches and dinners. Aswell as a section on parties. Perfect.

Recently we have gotten into a bit of a rut foodwise and I had been looking for some inspiration. I’m an adequate cook. I can follow a recipe and have a fair few dishes which I now cook well. But it gets fairly disheartening when you spend ages cooking something new and then some or all of the older kids discard it. They aren’t particularly picky about food, usually eating a range of meat, vegetables, spices, herbs and flavours. But that said, it would be nice to try something new.

So I decided to try the “chicken and mango casserole”. It looked appetising. The kids like mango and I had never tried it combined with chicken. The end result was ok, not great. There was too much cream in it and it was very rich, a bit cloying. The mango disintegrated to an orange mush which didn’t look great. So not a huge success really as the children tended to just pick the chicken out and eat it.

There are numerous ideas for breakfasts. Some are good. I like the ideas of “cheesy fingers with boiled eggs”, “fruit salas with oats and warm yoghurt” or “wholemeal pancakes with caramelized apples”. Though timewise I think these will have to be tried on the weekend or in the holidays rather than on a schoolday. But I find suggested recipes of “homemade baked beans” or “smoked haddock kedgeree” very unlikely to happen here.

She has some good lunch bite recipes such as “ham and cheese muffins”, “golden puff pastries” and “stuffed potato cakes” which I am looking forward to trying as they look easy enough to do and likely that the kids will eat them.

I guess, overall, I am disappointed with this book. I expected straight forward, easy to complete new recipes so that I could produce new dishes without taking too much time. I wanted new ideas but I also wanted simple and not overly complicated dishes which comprised of foods that the children were likely to eat and enjoy.

I will try more of the recipes and look forward to making some of the “orange sponge fingers” or “oatmeal and cranberry crunch biscuits” with the children.

UPDATE: The ham and cheese muffins turned out great, very easy to make and tasty. Handy for an “on the go” snack for the kids, will be definitely making them again.

Rated 3/5 on Jul 04 2007 by ManicMammy

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