Whilst attending the Good-Food Show in June I purchased a copy of ‘Nadiya’s Fast Flavours’ by Bake-Off-Winner and British Television Presenter Nadiya Hussain. Over what feels like many months I’ve cooked quite a few recipes from this book and now—with Christmas round the corner—I can finally review it and say whether I consider it worth buying… And yes, I could give you a simple yes or no answer but it would hardly be a proper review or blog post if I did that now, would it? (I also don’t believe it’s as simple as yes or no in most cases—and especially in this case).
Now, to start off, obviously this cookbook is going to sell many copies. It was created by a popular celebrity cook, being sold under her fame and reputation and the success of all of her cooking shows. I myself have always liked Nadiya. She’s a ray of sunshine in everything she appears in, from Bake Off onwards. I still remember her special, non-cooking documentary about her struggles with anxiety, something I struggle with everyday as well. When she mentioned in that special how she would go on ‘stage’ without her glasses because it helped to calm her anxiety a little bit if she couldn’t see, I could strongly relate. It’s a technique I’d also used throughout my time acting on stage etc. Ironically, at the Good-Food Show I’d planned to wait and meet her/get her to sign my book but my own social anxiety prevented me from lining up.
Okay, that said, now let’s get onto the book itself. The material is a quality standard celebrity cookbook—hardcover with shiny pages in the centre. However, for whatever reason, the glue that was used in ours mustn’t have been very strong as it’d already begun to fall apart after a few uses. Unlike a lot of my cookbooks, that I’ve had for at least a decade now, I don’t forsee this one lasting very long without some effort to fix it periodically.
The actual layout of the book is split up into different sections on the flavour spectrum: Herby, Spicy, Cheesy, Nutty, Zesty, Earthy, Fruity and Sweet. In each section there’s a mixture of savoury and sweet (yes, even in the Fruity and Sweet sections). The different chapter headings made it very easy to navigate and a joy to flip through. Once you know where your favourite recipes lay, it’s very easy to skip to them (for us it was definitely the Cheesy section, as you will see). The recipes all feature a picture of the finished product, which I’m extremely thankful for. I know it costs more to print the pictures but I love to look at all the pictures when I’m skimming through my cookbooks. Also useful, at the bottom of each recipe is: the amount of people it serves, the amount of prep time and the amount of cooking time it takes. I think cookbook writers sometimes forget how helpful that kind of a little guide is. In another book I’m working on at the minute all the times are in the Method and so I keep forgetting to do certain steps in advance or remembering what time to start them. Guides like Nadiya’s book provided are extremely helpful for scatter-brains like myself.
The pictures are all clear and very well put together and edited. The lighting makes them look appetizing and the set-up of the shots is often the driver of what makes me want to make them. The Heading pages for each section features a cartoon drawing of each title and are simplistic but fun and inviting. Each recipe features a small paragraph from Nadiya explaining something about the recipe: where the concept came from, where she got the idea, who’s recipe it is, what to serve with it, what certain ingredients are etc. All fun little insights into Nadiya’s process that really personalise the book and make it her own. One of the selling-points of Celebrity Cooks/Chefs is that you get to know them and their characters. It’s what endears you towards watching them, like a friend you’ve never met. These little paragraphs starting the recipes are another link to this ‘friend’ for you, the reader.
Okay, okay, I know what you’re most interested in… What I spent most of my time doing… How were the actual recipes? I tried to test at least one, often more, from each section and tried to make a mixture of sweet and savoury to get the full idea of the pros and cons of this cookbook… and let me tell you, there is definitely pros and definitely cons. Before I go into full detail about the actual overall experience with the recipes let me break down the recipes and how they went one-by-one:
1st Section: Herby
- Spinach and Coriander Crepes: The consistency of the batter was perfect. Over the years I’ve made crepes a few times and always faced the same problem. They always stick and become a mess. Nadiya’s recipe was the first one that flipped perfectly and were lovely and thin. So, texturally the crepes were great. The issue came in flavour. The coriander, put into the batter along with spinach, didn’t come through at all. I think it would’ve been preferable to tear it and put it in the middle of the crepes instead—or use dried coriander etc. It just didn’t have enough of a kick. The spinach also didn’t provide any flavour and I can only imagine that it’s only in the batter to hide vegetables from kids or reluctant adults. It was also, overall, way too salty. The filling was—well, not as good as I wanted it to be. The piccalilli we purchased was so sour you could barely taste anything else and, although we considered that perhaps we should use sweet instead, we weren’t sure we would enjoy that either. Either way the piccalilli would overpower everything else. I should also mention that Nadiya doesn’t mention which type of piccalilli to use (a running theme we would find out). I would use Nadiya’s method for making crepes again, but I would probably change the rest of the recipe.
2nd Section: Spicy
- Panzanella Salad: This salad, oddly, felt like it needed more salad—and by that I mean greens. Because of how oily it was, and the overwhelming taste of vinegar, we were crying out for some more freshness. The only freshness that really existed was in big pieces of parsley which existed in such a number that all you could really taste was parsley the entire time (ironically this recipe was not in the Herby section). It felt like the bread would’ve been nicer if it had been crispier and less like stale bread that was hard to chew through. This is a recipe with some potential but it doesn’t feel like it’s been perfected and finished yet (another recurring theme throughout the book).
2. Turkish Eggs—I was extremely excited to try this recipe. I love trying new things and this was certainly new to me. Unfortunately we also hated it. It features a lukewarm poached egg sat on top of a pool of sweetcorn-y-yoghurt which has no special taste beyond that of its description and covered in burnt garlic oil. There was barely any flavour, nothing felt like it went together and ironically considering the section it’s in it felt like it was missing spices and flavour. We couldn’t figure out whether we should put the burnt garlic pieces on top of the eggs but did so as it suggested it based on the picture showing the garlic on the eggs. The garlic and it’s oil were both flavourless and bitter. The other main issue I had with this recipe was in the actual description of the method. The way it’s written makes it seem like you put the egg in a cup and then put the cup in the water (not, as it should be, pour the egg from the cup into the water). And you might say, but surely that’s obvious? But actually, I know many different methods and one of those methods involves putting poached eggs into moulds. Regardless of whether I knew what it meant I think an editor should’ve stepped in and re-written the step to make it completely idiot-proof. A cookbook has to work on the principle the person cooking knows little to nothing. I also wished she had stressed that they must be fresh eggs. Ours were a few days old and sunk straight to the bottom using her method.
3. Cherry Cinnamon Dump Cake: Ah, yes. The ‘cake’ that splits a crowd. My Mum and I both hated this cake. My Dad loved it. The first time I saw a Dump Cake recipe was on B. Dylan Hollis’ YouTube Channel—where he expressed what I felt whilst making it myself—if I’m making a cake, why don’t I just make a cake? The dump cake’s entire existence is to make a cake in as lazy a way as possible (his used a boxed cake mix whereas I actually had to put effort into weighing everything out in Nadiya’s version). The creation that comes out of the oven can barely claim to be a cake. What comes out is a dry, oddly crispy and doughy mix on top of uncooked, but warm, cake mix. To me it was just an unpleasant eat and I could’ve spent the same amount of time and made an actual cake. However, based on my Dad’s reaction, I would say it probably does have it’s place for people who like it. I imagine it’s very much a Marmite of baking (love it or hate it for those outside the UK). I should also say, we used raspberries instead of cherries (not available where I live) but it wouldn’t be any better for me with the recommend cherries.
3rd Section: Cheesy (a.k.a. favourite section)
- One Pan Cheese and Egg Sandwich: There’s some irony about saying this was my favourite section when this was one of my least favourite recipes in the whole book. It is a copy of a trend online, but with Nadiya’s tweaks. Unfortunately I’ve tried the trend, didn’t enjoy it and then tried Nadiya’s tweaks, and still didn’t enjoy it. The sandwich you produce is unpleasant in flavour and tastes greasy. It just tasted like oil and fat (ironically we could’ve used the piccalilli from earlier). I think this may have to be the last time I try this type of recipe, and I was hopeful Nadiya’s would be better. Ignoring the taste, how easy is it to make? Honestly, I managed it fine but had some previous experience making it from the online trend. My Mum followed the recipe too and she found it a nightmare to make. I had to step in to take over because of how much she was struggling and she’s a fairly decent and experienced cook. I doubt whether an unexperienced barely-a-cook like my Dad would be able to do it.
2. Ricotta Blackberry Breakfast Cups: There’s not much to say about these. I made these late at night when I couldn’t sleep. They were fairly easy to make and the recipe was easy to follow. They were okay tasting but definitely needed an oomph of flavour to make them a bit better and less dull. I added a sprinkle of salt on top but would put it through the mix next time and add some crunch (perhaps pretzel pieces etc.) next time as well. The granola top, which was supposed to help with some crunch, mostly just fell off the top. Overall, I would definitely make these again but I would tweak the recipe as they didn’t feel quite perfected/finished yet.
3. Watercress Soup with Crispy Goats Cheese: Firstly I just want to say this tasted great. I have no complaints with the flavour of the soup or the crispy cheese. This was the first recipe I tried and it made me optimistic about the book. However, there was some issues that I think could’ve been solved by editing. For a start, I really think the order of some of the steps is wrong. By the time the soup is finished your crispy cheese has gone cold. You’re better off making your soup, including blending, and then reheat it after frying your cheese than frying your cheese and then finishing your soup. It just makes life easier. I also wouldn’t serve your cheese inside the soup but on the side as a dipper instead. If you put it in the soup the crispiness you created disappears as it sinks to the bottom and gets covered in soup. You could of course put it into a shallow bowl (as she has in the picture) but then your ratio of soup to cheese would be off as well. The other editing error we spotted was that it asks you to add your lemon juice at two points in the method… and I would highly suggest adding your watercress whilst it’s still on the heat and allow to slightly wilt for a minute or so instead of adding it off the heat and blending it in immediately.
4. Cheesy Chicken Kievs: One day, I’ve told myself, I’ll find the perfect Kiev recipe. I’ve tried multiple different ones and yet still—no luck. Unfortunately this one was no different. The actual recipe was simple to follow and we managed most steps without any problems but the finished chicken was tough and the garlic butter had mostly leaked out leaving the chicken quite bland. In my notes all my Mum has written is—‘it was ok’—Mum speak for ‘could live without it’.
5. Roast Trio of Cheeses: Finally we reach the king of this book, the very reason this became our favourite section and a recipe we’ve made again. This recipe is so easy to make, completely vegetarian and so tasty. We used grenadine instead of pomegranate molasses (again, an ingredient we couldn’t get where we live, but easily replaced) and we’ve found on our re-doings it’s also easy to switch and change. The second time we used one less cheese, mostly because halloumi isn’t always available here, but genuinely this recipe is so tasty and so easy there’s no way I’m stopping making it anytime soon. The potatoes are some of my favourite potatoes in a recipe book.
Section 4: Nutty
- Peanut Butter Egg Curry: Okay, I’m going to start this by saying I couldn’t get duck eggs. They don’t exist around where I live now, and honestly in any place I’ve ever lived before. I used hens eggs. I know duck eggs are richer in taste but it’s okay, we make do with what we can, right? The method of doing the eggs wasn’t our favourite. They were liquid in the centre (just about) but when you ‘fried’ them it created a very strange texture around the outside of the egg that I didn’t find particularly pleasant. However, the actual sauce was beautiful. It’s a really nice sauce (that we actually used again for a chicken curry later… Sorry, vegetarians). I think, honestly, though I didn’t particularly care for the eggs in the dish (I would rather make it using a myriad of different vegetables) it is definitely a good recipe and is worth it for those who don’t mind the texture of fried egg. The only issues we had were that the sauce was too thick (we learned to add more liquid that it says in the recipe) and that grating quality, soft French/Spanish tomatoes is practically impossible. It’d be far easier with a harder British-style tomato (though you wouldn’t get as good a flavour).
2. Cinnamon Sweet Pesto: Another easy recipe we really enjoyed. We couldn’t get any suggested fruit unfortunately as it was all out of season so had to ‘settle’ for the rather brown plate you can see below (including fresh madeleines from our supermarket boulangerie, poor us). The only thing this dish was missing was a pinch of salt (which I duly added after tasting the initial recipe). It’s moreish, rich, sweet and simple to make… and once we finally found coconut oil after a lot of searching around a lot of different shops, it was definitely worth the wait.
Section 5: Zesty
- Avo Lime Butter on Toast: No. Just no. Until this moment, looking through my notes, I’d forgotten this one existed. Forget what I said about the earlier cheese and egg toastie sandwich. This was the worst one. Was it really simple to do? Yes. Was the recipe clear to understand? Yes. Did it taste nice? No. We couldn’t even finish eating it. It was oddly sweet and didn’t blend well together, flavour-wise, with the smoked salmon at all. Just… no.
2. Tamarind Chicken: Another one we struggled getting the ingredients for. Unfortunately tamarind has yet to make it to our area of rural France. Unfortunately also, after a trip to Disneyland Paris last year, I found out I love the stuff. Tamarind tastes amazing so, despite the fact we had to wait to get it from the UK, I was determined to make this dish. Overall the dish was… okay. The tamarind sauce stuck to the outside of the chicken so none of that lovely tamarind flavour got through the chicken which meant you had bites of delicious flavour and bites of bland chicken. There also wasn’t enough sauce to dip the chicken into. The spring onions weren’t necessary at all and where mainly cold or melted into the sauce and added nothing. This was another dish that had a lot of potential but didn’t feel quite finished yet. It also, like a lot of times in this book, doesn’t mention the type of potato to use for its potato recipe (it does this a lot with butter etc. as well, not mentioning which one to use—salted or unsalted). You need to be clearer to people cooking, as people like Poppy O’Toole are in their cookbooks, as there’s so many aspects the type of potato etc. could change about a recipe.
Section 6: Earthy
- Toast with Anchovy and Beetroot Butter: This is a recipe I feel so mixed about. On one hand, it feels unfinished: it was a bit too fatty, needed more salt and acidity in the butter and was very fishy tasting (fine for me, I imagine horrible for people who hate fish). On the other hand, I think it could be great. I love the concept and I do think it was on it’s way to being a great recipe. I’m still playing with it in my own cooking to improve it and it inspired a lot of other recipes I’m working on. It makes a large quantity, which you definitely don’t need for the amount you should put on your toast (I would wrap in clingfilm in a sausage shape, freeze and use whenever you want to use it again—she does suggest to use leftovers in pasta etc. so she’s aware it makes too much). The eggs fried in cumin seeds really aren’t necessary. You can’t taste the cumin over the flavour of the butter and egg. Still, although I wouldn’t make THIS recipe again, I would make a recipe like it again.
2. Mixed Bean Lasagne: Another recipe my Mother would describe as ‘okay’. Would we have it again? Sure. Would we be excited about it? No. It’s quite a dry meal and needed a lot more sauce but overall was easy to follow and was… okay.
Section 7: Fruity
- Pineapple Upside Down Pancakes: Ah yes, something else that nearly made my Mum cry when she tried to make them. Even I struggled, only managing it because I learned what not to do whilst watching her trying to cook them. We thought that they would taste like an American Pancake, but with pineapple in them. Weirdly, they tasted more like a flat Yorkshire Pudding—with a pineapple slice in it. It was quite bland, very savoury for a sweet dessert and needed a few tweaks to make it be as great as it could be. The pancake mix would’ve been much better if it had been an American Pancake style recipe using buttermilk and making it fluffier and sweeter. It’s definitely not a bad idea, but it’s definitely not quite there as a recipe yet.
Section 8: Sweet
- Duck Tostadas: DO NOT use Plum Sauce instead of Hoisin Sauce. It may be part of the sweet section but it shouldn’t be that sweet, believe me. Unfortunately we couldn’t get hoisin sauce and used the next best thing we could get. You might ask, why did you make this recipe if you couldn’t get a hold of a key ingredient/flavour? Because… we wanted to eat duck. That’s it. We rarely get to eat it as my Dad hates it and this gave us a good excuse to eat it (making something different for my Dad). It’s a quick recipe to do. The duck turned out quite dry. The peppers didn’t feel like they belonged in there as they added a weird bitterness to the filling. The sauce (including the-usually-okay-but-not-this-time plum sauce) could’ve done with some soy sauce and/or some salt. We both agreed that we weren’t sure, even with hoisin sauce, that it wouldn’t need to be a bit more savoury of a sauce. Either way this was another recipe that needed some tweaking (even just focusing on the duck and other items that weren’t the sauce).
2. Beef in Stem Ginger with Skirlie Mash: Why yes, I did want to make this because I just wanted to try the mash. Yes, I did substitute the stem ginger because we couldn’t get it… and yes, the sauce still tasted lovely and I’ve no doubt it would work with stem ginger as well. The only downside to the actual beef was that the beef was a bit dry and overcooked—but the actual flavours were all lovely. The mash, using the surprise ingredient of mayonnaise, was also very good and definitely something I would make again. I do think the flavour would change depending on which country/what mayonnaise you use as our French mayonnaise is more mustardy in flavour than in the UK… But it’s nothing that a bit of light tweaking wouldn’t fix. We didn’t think the two things (Mash and Beef) went together very well as they were very similar in tangy flavour so didn’t balance well, but we would have both again with different dish partners.
3. Sweet Potato Eccles Cake: An easy recipe to make, simple to follow and okay to eat. This would be a perfect meal with slightly more cheese and salt as it is a bit too sweet and sickly the more you eat it in its current form.
Overall, I wouldn’t tell anyone not to buy this book. I think there’s plenty of great and inspiring ideas in this book and there’s many worth trying. I just don’t think that it was quite ready to be published… yet. There’s a lot of missing information (unsalted butter/salted butter?, what potatoes do I use? Etc.) and a lot of recipes seem to be at that stage where they could be good but they’re not quite there yet. Most of the recipes need some sort of tweaking to make them better: more flavourful, better texture and/or better balance… and there is frequent mistakes (recipes in wrong orders for how it would be easier to do them, added ingredients etc. that should’ve been pointed out and sorted by an editor/proof-reader). I have a feeling that this book wasn’t quite at the stage for publishing but was forced out because of a deadline, which is a shame as it could’ve been great. As it is, it definitely feels… unfinished is the best way I can put it. Luckily I have a good understanding of cooking and flavour so for the most part I can figure out what I would tweak and change. However, beginner home cooks or those with less confidence in the kitchen may have a harder time knowing what needs changing.
I’m not sorry that I bought this book. If anything I found it inspirational and I got to try lots of new techniques and flavours but I will be using it more as a guide, rather than a true recipe book, going forward.
Do you own this book? What do you think of it? If you love it, that’s great. I’m not here to change your mind or ruin your joy. My reviews are always reflections of my experience and I acknowledge eagerly that my experience isn’t the only one to exist. I hope you’re having a great day and happy cooking, whatever you choose to cook.
Signed,
The Literary Onion
P.S. So that’s it, one of the last pieces I’ll put out that’s not part of the 1-Recipe-A-Day-December until the New Year. Oh, you’ve not heard about that? Well, in December, I’ll be releasing 1 Christmas Themed Recipe a day (though, of course, you can eat it outside Christmas too—I’m not stopping you) from the 1st December all the way up to Christmas Day. I hope you enjoy them and I hope you have a Happy Christmas/Holiday and a Happy New Year, wherever and whoever you are.
The Literary Onion 