Recipe Testing: Secret Restaurant Recipes

In addition to reviewing the fabulous cookbooks in my collection, I will also be reviewing recipes that I tested from the cookbooks that I reviewed (I will try to post pictures as well).

Recipes I tested and loved from Kosher Restaurant Recipes:
Sesame chicken (pg. 148- Kosher Chinese Express)
I've been to Kosher Chinese Express before and have enjoyed their sesame chicken. This recipe tastes almost exactly like it. I didn't double fry the chicken and used the lite soy sauce the recipe called for instead of making the a brown sauce like the restaurant does (Leah and Victoria explain how it's made in the sidebar). It was a bit of a patchke because of the frying. I like that it didn't call for nearly as much sugar as most sesame chicken recipes do (maybe because it's authentic).

Sweet potato soup with meatballs (Citron and Rose- pg. 72)
This soup recipe was worth the price of the entire cookbook IMO. It's very easy, fairly health and tastes heavenly. I made this soup twice so far; I doubled the recipe the 2nd time I made it and froze some of it. It froze very well. The soup also tastes amazing topped with some grated cheese. If you make it with cheese, you can skip the meatballs and then the recipe is even simpler.

Here's a picture of the soup that I made:

To purchase the cookbook these recipes are from on Amazon click here,
Disclosure: this post contains affiliate link(s), which means that a small percentage of every purchase made through that link goes to help support this blog.

Secret Restaurant Recipes

Secret Restaurant Recipes by Victoria Dwek and Leah Schapira is a fairly new cookbook featuring recipes from kosher restaurants (simplified for the home cook when necessary). I love the idea of the cookbook but was worried that the recipes would be too difficult or time consuming.

Unlike the other cookbooks by Leah and Victoria, this cookbook is hardcover. The layout is nice and very similar to their previous cookbooks. There is a beautiful photo with every recipe.

More about the book:
Most of the mains are fried. As a somewhat health conscious person, this bothered me, but it IS restaurant food. One restaurant puts red 40 in their corn beef recipe to make it more appealing, which really turned me off.

Most of the parve desserts heavily featured whip or non dairy creamer. Again, not surprising, but annoying for me. One day when I have lots of spare time, perhaps I will try subbing coconut milk in those recipes and see how it goes. Many of the recipes also call for egg yolks (not one or two either) and I hate having to use up the whites so for now I'm skipping them.

I loved the salad section and wanted to taste almost every salad featured. Unfortunately for me, I don't usually have the patience to roast some veggies and dice up some raw ones to make a salad. The dairy recipes also were very appealing to me.

There are a few hard to find ingredients used, but the kosher groceries will probably have them in stock pretty soon (ex. sun dried tomato paste, porcini mushroom powder). Victoria and Leah have a two page spread in the beginning of the book about the secret ingredients in a chef's pantry.

Each recipe features the name of the restaurant its from, the restaurant's location. the name of the chef and a short piece about the restaurant. It was interesting to read about the background of so many different kosher restaurants.

Check out the recipes I tested from this cookbook here.

To purchase the cookbook on Amazon click here,
Disclosure: this post contains affiliate link(s), which means that a small percentage of every purchase made through that link goes to help support this blog.