A good basic recipe. I thought the spice proportions were fine, but it does need more depth, so using half beef or chicken broth and half water makes a great difference. In the end, I felt it still lacked something, so I read other lentil soup recipes and doctored it up with the following: 1/2 tsp of cumin, 1/2 tsp curry powder, a dash of soy sauce and dash of worcester sauce. Wonderful.

Reviewed On: Jan. 24, 2010

Great recipe. My foodie friends said it was as good as any at a restaurant. But you definitely need to double or triple the amount of coffee. I made it exactly according to instructions at first and there was hardly any coffee flavor. I didn't get any enthusiastic compliments that time. It is also quite difficult to split the lady fingers in half lengthwise when using the hard lady fingers (soft ones were too hard to find, even in NYC). The 2nd time, I did not split the cookies, and I rolled each whole cookie in a bowl with the coffee mixture. This turned out perfectly. It was not too much ladyfingers at all, as it smushes down with the moisture of the coffee and surrounding filling. I also combined the egg mixture and whipped cream for simplicity, as most recipes do. Absolutely fine. Also, I saved a scoop of the mixture for a personal parfait, and I used nilla wafers b/c i ran out of lady fingers. the nilla wafers worked great! (I wouldn't use them for a whole pan tiramisu, but for a parfait it was totally fine).

Reviewed On: Nov. 5, 2009