That sounds great! You could keep the affiliate products and other ads all in the review pages with just links going to them from your other articles. I think this will make your site look much cleaner and more professional looking. All the best!
The first thing I would do is to make sure that you have Google Analytics on your site, this will help show you where your traffic is coming from. Free Directories are good to, there are many good directories out there, which you can add your site too. You could try a Facebook page, for example you could call it Pete's Recipe's and start talking about your subject, it does work, but you need to update FB your page regularly, I hope this helps you!