Jamie Oliver Great Britain

This is the time of year when TV executives seem to think we should all watch back-to-back cookery programmes; Professional Master Chef, Jamie's Great Britain, River Cottage Veg have all been on the box recently.

Well, what can I say? After a spring and summer of watching virtually no TV I've been a complete sucker and have been hunkering down every night to watch other people cook. I suppose its hibernation instinct - its December: give me a darkened room and too much food please!

And after all that watching, it seemed only fair to try and cook something from one of the series. I was taken by the idea of potato scones from Jamie Oliver's Great Britain. He made the scones in Scotland and served them with smoked salmon and scrambled eggs as a brunch dish. Dan and I both liked the look of them - they made our mouths water! - so I decided to make them for dinner on thursday night. I served the potato scones with cabbage, a poached egg and a piece of lightly smoked salmon fillet.

This was a very useful recipe. On Thursday nights I meet a friend for a run, so I get home late and hungry. I was able to make the scones the night before so that all that needed doing when I got in was lightly frying them for 10 minutes while the fish and cabbage cooked. Poach an egg, and hey presto! - a quick and tasty dinner with enough stodge to replenish my tired leg muscles. I went a bit wrong somehow as the scones didn't hold together very well, but the flavours were lovely. Definitely a 'do again' recipe.

Sadly, mine didn't look like this, but they give you the right idea!

Find recipes for this as well as ones from the rest of the Jamie O series here.

Daring Cooks July Challenge

This month's Daring Cook's challenge was to make a pasta or noodle without the aid of a motorized machine. We were however allowed to use a hand-crank pasta roller.

The challenge presented me with a conundrum - I got a pasta rolling machine at Christmas and have made my own pasta a few times since then, so I could take the easy route of making a recipe I know, or I could investigate a different kind of pasta. It seemed more in the spirit of the Daring Cooks to attempt something new, so I started to look around for ideas.

I've been reading a memoir by Josceline Dimbleby recently. Its a meander through her life and travels, interspersed with lovely recipes and photographs. Towards the end of the book there's a chapter on a visit to the Gujarati district of India, and a recipe for Khvandi, which she describes as a kind of Indian pasta. It sounded intriguing, and we were planning a curry night, so I decided to give the recipe a try and serve it as a starter.

It is an unusual method for a pasta - you boil the ingredients (gram flour, tumeric, chilli powder, yoghurt and water) down to a thick paste;



then spread it into a greased tray and leave it to set;



The idea is to then cut it into strips and serve it garnished with herbs, seeds and some dessicated coconut.

Mine didn't set though! I imagine I needed to simmer the mixture for longer before spreading it out to set. I will give this another try at some point because the flavours were good - a little bit spicy and sour. Definitely interesing.

This non-setting disaster left me with very little time to acheive a Daring Cooks dish for this month - or at least one that was edible. I got in there with only hours to spare, making Jamie Oliver's Pici with tomato sauce (from the Jamie's Italy cook book) for dinner on the day this was all due to be posted! Pici is an eggless pasta made from semolina flour and formed into tubes. Previously I have always made egg pasta in sheets or strips, so this was still something new for me even if it is a little unadventurous!

Here's what I did - mix the semolina flour to a dough using a little water. Kneed it until silky and smooth:



Wrap in clingfilm and leave it in the fridge until needed.

Divide it into small pieces, place a skewer in the middle and roll the dough around it to form a tube of pasta:



Mine were a little thicker than intended because my skewer was a bit of a thick one for this task - the thinner the better.



Served with very tasty cauliflower from the farm shop, tomato sauce and prawns, this made a good dinner. It was fairly straight-forward to make really.



Steph from Stephfood was our Daring Cooks' July hostess. Steph challenged us to make homemade noodles without the help of a motorized pasta machine. She provided us with recipes for Spätzle and Fresh Egg Pasta as well as a few delicious sauces to pair our noodles with!

Buffalo Ricotta

I think I've documented reasonably often on these pages my prolems with dairy products. I can't seem to get along with cow cheese and other milk products at all. I have however been gradually exploring the non-cow options out there. In the last year or so I have discovered a number of soft cheeses which I like and don't make my tummy hurt - buffalo mozzarella, halloumi, feta. I can cope with one or two hard cheeses (manchego mostly), although I still wouldn't eat them in chunks - just grated into other food. And, surprisingly, I have overcome my childhood hatred of yoghurt. I'm sure my bones and joints are grateful for the extra calcium!

Last week I was in London so I paid a visit to the Whole Foods Supermarket on Kensington High Street (they do the best olives of anywhere I've found in the UK). I was interested to spot Buffalo Ricotta in their fridge, and I couldn't resist buying some to try.



I didn't have a plan for it, but when I got home I flicked through my books and decided on Fennel and Ricotta Risotto from the Jamie's Italy cookbook.

The recipe can be found here.

I was a little worried that the fennel flavour would be overwhelming, but the risotto turned out really well - creamy with nicely balanced flavours. It was pretty simple and quick to make, so I would definitely recommend it for an easy week night dinner.

PS I also discovered that you can mix ricotta with a little honey, berries, lemon juice and zest for a creamy but surprisingly low calorie dessert.

Warmth and spice

A cold snap always makes me want to up my cinnamon consumption considerably, so the combination of our recent cold spell and my horrible virus bug has had me reaching for the spice rack this week.

So, first up on the menu were Jamie Oliver's South American Fishcakes - fennel seeds and chilli from the spice rack. I tweaked the method very slightly by baking the cakes instead of deep-frying (deep-frying seemed a bit too fatty, indulgent and messy for a week-night supper) and by using a combination of plain flour and polenta to coat them. I thought the slight crunch of polenta might be a tasty addition to the mix.



I couldn't imagine what to serve these with, and although the wilted pak choi was good, in future I would make a tomato salsa and more vegetables, but lose the tortilla chips. Perhaps some garlic flatbreads or brazilian cheese breads on the side. The flavours of the fishcakes were good - punchy chilli and fennel seeds made a good combination, but I might try a slightly stronger fish than cod in future or mix in some crab meat. A good start, but this one needs some tinkering!


Then, baked apples stuffed with blackberries and dusted with cinnamon sugar. I've had the blackberries in the freezer since the autumn, but they're now nearly all used up. So sad...we shall be blackberry-less until september. Please don't tell me I can buy them inthe supermarket - the ones on sale are a pale imitation of the real, wild, sharply flavoured variety!
The apples were good - crunchy on the outside from the cinnamon sugar but softly baked and juicy from the blackberries. Very nice.

Sunday? Cinnamon toast for breakfast. Tasty. I was finally feeling better from my cold by then, so the spice overload clearly worked!

Rise and Shine!

Breakfast - they say its the most important meal of the day.

I tend to agree - if I don't eat breakfast I'm STARVING for the rest of the day. Its my favourite meal too. Good bread, a lovely cup of hot coffee, time to savour it and gradually emerge from the dozy feeling. Lovely.

However, breakfast is a meal I rarely tinker with. Eggs on toast, porridge, muesli, yoghurt and fruit: these are my standard choices.

This week, purely by chance, I branched out a bit. No massive leaps - I won't be having miso soup or wheatgerm for breakfast any time soon - but I tried my oats soaked in juice instead of made into porridge, and we had American pancakes for breakfast at the weekend (Jamie Oliver's recipe - find it here).

Having declared himself not very hungry Dan wolfed down 3 blueberry pancakes with enthusaism. They were dead easy to make, you just need to ensure than you have enough oil in the frying pan to stop them from sticking. My first one stuck, but after that I got the hang of it.

I swear my pictures are getting worse as time goes on, but these give you the general idea:


Batter in the pan - I was surprised by the consistency of the batter - it was much thicker than a normal pancake batter; more like cake mixture really (makes sense when I think about it - the pancakes are cakier than normal thin pancakes afterall).




The finished thing - they may not be all that neat at the edges, but they tasted lovely with a drizzle of honey.

Italleeee

I have just realised that 2010, sadly, was a year in which I did not visit Italy. Being a spoilt brat, in 2008 I went to Venice and Lake Como, in 2009 I went to Matera in the spring and Lake Como and Garda in the autumn. But this year...nada. In fact, since we have scrimping and saving our pennies foreign travel has been neglected in 2010. Again, I am aware how spoilt that makes me sound, but with relatively few other extravagances, travel is something I do like to spend my pennies on.
I feel a New Year's resolution coming on...I want to finally make that trip to Cuba this year. The autumn or winter seems achievable. Lets hope!

Anyway, back to Italy. Perhaps my withdrawal symptoms was what made me finally purchase this little beauty over the Christmas period:



Yes, a pasta roller/cutter.

I am aware that this is a gadget along the lines of 'definitely not strictly necessary' for a kitchen. Which is probably why it had sat on my Amazon wish list for about 18 months as I procrastinated about whether it was worth spending money on a nonessential item.
And then over Christmas I threw caution to the wind and bought it.

So on Monday, to celebrate the bank holiday, we had homemade pasta for dinner. I can honestly say that the machine made all the difference. I've never been able to roll pasta out thin enough by hand, but this machine worked like a dream, producing a beautiful silky textured pasta that made gorgeous cannelloni. Yum yum.

I then followed this up on thursday with Tuna 'meat'balls from the Jamie Oliver Jamie's Italy cook book.



Whilst they are intended to be served with pasta we currently have a potato glut so I served them on mash instead.


(sorry for the bad photo!)

Find the recipe on Jamie Oliver's website here.
The cinnamon, herbs, and lemon in the meatballs were great, and it worked very well with potatoes. I amended the quantities very slightly as I didn't have much bread or parmesan, so I reduced these (about 1/2 the quantity of bread, about 1/4 the quantity of parmesan). I think it does need the extra bread as our meatballs did have a tendency to fall apart a bit. If you are like me, and not mad keen on cheese, then I suggest you also reduce the cheese. I also reduced the pinenuts to about 1/4 of the quantity as we were nearly out of pinenuts too. I think that was fine, but more wouldn't hurt.
I'm not as keen on frying stuff as Jamie is, so I lightly braised my tuna and baked my meatballs instead of frying it all.



This worked fine, and at this post-Christmas time of year, it seemed kinder on my waist-line!

Daring Cooks December Challenge

This month's challenge: Jenn and Jill have challenged The Daring Cooks to learn to perfect the technique of poaching an egg. They chose Eggs Benedict recipe from Alton Brown, Oeufs en Meurette from Cooking with Wine by Anne Willan, and Homemade Sundried Tomato & Pine Nut Seitan Sausages (poached) courtesy of Trudy of Veggie num num.

So, poached eggs....I didn't feel inspired, I confess. I do poach eggs rather a lot anyway, so it wasn't a challenge which pushed me to make something I wouldn't otherwise have thought of. On the otherhand, Dan is always a happy man when eggs benedict are on the breakfast menu, so he was in heaven!

So, ta dah! Eggs Benedict feature again.



I won't bother to describe the method again, but I did realise that I had been overly cautious with the butter the last couple of times I made hollandaise sauce, and that was probably the reason for it curdling. It worked better this time.





So that I'm not totally cheating (and that would not do!) I am planning to make chorizo and potato hash with poached eggs later this week - that will at least be a new recipe including poached eggs.

UPDATE: I have been poaching away, and eating lots of eggs. I think eggs might just be my favourite fast food. I tried out the Chorizo and Potato Hash recipe, and it proved to be a massive hit with Dan. I liked it too, so thumbs up all round for that one. Find the recipe on the BBC Good Food site here.

Winter warmers

First things first: a major announcement.
We have heating in our house!
After over a year of living in our cotswold idyll, including through the coldest winter in 30 years, snow, ice and seriously sub-zero temperatures, we finally have a heating system! Oh the bliss...

And to celebrate, particularly given all Dan's hard work on getting the radiators plumbed in, I gave Dan a free card to request any dinner he fancied this weekend just gone. He chose beef stew and dumplings.

Now, I don't eat beef. I'm allergic. So, I'm always a little anxious cooking it as I don't feel all that confident that I know how to do it. I found some instructions in the Jamie Oliver magazine though, so followed them to the letter to make a very rich-smelling beef and ale stew with dumplings.

Dan's parents also came over for Sunday lunch. Its strange how anxious cooking for Dan's parents makes me; they're lovely and uncritical but I still get a little stressed by it! But the beef stew went down a treat with all of them. Apparently it was the perfect dinner for a cold day. I can't vouch for the flavour myself as I had trout, but since they polished off the whole stew pot of stew between 3 of them I think its safe to say it was a winner!

I followed it up with rasberry and white chocolate souffles. I'd meant to make these a week or so ago but couldn't buy white chocolate in the local shop so just went with rasberries. The white chocolate did make them just a touch sweeter and slightly more decadent feeling.

Oh how lovely to have a chilled out weekend (no DIY!) in a warm-as-toast house. Ahhhhh....

Mr McGregor

I am possibly not quite as bad as Mr McGregor since I didn't actually try to catch and eat Peter Rabbit, however we did have Rabbit Stew this week.



I spotted rabbit at the butcher's and bought some on impulse. The butcher said stew was the way to go with this particular specimen.

I'd never eaten rabbit before, and Dan had never had wild rabbit. Although he did tell me a charming anecdote about killing his pet rabbit when he was a kid and getting his mum to cook it for dinner. What a lovely boy I've ended up with.

Anyway, rabbit stew; it was quite tasty done to Jamie Oliver's stew recipe, although the meat was very lean so might be better in a creamy or yoghurt-y sauce in future. That would just keep it a bit moister I think.

The butcher did offer me a pigs trotter to go in the stew to up the fat content, but I felt that rabbit was enough new-ness for one meal. Couldn't quite bring myself to use a pig's foot!

Fruity Salads

Hot weather seems to call for citrus flavours and salad dinners, so I have mostly been eating fish and salad of late. I love the fruity-nutty flavours of thai salads, but decided to experiment with flavour combinations from Europe and the Caribbean this week.

Figs and Parma ham and mint

Trout with tomato and cucumber salsa

Grilled tuna with fennel, grapefruit and red onion salad



I know its a classic Italian dish, but I'd never tried the combination of figs and parma ham before, but I spotted some very ripe loooking figs in the shop and thought they'd make a nice lunch. And indeed they did. Jamie O's Italian recipe book suggested mint, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar as accompaniments, and it made a tasty meal. The mint was a nice touch - I would have expected basil to be best but preferred the mint.

Nothing fancy about the trout and salsa really, just a chopped tomato and cucumber salad in lemon juice, and mint again. Lots of mint you notice - its my new favourite herb because I actually managed to keep some alive in the garden!

The tuna salad was the most interesting. The idea came from my Cuban recipe book. I chopped 1/2 red onion finely and divided 1/2 ruby grapefruit into segments. These were mixed with the juice of a lime, salt and pepper, and a good handful of coriander. Then I shaved some fennel finely and mixed that in along with a drizzle of olive oil. I just grilled the tuna. Easy. The recipe called for swordfish but I couldn't get any, I would recommend you at least look for some if you want to recreate this as I think it might be a better combo than the tuna.

Couscous Jamie O style

I feel a bit guilty about the lack of use of my Jamie Oliver Italy recipe book. I keep taking it off the shelf and looking at the recipes and the beautiful photography, but then rarely get round to cooking from it. The recipes on the whole look like they would take more time to make than I generally have on a weekday evening. Although they also sound like they'd be worth the effort.

Nonna Giusy's Fish with Couscous was on the menu for us on bank holiday monday. I felt that with a little more time available it was the ideal time to delve into the book.

The method was an interesting one - you mix the couscous with finely chopped onion, garlic and parsley and then steam it for half an hour before mixing in some tomato sauce (made while the couscous steams) and putting it in the oven on a very low heat (80C max) to keep the couscous warm while it absorbs the tomato sauce. It was delicious cooked that way.
We used gilt-head bream as our fish (I had to gut it! Don't think I've ever had to gut my fish before. Chop the heads off, yes, but not scoop out its insides. Fortunately I'm not overly squeemish). This was poached in the tomato sauce, then I skinned and de-boned it, flaked the flesh into big chunks and mixed it back into the remaining tomato sauce.

Dan and I thought that a handful of raisins would go well in this recipe. Also, we thought chorizo and prawns could be substituted for the fish to good effect. The dish does take over an hour to prepare, but it is simple to do and, as always with tomato based recipes, the long slow cooking makes it rich and adds a wonderful depth to the flavour.

Risotto (its getting obsessional)

I made Jamie Oliver's asparagus, mint and lemon risotto. Perfect summery food.

Serving it with pan-fried scallops gave it an indulgent edge, although to be honest I think that big, meaty, garlicky prawns would be a better match.

My childish side was satisfied by serving the risotto in the scallop shells. It amused me.



Find the recipe here.

Yum yum; a few of my favourite things. Seafood, asparagus, risotto.

Sicilian pasta

No great excitments on these week's recipe of the week. It was a quick and easy recipe from my Quick and Easy recipe book. It did exactly what it said on the tin and provided a speedy and tasty dinner.

I noticed a very similar recipe in the Jamie Oliver Jamie's Italy book, Pasta con acciughe e pomodoro (anchovies in tomato sauce with pasta).
Its a poor man's pasta sauce recipe with very minimal ingredients. Basically just a handful of toasted pinenuts, and handful of sultanas (soaked in warm water for a few minutes to soften them), 2 or 3 skinned chopped tomatoes, a couple of cloves of garlic, 4 anchovy fillets and a tablespoon of tomato puree.

Put your pasta on to cook.
Fry the garlic in olive oil to soften it. Add the anchovies and stir until 'melted', then add all the other ingredients and heat through. Season.
Drain thge pasta, toss the sauce and pasta together.
Serve.

Can't be exciting every week!

I love.....Risotto

A few weeks ago I made Jamie O's cauliflower risotto (twice in a week).
This week I made Silvana Franco's red onion and cannellini bean risotto. Find the recipe here.

Both were very satisfying dinners.
Creamy, vegetarian (I like to eat vegetarian once a week if I can), flavoursome, filling, and non-fattening. Also, they were both recipes that I didn't have particularly high expectations of but which turned out to be surprisingly lovely.

So now I'm having a love affair with risotto and am on the hunt for more flavour combinations to try.

I know its basically just a vehicle for using up odds and sods in the vegetable drawer and the fridge. But its a wonderful one!

Jamie O Italy

My little nephew has a border-line obssessive love of Jamie Oliver. Unusual for an 8 year-old, but there are many worse role-models he could have!

For Christmas I bought him the Jamie Oliver Italy cookbook. I know that the chances are he will only look at the pictures for now, but he'll enjoy doing that, and ocassionally we'll cook something from it together.

Because I am weak where recipe books are concerned, after flicking through it on the train home I decided that I really wanted a copy of my own, so went back to the shops and treated myself.

It is my first (and currently only) Jamie Oliver recipe book.

And since December I have had a guilty conscience about it as it has sat on the side unused.

I decided that THIS was the week to put an end to that. The vegetable box delivered us a cauliflower this week which I wasn't sure what to do with, so when I came across cauliflower risotto I thought it would be worth a go.

Now, I know what you're thinking because I thought it too: cauliflower risotto just doesn't sound very nice. But Jamie Oliver raved about it, so I decided to put my trust in his judgement and give it a try.

This had a secondary risk of being a vegetarian meal, which normally means that I'm onto a loser from the start as far as Dan's concerned.

However, the dinner was a revelation. We both really liked it. It was quick, easy, tasty and filling. Dan's even taken the leftovers for lunch.

Cauliflower risotto; who'd have thought it would be such a yummy dinner?!

Jamie O's Duck salad

I wasn't going to blog about this, but it was SO pretty with all the different colours on the plate that I just had to mention it.

This was it before I added the duck:



Even with the meat (which I don't think ever looks very pretty!) it was still a very attractive looking dish.



There's something very pleasing about having a dinner which looks lovely! I get the same satisfaction from mixed multi-coloured roast autumn vegetables. Such a colourful combination. Am I wierd or is this normal? Who knows?! Still, I suppose its nice that I'm easily pleased!

Here's the link to the recipe, which I got from the Jamie Oliver website. I recommend it. Very tasty.

Thank you Mr Oliver...

...both for saving me from awful boredom on the long train journey from Glasgow to London, and for making Dan very happy.

Let me explain:
Dan's starting to get interested in the project. Not enough to get involved in the cooking you understand, but enough to put in a few requests. So far; bonfire toffee, treacle pudding, parkin, dauphinoise potatoes, and eggs benedict.

The week in question I had spent from thursday in Glasgow at a conference. I hadn't visited the city since I was child, and was pleasantly surprised by it, despite getting soaked every time I stepped outside. But I digress...
I was getting an early train back to London followed by a short break before my chiltern line back to deepest-darkest Oxfordshire. 7:55am on a rainy saturday morning didn't seem like a time to be breaking out the laptop and working on the train, so it had to be a magazine. Sadly, there wasn't much of a selection at the station. I had already read the ones I like for that month (I had been on the train quite a bit over the previous weeks!), and couldn't quite bring myself to part with my money for most of the others on display. So I was left with the Jamie Oliver magazine. Whilst this would not usually be my chosen reading material I figured that at the very least I could flick through and then donate it to my nephew who loves Jamie, thereby earning major favourite-auntie points.

One month later the magazine has taken up permanent residence in my kitchen, so no points for me. It is packed to the gills with great recipes, including eggs benedict! I bought some smoked ham, english muffins and white wine vinegar between trains the same day, and on sunday morning we had very decadent eggs benedict for breakfast. I've never had them before, and they're very rich so unlikely to be a regular treat, but tasty. Also, it turns out that hollandaise sauce really isn't difficult as long as you pay attention and don't rush.



So, thank you Jamie Oliver.

Incidentally, in case you should be under the mistaken impression that everything I've tried cooking has been a success, we had venison stew this week too. Seriously the most disgusting thing I have ever made.