This is our 24th cooking/blogging experiment from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals. We didn’t think our oven would be repaired in time for this one, so I flipped through all the remaining recipes in the book looking for the ones that didn’t need an oven. There aren’t many! We chose “Sea Bass & Crispy Pancetta, Sweet Potato Mash, Asian Greens, 1-Minute Berry Ice Cream, and Sparkling Lemon Ginger Drink.” (As it turns out, the repair guy fixed the oven a few hours before dinner, but we were already committed to this recipe.) We’d previously watched this episode, and we re-watched a bit of it online to refresh our memories. The Snook was on chef duty for this one, and he managed it in a very fast 30:56!

Substitutions: Well, it ain’t sea bass. European sea bass just isn’t available here. We turned to the fish markets for advice on a suitable substitute. They recommend Murray cod, which upon further googling appears to be critically endangered. NOPE! We instead went with some beautiful John Dory fillets. Instead of asparagus, we used some pak choy we got in last week’s veggie box. Other than that, everything else was as written in the recipe.

Quick verdict: In many ways, this is the prototypical “30 Minute Meal” recipe. We actually had to check to make sure we hadn’t made it already! It feels very, very familiar. It’s got all Jamie’s favourite ingredients (lemon, fennel seeds, chilli, sesame oil, etc); the technique of microwaving the veg for the mash; piling up everything on a tray; the random extra bits he has you make to use up time, like the drink; and the thrown-together dessert at the end. However, even though this one didn’t feel very exciting, it was certainly a pretty good meal. I found the mash a little sweet at first (some extra salt helped with that), but the Asian greens were perfect. The fish was okay, maybe a little boring. (Our skin didn’t get crispy enough and stuck to the pan a bit.) The lemon drink was very good, but seriously, who bothers with things like that? And the dessert was nice, if a bit expected. Overall I gave this one an 8; the Snook gave it an 8.5. Nothing really wrong with it, but nothing really amazing either. And he managed it in 30:56! Can’t argue with that.

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