Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals #8: Pregnant Jools’s Pasta
This is our 8th cooking/blogging experiment from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals. We decided this week to move our “Jamie meal” to Saturday nights which gives me a lot more time to put the post up on Sunday. The goal for this particular meal was to CARB-LOAD in preparation for today’s long run. With that in mind, we picked out “Pregnant Jools’s Pasta, Crunchy Chicory & Watercress Salad, and Little Frangipane Tarts.” We saw the corresponding TV episode a couple months ago, so we had a good idea of the preparations.

Substitutions: We couldn’t find red chicory in any of the shops – it must not be in season – but we did find a bag of mixed salad at the farmers’ market that had red chicory in it. We only made a half-recipe of the dessert. It was supposed to use “golden” caster sugar, but we couldn’t be arsed buying it specially so we just used plain. The Snook ground his own almonds (just because he objected to the price of pre-ground at the grocery store) and we used cherry preserves instead of raspberry jam. Everything else was as-written.

Quick verdict: Yum! This is the quickest and easiest recipe in the whole book, I bet. The frangipane tarts are really impressive considering how quick they are to make. The sausage pasta is just good, filling comfort food that would please any picky-eater. The Snook found the simple salad a little too bitter for his taste, but I thought it was a nice contrast to the sweetness of the pasta. We both rated it 9/10. Our elapsed time was 35:23, but the last 5 minutes were just standing around waiting for the tarts to finish baking. If we’d have been quicker getting them in the oven, we’d have easily made the 30 minute mark. This is a great recipe for any beginners who aren’t super confident in their cooking ability! Read on for a photo essay of the preparation.Pre-start prep: We got out all the necessary ingredients, tools, and cooking vessels, including our new food processor! The kitchen was clean (well, as clean as it gets) and everything wiped down and ready to go. The oven was turned on and the kettle was boiled. We had a fry pan, pot, and cookie sheet ready to go.

First up are the ingredients for the pasta: spring onions, carrot, celery, red chilli, “good-quality sausages” (we got ours at the farmers’ market), fennel seeds, oregano, penne, garlic, balsamic vinegar, chopped tomatoes, and basil for garnish.

Next, the ingredients for the salad: chicory, rocket, and watercress (ours already premixed), parmesan cheese, and a lemon.

Lastly, ingredients for dessert: shortcrush pastry cases, egg, ground almonds, butter, sugar, orange, vanilla, jam, and créme fraiche.

Pots and pans, ready to go. Frying pan is for the sausage; pot is for the pasta; and cookie sheet is for the tarts.

Our kickass new food processor.

Since I was going to be washing the salad leaves, I thought I’d show you our salad spinner. It works pretty well.

And we’re off! The first step is to put the spring onions, carrot, celery, and chilli in the food processor.

Once those are whizzed up, you add in the sausages (not bothering to remove the skins), fennel seeds, and oregano.

Here’s what it looked like when it was all mushed up. Mmm, meat paste.

This gets fried in the frying pan with some olive oil.

Meanwhile, I got to work on the dessert. The frangipane mixture consists of egg, ground almonds, butter, sugar, orange zest, and vanilla.

This what it looks like once you mix it up. We beat it quite a bit to try to break down the lumps of butter.

Our tart cases were unbaked and the recipe didn’t specify if they were meant to be or not. We decided to risk it and not pre-bake them. Here the Snook is filling them with alternating layers of jam and frangipane mixture.

The meat mixture is just about cooked…

The completed tarts go into the oven. We actually made a couple extra when we realised how much mixture we had left. Note: unbeknownst to us, these are overfilled. You’ll see. We had really shallow cases though.

Time to get the pasta going! Here it is bubbling away.

The Snook is crushing garlic into the meat sauce now…

Our salad prep was a lot simpler than the recipe’s! I just washed the leaves, spun them dry, and put them in a bowl.

The only other thing you do is grate some parmesan on top…

The meat sauce is coming together! He’s added balsamic vinegar and tomatoes now.

My completed salad, ready to be dressed with salt, pepper, extra virgin olive oil, and lemon juice.

The pasta is finished, so it gets drained…

…before being added to the meat sauce. Except our frying pan wasn’t nearly big enough, so instead we added the sauce to the pasta.

Once you stir it up, the whole meal is basically done!

Well, except for those tarts. We basically stood around for five more minutes waiting for them to finish. As you can see, a couple escaped their cases a bit. That’s okay; we just won’t fill them as full next time!

The finished meal of Jools’s Pasta and Chicory Salad.

Pop the tarts out of the tins, add some créme fraiche, and there’s dessert!

Tasting notes: The pasta was quite sweet from the tomatoes and the balsamic, but a little salt helped to bring out the other flavours. The Snook thought the fennel seeds dominated too much, but I like them and thought they were fine. I like that you could easily tweak the dish by changing up the type of sausages you used. The salad was simple and crunchy and made a nice contrast. The tarts were the real star though. They were much, much better than we expected given how quick and easy they were to put together. It’s a simple meal but one that would still impress a guest! We had heaps of everything left over, so this one is definitely a crowd-pleaser.

Stay tuned next week for another recipe from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals!

Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals #7: Asian-Style Salmon
This is our seventh official cooking/blogging experiment from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals. We picked this recipe because we hadn’t tried a fish recipe yet, and because we happened to have the corresponding TV episode saved on our DVR. (As before, we noticed that on the show Jamie does some things differently than the book. I’ll try to mention those as we go.) Historically I haven’t been a very big eater of fish, so these dishes are definitely going to be more challenging for me. This wasn’t my favorite of the Jamie meals we’ve made, but it did get me to eat a big piece of salmon… which is fairly momentous in our house.

Substitutions: Our salmon fillets were slightly bigger than the ones called for (250g instead of 180g), and the Snook had to remove the pin bones himself. (We didn’t count that as part of the cooking time.) He also had to spend a few minutes removing a few scales the fishmonger had missed. We had to settle for canned mango instead of fresh, and we used snow peas for the broth instead of sugar snap. We used some of the Snook’s duck stock instead of a stock cube.

Quick verdict: We both weren’t that impressed, to be honest. Personally, I thought this was my least favorite so far. We both rated it 8/10. It was somehow less than the sum of its parts for me. The Snook thought the dessert was “kinda meh.” Our elapsed time was 39:59, but a lot of that was extra fish prep time. (Twenty minutes had elapsed before we got it into the oven.) Read on for a photo essay of the preparation.Pre-start prep: We got out all the necessary ingredients, tools, and cooking vessels… including our new food processor! The kitchen was clean (well, as clean as it gets) and everything wiped down and ready to go. The oven was turned on with a fry pan, pot, and baking dish ready to go.

First up are the ingredients for the salmon: ginger, garlic, red onion, chilli, soy sauce, limes, salmon fillets, and Chinese five-spice.

Next the ingredients for the salad: coriander, beansprouts, cashews, honey, chilli, mango, soy sauce, sesame oil, and lime.

Broth ingredients: spring onions, chillies, garlic, ginger, Chinese five-spice, cornflour, stock, snow peas, soy sauce, noodles.

Lastly, the dessert ingredients: blueberries, canned lychees, sesame snaps, vanilla ice cream, and mint.

Pots and pans! The big pot is for the broth. The frying pan is for the cashews. The baking dish is for the fish. (That one was actually too small; we ended up swapping it for a bigger one when it came time to actually put the fish in it.)

Behold our lovely new Magimix. It’s lovely. (Also note the Snook’s beer.)

The first step in the fish prep was mixing up the sauce. Here’s the Snook combining ginger, garlic, onion, chilli, soy sauce, and lime juice in the Magimix.

And here’s the whizzed up result…

Meanwhile, I got on with the salad. Here I’ve combined the beansprouts and coriander.

This is a step from the TV show. Jamie made shallow cuts through the thick part of the salmon before rubbing in the spices. (The cookbook just has you sprinkle the spices on without cutting.) The Snook opted to cut.

Here are the four salmon pieces in the (bigger) oven dish. They’re laid on top of the sauce and then sprinkled with five-spice and pepper. Now they go into a hot oven for 18 minutes!

In the cookbook, Jamie has you bash up the cashews in a tea towel before toasting. He didn’t do it on the show, but I went for it anyway. (I like bashing things.) Frankly I wouldn’t bother next time though, as it mostly resulted in 50% whole cashews and 50% powder. These went into the pan with some olive oil.

Now that the fish is in the oven, we got started on the broth. Spring onions, garlic, and chilli go into the pot. Here’s me grating in some ginger.

Here the Snook has added cornflour and stock, along with some sliced coriander stem. (That was on the show but not in the book.)

Oh hey, my cashews are toasted! Actually they’re partially burnt. Interestingly, the ones on the show looked the same, so I figured it was okay.

Back in Salad-ville, I’ve added fresh chilli and sliced mango.

The cashews are drizzled with honey…

…before being added to the salad. The salad was then dressed with olive oil, soy sauce, sesame oil, and fresh lime juice to finish!

The final step for the broth is to add the snow peas and noodles.

For the dessert, it’s back to bashing. Here’s the Snook whacking up the sesame snaps in a tea towel.

The rest of the dessert prep was absurdly easy. I dumped the lychees in a bowl along with the blueberries (a handful of which I sliced in half). A few springs of mint finished it off.

Here’s the finished salmon after 18 minutes of baking. We garnished it with some coriander leaves.

The final meal. We weren’t quite sure how to serve it up, to be honest. We went with a large bowl with the salmon resting on top of some noodle broth. Then we served the beansprout salad on the side.

And the dessert: ice cream with spooned-over fruit and crushed sesame snaps.

Tasting notes: The Snook thinks the salmon was a little overcooked. This was surprising to me since we followed the instructions exactly (and had slightly larger pieces of fish). I’ll defer to his judgement on that though. It was definitely moist and flaky, and the skin was nicely crispy. (I did try a small bit of it.) The sauce was good, but I would’ve liked to have more of it. Our snow peas were limp, but the recipe’s sugar snap peas probably would have held up better. I liked the broth, but the Snook thought it had too much five-spice. We both liked the salad but thought it would have been better with fresh mango (to be more tart than sweet). The dessert was, as the Snook said, “meh.” Neither of us like canned lychees very much, and he thinks cooked blueberries are preferable to fresh. So overall it was fine, we ate it… but I’m not putting it on the automatic-repeat list.

Stay tuned next week for another recipe from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals!

Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals #6: Duck Salad
This is our sixth official cooking/blogging experiment from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals. As we did last week, we picked this one with the idea of going to the Eveleigh Farmers’ Market Saturday morning to get any necessary ingredients. There are always a couple vendors there with duck. When we got there, we worked out pretty quickly that four duck breasts were going to cost us close to $30. The Snook persuaded me to get two whole ducks from Coles instead (for $40 total), which would also give us legs and fat for confit, and a carcass for making stock. Sounds like a plan! So earlier today he carved up the ducks so we could get started. I was running a pretty serious caloric deficit for the day thanks to my long run, so I was excited for such a big, healthy meal.

Quick verdict: We followed it pretty much exactly (except for actually making homemade rice pudding in the rice cooker rather than buying expensive pre-made stuff). Elapsed time was 39:52, but we think this is one you could easily get down to 30 minutes once you have it memorised. There’s not much to it, really! In terms of presentation, this was the best one yet. If you served this at a small dinner party, people would be in awe! We both rated it 9/10 for taste (but we may have overcooked our duck a little bit). Read on for a photo essay of the preparation.Pre-start prep: We got out all the necessary ingredients, tools, and cooking vessels. (No food processor this week! And we were so excited to use our new one.) The kitchen was clean (well, as clean as it gets) and everything wiped down and ready to go. The oven was turned on with a fry pan and a sauce pan ready to go. We also pre-made a batch of rice pudding earlier in the day using Wolfgang Puck’s recipe.

First up are the ingredients for the duck: duck breasts, Chinese five-spice, dried thyme, red chilli, mint, lemon, and honey.

Next up are the components of the salad: pomegranate, rocket, carrots, radishes, cress, mint, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and lemon.

On the left are ingredients for the croutons: a ciabatta loaf, rosemary, garlic, and fennel seeds. On the right are the ingredients for the dessert: pre-made rice pudding, flaked almonds, icing sugar, oranges, plums, and vanilla.

Pots and pans, ready to go! The frying pan is for the duck, and the sauce pan is for the stewed fruit. (Ignore the small pan at the back; that’s the Snook rendering down duck fat for his confit.)

We also needed two baking sheets: one for the flaked almonds, and one for the croutons.

And we’re off! First step was prepping the duck breasts. The Snook scored the fat in a criss-cross pattern while I sprinkled on five-spice, salt, and thyme. Then we drizzled them with olive oil and rubbed the mixture in.

The breasts go skin-side down into the hot frying pan…

While the Snook tended the duck, I got going on the dessert. I rinsed the flaked almonds and then sprinkled them with icing sugar.

These got spread out on a baking sheet and put into the oven to toast.

As directed, the Snook weighted down the duck breasts with a pot lid to help them crisp up.

Now for the croutons! We cut up the ciabatta and then drizzled the slices with olive oil. Then we added rosemary, fennel seeds, crushed garlic, and salt and pepper. These got tossed around and then placed in the oven to toast.

Duck is looking good!

Time to get the stewed fruit going. This is orange juice, orange rind, icing sugar, and vanilla.

Ooh, nearly forgot about the almonds! They’re nice and toasty.

Here they are in a bowl.

The quartered plums have gone into the stewing liquid…

Everything’s cooking, so it’s time to make the salad. The first step is to get the seeds out of the pomegranate. The Snook used Jamie’s method of whacking the cut halves with a spoon. (He felt it was good for getting like 80% of the seeds, but he had to dig for the rest.)

Back to the duck. Jamie wants you to serve it on a wooden cutting board, but we substituted a big platter. Here’s the Snook “dressing the board” with chilli, mint, lemon, honey, and olive oil.

Meanwhile, I was chopping. I added carrot, rocket, mint, and radish to the salad. Here I am “snipping over” the cress.

Snookums is slicing the duck breast and adding it to the platter. (He also added the pan juices, which Jamie oddly didn’t mention. We didn’t want it to go to waste.)

The croutons are nicely toasty! They smell good.

Here’s the salad ready to go! I mixed the dressing in an old jam jar: olive oil, balsamic, salt, pepper, and lemon juice.

We overstewed our fruit a little bit, I think. It was a vibrant red mush!

Snookums arranged the croutons on the platter and carried it to the table. Very impressive spread… especially for two people! Eeek!

The finished meal: duck, salad, and croutons.

For the dessert, you simply spooned the stewed fruit over your rice pudding and then topped it with crunchy almonds.

Tasting notes: The duck was very tasty! We wish we had left it a little rarer though; that would have been even better. Rodd’s first impression of the salad was that it was very “rough,” in that it had a lot of rocket compared to everything else. I didn’t mind that though. It was fabulously crunchy and peppery and bitter, and every now and then you’d get a couple pomegranate seeds like secret jewels. The croutons were gorgeous (and we plan on duplicating them once the Snook’s confit is finished). We used them to mop up the platter juices. We’ve got two large portions of everything to have for lunch tomorrow! Dessert was good, but we didn’t really need it after so much food. Nothing too fancy; rice pudding is basically comfort food. The only change we’d make if we did it again would be to use a little less rocket in the salad, maybe. This is definitely one to impress your guests!

Stay tuned next week for another recipe from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals!

Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals #5: Oozy Mushroom Risotto
This is our fifth official cooking/blogging experiment from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals. Hey, we’ve made it through 10% of the book! I had plans to go to the Eveleigh Farmers’ Market on Saturday morning, so I figured we should find a recipe that uses ingredients I can get there. We settled on Oozy Mushroom Risotto, Spinach Salad, and Quick Raspberry & Lemon Cheesecake. For most of my life, mushrooms have been my most hated food, but I’ve been working to get over that in the past few years. I figured this would help. But I wasn’t going to use just any old crap button mushrooms from Coles. There’s always a stall at Eveleigh selling fancy mushrooms (“The Fun Guy”), so that was my first stop Saturday morning. Let me tell you: 500g of fresh exotic mushrooms is NOT cheap. Neither are dried porcini. I’m glad I suffered the expense though, as the resulting meal was well worth it.

Quick verdict: No substitutions on this one; we followed the recipe pretty much exactly. Elapsed time was 43:07, which wasn’t too bad. In terms of taste it was fantastic, and we both rated it 9.5/10. I would have never thought such a quick risotto would turn out so good! We did come up with a couple things we’d do differently next time though. Read on for a photo essay of the preparation.Pre-start prep: We got out all the necessary ingredients, tools, and cooking vessels. This week we also needed the food processor and a kettle full of boiled water. The kitchen was clean (well, as clean as it gets) and everything wiped down and ready to go. The oven was turned on and a big saucepan put on the stove to heat. The Snook also decided to wash the mushrooms ahead of time. (Alton says it’s okay!)

First up are the ingredient for the risotto: onion, celery, rosemary, dried porcini, arborio rice, a stock cube, white wine, garlic, butter, thyme, parmesan, lemon, and parsley.

And of course, the mushrooms themselves! I asked for 500g of mixed “chestnut, oysters, and shiitake.”

Next, the ingredients for the salad: pine nuts, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, lemon, baby spinach, mint, cucumber, and sun-dried tomatoes.

Lastly, the dessert ingredients: gingernut biscuits, hazelnuts, butter, lemon curd, lemon, (frozen) raspberries, light cream cheese, icing sugar, milk, vanilla, and dark chocolate.

Pots and pans, ready to go!

Our crappy food processor, ready to go. (Our new one should be here soon!)

The first step in the risotto prep is to whizz up celery, onion, and dried porcini. The porcini smelled amazing – just like Vegemite! Lots of umami happening here.

While I did that, the Snook got the pine nuts toasting for the salad.

Here’s what the whizzed up risotto base looked like.

The Snook cooked this in a pan with a couple slugs of olive oil.

Now he’s added the white wine and the arborio rice.

And now the real risotto process happens. He put in a crumbled stock cube and then began adding boiling water, a bit at a time. Over the next 20 minutes, he kept an eye on it, stirring and adding more water as necessary.

Pine nuts are toasted!

Once the pine nuts came out of the pan, it went back on the heat with some oil. Then we tore up half the mushrooms and added them along with garlic and thyme. These came off the heat very quickly.

The rest of the mushrooms and thyme went into the risotto.

Now we get started on the dessert. This step was fun at first, but in retrospect it was really stupid. I had to bash up the hazelnuts and the gingernut biscuits in a tea towel with a rolling pin. It would have been a lot faster to use the food processor, but presumably he figures yours is dirty from the risotto bits.

After melting some butter in a saucepan, the Snook dumped in the bashed up cookies and nuts. This was another stupid step. Why get a saucepan messy to melt butter? We’ll use the microwave next time.

After grating in some lemon zest, we pressed the mixture into our chilled tumblers. It was pretty chunky. Plus we had a tea towel covered in crumbs, which is annoying.

Now for the salad! The toasted pine nuts go into a bowl along with balsamic, olive oil, lemon juice, and roughly chopped spinach.

Risotto is still going! Also, the mushrooms in the frying pan were put under the grill to crisp up.

Completed salad with mint, cucumber (complete with arty scoring), and sundried tomatoes.

Next step on the dessert: adding lemon curd and raspberries.

The grilled mushrooms are finished! They smelled great.

Finishing off the risotto with parmesan and lemon juice…

Finished meal! Chopped parsley was added to both the risotto and the grilled mushrooms, which were served on top.

And the dessert, with the “cheesecake” mixture and grated chocolate on top.

Tasting notes: The risotto was GREAT. The Snook admits that the “stock cube + water” method was less hassle than stock, but he felt the resulting dish needed a little extra salt at the end to compensate. I was impressed with how well the mushrooms matched up to the strong flavours of rosemary, thyme, garlic, and parsley. They also retained their texture nicely. I don’t feel bad about the cost anymore – it was well worth it! The salad was simple but made a nice contrast. The cheesecake dessert was very nice, but the bottom was really chunky (due to my crappy bashing). Next time we’ll whiz it in the food processor and add melted butter from the microwave. We have plenty of leftovers of everything so we’re having it for dinner again tonight! Great little vegetarian feast for a cold autumn night…

Stay tuned next week for another recipe from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals!

Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals #4: Curry Rogan Josh
This was our fourth official cooking/blogging experiment from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals. The weather this weekend has been cooler, so we thought something warming was appropriate. We also had some pumpkin and carrots to use up from the veggie box, so one recipe leaped out at us: Curry Rogan Josh, Fluffy Rice, Carrot Salad, Poppadoms, Flatbread, and Beer. (I love that Beer is in the meal title!) No dessert with this one, but it made a huge feast’s worth of food.

Quick verdict: The only substitution we made was using Kent pumpkin instead of butternut. Time-wise, we were worse than last week with an elapsed time of 48:02. There are definitely things we’d do to save time next time though. Overall I rated it 9/10, while the Snook rated it 8.5/10. (Personally, any recipe with two whole bunches of coriander/cilantro is A-OKAY by me!) However, we both agreed that the lemon pickle SUCKS. Read on for a photo essay of the preparation.Pre-start prep: We got out all the necessary ingredients, tools, and cooking vessels. This week we also needed the food processor and a kettle full of boiled water. The kitchen was clean (well, as clean as it gets) and everything wiped down and ready to go. The oven was turned on and a big saucepan put on the stove to heat.

First up are the ingredients for the curry: onions, squash/pumpkin, cauliflower, chilli, garlic, coriander, Patak’s rogan josh paste, chickpeas, baby spinach, and yogurt.

Ingredients for just about everything else! Basmati rice and cloves for the rice; almonds, carrots, chilli, coriander, ginger, and lemon for the carrot salad; chapattis and turmeric for the chapattis; and lemon, mustard seeds, turmeric, and chilli for the lemon pickle.

Pans ready to go. The big one is for the curry. The saucepan is for the rice. The frying pan is for toasting the almonds and later cooking the lemon pickle. (Note: This was a BAD CHOICE for the pickle. More on that later.)

Our crappy food processor, ready to go.

Time to start cooking! The Snook immediately got going on the curry. Here’s the onion starting to cook.

Chopping up the pumpkin. Jamie didn’t peel his since he used butternut, but we had a Kent so the Snook peeled it.

The pumpkin’s cooking now…

Meanwhile, I was working on the carrot salad. I know from experience that our food processor is CRAP at grating things, so I did them all by hand on a box grater. I just used the processor to whizz up the chilli, coriander, and ginger.

Here’s the whizzed up flavourings mixed up with the grated carrot.

The curry continues. He’s chucked in cauliflower, chilli, garlic, and coriander at this point.

And with some more additions: curry paste and chickpeas. We put the lid on and let it cook.

Now for the rice. The Snook was skeptical of cooking the rice on the stove and lobbied hard for us to use our rice cooker. I told him we had to stick to the recipe, but if we did it again, we’d use the cooker. (I don’t know why Jamie didn’t mandate using one; everybody’s got one, right?) Anyway, rice, water, and a couple cloves.

I got my almonds toasting for the carrot salad…

And the Snook got the chapattis going. He scrunched up some greaseproof paper and soaked it in water, then spread it out on a cookie sheet. The chapattis are each drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with turmeric.

He’s stacked them up and wrapped the paper around into a little parcel, which then goes into the oven.

To finish the carrot salad, I added olive oil, salt, lemon zest, and lemon juice.

My almonds are toasted!

I finished the carrot salad with heaps of coriander and the toasted almonds. I have to say, I am not traditionally a fan of raw carrot, but I could tell already this was going to be a winner!

It was time to start the lemon pickle. Here’s the Snook chopping up a whole lemon.

The frying pan received a glug of olive oil, then the spices for the pickle.

And that’s when all hell broke loose! See all those little specks on the stove? Yeah, the mustard seeds started popping like popcorn and zinging all over the kitchen! I’d suggest using a saucepan in the future and maybe clamping a lid down for the first few seconds.

Now he’s added the lemon and he’s giving it the required ten seconds of cooking.

The finished pickle in the bowl.

Checking the curry. It’s looking good!

The rice cooked for seven minutes and then steamed for seven more. To my surprise, it turned out great! Fluffy and perfect, with a tiny bit of flavour from the cloves.

The chapattis have come out of the oven, still in their paper package…

And the poppadoms are ready with their yogurt and olive oil dipping sauce.

The finished meal! The curry was garnished with yogurt and coriander leaves. We served it with an ice cold glass of the Snook’s homebrew, of course.

Tasting notes: The Snook thought the curry was “good, but not great.” He liked the carrot salad and the chapattis. The pickle earned a big thumbs down. “It had potential, but it was… not right.” I actually thought the curry was quite good, and I’m happy we had three generous portions left over for lunches. The carrot salad was excellent, and I can definitely see myself making that again for barbecues and picnics. I do agree with him on the pickle though. Much too bitter and strong. We ended up throwing most of it away. Maybe we needed a sweeter lemon? If we were going to do the meal again, I’d leave out the pickle, do the rice in the rice cooker, and possibly do the curry in the pressure cooker since that was the thing that took the longest. I also like that this meal was vegetarian, and you can easily adjust the spiciness level if needed. It’s a great one for a party feast!

Stay tuned next week for another recipe from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals!

Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals #3: Cheat’s Pizza
This was our third official cooking/blogging attempt from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals. It’s been so hot in Sydney this week that we wanted to choose a “cooler” meal, something with lots of salad. We settled on Cheat’s Pizza with 3 Delish Salads, Squashed Cherries & Vanilla Marscapone Cream. It actually worked out pretty perfectly, as we had a surfeit of tomatoes and basil from our weekly veggie box, and cherries were on special at the grocery store.

Quick verdict: This was the first recipe where we didn’t substitute anything; we had it all. This was also our FASTEST attempt yet! Elapsed time: 38:26. That’s pretty damn good! I think you could easily get this one down to 30 minutes once you had the recipe memorised. (There’s also a step we’d eliminate if we did it again; more on that in a minute.) Overall I rated it 9/10, while the Snook judged it 8/10. Read on for a photo essay of the preparation.Pre-start prep: We got out all the necessary ingredients, tools, and cooking vessels. This week we also needed the food processor and the blender. The kitchen was clean (well, as clean as it gets) and everything wiped down and ready go to. The grill was turned on as high as it would go and the frying pan was on the stove on low heat.

First up are the ingredients for the pizza. The dough was just self-raising flour and tepid water. There’s also: salami, buffalo mozzarella, red wine vinegar, canned tomatoes, garlic, fennel seeds, red chilli, and parmesan.

Next up are the ingredients for the tomato salad: a variety of “interesting” tomatoes, basil, balsamic vinegar, garlic, chilli.

Two more salads’ ingredients here: a packet of rocket and a lemon for the rocket salad; buffalo mozzarella, pesto, basil, and lemon for the mozzarella salad. (Note: Rodd actually made some homemade pesto recently and froze it into an ice cube tray, which is why our pesto looks weird here!)

Dessert ingredients: marscapone, cherries, icing sugar, an orange, milk, vanilla.

Here’s our frying pan on the stove. We didn’t have an ovenproof one as big as the recipe required, so we took Jamie’s advice and made two smaller pizzas instead.

Our crappy food processor. We’re going to get a new one soon, I swear.

And a newcomer to the stage: the blender! (Or “liquidizer” as Jamie refers to it.)

The tomato salad was the first thing to do. The Snook got to work chopping up all our weird organic tomatoes.

Really, the salad prep was so quick. We added in finely chopped chilli and garlic, torn up basil, and the balsamic vinegar. Then a seasoning of salt & pepper and a drizzle of olive oil, and it was done!

Time to get the pizza going. Here’s the Snook whizzing up the dough (flour, water, oil, and salt) in the food processor.

Next he turned it out onto a floured board…

Kinda lumpy and wet, “like a scone dough” he says.

Here he’s divided it in half and he’s rolling it out into a circle roughly the size of our frying pan.

Meanwhile, I got to work on that sauce. The blender has tinned tomatoes, basil, garlic, red wine vinegar, olive oil, and salt in it.

The whizzed up sauce. Frankly, this is a step I’d leave out next time. It annoyed me that it only uses a third of a can of tomatoes. What the heck am I going to do with the rest? And it’s a pain to clean a blender. I found myself thinking – why not just buy one of those little tubs of pre-made sauce?

Time to assemble the pizza! Here’s the dough going into the frying pan.

At this stage it’s got my sauce on it, along with torn up buffalo mozzarella and a grating of parmesan.

The final additions: salami, fennel seeds, and chilli. Then it went under a hot grill for 5 minutes!

Meanwhile, Snookums got working on the rocket salad. It was pretty simple: just rocket, olive oil, lemon juice, salt and pepper.

The pizza is done! (We let it cool for a minute before putting it on a rack and then assembling the second one in the same pan.)

I was busy with the mozzarella salad. Basically, it’s torn up mozzarella covered in pesto, basil, lemon zest, pepper, and olive oil. (Note: real buffalo mozzarella is HELLA expensive. The two lumps we used cost us $16!)

The dessert was the weirdest part for me. First, I don’t get why you have to put the cherries in ice water. It didn’t seem to really make much difference. Secondly, why such a tiny amount of marscapone? The recipe called for 125g, which was half my little tub. Even padded out with milk, icing sugar, vanilla, and orange zest, that doesn’t amount to much when you divide it among four people. Here I’ve divvied it up as if you were serving to four.

The finished meal! In terms of leftovers, we have a whole second pizza and plenty of salads for lunch tomorrow.

Here’s the dessert after I decided to just dump in the other half of the marscapone cream. That made a much nicer portion size.

Tasting notes: The Snook says the pizza was as good as could be expected given that it was made so quickly and didn’t include yeast. It browned up nicely on the bottom, but it was mostly bready and not that crispy (except around the edges). Snookums also doubted the inclusion of fennel seeds, which I actually liked. The tomato salad was excellent, and I think it actually brought out the best in our ragged tomatoes. The other two salads were good as well. In retrospect, buffalo mozzarella is probably overkill for the pizza in terms of the price, but it sure made a nice little indulgence. The dessert was very tasty; we just thought the recipe amounted to some very meager portions! Overall this was the perfect summer Italian meal and that nicely highlighted produce that’s in season. Will definitely be repeating this one.

Stay tuned next week for another recipe from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals!

Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals #2: Summer Veg Lasagne
This is our second cooking experiment from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals. We had about half a dozen episodes saved on the DVR, so we skimmed through them today looking for a suitable one. (We reckoned that if we could watch the episode first, we might stand a better chance of reproducing it.) We settled on Summer Veg Lasagne, Tuscan Tomato Salad, and Quick Mango Frozen Yoghurt.

Quick verdict: We couldn’t find any frozen mango cheeks, and fresh ones are just way too expensive right now. So we subbed in frozen berries for the dessert. Everything else was according to the recipe, pretty much. It was FANTASTIC. We rated this one 9.5/10. Our elapsed time was 60 minutes. That’s why we’ve taken off half a point. We feel that with more practice we could maybe shave off 15 minutes, but there’s no way we could get this one down to 30 minutes total. Still, the taste made it all worthwhile! Read on for a photo essay of the preparation.Pre-start prep: We got out all the necessary ingredients, tools, and cooking vessels. The kitchen was clean (well, as clean as it gets) and everything wiped down and ready go to. The grill was turned on as high as it would go.

First up are the ingredients for the lasagne. It used: spring onions, anchovies, garlic, asparagus, frozen peas, frozen broad beans, mint, cream, lemon, veggie stock, cottage cheese, fresh lasagne sheets, Parmesan cheese, and thyme.

Next, the ingredients for the Tuscan salad. It used: ciabatta (we had Pane di Casa instead), fennel seeds, oregano, capers, anchovies, basil, red peppers (we left these out as Snook doesn’t like them), garlic, tomatoes, red wine vinegar, and Parmesan cheese. (We also got the Balsamic out since Jamie used it on the show, but it’s not mentioned in the book.)

The cooking pans, ready go to. The big pot is for the lasagne filling, and the roasting pan was for toasting the bread and then cooking the assembled lasagne.

The first part of the lasagne filling preparation. This has chopped up asparagus and spring onions, and all sorts of lovely bits in it.

Here I’m tossing hunks of bread with olive oil, salt, and fennel seeds. (We tore some by hand before resorting to the knife. Efficiency won out over rusticity.) This then went into the oven under the grill to toast.

The next stage of the lasagne involved adding in the frozen peas and beans along with mint, cream, and lemon zest.

The hunks of bread have successfully toasted!

Now we could reclaim the roasting pan for lasagne assembly. We finished off the filling with stock and cottage cheese, then sorta mashed it as best we could. Here’s the Snook laying down the first layer of filling.

On top of each layer of filling went fresh lasagne sheets and then cheese. We didn’t have quite enough Parmesan, but on the actual episode Jamie said that cheddar would be a good substitute. So that’s what we’ve mixed in here.

Once you put the final layer of lasagne sheets on, you cover it with more cottage cheese, the asparagus tips, olive oil, fresh thyme, and more cheese. Then this goes into the hot oven.

While Snook worked on the bread salad, I started the dessert. As I said, we couldn’t find frozen mango so we went with mixed berry. The only other change I made to the recipe was adding a bit more honey to compensate for the tartness of the berries. (Man, our food processor sucks.)

The Snook’s completed bread salad. We didn’t seem to have quite as much liquid in ours as Jamie did. Maybe we didn’t use enough tomatoes? At any rate, our bread didn’t get a chance to soak up much juice.

By now my dessert had finished churning. I put it straight into a tub into the freezer.

Our lasagne took a little longer to brown up than Jamie’s. We think it’s because we had our shelf set slightly farther away from the element. But it browned up nice in the end.

A better shot of the completed lasagne. Note: this was HUGE. It easily makes 8 generous portions.

And here’s the completed meal! We had it with white wine, as suggested.

And lastly, dessert! The pink part is the Quick Raspberry Frozen Yoghurt I made above. (We didn’t bother with cones.) The green is actually pistachio gelato that the Snook made earlier in the weekend. The raspberry stuff was good… but the pistachio was AMAZING. I guess the lesson is that you can make decent ice cream quickly, but the good stuff takes a lot longer than 30 minutes!

Tasting notes: We both loved the lasagne. We’d had a lot of worries about it – would the pasta be cooked? would the mint be weird? would frozen broad beans be nice? – and they all turned out fine. Seriously, this dish alone was 10/10. The Tuscan bread salad was, as Rodd pointed out, basically a deconstructed bruschetta. We didn’t have quite enough juice to really soften the bread, but the crunchiness made a nice contrast to the lasagne. (For those worried about raw anchovy in it – as I was – it’s fine. No ickiness or fishiness at all!) The dessert was probably the weak point here, but frozen yoghurt was never going to set the world on fire. I’d really like to try it with the mango though, if we can find some frozen mango cheeks. This meal is a DEFINITE one to repeat!

Stay tuned next week for another recipe from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals!

Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals #1: Mustard Chicken
As promised a few weeks ago, the Snook and I have decided to cook and blog our way through Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals in its entirety. We got the book this week (thank you Booko!) and picked out a hopefully-easy recipe to start with: Mustard Chicken with Quick Dauphinoise, Greens, and Black Forest Affogato.

Quick Verdict: We experimented a bit with the dessert but the other three components were prepared exactly as specified. Both of us rated this one 8/10. With a few small tweaks, it could’ve been even higher. Our elapsed time was 50 minutes, but that was mostly due to capacity of our frying pan. Read on for a photo essay of the entire preparation.Pre-start prep: I got out all the necessary ingredients, tools, and cooking vessels. The kitchen was clean (well, as clean as it gets) and everything wiped down and ready go to. The oven was turned on to 220C and the kettle was boiled.

First up are the ingredients for the Quick Dauphinoise. I should mention that I have never been able to cook a very good gratin, so I was interested to see if Jamie’s version would work. It used baking potatoes, a red onion, cream, thyme, parmesan, anchovies, bay leaves, and nutmeg.

Next the ingredients for the Mustard Chicken. We got four skin-on chicken breast fillets, but they’re actually a fair bit larger than the size he specifies. This may have affected the final dish a bit. (More on that later.) We also have leek, garlic, mustard powder, wholegrain mustard, cream, and rosemary (not in the picture because I had to run out and pick it).

The Greens were pretty simple: a bunch of silverbeet, a package of baby spinach, and a lemon.

The cooking pots, ready to go. The roasting pan was for the potatoes; the frying pan for the chicken; and the sauce pan for the greens. This is where I’d do things differently next time. The frying pan wasn’t actually large enough for all four of our chicken breasts, so we had to do some juggling to cook them in stages. Make sure your meat fits! And my silverbeet only just fit in the saucepan.

Assembling the Dauphinoise. Most of the ingredients are in the roasting pan here and the Snook is mixing it up with his hands. Jamie has you cheat a bit by cooking the mix in the roasting pan on the stove for a bit. It was a bit tricky for us, as our cooktop is induction and our square roasting pan doesn’t fit nicely on the round induction zone. So it probably took a few minutes longer than necessary to start bubbling away.

Check out those monster chicken breasts. They’ve been “massaged” with chopped rosemary, mustard powder, salt, pepper, and olive oil. That’s when we realised we had a size issue happening with the pan. We decided it was best to cook them two at a time.

The Dauphinoise is bubbling away now so it was time to add in more parmesan and thyme. Then it goes into the oven! (That freed up a burner so we could get the other chicken going in a separate pan.)

I didn’t document much of the Greens preparation since it was so simple. I chopped the ribs of the silverbeet first and tossed them in the pot of boiling water. After a few minutes, I added the roughly chopped leaves. When they were cooked, I drained it by pouring it over the baby spinach in a colander in the sink. Then the whole lot went back in the pan with olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Simple but delicious!

The Dauphinoise bubbling away in the oven and getting nicely brown…

Here the Snook has turned the chicken over and added leek, garlic, and white wine to the pan.

Meanwhile, I started some prep on the dessert. Instead of “Black Forest” Affogato, we decided to go with Raspberry since we had some homemade raspberry gelato in the freezer. I’ve crumbled a couple shortbread biscuits into each glass and then topped them with frozen raspberries and bits of 85% Lindt chocolate.

The Dauphinoise as it came out of the oven. It was still a little liquidy, so we think it probably could have cooked a big longer. But we were hungry and everything else was done. (While we ate, it continued to suck up liquid and I think the leftovers are going to be pretty nice!)

Here’s the completed meal! After finishing the sauce with cream and wholegrain mustard, the Snook spooned it over the chicken breast pieces. (Note: We have plenty of potato and greens left over, along with the other two chicken breasts.)

And now for dessert! The Snook brewed up a couple espressos while I scooped some gelato into the glasses. Here he’s pouring the coffee over the ice cream.

And now the finished dessert, garnished with more raspberries and grated chocolate.

Tasting notes: The Snook thought the chicken itself was a bit ordinary (though the sauce was great). I argued that chicken breast is pretty much always tasteless protein anyway, and the fact that our breasts were larger and thicker may have diluted the flavour a bit. The Dauphinoise was the highlight of the meal, and we think 5-10 minutes more cooking would have made it divine. The Greens were a nice, simple complement to the richness of the potatoes and the strong flavour of the mustard. The Affogato ended up being a little bitter, but that may have been due to our coffee maker or to the fact that we changed up the recipe. It was still yummy.

Stay tuned next week for another recipe from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals!