Anna's Food Diary: Jamie Oliver

Showing posts with label Jamie Oliver. Show all posts

16 Mar 2012

Dinner for Cook da Books

Last December it was my turn to cook dinner for my book and cooking club 'Cook da Books'. We had read and were going to discuss a book called 'We have always lived in the castle' by Shirley Jackson. The story is about two sisters and an uncle living together in a big house outcast by their village. The rest of the family is dead. They were killed with arsenic mixed into the sugar on the berries that were the dessert of a big Sunday roast lunch.
I based the dinner menu on the Sunday roast lunch menu from the book. In the book it's a Spring menu. I adapted it to Christmas time.

The Menu

A Deadly Dinner

Prosecco with Cranberry

Kale Crisps

Salad with Herbs

Roast Lamb Shoulder

Crushed New Potatoes and Vegetables

Minty Mushy Peas

Eton Mess with Blackberries and a Pinch of Arsenic

Kale Chips

Kale is my new favourite winter vegetable, whether blanched and sauteed with onion, olive oil, lemon juice and salt or, like in this recipe, baked in the oven until crispy. A very simple way to create a wonderful snack. I got the recipe on a blog called Roost, which I highly recommend for healthy recipes: http://www.roostblog.com/roost/tuscan-kale-chips.html

Salad with Herbs

A simple salad with any herbs I can find and finely sliced radishes. I like flat leaf parsley, chives, coriander and chervil. For the dressing I use olive oil, salt, pepper and either lemon juice or white wine herb vinegar.

Roast Lamb Shoulder

Crusched New Potatoes and Vegetables

Minty Mushy Peas

For the lamb shoulder I used a Jamie Oliver recipe, which I will definitely cook many times in future! It is so simple and so delicious! It's easily prepared in advance and needs little attention while in the oven so it's perfect for when you have people coming round for dinner: www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/lamb-recipes/incredible-roasted-shoulder-of-lamb-with

For the vegetables I used lots of different coloured carrots - white, orange, dark red, almost purplish, some orange with a purple boarder.

Eton Mess with Blackberries and a Pinch of Arsenic

For the Eton Mess I made a Pavlova rather than smaller meringues. I love it when there's a lot of gooey meringue in the Eton Mess.

For the berries I had to use frozen ones. Along side the Eton Mess I served a bowel of sugar. With a pinch of Arsenic of course!

As I always I forget to take pictures of the finished food and the dinner itself. Here a couple of shots including the aftermath...

25 Feb 2012

Home-made pizza / iphone app

A friend came round to my place recently for a TV dinner, to watch a TV program I cannot admit to watching. Lets say it was a documentary about something really important, deep and meaningful... We made pizza using a Jamie Oliver recipe from his iphone app with the imaginative name 'Jamie's Recipes'. It's a useful app with many easy to follow meal ideas. I often stand in the supermarket wondering what to cook for dinner and I use this app to get ideas. Just search for something you feel like eating and it gives you list of options. All necessary ingredients are automatically added to a shopping list, you can set it to either 2 or 4 people and the amounts are adjusted accordingly. Recipes are listed according to themes, i.e. light meals, 20 minute meals, comfort food, breakfast, date dishes...

http://www.jamieoliver.com/apps/

27 Jun 2011

Ketchup - red, green and yellow

The other day I went to the market where I found the most beautiful local tomatoes - green ones, yellow ones, red ones, in all shapes and sizes. I really wanted to use them for something so I decided to try making ketchup.

I followed Jamie Oliver's recipe (Natürlich Jamie, p 314).

First I fried onions, garlic, chilli, cloves, ginger, celery, fennel, coriander seeds, chopped basil stalks, salt and pepper until soft.

I split this mixture into 3 deep pans. To the first I added a good half kilo of different kinds of red tomatoes plus half a kilo of tinned plum tomatoes.

To the other two I added green and yellow tomatoes.

I added 350 ml to all three pots and brought them to the boil to let the liquid reduce.

After the liquid reduced by half I puréed each mixture in a blender and then strained it through a sieve twice - this part was the most time consuming. To all three I added some basil, to the green tomatoes the most and also some parsley.

The resulting liquids went back into pots and on the stove. To each I added sugar and vinegar - I reccomend using less than in the recipe, maybe 2/3 and adding more after tasting. To the yellow sauce I added a bit of tumeric for extra colour.

While everything reduced again until it had the consistency of ketchup I sterilised the preserving jars.

And then filled the sauces into the jars while still very hot.

The red ketchup turned out quite hot and spicy, the yellow quite sweet and you can really taste the herbs in the green one. I'm not going back to bottled ketchup - this is too good! Now I'm hoping for lots of bbqs...

21 Jun 2011

BBQ

A couple of weeks ago I had some friends over for dinner and finally lit my bbq for the first time in 2011.

We had smoked beetroot salad à la Jamie Oliver (Natürlich Jamie, p. 108). I got slightly carried away in the kitchen and forgot to take pictures of the finally result.

I made pork belly rubbed with a lot of spices, pre cooked in the oven and then grilled.The recipe was also from Jamie Oliver, from his website: http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/pork-recipes/southern-barbecued-pork-belly
It was the first time I made pork belly and I definitely will again. The meat I got from Metzgerei Wipkingen in the Viadukt Markthalle - I highly recommend it!