Jamie's 30 minute Rigatoni

About time I posted again right?  I am still ploughing my way through Jamie's 30 minute meals and have lots of uploading to do, but... as I like doing things out of order, I'm going to skip forward to tonight's dinner. 

Tonight, after much debate, we settled on the Rigatoni, which is accompanied with a rocket salad, chicory salad and ciabatta with a Limoncello triffle affair for dessert. 

My kitchen began the journey like this:

You are supposed to start by sprinkling the ciabatta with olive oil and thyme and popping in the oven - I missed this step completely, which resulted in a last minute panic to get it in the oven in time.  We still had time to cook it though, and I was about to drain the pasta by the time I remembered!

The trifle is the first thing I tackled, which makes sense as it has to go in the fridge so it is ready in time.  You squeeze oranges and add some limoncello, place the sponge fingers in and then top with a mascarpone, icing sugar, milk and vanilla extract concoction,  You then sprinkle with raspberries and grate some chocolate over.

Chicory is sliced in half and placed on a griddle.  I've never had chicory before, so I was curious as to what this would taste like. 

In the meantime the pasta is cooking.  The sauce is made like a pesto, chopping almonds, chili, anchovy, tomatoes, basil and Parmesan, adding a little olive oil towards the end.  This is then mixed over the cooked pasta and the whole dish is scattered with halved cherry tomatoes and some left over basil leaves. 

Rocket salad makes another appearance in this recipe.  Rocket in a bowl, topped with Parmesan and an olive oil and lemon dressing. 

The chicory, once charred on both sides is chopped and sprinkled with olive oil, balsamic vinegar, garlic and rosemary.  

We then waited about 2 minutes for the ciabatta to catch up! and we were ready.  

The pasta looked great, although hubby was a little put off by the (semi) whole tomatoes:

The rocket salad looked as you would expect and the chicory looked a little lost really, maybe because I had to halve the recipe:

Anyway, this is what the assembled meal looked like on a plate:

The verdict?  We both really enjoyed the pasta (although hubby ate around the halved cherry tomatoes) - I halved the recipe as it was just for the 2 of us and it made way too much, but that is ok as we now both have lunch for tomorrow sorted.  Rocket salad was ok, pretty standard.  I really enjoyed the chicory although I am not entirely certain it was necessary.  I like the extra salad bits and it is a way of making the meal go further, but I'm not sure I would bother with both sides next time.  

The ciabatta was good.  This is definitely something the whole book does really well.  Taking a standard ciabatta loaf and making it something delicious.  I'm not a fan of bread products really so making them more interesting is good.

And then it came to dessert.  I hate trifle, I can't actually remember ever eating it, so I'm not really sure why I have that opinion.  However, I love limoncello and raspberries so it was worth a try.  My portion looked like this:

It was delicious!  And so easy to make.  I'm going to keep this recipe on standby if I ever need a quick dessert when I have friends over or if I need to take dessert somewhere. 

Timings:  30 minutes ish - would have been more timely had I followed the instructions correctly and not left the ciabatta til last!

Spaghetti Alla Puttanesca

Another day, another meal, another Jamie's 30 minute challenge.  This time I opted for the Spaghetti alla puttanesca which is served with crunchy salad, garlic bread and silky chocolate ganache.

This sounds amazing, but i was a bit concerned about how much hubby would enjoy this.  He doesn't like tuna or olives, which are two key ingredients in the spaghetti, but you never know, he might surprise himself.

My kitchen started out with this assortment of ingredients:

We struggled again with the purchase of all the ingredients.  Nothing too major this time, we couldn't find palmiers, so ended up substituting shortbread.

The garlic bread was the first task.  I have made garlic bread before, but never like this.  A ciabatta is sliced to form grooves and placed on some soggy greaseproof paper... sounds wierd, but stick with it.  This is then drizzled with olive oil and then you crush over some garlic and scatter with chopped parsley.  It gets  bit messy, but you need to cover the ciabatta and ensure you get the ingredients into the grooves.  This is then wrapped and placed in the oven.

It comes out looking like this, and it tastes delicious.

Once you have tried garlic bread this way there will be no going back.

The next job was to start melting the chocolate for the ganache, along with butter, cream, salt and clementine zest.

The spaghetti cooks in the saucepan underneath the chocolate bowl... less washing up which is always good, but it would probably be easier to use two saucepans.

The sauce is created in a frying pan adding the tuna oil, garlic, capers and anchovies.  I love adding anchovies to a frying pan and watching them disappear - I am so easily pleased!

The chilies and parsley stalks are then added followed by the tuna itself, olives, cinnamon and tinned tomatoes (or passata if you are feeling posh).

Back to the ganache - pouring these into tea cups - Jamie suggests espresso cups, but I don't have any, so we used what we had. These are then served with the biscuits, like so:

Next it is one of my favourite bits, using the food processor.  Fennel and radishes form the salad along with some olive oil and lemon juice, salt and pepper.  I will always love how quick the processor makes a nice salad.

Then all that is left, is the spaghetti.  Combining everything together to create this:

So, the completed meal was great.  Both of us enjoyed the pasta, the salad was great - even for someone who thought they didn't like fennel and the garlic bread was fabulous and yes it was all done within 30 minutes again.

The only thing I wouldn't make again would be the ganache.  I love chocolate, but this was just too much.  I know we used bigger cups than suggested but I did adjust the recipe quantities for 2 servings so it should have been the right serving size.  It was just way to rich for me.  I managed a couple of spoonfuls.  Hubby did much better and finished mine up later.

Jamie's smoked salmon

Well, after a HUGE break, I decided it might be time to revive the blog.

Dinner of choice was from Jamie's 30 minute meals again - this time the smoked salmon, potato salad, beets and cottage cheese with rye bread and home made butter.

Our starting ingredients looked a little something like this:

This sounded like a much more simple recipe than some of the others - mainly because a lot of the main dishes don't require any cooking.

Rye bread is served as is... off to a good start.  Potatoes are boiled with lemon peel which I have to admit sounded a bit odd.

The salmon is placed on the board in 'rustic waves' which is just ridiculous, with horseradish, seasoning, lemon and olive oil.

The butter is the thing that really concerned me about this recipe.  Now I know the basics, but I really did not expect this.  You put double cream in a mixer with beater attachments and leave it et voila! butter.  Honestly the thought of smearing double cream on bread really turned me off.  Hubby enjoyed it though, so it can't be all bad.  This is what the 'creamy' butter looked like:

The beetroot is cut and arranged with splashes of oil, balsamic, basil and cottage cheese.

The potatoes should then be done and you toss them with some dill, butter, olive oil, salt, pepper and lemon juice.

That's it... see, I told you this was an easy one.

So, our completed meal consisted of the salmon:

The potatoes:

and the beetroot:

This is how my meal looked:

Hubby took a slightly different approach and ate this like this:

In all the meal took way less than the 30 minutes to prepare - we were closer to 20 minutes.

There isn't much to dislike as it is more about arranging ingredients than cooking.  Hubby really enjoyed this one.  I thought it was ok, but the butter concerned me and I didn't really like the beetroot/cottage cheese combination... so mixed reception... on to the next one.

Tofu Triangles

Let me start by saying, I don't like tofu.  I've tried it before - it tastes of nothing and the texture reminds me all too much of egg. Bleugh!

So, tofu seems like the perfect base for dinner right?

We visited Hoo Hing earlier in the day, which by the way is an excellent place to shop.  So many exciting ingredients that you just can't get elsewhere. Check it out here:  http://www.hoohing.com/

So, as usual we bought a few additional 'random' items to try out.  One being tofu, because you must be able to do something interesting with it right?

Having flicked through my books I decided to try some tofu triangles from one of the Chinese themed books.  This will only work with firm tofu!  Sugar, salt, 5 spice, ginger and garlic go in a tub, the tofu is then cut into triangles and coated.  The recipe called for this to then be left for an hour, but I didn't have time.  These then get deep fried for 10 minutes and come out looking something like this:

I have to say these were really good.  Crispy on the outside, soft in the middle and the flavouring actually made the tofu taste of something!  Result!

We had this with some miso soup, which is oh so simple.  Miso seasoning added to water with noodles, veg and of course the left over tofu for about 3 minutes.  This looked a little something like this:

We also have a tradition when we visit the Chinese supermarket.  Hubbie has to buy a drink, some have been good, some not so good.  This week's little gem was this:

Love the label placement!  It actually says Grass Jelly Drink and it is as disgusting as it sounds.

Easter cupcakes

You know a recipe for chocolate cake is going to be good if it contains chocolate, proper chocolate, and not just cocoa powder.

I wanted to make some cupcakes to take to work, I decided to try to make these look like nests with little eggs in... here's how it worked...

The recipe is from the Primrose Bakery book.  You all know how to make cake - ingredients go in, get mixed, and put into cases.  This recipe was a little different to those I have done before as it called for the egg yolks to  be added first with all the usual ingredients.  The egg whites are then whisked separately until they form soft peaks.  This is then added at the last minute and folded in to make the cupcakes light and airy.

The recipes in the book are for either large or small cupcakes. Large is muffin sized, I still haven't worked out what small is.  I put the mixture into standard cupcake cases and it made 24 - it was supposed to make 36 small cupcakes so I guess mine were somewhere in the middle.

I made the chocolate icing from the book again.  This was just butter, icing sugar and more melted chocolate.  It made quite a soft icing so as I wanted to pipe it I ended up adding more icing sugar.

This is the end result:

Apparently they were rather good.

30 minute Chicken Satay

Ok, so technically I didn't cook this... I helped, but Hubbie did most of the work.  This is another recipe from Jamie's 30 minute meals - Chicken Skewers, Satay Sauce, Fiery Noodle Salad and Fruit and Mint Sugar.

Made for our anniversary meal as I was working late.  I love chicken Satay, Hubbie loves pineapple, but neither of us like the other.  So, this is what we started with:

(Well aware the chilli looks odd, this is because we freeze them...works really well)

The food processor comes out again for this recipe and all the ingredients for the satay sauce go in and come out looking pretty tasty.  Some of this goes in a bowl for dipping later.  The rest is used to coat the chicken.

The chicken skewers are really easy to do - I have done skewers before, cut chicken up and threaded it on... Jamie makes it easier, you thread the skewers through the breasts then just cut through once done.  Simples.
These are then grilled, turning later and drizzling with some honey.

The sides for this dish are little gem lettuces, cut so you can use them to scoop up chicken and noodles later and noodles.

The noodles are put in hot water to soak.  Meanwhile, you hit some cashew nuts with a rolling pin, which is always good fun, and heat up the frying pan so you can toast them.

Red onion, chilli, and coriander stalks are chopped in the food processor then put in the serving bowl with soy sauce, olive oil, lime juice, sesame oil and fish sauce - I love what fish sauce does to food, but wow does it smell awful!  Once the noodles are ready and drained they are added to the bowl along with the cashews and coriander leaves.  You toss that together and serve.

Dessert was the pineapple.  I HATE pineapple, but apparently if you don't, this is pretty good... lay slices of pinapple on a plate with some blueberries, in a pestle and mortar pound some sugar and mint leaves and scatter this mixture over the fruit.  Serve with coconut yoghurt.

So this is what the meal looked like:

and this is what my plate looked like:

The boy did good... took him longer that 30 minutes - closer to 45, but he doesn't like having 6 things on the go at the same time and will normally cook by arranging everything in little pots to be added when required so this way of cooking is a little odd for him.

The meal was great, even Hubbie liked the satay and he would normally hate this.  Dessert was ok, but I wasn't really expecting to like it anyway.

Anjum's Beef Madras, Naan and Aromatic Pilaf Rice

So, the last few posts have been a little Jamie orientated.  But my new Anjum Anand book, I love curry, finally arrived!

I have had this book on order for about 2 months, it is seriously difficult to get hold of.  I have one of her other books which is great so I really wanted this too.

We decided for our first culinary adventure from this book we would try out the madras recipe as this is Hubby's all time favourite when it comes to curry.

The madras, being beef, takes a LONG time to cook.  But that is ok, it just makes this a weekend recipe.  The recipe involves browning some onions then adding in an assortment of ground spices (this is where it pays to have an electric spice grinder - I don't miss the days when we only had a pestle and mortar!).  The beef is then added with a little water to stop everything sticking and this is cooked for a few minutes to colour and seal.

Ginger, garlic, tomatoes are added with some whole green chillies and the sauce is then reduced.  Once reduced, you add more water and simmer for about 1 hour 15 minutes (see what I mean about it being a weekend recipe?)

Once this time is up you reduce the sauce AGAIN!  Then add cream and coriander to serve.

The great thing about the curry taking so long, unattended is that you have time to make the rice and naan.

I have made naan before, but Anjum has a recipe for 'instant naan' which is brilliant as it is so incredibly quick.  Naan's involve yoghurt which is a bit of a pain as you can only buy natural yoghurt in huge quantities.  We were making half a batch of the naan as we were just cooking for 2 so this called for 2 tablespoons.  I really didn't want to buy loads, so we cheated and bought a vanilla corner yoghurt, used what we needed and threw out the fruit flavoured corner.  Ok, so this is not natural yoghurt, but it was close enough and seemed to work.  I wouldn't recommend trying this with a flavoured yoghurt though, Strawberry naan may be a little odd.

Anjum gives you a few ideas for flavouring your naan.  We chose to top ours with black onion seeds.  This was the result:

These were delicious, very quick and easy to the point that you have to wonder why we buy then normally.  We will definitely make our own in future.

We also made aromatic rice pilaf to go with the madras.  Normally we don't bother with rice, but I wanted to try the recipe out.  I love making this kind of rice because it really is a throw everything in and leave it kind of job.

The rice and the madras in completed form looked like this:

Sorry about the photo, it is difficult to make curry look appetizing and my photography skills just aren't up to it!

The rice was a little disappointing actually.  I have made this before in a slightly different form from another book and this seemed to work better.  Anjum's recipe calls for simmering for 12 -13 minutes, which I did, but the rice wasn't really cooked so I had to add a little more water and leave it a while longer.  However, saying that it is still much more interesting than plain boiled rice which is duller than a very dull thing (in my opinion).

The madras was HOT.  Well, I thought it was hot, Hubby thought it was mild, but he has destroyed his taste buds when it comes to spicy food.  This was probably my own fault as we have some seriously spicy chilli powder which has ruined many a meal before now.

It tasted good though, and the beef benefited from the hour and a half cooking time.  Hubby enjoyed it and he is the real connoisseur, however he said he would prefer chicken next time.

So, Madras - nice but would make with chicken next time - this is just personal preference though, so if you like meaty, fairly hot curries it is a good one.

Rice - ok, I will probably stick with the other recipe I have though, it is quicker and tastier.

Naan - om nom nom.  These will be making an appearance on our dining room table again sometime very soon.