… Caesar Salad 

For some reason I forgot to write about this one.  I cooked it, created a draft blog post, sorted the photos out but didn’t write anything.  It’s now two and a half months since I cooked it.  But I do actually remember a fair bit about it.  I cooked this for my friend Tom, before we embarked on a night of playing a board game.  I remember this being quite easy to cook.  It was a good excuse to use my, then new, and very cool looking, liquidizer.

There was quite a lot of griddle pan work.  With the ciabatta to be done first and then the chicory, with the pancetta.  I like the look of my griddle pan, but it isn’t actually that great to use.  I struggled a bit, with it.  It just doesn’t give the satisfying charred lines in the way you’d want.  Must remember to buy a new one.

The chicken was cooked in a reasonable time, which hasn’t always been the case in cooking the 15 Minute Meals.  The polenta gives the chicken a lovely crispy crust.  It was succulent too.  Despite my frustrations, at times, with cooking chicken as part of the 15 Minute Meals, I have learnt something.  I have learnt to cook chicken breast just right.  So it’s cooked through but still juicy.  Before I have been a bit scared of chicken and so erred on the side of caution and over cooked it.  I don’t do that any more and I’m enjoying chicken much more for it.

The dressing is amazing and beautifully green.  Much greener than the picture in the book. 

There was loads of food.  Delicious and hearty.  Try it. 

Who with: Tom 

How Long: Fifteen Minutes and Forty Seconds

… White 

So there’s not much to say.  This is a white smoothie.  It is white. It has milk and banana and almonds and a bit of honey.  It’s nice.  It’s very nice. I don’t even mind the banana.  The almonds make it taste lovely. And it takes no time at all.  I have it all to myself. It’s one I really must do again.

Who with: Me 

How long: One Minute and ThirtyTwo Seconds 

… Wicked Mole Sauce, Rice and Veg

So I’m moving to Bath in about five weeks.  I did a deal with my mum – I could store some of my stuff in her loft, if I board out her loft.  That’s what this weekend is about.  The loft has been boarded out, the first carload of my stuff has been moved up there and now I am cooking. 

My sister, Selina, has had her eye on this meal for a while, so I’ve saved it for her. She’s here tonight so it’s time to cook it.  

Normally when I cook away from home, I am really very prepared.  I have all the ingredients bought and I have any bits of kitchen equipment I don’t think my host will have with me. Tonight I am not prepared.  So, after the DIY tasks are done, it’s a quick shop and then cook.  Or it should have been. However buying the Okra (ladies fingers) proves unsuccessful in the supermarket, so it’s a detour to an Asian supermarket to try to buy the Okra … they have it so all’s well. The other issue is the lack of dried Chipotle chilli, which I can’t get in ether shop so I substitute some chipotle paste instead. 

In general the cooking went quite smoothly.  The time taken was awful. The worst one yet. Everything seemed to go quite well. I guessed it would be one of those that went a bit over time … but it was one that went badly over time. 

I haven’t actually looked back over all the dishes, but I do get the feeling that I miss most often with the chicken dishes and I do again today. Badly. The worst time to date I think. 

The chicken goes in quite late into the recipe (almost two thirds of the way through the written recipe). You poach the chicken, which I know is a little unusual, but I really like it.  It keeps it very moist.

It is however not cooked in time.  Everything else is, or at least nearly is, done in time.  It’s a horrific ten minutes late … but it’s a good one.  There is chocolate in the sauce.  A bit odd (before today I’ve had chocolate in sauces with venison but not much else savoury) but nice.

Bad time – good meal.  I can’t blame the foreign kitchen really – I spend the best part of my Christmas holiday cooking in it so its not like I don’t know the cooker and where things are … 

Who with: Mum, Gordy, Selina, Matt and Gav 

How Long: Twenty Five Minutes and Forty Two Seconds 

… Grilled Prawns and Noodle Broth 

Ok so it’s been a little while since I cooked this. 

Things I remember:

1)    It did taste really good.  The taste, the smell, the texture.  All very good. 

2)    We eat all the squid balls and prawns and about half the noodley broth between the two of us.

3)    More and more I am trying to make the end product like the picture in the book … yes I am a tart.

4)    Gavin said he would do the washing up … I took him at his word … he did the washing up two or three days later … I was out the house … apparently disturbing rotting squid makes quite a horrid smell!!

Things I don’t remember: 

1)    Why it took 18 and a half minutes

2)    Why it took Gavin two or three days to wash up

3)    Where I was when the offensive rotting squid smell invaded the house.

Other things:

1)    A meal very much worth trying

2)    I can’t remember 

Who with: Gavin 

How long: 18 Minutes and Thirty Seconds 

… Orange

I’m making porridge for breakfast this morning.  Having guests to stay makes me think about breakfast.  It’s a meal I never make for myself, brunch on a weekend is the best I can do, but when I am made to or make it for friends, I do really enjoy it.  However today as well as the porridge it’s another smoothie. My new fruit buying and freezing thing means I have frozen (reduced price) chucks of mango in the freezer.  That means that making this smoothie is possible with out any forethought.

It’s orange.  It tastes nice.  It has ginger in it, which gives it a nice little kick. porridge and this is a nice start to the day 

Who with: Pieter and Gavin

How Long: Three minutes and thirteen seconds 

… Grilled Peppers, Salsa, Rice & Beans 

Tonight I’m cooking for my friends Pieter and Gavin.  This one seemed quite an easy meal to cook and I barley had to do any shopping for it. I get to use my new liquidizer again today, which means I’m just about beginning to feel justified in buying it. 

This is quite a simple meal to cook.  There is far too much sauce and it’s very hot, so only a tiny bit is eaten. 

The rice is really very nice.  I think I’m quite sold on the whole ready made rice from a pack thing (or at least in certain circumstances).  It works well with spiced, flavoured rice dishes. 

I really have gotten into the whole half assed re-fired bean thing.  I really like proper re-fired beans and can and do cook them properly.  However this idea of chucking tinned kidney (or similar) beans in a frying pan and cooking them until they pop and split open is a great quick way of getting that effect.  Maybe … maybe … its better.  You get that pulsey-fluffy texture but also that gnarly, almost over cooked, texture on the outside.  It is great.

Again I was beaten by the chicken.  You put it on quite late in the process (one third of the way through the words in the book).  The chicken wasn’t cooked in time. I also straggled with individually warming the torillas in the griddle pan. 

Nevertheless, it was a nice meal.  Followed by a beer or two.  Not a bad evening at all.

Who with: Gavin and Pieter

How Long: Seventeen Minutes and twenty eight seconds 

… Chicken Salad 

It’s Saturday and I have my friend Tom and his daughter Maisie round for lunch. 

This is a meal with bulgur wheat, which is something only introduced to me from cooking these 15 Minute Meals.  I do like it. 

This meal required radishes.  A simple ingredient to buy.  Today I went to the nearest supermarket, my least favourite, but I couldn’t be bothered to walk very far.  This particular supermarket probably ranks the lowest in its ability to supply all the ingredients I need for a 15 Minute Meal, but its strength is its good range of British ingredients.  I think radish is a fairly normative British food, so not one I expect to struggle with today.  I do though.  After looking in the fruit and veg section, failing, looking again, doing the rest of the shop, looking again I resolve that I will have to walk to a second shop.  Then I have a brainwave and I leave the queue to the self-service tills to see if I’m right … I am. There are radishes in this store.  There only at the self serve salad bar … but they’re there.   In the end I end up paying an unacceptable amount for the radishes, because I fill the smallest salad box with them, without all the nice expensive little bits you would normally stuff in there.  However no walk to a second shop for me today.  

This was a really, really nice meal. 

 It cooked fairly easily, but I struggled with the chicken again. Am I not bashing it thin enough? Is my hob really that crap?  Whatever it was I was again in the position where everything was done, but the chicken was pink (raw) in the middle.  So it took a fair bit longer. 

A very nice (incredibly delicious you could even say) meal.

Who With: Tom and Maisie

How Long: Nineteen Minutes and Twenty Seven Seconds 

… Purple

I have now become a fruit buyer.  Not that I wasn’t one before. But now I have specifically become a buyer of fruit from the reduced section.  I get home, bag it up, freeze it.  It seems it took one smoothie making experience to turn me in to this type of person. 

This one doesn’t have banana in it so I think there is a good chance i’ll like it.  This is a bit more fiddly to make than the green smoothie because I have to de-stalk pears.  The frozen blueberries are responsible for the purple colour and the cold. 

I really do like this one.  I do like the deep, if slightly speckled, purple colour.

Again there is enough for two, so I leave a glass outside the back door for Gavin, my house mate, to have after he has finished with his morning witch craft or, as he’d prefer me to call it, yoga. 

Who with: Gavin

How long: Three minutes and forty-five seconds

… Chopped Garden Salad 

This is one of the meals I’ve looked forward to cooking from the start.  I don’t think I’ve ever cooked orecchiette before.  It was one of the store cupboard ingredients I bought before I started the project but has since sat in the cupboard (or actually wicker basket in my case).

As I go on with these meals I do think I’m getting better at cooking quickly.  I make less mess.  I make fewer mistakes.  I intuitively know if I need to mix of the order of the cooking process to compensate for my equipment (mostly my shitty hob).

There isn’t much to report about the cooking process.  It was on time (nearly). It was a tidy cook. 

There is a fair bit to report about the eating.  The Orecchiette was great.  It’s quite a thick pasta and so it has a good bit of bite to it. Basically this was a simple pasta dish that tasted great. The salad was great too. The little revelation with this salad was that the broccoli stalk went in the salad.  Now I’m not one of those people who automatically throw away the stalk, I use it in soups, and if I’m just boiling or steaming broccoli the majority of the stalk will be served.  But I’ve never had it in a salad before.  The stalk is just grated as part of the salad and it tastes great. Really great.  Maybe this isn’t the best part of the meal.  But it is the most interesting. 

Who with: Gordy and Gavin 

How Long: Fifteen Minutes and fifteen seconds 

… Green

So I predicted that as part of doing this project I would buy a few bits of equipment.  And several pots, frying pans, a (too small) bamboo steamer later that has turned out to be true.  I very specifically predicted that this project would be an excuse to buy the liquidizer I have wanted for ages.  Somehow I’ve held off and all the meals that required a liquidizer I managed, just about managed, and on one occasion didn’t manage, with my food processor. Today, thanks to John Lewis and their click and collect (at your near by Waitrose) service I picked up my new liquidizer today.  Yesterday was a random day of, and fatally I spent the morning in front of my computer.  I googled the liquidizer I wanted, something I do form time to time, and I discovered it now comes in blue (and other colours) so I don’t have to get the almond colour version. And so with a few clicks that was it, ordered and arriving tomorrow, now today.

I don’t really like smoothies.  Which I think is because I don’t really like banana.  I do like banana. On it’s own.  But not in stuff.  Fundamentally banana is in a smoothie. So I don’t really like them.  But I have four to make so here goes.  The green one. 

The recipe requires a sliced and then frozen banana.  I slice and freeze mine today.  By the time I get fed up waiting to make this, the banana is only partly frozen, but I guess it will be ok.  I make this smoothie, it’s enough for two, and I do quite like it.  It is very green. 

Oh, by the way it’s spinach that makes this green.

Who with: Me

How long: Three minutes and thirty-four seconds