… Sweet Naughty Beginning 

So today i’m moving house so obviously it is an ideal day to cook more 15 Minutes Meals in one day that I have done to date.  I will be doing breakfast lunch and dinner.  Breakfast in the old house, lunch in either the new or old house and  dinner in the new house.  It’s seven thirty and for breakfast i’m cooking this meal.  

This seems a bit of a wired dish – chocolate in a toastie for breakfast.  Although I would have Nutella on a pancake for breakfast and so I dodsee that this is too different.  The banana and chocolate all mingle together.  It’s a nice sweet start to the day.  

Anyway time to go and get the van … 

 Who with: Gavin 

How long:   Seven minutes and twenty two  seconds

… Shred Salad, Feta & Herbs 

I love Sundays.  Church and then friends for dinner.  It is very often the best day of the week.

I think this was a first.  I gave my guests for today a choice.  I had bought ingredients for three different meals and I let Peter and Alison chose which meal they wanted.  They chose this and so this is the meal I cooked today.  The remaining two as well as a breakfast will be cooked tomorrow, whilst I’m in the throws of moving. 

I had zero confidence that I would cook this in the time.  There are just so many ingredients today.  I think it must be one of the longest lists of ingredients in the book. 

Five or six minutes in and I get pretty confident.  The lamb is seasoned and cooking away.  The salad is basically done.  It’s still naked.  I haven’t dressed it yet.  But there it is.

I do have a slight issue today. The recipe tells you to put two (large) wraps (laid flat) on a roasting try and another two on another roasting tray and they go in the oven, with the lamb, to crisp up a bit.  My oven is small.  My wraps are big. Some of the very, very limited packing I have done so far (for my house move tomorrow) has included some of my roasting tins.  This I now regret. In the end I cobble together three roasting tins for four wraps. It works.  Or very nearly.  One of the roasting trays is quite large and it over hangs the flame in my gas oven and it does burn the very end of one of the wraps.  I eat that one.

Twelve minutes and twenty one seconds.  I think this is the second quickest.

This is so, so, so tasty.  The salad is lovely.  It (green pepper, spring onions, cucumber, tomatoes, lettuce) is cut so thin, that with the oil and (more importantly) the vinegar it is almost a pickle.  It is lovely.  

Great meal.  Great day.  

Best do some packing now … 

Who with: Gavin, Peter, Alison

How long: Twelve Minutes and twenty one seconds 

… Garlic & Rosemary Chicken

I’ve taken the 15 Minute Meal making on the road again today.  Tonight i’ve come to visit some friends from my last church and I’m cooking for Colin, Dawn, Josiah (who is tonight’s photographer) and Bethany. After seeing Jamie cook this one on TV, they specifically asked if I could cook this for them.  I have also seen this one on TV and it does look great.  I’m quite excited to cook it.

With moving house on Monday, I have had to be a bit organized with the next few meals.  I went shopping this morning to get the ingredients for five meals.  When I have bought food for two, three or four meals before I have always had to go to at least two shops to get the ingredients, sometimes more.  Even when I’m only buying for one meal it can often mean going to at least two shops.  In part this is because i’m being quite fastidious with the shopping and if I wasn’t doing this as a project I would probably buy a substitute ingredient, instead of going to another shop just to get one thing. Today however I managed to get everything at one shop.  Well done Asda.

Tonight it felt a little easier cooking in someone else’s kitchen than it has done before.  I don’t know if that’s because I’m getting used to doing this a little now? Colin and Dawn have a nice kitchen to cook in.

This is a fun one to cook.  The chicken smells great as you cook it with the garlic and rosemary and chillis. The pesto smells really lovely too as it whizzes up in the food processor.  By the way I saw Jamie to a neat little trick on TV the other day with green beans.  Normally you opening the pack, line up a few of the beans, then cut the stalks off those few beans (and repeat). Jamie just forced them to one end of the pack, took a knife and sliced through the stalk end, packaging and all.  I did this tonight and it worked perfectly.  You should try it.

There is a fiddly bit.  The lasagne sheets come in a packet where each sheet is separated by a layer of paper.  It takes quite a bit of time to separate the lasagne from the paper.

As with a lot of these dishes there is quite a bit to bring together at the end.  The dish is served on a lovely old platter, which Colin has been eating his Christmas turkey from since he was a child.

This was a fun meal that tasted really lovely and it was great to catch up with some friends.

Who with: Colin, Dawn, Josiah and Bethany

How long:  Fifteen minutes and fifty non seconds

… Smokey Pancetta, Melted Cheese & Pears 

Tonight is my church home group night and its meant to be at my house and I’m meant to have people for dinner before hand. 

Rain calls off play.  This morning I only barely got into work.  The roads were so flooded.  My battered old car didn’t let me down though! Nevertheless it doesn’t feel right to make people drive in weather like this and so it’s called off.  And so I’m cooking for just two tonight. 

I am very glad that I had chosen this dish.  It looks warm and comforting and exactly like the kind of meal you should have on a bleak raining night. 

Despite my excitement to eat this meal, I’m remarkably sure that I won’t do it remotely in time.  If I was feeling a bit slow last night,  I just wasn’t feeling like I could cook at any speed at all tonight. 

Three or four minutes in my confidence grow.  There really are a lot of ingredients tonight, but it feels like I’m really getting though the recipe. 

I made quite a bit of mess.  More because I prepared the salad on the worktop and carried it to the serving platter on the table, rather than plating on the worktop and carrying the plate to the table, which would have been a much more sensible thing to do.

There are pears in this recipe.  Cooked pears.  Or rather griddled pears.  Gavin is skeptical. I am not. 

I’m done in less than fifteen minutes.  I’m happy and this makes up for last nights, slightly disappointing, time. 

This meal is really lovely.  There is so much salad.  It’s a messy one to eat and my trousers are now more than a little worse for ware from the spillage that they suffered.  In part I think this was due to the greedy manner in which I approached the first few bites … I really need to stop leaving my packed lunch in the fridge when I go to work in the morning …

The pears were great, Gavin was converted.

Jimmy Eat world’s record – Bleed American, provided the background music tonight.  It’s one of those records that makes me feel old because I remember loving it when it first came out and that was more than ten years ago! 

Who with: Gavin (rain ended play for my other guests) 

How Long: Fourteen minutes and twenty three seconds 

… Couscous Salad & Salsa 

I have been quite intrigued to cook this one.  Cooking a little brick of crab seems quite interesting. 

This meal requires that you have preserved lemons.  I have really struggled to find preserved lemons.  It is one of the very few pantry ingredients that has eluded me. I have looked in every supermarket I have been to and never seen them.  As a precaution, before I go shopping, I write down the ingredients for another meal just in case I can’t get the lemons.  But tonight I found them.  Either it has been absent from the supermarket for the last few months, or I have just been very unobservant.  This does however mean that the several meals I have wanted to cooked, seen preserved lemons on the list of ingredients, and had to pass by, I can now cook. 

It’s Gavin’s birthday and I know he likes fish and so this is why I was keen to do this one tonight. So I was extra glad I found the preserved lemons. 

I was far from confident that I would be able to do this in the fifteen minutes. Less to do with the recipe and more to do with the fact that I just felt I was having a slow day. 

It feels like quite a long time before you actually start to cook. That said the only thing that is actually cooked is the crab bricks.  Everything else is raw. There is quite a bit to chop up to go in the crab mix and it is fiddly to wrap the pastry round the small piles of carb meat mix.  I tear the pastry here and there, but it does work out ok in the end. 

It all feels a little rushed tonight.  Constant cooking and far too much consulting the book.  Most nights I can hold a good portion of the recipe in my head. Not tonight.

By 2/3ds of the way through I’m pretty sure I’ll be over the fifteen minutes.  And I am.  In transferring one of the crab bricks to the serving board I drop it on the table and it breaks. 

I’m done in sixteen minutes exactly.

The meal tastes really, really great. 

Gavin says it is probably his favourite so far.  It’s up there for me too.

This one is well worth a go!  

Who with: Gavin 

How long: Sixteen minutes 

… Bacon, Asparagus & Spinach Lentils 

It’s Sunday and I always feel like I should try to cook something that’s vaguely like a Sunday dinner.  A well-fried bit of chicken should do the job.  I watched this one on the TV the other day.  It looked great and I really love lentils. 

I always approach the chicken dishes with a small amount of trepidation.  Partly because it must be cooked through and partly because you have to be much more careful with what it touches, with hand washing after touching the raw chicken etc.  All this means that it takes more time to cook a chicken dish than if you were doing something similar with beef.

The recipe calls for the chicken to be spiced with cayenne pepper.  As the chicken fries this makes my guests cough. This is a nice dish to cook.  It smells great as it cooks. 

I don’t quite make the fifteen minutes, but the end result is lovely.  There is plenty of food here.  It’s enjoyed by all.  Well nearly all Maisie didn’t appreciate the cayenne pepper on the chicken, she did enjoy the lentils.

There was a Christmas market on in Taunton today.  After lunch we take a walk into town, mainly to go for a coffee, but we do have a quick look around the market.  There is a petting zoo for kids.  They have mini pigs … I want one. 

Friends back for lunch after church followed by a Coffee is an ideal Sunday.  

Oh and one of my guests weed on my couch, but I won’t embarrass them by saying which!! 

Who with: Ed, Tom, Hannah and Maisie 

How long: Fifteen Minutes and thirty two seconds 

… Grilled Veg & Salsa 

So it feels like a night for vegetarian food tonight. So that is what is cooked.

This is the third time this week that I am writing this blog at around two in the morning.

It’s been too long since I’ve has falafel.  It is a quintessentially vegetarian food. So much so that it’s a cliché.  If I can add to that cliché I first had falafel was at the Glastonbury Festival …

I have had quite a sedate day today.  I have spent the best part of the day indoors doing mundane tasks. In part preparing for moving next week (with very half hearted packing) and in part just preparing for general life next week (ironing).  All that means that I have watched a bit of TV today.  Hugh Fearnely Wittingstall (River Cottage) has a new show on.  It’s about cooking simple food based around three key ingredients.  The book came out several months ago.  I bought it (of course) and I enjoyed cooking two or three recipes from it.  But this weekend has been the first chance to catch up on the shows based around the book.  They have a lovely, pretty, talented, girl chef on the show … I think I may have fallen a little bit in love …

However that book must sit on the shelf because I can’t cook from it until all this is over.

So tonight is falafel. Believe it or not I have been looking forward to cooking this.  It looks great.  Dinner is planned for about 7:30 to 8:00 ish.  But my guest, Debbie, is called into an emergency at work.  It is very nearly 10:00 before she gets here and afterwards before I start to cook.  My falafel looks wetter and chunkier than Jamie’s does in the book (and on the TV show – I also watched that today). Every thing else goes well and quickly.  This one is easy to cook but fun also.  

It tastes good and healthy.  I really, really liked the veg (seared on a bare griddle pan).   I would recommend this, I really would. 

Who with: Debbie and Gavin 

How long: Thirteen minutes and thirty seconds

… Chillies, Guacamole & Salad 

Today I felt like something a bit comforting.  I don’t really know why.  Perhaps it was the late night last night? I have been looking forward to doing this one from the very first night I bought the book. It looked, great and fun and snacky and comforting. 

I had a feeling this would be done in the fifteen minutes with out a great deal of hassle.  The only fiddly bit was separating the strips of pancetta.  It all went quite smoothly.  The chicken was on in a few minutes.  I made the salad on my big chopping board at the table as well as the little oil/vinegar dip. The chillies and the lime wedges were also prepared at the table.  The guacamole was also quick and easy.  There was more than a little bit too much to go in the baguette and so that will make a nice little snack later (perhaps after I vote later on, on my way to the pub for a pint).  

The only slight issue I had was that my chicken came with one very big breast and one quite small one.  I probably didn’t bash the big one as much as I should have. It was a little over the prescribed 1.5cm thick.  When it came to start making the sandwich (after only twelve minutes to be fair).  The middle of the big breast was just slightly under done.  As it happened I didn’t need all the chicken to fill the baguette and the under cooked bit cooked through in the residual heat of the pan whilst I finished the rest of the meal off.  

This is a messy dish to eat.  Gavin described it as not a first date meal.  It really is not.  I got more than a little bit of guacamole down my face which splirted out the sides as I bit into the baguette.  This was made all the worst by the fact that, for some reason, I almost have a proper beard at the moment.

I think Jamie is playing slightly fast and loose with the term BLT here.  There is Bacon (Pancetta at least) and Lettuce and Tomato.  Just five cherry tomatoes, hidden in the guacamole.  With only four rashers of pancetta, which shrivels whilst it cooks, the only part of the BLT which is really prevalent is the lettuce.  However I think we can forgive Jamie for his misdescription.  This is so much more than a BLT.  With the chicken and the salad and the guacamole and the chillies it is absolutely lovely. 

This really is very lovely.  It is Great. It is Fun.  It is snacky.  And it is comforting. 

Oh and, although this is meant for four, most of it was eaten and mostly by me.  In my defence I have had neither breakfast nor lunch today. 

Who with: Gavin

How long: Thirteen minutes and twenty four seconds

… Spaghetti & Smokey Tomato Sauce 

So it’s a busy night tonight.  I left work slightly early so I could call home and then drive up to Gloucester.  Tonight I was cooking for some of my family before we went out to see a mime act (The Boy With Tape On His Face).  As I said in my last post I saw The Boy whilst at the Edinburgh festival over the summer.  I think I saw around 25 shows in all, most of them good, some really bad and some really, really good.  The Boy was one that stood out.  It was funny and endearing and very, very clever.  I saw this show with my sister Selina and her boyfriend Matt in Edinburgh.  They are also coming to see the show again tonight. 

I have to admit that I do not know how to pronounce cacciatore, which makes telling people what we are having for dinner a little difficult.  I am again cooking in someone else’s kitchen.  This is a kitchen I am used to cooking in and each year over Christmas I usually spend the best part of four or five days cooking in it (as well as at other times).  Nevertheless I still have the same difficulties I have had in all the other kitchens I have cooked in.  I’m just not that familiar with how the cooker works, how hot the hobs get and how quickly they heat up.  Using other people’s equipment is also tricky.  On the whole I have fairly good kitchen equipment and where it isn’t of good quality I’m used to using it and know how to get round it’s deficiencies.   One thing I am learning is that having big pots and pans is very important for quick cooking.  They are easier to use.  It’s easier to transfer from the pan to another vessel and the food just cooks quicker.  I shall be buying my family a decent garlic crusher after the experience I have just had using theirs.

I do struggle a bit with this one and I get a little frustrated.  In principle this should be an easy one to cook well within the time.  It’s the type of food and ingredients that I cook with most often.  At one point the salt pot was tossed aside in frustration (due to lack of salt within it), which is not something I am prone to doing very often at all. 

Frustration notwithstanding.  This is a great meal.  You use skinless, boned, chicken thighs.  Unless I have been very inattentive, I think this must be a relatively new product to the supermarket, as I have only noticed it recently.  I do not cook with chicken that much, or at least not with chicken pieces.  I only like to use free range chicken and I find this expensive.  Free range chicken breast especially so. When I do cook with chicken pieces, if a recipe calls for the use of chicken breast, I often substitute the use of chicken breast for thighs.  It only takes a few minutes to bone them out and they are much cheaper.  Besides thigh meat often tastes better.  I am happy that it is now quite easy to get pre-boned chicken thighs.  

This meal tastes really great.  Again this has been one of the best.  Once the project is over and I am allowed to re-cook some of these meals I can see this one being done over and over again.  There was loads of food too.  I was aware I would be cooking for more than the four people that (nearly) all these meals cater for and so I deliberately chose this meal.  Some meals have 4 specific portions (such as four burgers), but it’s easy to share out a pasta dish among more people.  I did buy some bread to go with it and help the meal stretch out a bit.  Also this recipe calls for 4 chicken thighs.  I thought I had four.  In fact I had five.  So I just used five and this helped a bit too I guess.  I estimate that it took about fifteen seconds to cut each thigh, and certainly not less than twelve seconds … can I have those seconds back? In the end I cooked for five people and there were leftovers which provided a light supper for two more people. 

After dinner it was off to see The Boy.  It had been just long enough since I saw this show that I didn’t remember all of it.  The venue was really lovely and more intimate than the venue in Edinburgh.  There is loads of audience participation in the show and I got called to the stage!! I couldn’t recommend seeing The Boy more highly.  I really can’t tell you what happens in the show – it would just spoil it.  But if you get a chance to see this show, do.

Who with: Mum, Anna, Gordy, Gavin (and Selina and Matt ate the left overs later). 

How Long: Fifteen minutes and twelve seconds 

… Avo & Smoked Ham 

So I haven’t done a 15 minute meal for two days.  This project has taken on a bit of a life of its own and if I go two days without cooking and writing I feel like I’ve neglected the blog and I feel that I need to cook again.  Sunday was busy with church and then we had a meal together after and then I went to see a friend.  All this meant that I was grateful that Gavin cooked for me.  A very, very nice fish pie. 

I have mentioned before that I am, a little bizarrely, now a member of a backgammon team.  Monday night was our first proper match against another pub team.  I think that in general our pub team (made up of more than a few beginners – me included) got thoroughly thrashed.  I am among our teams weaker players, however I somehow managed to win five out of my nine games.  I had intended to do this meal/breakfast/snack for me and Gavin before we went out back gammoning. However a nearly hour long phone call to Sky to cancel my TV subscription made that impossible. And thus there was no Fifteen Minute Meal last night. Why is it impossible for people to believe that you just don’t actually watch TV anymore?

I was also busy doing boring things tonight which meant there very nearly wasn’t a 15 Minute Meal tonight either.  One of those boring things was writing the, over one thousand word long, email to Sky following up from yesterday’s phone call.  Actually it wasn’t that boring.  It was quite amusing. So I nearly posted the email as my blog for today.  But this is a food blog and so …

This is the first one I have just done for me.  Gavin is here (he took the pictures). But he had already eaten. This is one of the breakfasts, so naturally I’m cooking it at 22:30 ish.  Avocados are used a lot in these meals.  I’ve always liked them.  I say always, but I very much doubt I knew what one was until I was well into my teens. But any way from then I have liked them. But doing these meals has given me a newfound love for them.  This breakfast (supper in my case) is really lovely.  Super easy to cook (I think this is my best time). Really very tasty. 

Tomorrow is a busy day.  Work – travel Gloucester – cook for my family (yes a 15 Minute Meal) and then out to see the boy with tape on his face.  I saw the boy whilst I was at the Edinburgh festival over the summer and really enjoyed it.  I’m looking forward to sharing that experience with some of my family.  It will also be the first time any of them have had a 15 minute meal (other than my brother – who was there at the beginning and is partly responsible for this website).

Who with: Dinner for one so just me.

How long: Three minutes and eight seconds.