One of these recipes is the baked Jerusalem artichoke (p208). I can’t quite believe I’m ‘fessing up to this, but back in 2001 I had no idea what a Jerusalem artichoke was.  The artichoke I found in the supermarket was a globe artichoke (a totally different vegetable, but how was I to know?!). In 2001 I also didn’t really know how to prepare an artichoke and didn’t really think to check. This meant my Sunday roast accompaniment was inedible, I had basically baked all the inedible bits and it was way too stringy for even Graham, who will normally eat pretty much anything. Thankfully by 2011 I now know what Jerusalem artichokes are and after 10 years was brave enough to try them again and the dish was actually quite delicious when cooked properly.  As I tried the dish, it also reminded me that we used the sauce for a quick cauliflower cheese for many years after the disaster, so I might also resurrect that dish over winter.

The other dish that holds powerful memories for me is the roasted fillet of beef rolled in herbs and porcini and wrapped in prosciutto (p186). This is one of the first recipes I remember Graham cooking for me and he made it to celebrate my graduation from university in 2002.  I couldn’t believe he had cooked something so adventurous and executed it so well.  This has become a dinner party firm favourite, which most of our family and friends have sampled at some point over the last nine years, and don’t even want to guess how many times it has been made, but judging by the gravy stains on the page it’s quite a few.

This time, I was fortunate enough to have some home made bacon instead of prosciutto to wrap the fillet in but this may also be a good moment to reminisce about the first time I bought prosciutto.  As I was venturing out into the world of Jamie Oliver cooking it became clear that I really should try some of this prosciutto that Jamie uses in so many of his recipes. So off I went to an Italian deli in Didsbury and asked for 100g of “pros-qwee-tow”. I had no idea how to say it and the lady behind the counter had no idea what I wanted, but with a bit more pointing and grunting I managed to get what I wanted and haven’t looked back since.

Polenta Biscuits

For those who know me well, you know that baking is my least favourite part of cooking, but if I’m going to complete my Jamie project I have to do recipes that I wouldn’t normally dream of cooking, and today was one of those days.  Graham is cooking an early Valentines day meal, so I offered to do dessert.  My dessert of choice was Chocolate Pots with Orange Polenta Biscuits.

Ready to go

There were many recipes in the Naked Chef that I felt needed some improving, whether it be incorrect quantities or cooking times, but so far I thought book 2 was much better, until today.  If I’m baking I need a foolproof recipe, but that seems much more difficult to find with baking.  As there are only two of us I thought 25 biscuits was a little excessive, so I halved the recipe. No dramas there, there were two eggs in the original recipe, which is usually the hardest part to reduce but two eggs to one is easy!

Ready!

But apparently not as straight forward s I’d hoped, or failing that, Jamie got something a bit wrong. If halving the recipe, surely that would mean half the quantity of biscuits.  I made the mixture, which was an interesting consistency, and started dishing out the portions. I tried to divide the mixture into twelve, but the portions seems a little large, so I did the best I could.  After the allotted 5-6 minutes cooking time I opened the oven to find ginormous biscuits, that even to my untrained eye did not look cooked! And I hadn’t even use all of the mixture!  I placed them back in the oven for another three minutes, and another three minutes, so after 12 minutes they were just about cooked but much larger than I’d hoped.

Chocolate Pots

Thankfully, I am starting to get a baking instinct and had reserved some of the mixture, which I proceeded to divide into another nine biscuits. These ones looked a little more like the ones in the book, and only required an additional 3 minutes cooking time. So Jamie, can you please have a look at your quantities and timings for this recipe, because they don’t really work, and I would guess I would have about fifty biscuits if I’d followed the whole recipe and aimed for biscuits the size of the ones in the pictures.

The chocolate pots on the other hand are so simple to make and delicious, but again, serve more than suggested, but I don’t mind eating them three days in a row!

Tray baked cod

With a kilo of homemade bacon in the fridge how could I not combine my Nic and Jamie project with Charcutepalooza? Jamie is very keen on using bacon and pancetta in his recipes and he always suggests you use what is available to you, so if that means substituting pancetta for bacon then I say go for it! The recipe that caught my eye before I went shopping yesterday was the tray baked cod with pancetta and runner beans. 

Fish and Chips

Vegetables here in Oz are very seasonal, and highly weather affected (we cannot get asparagus at the moment because of all the floods) but runner beans are in, even if they do call them European beans. I also find it difficult to source some of the fish in Jamie’s recipes, as the southern hemisphere fish are a little different, so instead of cod steaks, as the recipe suggests, I had to use Blue Eye Cod fillets. As the fillets don’t have a bone, I had to reduce the cooking time, which meant the bacon was not as crispy as I would’ve liked, but it was still very tasty, and more than acceptable as a way to serve the homemade bacon, which for me is still the star of the show!

I also have to put in a little mention for the awesome King Edward potatoes that we bought at Eveleigh Markets on Saturday.  Not only did they make fantastic roasties on Sunday, but they also made fantastic chips today! I can see a regular trip to the markets coming on, just for potatoes!

Baked Mushrooms

As I continue to work my way through the Return of the Naked Chef the weather is Sydney is getting hotter and hotter. This means I can’t even give most of the recipes a second glance as it’s just too hot, but then I remembered the joys of indirect cooking on the BBQ. With a gas BBQ with a lid, you can heat it up to a specific temperature reasonably accurately and then turn off the central burners to create a kind of oven. This discovery opened up a whole new chapter of the book…Most of the vegetable chapter in this book is baked veg. Well I couldn’t wait another 3 months to bake all the lovely veg, so to the BBQ it was.  Some of the recipes involve being wrapped in foil, like the carrots, and others I had to improvise (by wrapping them in foil!). Foil packages work a treat on the BBQ so we’ve had some awesome baked fennel and beetroot and then finally I tried the mushrooms which can go straight on the grill.  I don’t think Jamie will mind that I didn’t completely stick to the recipe as they have all been perfect accompaniments to a summer BBQ dinner!

Fig, Prosciutto and Buffalo Mozzarella Salad

I know I haven’t blogged about my Jamie project for a few weeks, but if you look at the recipe tally you will notice the numbers increasing.  The good thing about most Jamie recipes is that they are quite cook-able on a week night, so I have been steadily ticking them off and photographing the results. But then disaster struck! The photos were deleted before they were downloaded and couldn’t be retrieved, so although I had things to write about there was nothing to show for it, which is very disappointing. I have now rectified that, so here is my round up of the last month or so of The Return of the Naked Chef..The weather has been so hot in the last week that I haven’t really felt like cooking or even eating that much, especially as we don’t have very good air conditioning.  We have had a record 6 days in a row reaching more than 30 degrees centigrade and the night time lows have been not a lot lower than 25 degrees most nights.  This has meant I’ve been able to get stuck into the salads and light meals.  I also can’t walk past the figs in the shops when they are in season, so figs and the basil, balsamic vinegar and pine nut dressing seemed like a match made in heaven when paired with a little prosciutto and buffalo mozzarella.

Beef Carpaccio

Then there was the seared carpaccio  of beef served with a crispy Thai salad. This was also meant to be a great sultry, summer supper, expect it took a little longer to prepare than I had anticipated, so I was still pretty hot by the time it was served, despite the fact that it was served cold! It tasted amazing though, and every bit as good as I’d hoped for the past ten years that I’ve been looking at this recipe and not quite getting around to cooking.

Aubergine stracci

I’m also still harvesting some wonderful produce from our garden, so when the first aubergine was big enough to pick I had to find a suitable dish to show off the produce.  By chance, there was a pasta recipe that would fit the bill.  The recipe called for a can of tomatoes, but I also had enough home grown cherry tomatoes to replace the can for something a little fresher.  The recipe is stracci, spicy aubergines, tomatoes, basil and parmesan.  I even went to the effort to make the home made stracci, which is pasta shape I haven’t tried before, but as a big fan of pappardelle, I knew I would love this one just as much.  When you read the description of the stracci, you would think this would a quick pasta to make, but I actually found the random cutting to be slower than the uniform cutting of pappardelle, so I think I might stick to what I know and like in the futre. I don’t think it would alter the taste of the dish, even to an Italian!

Salted and Spiced Prawns

And finally we had a craving for Tapas a few weeks ago, so we indulged with a couple of recipes from the tapas, munchies and snacks chapter.  I managed to persuade Graham to eat the anchovies, just as they are, which is something he always refused to do in the past. They were good quality anchovies, from a deli in Leichhardt, so not your average tinned fish, but then they were also marinated with lemon, garlic and chilli – delicious!  We also tried the salted spiced prawns and the marinated squid with chickpeas and chilli.

So all in all we’ve had a good few weeks of eating and there is plenty more to come!

Spaghetti

I snuck in an extra day off work today to recover from the last 3 1/2 weeks with the parents, but rather than a relaxing day off I’ve ended up clearing out the fridge and freezer. Not exactly what I had in mind for my day off, but it was pretty productive.  Apart from the large number of jars of chutney that will plague my fridge for the next twelve months, I also found numerous half finished jars of stuff that were all years out of date, and 32 egg whites waiting to be made into something other than meringue! Suggestions on a postcard to…

All this activity meant that the morning disappeared very quickly and early afternoon was upon me without any food passing my lips! So instead of rushing to the mall for take-out sushi I remembered the joys of Jamie Oliver’s quick pasta dishes.  We discovered the joy of the quick pasta not long after we were married, they are perfect for a post work dinner, and are often quicker to prepare than getting a take-out!  The quick pasta became a regular fix in our house, with favourite recipes depending on the season, and the best bit is they all take as long as it takes to boil the pasta.  First there was cabbage, pancetta and mozarella; then there was the real carbonarra; and one I don’t do very often now due to difficulties getting hold of decent ingredients – parsnip and pancetta.

The beauty of the Nic and Jamie project is I’m now on book two, where Jamie first introduces the joy of  the quick pasta, and unbelievably there are many I haven’t tried. So today was the perfect opportunity to try one. Spaghetti with olive oil, garlic, chilli and parsley (p125). This is probably one of the most simple pasta recipes I’ve tried, which is probably why I’ve overlooked it in the past. It was definitely quick, and fairly tasty, but definitely a dish for a very quick lunch on the run, and not something I would serve up to my starving husband after a long day at work!

I-Thai Tortellini

Before I launch into the next book good a proper I thought I’d set out some more ground rules. I’ve had a quick flick through book two, and disappointingly noted that some of the recipes have been copied word for word into the second book, so I can tell you now I will be ticking them off and not repeating them, as I think there is little point. So that gives me a head start on a least 7 recipes! I’ll have this booked nailed by the end of the month!!!

So I actually managed to get a couple of recipes done before the start of the new year. The I-Thai Tortellini (p122) made a fantastic nibble as part of of the Asian inspired Christmas lunch spread. Sounds like a strange idea but chicken as a tortellini filling is delicious and frying them gives a great crispy edge, making it more Asian than Italian (the coriander and water chestnuts also help!).

Tomato Salad

The tomato salad (p58) was an excellent way of using up some of the excess tomatoes we have from our bulging cherry tomato plants, and when Jamie said “use as much basil as you can afford” I don’t think he appreciated how well basil grows in the garden in Sydney!!! I can see that this is another recipe that will be cooked over and over again when the tomatoes are in season.

I also found a recipe to use up my glut of zucchini that had seen better days, and probably weren’t fresh enough to be served up as a vegetable dish but were definitely god enough to be made into smashed courgette paste (p43) along with the olive tapenade for one of our public BBQ picnics (we were being photographed by the pommie tourists up in Palm Beach, AKA Summer Bay!!!)

And finally there was the fennel, thyme and garlic rub for the pork chop that I threw on the barbie tonight. It made a simple piece of meat very tasty. I look forward to trying some of the other rubs and marinades as similar to the salad dressings, they are another thing I often make up and you either get stuck in a rut, or don’t quite use the right quantities.

So I’m now eagerly reading the book and working out dinners for the next few weeks!

Well you may not have seen the film or read the book, but Julie and Julia is a true story based on the online memoir of Julie Powell…

Ephron’s screenplay is adapted from two books: My Life in France, Child’s autobiography, written with Alex Prud’homme, and a memoir by Julie Powell. In August 2002, Powell started documenting online her daily experiences cooking each of the 524 recipes in Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and she later began reworking that blog, The Julie/Julia Project.

Nichola saw this film on one of the long flights en-route for a surprise visit to the UK and really liked it. And it got her thinking…. “maybe I should cook every single Jamie Oliver recipe – EVER!”.

So this is the start of that project, starting with book 1 – ‘The Naked Chef’ – and in time moving on to the others.

This is good news for Graham, who just has to sit back and reap the rewards of having a wife who just LOVES to cook!!

Chickpea and Leek Soup

Soups and Broths 6/6 This was an easy chapter to complete as I started the project in winter which is typically good soup season!  This led to my first really good discovery of the book, the leek and chickpea soup. This one will be rolled out every winter without fail! There was also a very nice tomato and red pepper soup.

The only slight negative from this chapter was the Asian Broth’s, they really did need some fish sauce, but I’m not sure the UK was ready for that in 1999.

This chapter also led to the realisation that I often only cook from recipes with pictures so it was a good challenge as I had no pre-conceived ideas of how it should look.

Salads & Dressings

Salads and Dressings 18/18 This Chapter was a bit of a slow starter as I like to make the most of the few cold months there are to cook heartier food, but as soon as spring sprung I embarked on the salads and found a couple of amazing salads that I hadn’t looked twice at before.  This chapter highlighted the fact that sometimes it’s a good idea to follow a recipe even for what seems to be the simplest of ideas, for example the tomato salad or the mustard salad dressing. The tomato salad was so good we had it three times in one week, although that was partly to do with the buffalo mozarella I served with it!

Pasta

Pasta 21/22 So here comes my first non-cooked recipe. I completed all but one of the pasta recipes due to a lack of stinging nettles and borage.  I don’t feel like I missed out though, as I have definitely mastered the art of ravioli and tortellini, which is the main skill in cooking fresh pasta, and once you’ve done that you just alter the fillings and sauces, so I need the challenge of another book to further my pasta making skills.

I also discovered it takes a lot of patience to make enough filled pasta for a main course, so pasta for lunch and entrees has been the order of the day. Fresh pasta also freezes very well.

Fish and Shellfish

Fish and Shellfish 13/14 Another incomplete chapter, but for a good reason, it is very difficult to get some of the fish used in the book in the southern hemisphere. I had to replace red mullet for other white fish as recommended by Jamie, however, I couldn’t find a suitable substitute for skate.

This chapter succeeded in encouraging my husband to enjoy fish a little more. The only downside to this chapter was the recipes became a little repetitive, and many of the recipes were not that exciting, which is why I have never cooked them before and will probably never cook them again.

Pork Chops with Pesto

Meat, Poultry and Game 18/18 Here was a chapter I was convinced I wasn’t going to finish because of the difficulty in tracking down some of the raw ingredients, but at a price I managed to find rabbit and guinea fowl, and with Christmas around the corner I found some pickled pork for the ham – slightly different to galmon, but it did the job very nicely, and I will definitely be cooking this one again if I can find the pickled pork at other times of the year.

The North African lamb was the surprise dish of this chapter, which I had never done before because there was no picture and the title doesn’t really do it justice, it’s actually a fabulous curry.

Roasted Red Onion

Vegetables 11/12 The first comment about this chapter is life is too short to stuff an onion. The effort of preparation did not match the taste of the finished dish – sorry Jamie.

I also couldn’t finish this chapter due to the short season for fresh globe artichokes. I did given them a go, and feel like I’ve mastered the art of preparation, but they were just too expensive and available for too short a period of time to complete them all.

Apart from the tempura (which was delicious) all of the other vegetable dishes were quite ordinary and didn’t really need a recipe to achieve.

Black eye beans

Pulses 9/9 This was an unexpected chapter and required the most purchasing of ingredients I wouldn’t ordinarily buy. I now have a cupboard full of dried pulses which will probably remain there for the unforeseen future.  The highlight of this chapter was the braised lentils, which I have done countless times since and will continue to do instead of the boiled puy lentils that I normally do from other Jamie books.

I have to confess I didn’t see any great benefit in using dried chickpeas and butter beans over the good quality tinned ones I can buy.  The black eyed beans with spinach and pease pudding were both excellent new discoveries and the only two recipes I would bother soaking pulses over night for. the majority of recipes in this chapter would be equally as good with canned pulses, and the combination of herbs, olive oil and vinegar gets a little repetitive after a while. I also thought some of the quantities of vinegar was a bit much in some of the recipes, and if I were to do some of them again I would follow my instinct rather than the recipe.  I think this is what Jamie encourages in later books but the first one is quite prescriptive.

Risotto and Couscous

Risotto and Couscous 9/9 An easy chapter to complete as risotto has been a regular staple in our house since receiving my first Jamie book as a wedding present back in 2000. The interesting part was actually following a recipe for risotto which I haven’t done in a long time, but it provided me with a good excuse to try some new flavour combinations, with the seafood being the favourite. I have always shied away from seafood risotto thinking the fish stock would be too overpowering, but it was subtle enough to change the flavour of the risotto without being too fishy!

The couscous recipes were quite unremarkable, and I think Jamie’s method of boiling rather than steaming is not necessary. There is no way I could’ve simmered the couscous for 15 minutes with the quantity of water he was suggesting and why would you when you can steam with twice the quantity of water to couscous, and get perfectly cooked couscous every time. I’m guessing couscous was a little exotic in 1999!

Bread

Bread 6/9 A difficult one to complete, especially when there are usually only two of you in the house, as it’s pretty difficult to make a small batch of bread, and the nature of fresh bread, with no additives means it doesn’t last very long.  So I did the best I could with this chapter, but now I’m all breaded out! Home made bread is one of those things whereby the idea of it is sometimes nicer than the reality. The rolls were probably the highlight and the pizza recipes have been a for favourite for many years. I gave it a go, and succeeded but I won’t be cancelling the weekly bread order in favour of making my own just yet, definitely a special occasion, for a crowd type of recipe.

Desserts

Deserts 12/12 The biggest turn around for this project is I can now make deserts, and an even bigger turn around is I actually quite like them now.  I’ve always had a savoury tooth, and would always choose an entree over dessert, but having cooked some of these desserts I am starting to change my mind.  I think all of the desserts in this chapter were fairly simple, and I’m looking forward to trying a few different options as I plough on through the return of the Naked Chef. If I was Jamie’s editor I would’ve suggested that 5 tart recipes in one book is just a bit too much and maybe you should vary it a little.

Bits and Bobs

Bits and Bobs 16/17 A bit of a random chapter, I did the recipes because when I start something I like to finish it, and most of them were related in some way shape or form to another recipe in the book. However, when it got to the point of having to make a third salsa in a week, I called it quits, the coconut, tomato and cucumber relish was fairly similar to the other salsa recipes and the chance of finding half a coconut was slim to none. I also thought, that having pickled chillies the week before I deserved to be let off this one. I haven’t tried the chillies yet as they take two weeks to marinate but again, it was another of those “life’s too short…” moments.

So I declare I’m done! I’ve cooked 95% of the recipes in the Naked Chef! When I embarked on this project, I thought it would be good fun, but never really thought I’d actually finish it, but having done one I’m hungry for more, and I’m hooked on the idea of cooking recipes I wouldn’t normally give a second glance!

In summary, nearly 12 years on this book is showing it’s age (I was a little surprised by the imperial measurements!) and Jamie’s talent’s in writing having definitely improved over the years (I have every book he’s written on my shelf). I have found a few errors, including photos of recipes clearly showing ingredients that aren’t in the recipe; Titles with ingredients that aren’t included in the recipe; vague cooking instructions that would be difficult for novice cooks to follow. But having said that, I enjoyed the challenge so much I am going to move onto The Return of the Naked Chef and see how far I get!

Marion and Buster!

I think I’m done! Well as done as I’m going to be! 6 months of cooking, and 133 out of 140 recipes, that’s not a bad effort and I think I have legitimate reasons for not cooking the recipes I haven’t cooked. 95% – you can’t be disappointed with that!

So the final recipe was a bit of an event. When I first read the book this was the recipe that I skipped over – Perfectly cooked lobster. LOBSTER?!?! I can’t justify the $90 a kilo to cook lobster. But then when I asked my parents the fateful question, “What do you want for Christmas dinner?” The answer was lobster. I wish I hadn’t asked, but then I realised it would serve two purposes:

1: Keep the parents happy.
2: Complete another recipe from the book!

So off to the fish market we went.  Because it was meant to be cooked alive, we decided it would the Christmas Eve dinner as I didn’t want the responsibility of keeping an expensive bit of seafood alive for 48 hours but 24 was just about do-able. Now, we did a recce a couple of weeks ago and found some small lobsters that didn’t require a second mortgage to purchase, and naively thought they would be available in the crazy run up to Christmas. But of course 2 days before Christmas, with prices inflated, there was no sign of said lobster. Having just bought a crab and a suckling pig it was decided we should compromise on the lobster and buy a marron instead.

A marron is an Australian native freshwater crayfish that looks a lot like a lobster but is smaller and a little more active! Cooked in the same way as a lobster, with reportedly similar taste, this was the answer at half the price per kilo.

We followed Jamie’s advice, and having kept Marion the Marron alive for the required time we put her to sleep in the freezer, and plunged her head first into the pan of boiling water. Served with some home made garlic mayo, she tasted pretty good. It was a shame there wasn’t a bit more to go around but with some crab and the final salad recipe it was enough to keep us going.

So in summary, cooking live seafood was an experience which I’m glad I’ve tried once, but I don’t think I will be repeating the experience in the near future!