Jamie's 30 Minute Meals

Andrew's parents gave me some money to get a birthday present this year.  With Chicken's due date the day before my birthday I didn't get round to choosing anything until Mum came to visit.  I decided to get a cook book because, well you can never have too many cook books can you? 

I chose Jamie's 30 Minute Meals because I'd seen the TV show which looked good, and because we really like his other books.  We've got Jamie at Home and Cook with Jamie and use them both regularly.  He's also really funny on TV, and his recipes are inventive yet easy to make. 

Mum also decided to get the book and we've decided to see how many of them we could cook, a challenge if you will!  We thought about cooking the same meals each week, but as Mum pointed out we're in different seasons which makes cooking with seasonal ingredients harder (not that that really matters in the UK, you can buy any type of fruit and veg all year round).

Andrew and I have done two meals so far, on Saturday I cooked Mustard chicken, dauphinoise potatoes, greens and black forest affogato.  I made a few changes and left out the Swiss chard and used espresso in the affogato. While it didn't take 30 minutes (more like an hour) I did enjoy the meal.

Tonight Andrew made Pork chops and crispy crackling, crushed potatoes, minty cabbage, peaches and custard. We only had pork loins so left out the cracking, and I swapped the shortbread biscuits for ginger biscuits, but otherwise stuck to the recipe.  This time it was a 45 minute meal, we're getting quicker!

Now it has to be said while that the presentation in all these meals isn't the best, they are really tasty and full of flavour.  I've eaten veg I usually avoid like spinach and cabbage, and added more flavour to meals than I normally would, the fennel seeds on the pork tonight was tasty!.  All in all, I'd say these are great week day recipes and a good way to get people (me) trying new things.  No more carrots, green trees, and white trees as my three veg for a while!