stuffed cypriot chicken, pan-fried asparagus and cabbage salad

Last night I made Jamie Oliver’s Stuffed Cypriot Chicken, Pan-fried Asparagus, and Cabbage Salad from his 30 minute meals book (I once again omitted the dessert component – an ice cream float). And although I am extremely doubtful I made this in the 30 minute time span, it turned out beautifully. I was a little bit worried about the stuffing of the chicken, the recipe references a video which unfortunately has been taken down online, so I was anxious about whether I was doing it correctly. The stuffing all seemed to all stay in whilst cooking so I was happy with how it turned out.

The addition of a salad or vegetables (or in this case both) with every meal is something I am enjoying with Jamie’s book, it is forcing me to cook more balanced dinners. The downside of his books (and it seems to be all of his books) is that the meals are massive! Now this isn’t a downside for most people, but living alone, that’s a whole lot of leftovers, and a whole week of eating the same thing (at least its tasty)!

the weekend

And the weekend is nearly over…sigh. Sunday evenings are always filled with a slight melancholy of knowing it is back to work tomorrow, but at least, looking back, it has been a good weekend.

A snapshot of what I got up to:

Just before hometime on Friday I got my delivery from the Book Depository – I had purchased a week earlier Thai Food by David Thompson, which is supposed to be the quintessential Thai cookbook, and after a quick look through this weekend it is definitely thorough. The book goes through a lot of the history of Thailand, as well as the workings of Thai kitchens before it even gets to the recipes. I like having this background, especially since I am headed to Thailand early next year. I am going to have to try to pick one recipe to try (due the quantity in the book it will be a challenge).

After an intensely stressful work week, I decided to end it by popping into the new Ikea in Springvale (just around the corner from my work). The place is massive, apparently it is the size of two MCGs – just insane. I didn’t end up buying much, but I did grab a few cheap vases for around the house.

      

I can cross #20 off my 24 before 24 – I finally got around to folding the cranes to fill my vase. I also stopped off at a florist today and brought some colour inside with these beautiful flowers.

   

Tonight I made another meal from Jamie Oliver’s 30 minute meals - Piri Piri chicken, rocket salad and dressed potatoes. I just finished eating it 30 minutes ago and it was delish! The combination of the three components worked really well, even the rocket salad, which I was sceptical about as it was literally just rocket, lemon juice, olive oil and salt – not what I would traditionally call a salad but a great accompaniment none the less. The hero of this meal was definitely the potatoes, the flavours of the feta, chilli and coriander were a refreshing change to usual mashed potatoes.

The rest of the weekend was filled with cleaning (mum coming to stay next week), braving the cold for a night out dancing and also some subsequent recovery napping…

Hope you all had a great weekend – much happening for the week ahead?

yum yum

Just to break up the wardrobe posts – I thought I’d post what my dinner has been for the past few nights. As I have mentioned before, I often bulk cook for the week on Sunday, and then eat my way through it during the week. So this week I have made Jamie Oliver’s Pregnant Jools’ Pasta from his 30 Minute Meals book, and to accompany, another Jamie Oliver, insalate caprese from his Italy book:

Both have been delicious! However the pasta has made a massive batch – so I think I am going to be eating it for another week yet!

a sister visits

My lovely sister came to visit me last night. We don’t see each other as often as we should, being at two separate ends of Melbourne makes it hard to get the time to brave the Melbourne traffic between us.

In honour of the occasion I cooked a meal out of my new Jamie Oliver book – 30 minute meals. I prepared most of the meal the day before, and just did the last minute things before she arrived. I choose the Chicken Satay recipe – however realising I didn’t have satay skewers, it was ended up just being chicken pieces. It didn’t come out looking the prettiest – hence no photos – but it certainly was tasty, I am a sucker for the peanut butter satay sauce. It was my first meal that I had cooked out of this book, and I am still uncertain if I like his new format – he gathers a meal together (so a main, salad and dessert) and the directions are intermingled for all of them together. This will be great if I am planning a dinner party and wanted the three courses, but making just one of the three dishes a bit confusing. But it all went down well, so can’t complain too much.

Unfortunately Bailey wasn’t very hospitable – he was in a funny mood, wanting to play/attack my sister whenever she tried to give him a cuddle. He usually is a very placid cat, and wasn’t actually hurting my sister, but he certainly got his growl on (a playful growl, not a ‘I am going to attack you’ growl). Hopefully he will be nicer to her next time – or I might not be able to convince her to babysit.

Overall though it was so good to see her again – we really should catch up more often.

a jamie oliver triumph

Without the internet the past couple of weeks I have had to turn to my cookbooks for ideas for recipes – rather than my old faithful taste.com. I turned to Jamie’s America – a relatively new book on my cookbook shelves that I hadn’t used yet.  I ended up choosing a recipe from the chinatown section:

fiery dan dan noodles

The recipe was fairly easy to make and tasted delicious!

There are many fantastic looking recipes in Jamie’s book – I’ll need to go back to try and make some more.