Everyone Loves a Quickie! Jamie’s 15 Minute Meals

IAMWRITINGTHISREALLYQUICKLY,CHALLENGEDTODOITIN15MINUTES!!!

That’s the idea! 15 minutes, bish bash bosh – delicious, nutritious, super fast food!!  The cookbookclubbers took on this challenge like a hare racing a tortoise.

We all know the kitchen in the cookery school so there was absolutely no reason, having chosen our dishes and prepped the ingredients a little beforehand, that we shouldn’t be able to do this!!

Right!?

Wrong!! Not one of us was able to get our dishes to the table in 15 minutes!! And our lovely pregnant cookbookclubber said she had never felt so stressed at cookbook club before! We don’t want to stress out pregnant ladies.. There was even talk that there was no enjoyment whilst cooking at all!! Surely this is not culinary experience we are looking for on the type of day in which you need a quick meal?!  I would prefer to take 20 minutes and relax (obviously when I say ‘relax’, I actually mean open a bottle and pour a glass).

 Aaron showing off his mandolin and Phil, yet again, showing off his balls!

 Sinead, yet again, made ALL of the salad, enough to serve 34 instead of 17! So yummy though!

There is no denying it, the dishes were very pleasant, nothing to complain about, oh apart from maybe needing to add a bit more flavour in the cous cous!  They were all ‘very happy if it was served to me’ meals.  They all looked bright and colourful on the table and it was very helpful to have a photo of every dish. The food really did turn out just like the very lovely photos.

        

The first to the table was Marie-Louise with her lamb koftes but there was some pre-chopping involved 🙂 Highlights were the chimichurri, watching Phil go shopping for ingredients for his meat balls (delish) and still get his dish up before other people, black bean burgers, pork masala and an orange and pine nut (Catalan market) salad, the dressing on it blew us all away!

Nutritious.. hmmmm we’re not so sure.. Some dishes had a very high saturated fat content but then we have never let a high saturated fat content get in the way of a good meal! ‘Helpfully’ the amount of saturated fat and calories is listed for every dish.. *tumbleweed*

There was salad with everything in this book, oh and parmesan! But there were no desserts! This was the first cookbook club without a dessert and if Nigel can fit a few in to his Real Fast Food, then surely, with a little more thought, Jamie could have too.

The cookbookclubbers found the recipes to be all over the place, the word ‘incoherent’ was used. The lists of ingredients were lengthy and expensive.  We all agreed that our own favourite ‘fast’ meals at home have a handful of ingredients, simple to cook and so are speedy yet delicious.

I’m hearing the bell toll..!! This isn’t a book to learn from (oh other than watermelon and radish do go together) and other than figuring out how to stretch the space/time continuum (thanks Rosie), you aren’t going to get these dishes up in 15 minutes, and if you do, let me know!

If you cook and enjoy cooking, then you will already have enough speedy dishes in your repertoire.  If you are new to cooking or don’t enjoy it, then this book might tip you over the edge if you try to do it in 15 minutes.  With so many other Jamie Oliver books on the market, and indeed, ‘fast’ cookbooks, we didn’t find this one to be our favourite.

Oh and one more thing!  Soooooo many…