Tagliatelle with a Sweet Tomato Sauce and Baked Ricotta

It’s been a busy week and we’ve not cooked half the meals we planned for; however we did get time to cook a recipe from Jamie’s dinners: Pasta with sweet tomato sauce and baked ricotta.

Throughout every book, Jamie frequently boasts about his brilliant, ‘simple’ tomato sauce, but having tried it a couple of times it never ends up as great as the description. Either his recipe is wrong or we’re missing something, so inspired by his ‘bit of this, handful of that’ approach we made the dish with our own instead. It’s really yummy so I’ll post it here sometime.

The dish starts with softening onions, then making a tomato sauce, sweetening it with a small amount of sugar, adding some balsamic vinegar and mixing with cooked tagliatelle. Finally, top with pieces of the ricotta, which had been baked in the oven with chilli, s&p and olive oil.

I’ve been burned (proverbially) by following some of Jamie’s instructions to the letter, including making pizza dough when I created a well of flour and salt and poured the water in the middle – the barrier burst and I ended up covering the worktop and floor with yeasty water. This time, after baking the ricotta, he instructs you to ‘crumble it’ over the the pasta. Asbestos fingers perhaps, so I picked at it with a spoon to get lots of small-ish pieces. It still ended up looking presentable.

The good news is that both Kitty and I enjoyed it. Pasta and a simple tomato sauce is delicious as it is, but the ricotta added both texture and flavour to the dish and I’m sure we will cook it again.

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Mediterranean Salad Tarts

Recipe from BBC Good Food.

Today we went to the Marylebone Farmers market and got some wonderful carrots and yellow tomatoes, so we came home and set to work finding a recipe in which we could use them. Furthermore, it was a rainy Sunday so we were after something which might take our minds off the rain which was lashing down outside.

The recipe was for the most part easy to follow, with the notable exception of step 4 which had obviously been overlooked by whoever was meant to be proof reading. The prep mostly involved sweating some onions and then boiling some whole potatoes – our ‘medium sized’ ones were still like bullets after 10 minutes so they were on for at least 5 minutes more.

When assembling the tarts we didn’t bother going for rounds; it was much simpler just to cut the piece of pastry in two instead of trying to be artistic with a knife. We oiled the tray before putting the pastry on it as we’ve had bad experiences with things being difficult to remove and put on the plate before. We skipped over putting the olives on top as neither Kitty nor myself are a fan of them.

Once in the oven there was a slight dilemma with the baking tray bending due to the heat and this pushed the two tarts dangerously close together. An executive decision was made to put them back in the oven despite them touching but eventually after 10 minutes we tried to put them onto a sturdier baking tray. Some advice if you find yourself in this situation: don’t be as foolish as us. Eventually one made it onto the new tray and the other stayed where it was and after 25 minutes they were both cooked.

In case you were wondering what happened to the carrots I mentioned at the start, we served them alongside the tarts instead of the rocket and green bean salad.

After all the hassle of trying to separate the tarts we wished we’d gone for something a bit simpler but in actual fact they turned out rather well. The tomatoes were sweet, the cheese had started to bubble and the pastry had puffed up perfectly. Kitty was also impressed and I think that despite the issues encountered when cooking, we might try it again but with some different toppings.

Overall the preparation stage took a while longer than the recipe said, but it took less time to cook. Maybe they count cooking the onions/potatoes as cooking time, although I’d argue preparation involves everything up to putting the finished thing in the oven.

Preparation time: 1 hour.
Cooking time: 25 minutes.
Total time: 1hr 25minutes.

Ratings:
Difficulty: very easy / easy / moderate / a bit tricky / very difficult
Taste: disgusting / edible / average / tasty / delicious
Cook again? Maybe.

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Chinese Food Made Easy – Chicken Chow Mein

From the BBC series, Chinese Food Made Easy. Recipe: video or text.

This is actually the third time we have made this dish, but today was the first time we used all the ingredients stated (previously we didn’t have any sesame oil) therefore it’s fine to review! *cough* This is a great recipe to have on hand when you need a really quick meal, although we actually chose to cook it tonight simply because we weren’t sure how much longer our chicken would last!

Preparation is simply slicing chicken, peppers and spring onion and the key to this is very thin slices. We always seem to run into the same problem of the chicken pieces all sticking together once the seasonings and cornflour have been added, but they can be separated once the chicken is cooking. I have an inkling that this may happen because we season the chicken in quite a small bowl – next time a larger dish is probably in order! I’d recommend that once the chicken is cooking, you make sure you know the remaining steps as everything suddenly happens very quickly!

Taste-wise, this is really nice. I can’t really compare it to a chow mein from a Chinese takeaway as I haven’t had a good one in quite a while (note to Chinese takeaway addicts – south west London isn’t for you!), but neither Ted nor I have ever been disappointed with how this has turned out.

Preparation time: 12 minutes
Cooking time: 8 minutes
Total time: 20 minutes

Ratings:
Difficulty: very easy / easy / moderate / a bit tricky / very difficult
Taste: disgusting / edible / average / tasty / delicious
Cook again? Yes, definitely

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Tender & Crisp Chicken Legs with Sweet Tomatoes

From Jamie’s Dinners by Jamie Oliver (also available online).

We thought we’d kick this blog off by actually following a recipe from one of the many unloved cookbooks that gather dust on the bookshelves, sadly watching us turning to the web time and time again. As it calls for an hour and a half of cooking, this dish seemed well suited to the last lazy hours of a much needed bank holiday Monday.

Using mostly store-cupboard ingredients that simply required chopping, this was an exceptionally easy dish to prepare and Jamie’s “handful of this” and “handful of that” measurements remove any pressure – it’s all just going in one dish anyway! We decided to add the optional new potatoes and replaced the red chilli with a green one that had perhaps been hanging around the fridge a little too long. Also, as there are just two of us, we halved all quantities.

25 minutes into cooking and the delicious fragrance of basil was drifting out of the kitchen. Then by the time it came to turning the tomatoes halfway through we were positively salivating! On that note, turning the tomatoes did end up being a little problematic partially because they were somewhat buried beneath the layers but also because they almost collapsed at the slightest touch.

The final result was certainly delicious; the chicken skin and potatoes were crispy and the chicken was cooked beautifully (although admittedly not falling off the bone the recipe suggested it would be!). The tomatoes were delightfully sweet and the roasted garlic – mmm! The only disappointing thing was the quantity. Without the potatoes there would have been very little to this dish as the tomatoes all but disappeared. Next time, definitely more tomatoes (and there will certainly be a next time).

Preparation time: 15 minutes
Cooking time: 1 1/2 hours
Total time: 1 3/4 hours

Ratings:
Difficulty: very easy / easy / moderate / a bit tricky / very difficult
Taste: disgusting / edible / average / tasty / delicious
Cook again? Yes, definitely

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