Jamie's Griddled Kinda Nicoise

My infatuation with Jamie Oliver is escalating. What started as mild disinterest is now a full-on passion. I was very kindly given Comfort Food for Christmas and am gearing up to cook something from that soon (pregnancy makes everything very slow) but the other night I was cooking for my mother and husband both of whom are trying to be virtuous in January and I'm very aware that the bump isn't getting its 5 a day so I randomly picked this Salad Nicoise from 15 minute meals. No potatoes and no egg but supremely delicious and finished by three of us and pretty easy to cook (and no it didn't take me 15 minutes but I'm a pretty slack cooker). Will be cooking this again and again - nice tuna steaks aren't cheap but the rest of the ingredients are and you can use what veg you have in your fridge.

There were quite a few things I tinkered with on this recipe, for example I'm not a huge fan of green beans and couldn't get the mixed green and yellow from the recipe so I used half beans and half broccoli tips.Where I've made changes I hope I've made them clear - I think the thing with salads is they are endlessly adaptable depending on what you have and like. I also refuse to serve anything on a board so I did this on one big platter... as you can see from the picture.

Griddle Tuna Salad
Serves 4

350g mixed green and yellow beans (or half green and half broccoli tips)
½ a baguette (I used a small one from Sainsburys)
12 black olives (Jamie says stone in, I say stone out)
3 ripe mixed-colour tomatoes (or red ones)
1 romaine lettuce
20g feta cheese
1 lemon

Tuna and Dressing
1 big bunch of fresh basil
6 anchovy fillets
1 lemon
4 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
2 x 200g tuna steaks (about 2.4cm thick)
1 tbsp red wine vinegar
1 heaped tsp wholegrain mustard
1 tsp runny honey

You will need a medium sized saucepan with a lid, a griddle pan and a liquidiser/magimix.

1. Line the beans up and cut off the stalks, put them into a pan of salted boiling water and put on a lid (I did my broccoli and beans for the same length of time).

2. Slice the baguette into 2cm chunks and, if you are following Jamie put onto the hot griddle pan. I think basting them in a tiny big of garlic oil pre-griddle would be lovely. Turn when golden.

3. Pick and reserve 10 baby sprigs of basil then rip off the rest of the leaves and blitz in the liquidiser with the anchovies, juice of 1 lemon, the extra virgin olive oil and a splash of water.

4. Pour about 40% of the dressing on to a nice serving platter (Jamie uses a separate one for the dressing and tuna and then places the whole lot on a board with the salad. I used one big platter and it worked very well).

5. Rub 10% of the dressing into the tun and season with salt and pepper. Pour the rest of the dressing into a big bowl with the vinegar, mustard and honey then mix together. Drain the cooked beans, remove the stones from the olives. roughly chop the tomatoes and add to the dressing and mix together.

6. Put the tuna on the griddle pan and cook for 2 minutes on each side or until blushing in the middle. How you cook your tuna is a matter of personal preference.

7. Chop the lettuce into 2cm chunks, tear the toasts into croutons and arrange over a large board (or on the platter) with the lettuce. I think it's nice to toss half the croutons in the bowl of tomatoes and dressing so they get a bit soggy.

8. Scatter the dressed beans, olives and tomatoes over the top. Tear each tuna steak in half or more and add to the dressing platter (or put on top of the dressing in the centre of the platter if you are not using a board).

9. Scatter over the reserved basil leaves, crumble over the feta and serve with lemon wedges (if you remember).

Jamie Oliver's Incredibly Delicious Chicken Salad

As you may know my latest love is Jamie's 15-Minute Meals and anyone who's been coming to our house has been getting fed from it. I could do each recipe as I try them but as I've yet to try a dud this would be a bit of a one theme blog and I would be in trouble with the publishers. So I thought I would go for this one because so far it has been the one that Joe made the most excitable noises over and it's the one I thought he'd like least because it has 'salad' in the title and he's a boy.

It didn't take me 15 mins but not far off and it was really filling. We finished it between three of us but we're quite gluttonous - it would do four (as the recipe suggests) for lunch or if you had a pudding. I left out the lemons though because I hate them and THIS IS MY HOUSE JAMIE. And the cress. I just can't be doing with cress.

Incredibly Delicious Chicken Salad

Serves 4

for the salad:
1 head of broccoli
4 x 120g skinless chicken breasts
1 heaped tsp ground coriander
olive oil
1 mug (300g) Bulgar wheat
2 preserved lemons
1 bunch radishes
2 spring onions
½ a bunch fresh mint
2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
3 tbsp red wine vinegar
2 tbsp sunflower seeds
1 punnet of cress

to serve:
4 tbsp fat-free natural yoghurt
2 tsp harissa
1 lemon

1. Fill up a medium pan with a lid, with boiling, salted water. Trim the end off the broccoli and cut the head to florets and add to the pan., cover and boil for 4 minutes.

2. On a large sheet of greaseproof paper, toss the chicken with the salt, pepper and ground coriander, then fold the paper over and bash with a rolling pin til it's about 1.5cm thick. Put into a large frying pan with 2 tablespoons of olive oil on a high heat turning after 3 or 4 minutes until golden and cooked through.

3. With tongs, remove and drain the broccoli (leaving the water in the pan on the heat) and put on a hot griddle until nicely charred.

4. Cook the Bulgar wheat according to the instructions on the packet in the broccoli water with the preserved lemons if you are using them.

5. Halve or crush the radishes, trim and finely slice the spring onions and the top leafy half of the mint then toss it all in a bowl with the extra virgin olive oil and vinegar and season to taste.

6. Drain the Bulgar wheat and tip into a large serving bowl, then mash and mix in the preserved lemons and arrange the broccoli on top.

7. Toss the sunflower seeds in the chicken pan, then slice the chicken and add to the salad scattering over the seeds and snipping over the cress.

8. Serve dolloped with the yoghurt and drizzles of harissa and with lemon wedges on the side.

Jamie's 15 Minute Meals

I don't usually do full book reviews on here. I think it's more useful to review individual recipes that I have tried that worked, however I love this book so much it's getting it's very own post. SO THERE.

I wasn't that keen on the Jamie's 30-Minute Meals: A Revolutionary Approach to Cooking Good Food Fast . Because there was often three parts to each meal there would usually only be one part that I liked the sound of and that seemed to defeat the point of the book for me. I bought it for Joe because he wanted it and it really is his sort of food and he really likes the whole timed aspect of it (never taken him less than 45mins but our kitchen is tiny and Jamie doesn't factor in having to actually wash up half way through) and it's really the only recipe book he cooks from. But while I was at a friends house waiting for her to change my godson's nappy I picked up Jamie's 15-Minute Meals and flicked through it and was incredibly surprised to find I wanted to cook 85% of the things in there. That's huge - I'm an incredibly picky eater.

I may be getting old (veering towards 31) but I recently decided that if I could have ten minutes to sit down with a celebrity-that's-not-Slash, Jamie Oliver would be in the running for that prestigious honour. Why? Because I think he is generally interested in people (and it's all about me obvs) and is actually a nice guy I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU SAY.

Anyway I bought Jamie's 15-Minute Meals and tonight I'm planning on cooking my second thing from it and I've only had it a couple of weeks This is unheard of. It just lives on the kitchen table tempting me to cook from it. If tonight's recipe goes well and I remember to take pictures then I will post it up here but for now here are some reasons why this book is awesome...

1. It has great compromise food. Quite often Joe will get home at 9pm and want to eat. I don't want to eat at 9pm but I'm too gluttonous to cook and watch him eat and not eat anything myself. It has a lot of lighter, salady things but with meat in that suit both of us and actually are great for this time of year when you want to cook something filling but not meat-and-two-veg.

2. It's completely different to his other books. New recipes, new types of ingredients, slightly new way of writing. It must be really hard to keep churning them out even if you do have new recipe ideas but it's a completely different book to Jamie's 30-Minute Meals: A Revolutionary Approach to Cooking Good Food Fast (and I mean that in a publishing way not in a literal stupid way...).

3. There are great ideas but it's not too wacky. I don't like lemon (but you know that), I don't like courgette or aubergine but I also don't want to be driving to a business park in Park Royal (no park, no evidence of royalty) to buy some suspicious smelling paste or a gadget to make edible cellophane (sorry Heston). If there's something I don't like (preserved lemons in tonight's recipe) I leave it out or substitute it and it doesn't really matter. You are not going to get halfway through a recipe (supposedly 7.5 minutes in) and discover you need something that is hard to find during daylight hours let alone 8.30pm. Don't get me wrong sometimes I want wacky. I do. But with an 18 month old, two dogs and a husband who thinks that playing football on a Tuesday until 9.30pm is fun I mostly want yummy and simple.

4. I LOVE JAMIE (sorry that slipped out).

5. I prefer his outfit on Jamie's 15-Minute Meals to Jamie's 30-Minute Meals: A Revolutionary Approach to Cooking Good Food Fast (this is a well rounded review isn't it).