Jamie Oliver was born in 1975 in Clavering in Essex, jumping straight into the kitchen of his parents’ pub. He swept through the River Cafe, was quickly spotted by TV crews and became an immediate celebrity with Naked Chef. He’s then used his celebrity status to increase the ranges of supermarkets, give disadvantaged youths a career in cooking, fights tooth and nail to improve school dinners and is passionate about everyone having at least one recipe up their sleeve. (Fun fact: I once fixed Jamie Oliver’s website over the phone.)
The recent Jamie Does… series has thrown up some delicious recipes. This cornmeal cake, from his Athens trip, is light, fluffy and stuffed with gooey honey. If I had one criticism, there’s not quite enough honey. I’d up it to 150ml next time. The flavours are still there though, it’s great for sharing. It also lasts for days with no noticeable drying out. Result!
Honey and pistachio cake:
225g caster sugar
75g ground almonds
150g plain flour
200g semolina / cornmeal / fine polenta
1 teaspoon baking powder
Pinch of salt
Zest of 1 lemon
Zest of 1 orange
225g Greek yoghurt
5 eggs
200ml olive oil
150g pistachios
100ml honey
Juice of 1 lemon
Juice of 1 orange
Preheat the oven to 180°C.
Combine the sugar, almonds, flour, cornmeal, baking powder in a bowl. Add the eggs, zest, yoghurt and oil and stir well until you have a thick, gloopy batter.
Pour this into a lined baking dish or cake tin (it will be quite large), or drizzle with oil and dust with cornmeal as an alternative lining. Bake for 30 minutes, until a skewer comes out clean. Leave to cool for 1 hour.
In a dry frying pan toast the pistachios, lightly crushing them with a wooden spoon. Pour in the honey and juices and get everything fluid. Pierce the top of the cake many times with a knife and pour the honey nut mixture all over. Serve in wedges with more Greek yoghurt and some sliced strawberries.
A tale of two halves here: cheeky Essex boy meets Eastern-influenced vegophile.
Jamie Oliver’s current series Jamie Does… visits different cities and squeezes the food out of them. I’ve scribbled quite a few of them down, but his recent Andalucian pork chop recipe really connected with me. He cut a slit in a pork chop, then stuffed it with a juicy raisin stuffing. Mine is simplified to my store-cupboard. I couldn’t quite manage the meat pocket, my chops were more steaks and I couldn’t get enough knife in to stuff without going through. I instead plonked the marinade on top after cooking on one side on the barbecue. The flavours were there but I imagine it would be sensational properly stuffed. Next time I’ll get proper fat chops.
The other part of the dish was courtesy of Ottolenghi’s new book Plenty. I was fortunate enough to get one of these courtesy of their Twitter competition and couldn’t decide where to start, it’s stuffed with great ideas and brilliant (yet simple) invention. I started simple: mozzarella rendered to fluffy, yummy gooeyness. Fennel seeds popped in the mouth among the creamy cheese. Simply delicious.
Moorish pork chops with marinated mozzarella and tomato salad:
For the pork:
4 pork steaks
A handful of raisins
A good splash of sherry vinegar
A dash of extra virgin olive oil
A couple of teaspoons of thyme leaves
For the mozzarella salad:
A couple of tomatoes, cut into chunks
400g mozzarella
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
A couple of teaspoons of thyme leaves
A dash of extra virgin olive oil
1 garlic clove, crushed
Zest of 1 lemon
Fry the fennel seeds in a dry pan until they pop. Put them into a pestle and mortar and crush lightly. Add the thyme, garlic, oil and lemon zest and toss with the mozzarella. Leave this alone while you get on with everything else.
Combine the raisins, vinegar, oil and thyme and leave for a few minutes so the raisins absorb the juice.
Cut a slit horizontally in the side of the pork. Push some of the stuffing into the gap.
Barbecue the pork on each side until nicely browned. Serve with the mozzarella and tomatoes, garnished with a drizzle of oil.
The sun shone in my corner of Rayleigh this weekend, and with family coming over for dinner a roast or stew didn’t seem right for the occasion. I was browsing the ol’ recipe book shelf and a skinny little booklet fell out: Jamie Oliver’s Red Nose Day Recipes 2009. I was bought it as a gift, which is great, but it’s so slender it disappeared between dusty volumes in my collection. Mrs. RoastPotato took one look at this salad recipe and that was it, it was on the menu.
It’s a fairly simple affair, a celebration of tomatoes matched with milky mozzarella. I managed to pick up some arancia variety at the Co-op, and they were beautiful – sweet grape-sized amber tomatoes with bags of character. Paired with some more luscious vine toms they were a pleasing mix. Unusually there was only vinegar on the salad items, with the oil component coming from a punchy basil dressing, and as a combination it was brilliant. Lots of bright, sunny flavours and a celebration of it’s core ingredients. Dust this one off for a barbecue this Summer, it will be an instant hit.
Salad from Capri (serves 6 as a side-salad):
600g mozzarella, torn into chunks
A few handfuls of mixed tomatoes
A handful of baby salad leaves
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
For the basil dressing:
Large handful of basil leaves
Large pinch of sea salt
Extra virgin olive oil
For the basil dressing, bash the basil and salt together in a pestle and mortar. In seconds it will turn to a spinach-y mush. Add enough oil to make a vibrant green paste.
Strew most of the mozzarella over a large serving dish. Hold some back for another layer.
Toss the tomatoes and salad with the vinegar and a sprinkle of black pepper, and drape over the cheese.
Top with more mozzarella, and put splodges of basil dressing around the salad – these will provide big hits of salty basilness through the salad.
Jamie’s Family Christmas featured a recipe for stuffing which, as soon as I saw it, thought would make for a comforting and nourishing meatloaf. I wasn’t far off but I roasted it too quickly – a slower roast next time, so the juice doesn’t get wringed from it.
Meatloaf:
500g pork shoulder
Grated nutmeg
Grated zest of an orange
handful of sage leaves
1 onion
Handful of breadcrumbs
Good pinch of salt, pepper
Blitz all the ingredients in a food processor. Pile into a baking dish and top with bacon. Roast for 45 minutes at 180°C.
To make his stuffing Jamie blitzes pork shoulder, sea salt, pepper, lemon zest, nutmeg, orange, sage and smoked bacon before adding onion and breadcrumbs.
