One of the things that I regularly keep in my kitchen is a tin of anchovies, most of the time bought at Trader Joe’s. I thought it has been toooo tooooooo long since last I made anything from a Jamie Oliver cookbook and it was time. Also few months ago my friends S & S finally gave me my Xmas present and HELLO it was the Jamie’s Food Revolution cookbook. This cookbook is geared towards people that can’t really cook so to me means simple recipes! I was flipping through the book and came upon this recipe for Pasta Al Pangrattato. All you need are bread crumbs, anchovies, thyme, dried chili and pasta. Luckily I had everything except thyme. Once I got the thyme I prepped everything and made the dish. FYI, the anchovies that Trader Joe sells do not melt in the pan. I have tried it many times and every time they don’t melt like they should. I have bought anchovies from higher end grocery stores and they do melt.

I wasn’t a big fan of this dish because it was too dry. I like my pasta with a bit of sauce but this was hella easy to make and good way to use up old bread.

Click for the recipe

Pork neck fillet. Supposedly it’s one of the cheaper cuts of pork that you can get, definitely underused. Though when I bought 2lbs worth of pork neck fillet, an inch thick from The Meat Hook I got 3 big pieces for about $13. Yes for $13 you can probably get a lot of pork chops but damn these are a total different monsters. At fancy dim sum places you can get a plate of roast pork neck fillets which are 1000x better than regular old roast pork. They’re tender and not too lean or fatty. What makes these babies so good is that there are enough fat inside the fillets to keep them juicy.

Jamie Oliver has a quick and simple recipe for cooking a pork neck fillet here. All you need are sage, lemon, garlic, oil, salt and pepper. I didn’t really follow his recipe instead I cooked the fillet with just salt and pepper. I really wanted to taste how it suppose to taste like first. But I did follow his rule on cooking each side of the fillet for 2mins for a total of 8mins. Man did it come out just peeeerfect. That night I also made some pasta but I just couldn’t wait to try the pork. I cut a piece and popped it into my mouth. It was unbelievable IT WAS SO DAMN GOOD! The fat inside the fillet really kept it nice and tender. I like to credit the awesome pork I got from The Meat Hook guys and also me for seasoning it correctly. Pork neck fillet is now my new bff!

This week of cooking a Jamie Oliver recipe is his Wild Rocket & Chilli Spaghetti recipe. This recipe was super duper easy and quick and tasted good too. Arugula is the same as rocket right? I used wild arugula and chilli flakes instead of dried chillies. Give this recipe a try and I’m sure you can use whatever greens you can find instead of wild rocket/arugula.

This week I decided to make this dessert because I was lucky enough to get stroopwafels straight from Amsterdam! I have couple friends that live there and they brought me some stroopwafels. Yay!!

So all I needed to make this were couple bananas. The recipe said to warm up the stroopwafels in the oven but I was too lazy to so I heated them up in a pan with a super low flame. Oh I can’t tell you how wonderful it smelled in the kitchen of warm stroopwafel-y smell. AAAhhhhhhhhhhhh. This dessert was REALLY good warm bananas, caramel-y, went perfect with the scoop of vanilla ice cream. YUM!

So this week I cheated a bit. The recipe called for pancetta and thyme or rosemary. I didn’t use pancetta, I know its in the title but pancetta is pricey, so instead I used bacon. Also I had 5 strips of bacon in the fridge already. As for the herbs I wanted to use something different, something I have never used before…..like…..tarragon! I think sage would’ve worked good in this dish also. Well I guess I might as well just say that I didn’t use tagliatelle pasta either! Geez… This wasn’t my fault I couldn’t find any so I got linguine.

Parsnips have sort of a licorice taste to it, I think, and so does tarragon. What I made tasted okay but probably tarragon wasn’t the right herb to use because it taste like parsnips, I don’t know. Will try again with sage! Love sage.

This week I decided to do something that required more than half an hour to prep and cook and something more fancy. I went with this recipe for Mediterranean Braised Lamb with Couscous because it was still simple enough for me to make after coming home from work. I spent Monday night buying everything at Whole Foods and prepping. Tuesday night was just throwing everything into the pot and let it braised for 1.5hrs. Easy!

The recipe called for lamb shoulder or leg of lamb but Whole Foods was selling stewed lamb meat for a dollar cheaper so I got that instead.

My relationship with braising anything has never been good. No matter what I braise, it usually comes out oily, bland and thin. I followed his recipe pretty closely and it did not look anything like the photo. What did I do wrong?! Though everyone said it was good and Steph, she loves lamb, said this was her favorite Jamie Oliver dish I have made so far. And for some reason I did a combination of couscous and basmati rice.

Then after letting the stew sit in the fridge for couple of days, I was able to scoop up all the fat that had hardened on top. I also drained the liquid from the stew and used it to cook couscous. The lamb mixture I heated it up on a pan and added some creme fraiche and oh wow! It was delicious! So next time I am going to let any stew that I make sit in the fridge for a day or 2 before serving it.