Yes Jamie At Home is the name of Jamie Oliver’s cookbook and also one of this cooking show. But this is me cooking a Jamie Oliver recipe at my own home. I know this idea of cooking through a cookbook and blogging about isn’t new but in my attempt to cook more and actually use the cookbooks I need to document it. Sorta like homework. I’m less lazy if its homework. Also I’m not cooking through 1 book, I’m merely just cooking any of his recipes from books, magazines and website.

So here is my first attempt of this Jamie at Home weekly post (lets see how long this goes eh?) Pasta Peperonata, found here on his website. Oh man this one was so simple to make but I really hate cleaning and slicing bell peppers. In the recipe, creme fraiche or mascarpone cheese is optional but if you ask me it should be a must. I just love a good creamy pasta sauce. Basically you just slice everything, saute everything, stir in the creme fraiche and add pasta and parsley, done! This was really good! The bell peppers were sweet and tasty though my apartment smelled like peppers for few days.

I watch Lidia Bastianich on television quite a bit. In some ways she stands in for the Italian grandmother I never had, complete with exhortations to join her (and her family) at her table to eat. I’d been meaning to check out Felidia for a couple of years now, but somehow never made it. My family has started a little bit of a tradition in the past few years: when my parents, my sister, and I are all in town, we try to go out to a fancy meal. With thoughts of family in my head, I realized Felidia would be a perfect place to go.

Click to continue…

In my effort to clean out the fridge, I had to get creative with what I got. Actually I didn’t have to get too crazy since I had leftover stuff from making the pasta dish for Jamie Oliver’s Huntington 1000 and 2 week old spinach from my hot pot dinner and a tin of spam my friend, Phae, brought over. It’s basically the same recipe as the recipe I did for Huntington 1000 but instead of peas I used spinach. Also this time I didn’t use any oil or butter and added spam to it. I didn’t really add any salt to this since the spam is salty enough. In the end this was quick, easy and pretty good.

As I noted here that I was going to participate in Jamie’s Huntington 1000. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to cook at first but I knew I wanted something quick, easy and cheap. Luckily on Jamie Oliver’s site he has a “Budget Meal” section that was perfect for me!
Click to continue

There’s an entire story of how Steph and I tried to go to Ikea via their free shuttle service, missed the first bus then the second bus was too small to fit everybody and then our failed attempt to catch the B61. Anyways, while sitting down for dinner at home around 10:30pm with Steph, Scott and Mo, I realized things DO happen for a reason. Steph and I decided to just walk down Court St. and back up on Smith St. instead of trying to go to Ikea. AND because of that we went to Lowe’s with Mo in his car THEN saved Scott because his bike rack broke while moving. SO we all ended up in Mo’s car to Ikea and Fairway. Ah….very magical. Mo and I invited Steph and Scott over for dinner and Mo decided to make turkey meatballs with penne pasta. YUM. He said its a Lidia Bastianich recipe. The meatballs came out really good. They were light and flavorful, not tough at all. The tomato sauce he made was quite good also but it was toooo spicy for me. I’m okay with heat but when I can’t taste the flavor, boo. It’s nice to have friends that love to cook! WIN!

can you guess what the topping is?

Back in late summer, when the Farmer’s Market was fairly bursting with fresh tomatoes, I had the “good” idea to freeze a few of them for use during the winter. This was actually pretty easy to do: I scored the tomatoes at the top and dunked them in boiling water for about a minute each, and then removed them and the peels came right off. The tomatoes went into the freezer on an aluminum pan first, and when they had hardened I put them into a plastic bag to store (this may seem like an unnecessary double step, but it’s important because if you just throw the tomatoes into a bag they will all stick together in one big lump; doing them in two steps avoids this problem — look up IQF if you really care¹). Later that day, my roommate came in and asked me if those were, in fact, tomatoes in the freezer. I said they were. He asked why. “Um, er… you can’t get really good fresh tomatoes during the winter,” I said. “Okay…” was his reply. Anyway, I had them in the freezer and I completely forgot about them.

Then one February day I was trying to decide what to make for lunch and I remembered the tomatoes. That’s when things got really weird.

Click to continue…