Risotto Three Ways

We've recently had to cut back on our gluten intake. According to the science, overdoing gluten intake, as is the custom in the Western diet, does nothing good for you. Gluten gives foods a great, chewy texture but so far our experiences with the wonderful world of glutenless living hasn't made us miss the stuff much. Anyways, all this to say that since we are steering clear of gluten for the moment we've been experimenting with loads of stuff but also relying on some good old recipes which don't sound like a hippy chemist sat down to write it (just in case some hippy chemist cook is reading this, I have absolutely nothing against tapioca, coconut, rice, chickpea, almond or buckwheat flours...I'll even be sharing some recipes soon...imagine gluten, dairy free pizza!). So to get back on topic - again - the good old recipes I'm referring to are Asian foods which usually rely more on rice and soy than on wheat. In this case however, we're talking risotto. Gooey rice mixtures full of delicious potential.

I started off by making a monster batch of basic risotto from the ever-reliable Cook with Jamie book. The ingredients are:
- 1 and 3/4 pints vegetable or chicken stock
- 2 tbsp olive oil (something Mr. Oliver can't leave out of anything)
- 1 tbsp butter
- 1 large, finely chopped onion
- 4-5 sticks of celery, also finely chopped
- 1 pound 6 ounces risotto rice (I used medium grain rice and it was fine)
- 9 fluid ounces of vermouth or dry white wine.

The preparation is long but well worth the effort. Basically, you sweat the vegetables, incorporate the rice and slowly add warm stock, letting the rice fully soak it up before you add more. You repeat this till you have something almost very gooey. I say almost because this is a basic recipe in which you will add more deliciousness and liquid.

For anyone whose ever made their own pasta sauce or mixture, risotto is very similar. Just put stuff that works well together and add to the risotto. The only difference with the risotto is that you have to be careful not to add too little or too much liquid or you risk ruining the whole texture which is the whole point of risotto. Because if you don't care about texture, just microwave a bag of instant rice with a can of mushroom soup and stop reading my blog.

Our first recipe was an adaptation from the same, previously mentioned book. We replaced spinach for kale (it's what we had on hand), chopped and sautéed the kale in some olive oil with garlic. Once cooked down, we popped the vegetables in a food processor till we had a very fine mixture; to this we added a touch of nutmeg. We then finished off half of the basic risotto recipe with 1 and 1/4 pints of vegetable stock, mixed in the kale mixture, added the juice of half a lemon and added cheese: parmesan and goat's cheese for me, daiya for my wife. The great thing about risotto is that it tastes as if you drowned it in cream and butter but is absolutely the healthiest stuff on the planet besides laughing children ;)

Since we still had half the basic risotto recipe left, we decided to make a mushroom risotto. We did the same as above but instead of the kale we put mushrooms, onions, shallots, fresh thyme, garlic, and loads of pepper. I then gave a generous splash of lemon to brighten up what could be something very un-springlike. Topped with a bit of parmesan (or daiya) and olive oil, this dish was quick and easy. Quick because it was made with leftover basic risotto mixture and easy because we'd succeeded once so the odds of failing were much lower.

So if you're counting, that's two variations of risotto which build on one basic recipe. Yet here comes something even more beautiful. With the leftover mushroom risotto - this stuff is like the Energizer bunny - we formed patties, rolled in chickpea flour and fried in coconut oil. This was amazing! The smooth, gooey texture of the risotto was given yet more texture with the crunchy outside. To be fair, it would have been better if we'd done some proper breading (i.e. flour, eggs and then the chickpea flour) but we're also avoiding eggs for the moment. We served the mushroom risotto croquettes - cute name, non? - with some beer butt chicken and a simple salad.

To wrap this whole entry up, I'd like to formally state that I love risotto. We're good friends now. Maybe we'll go on a picnic together this summer by the seaside and I'll see if it's as lovely cool as it is warm.

Jamie's Warm salad of crispy smoked bacon and Jerusalem artichokes

The modern palate, it has been said, has been kept from bitterness. We love sweet, salty and at times sour. But that fourth part of our tongue is too often neglected. Except for really hopped up beer.

This recipe comes from Cook With Jamie. Once again, the recipes from this book are simple perfection. You can't mess up a Jamie Oliver recipe unless you're incompetent in the kitchen.

The crown jewel of this particular dish, for me, is that the Jerusalem artichokes come from my own garden. I hadn't tasted them yet since I don't often eat potatoes and what I heard about JAs is that you should treat them like potatoes. Maybe so, but they are very different. This recipe called for the JAs to be boiled. Their texture is softer than potatoes; more like rutabaga in that regard. Their taste is delicate, slightly sweet. Kept warm, they went perfectly with the radicchio, Boston lettuce, parsley, cooked smoky bacon from the market and fresh red onions. The vinaigrette is simple: olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I put the vinaigrette in with the bacon and onions, tossed in the JAs, warmed, tossed with the lettuces and served.

Topped with thin slices of parmesan, this was really a delicious salad. We ate it as a meal in itself which can get a bit much if you're not used to the bitterness of radicchio and the richness of the JAs. But it really is a gorgeous salad. Who knew warm salads could be so pleasurable?!

Proper Roast Beef

Growing up, roast beef was some dry crusty grey meat that wasn't even edible even when drenched in gravy. But beef is beef. A roast is no different than a steak. And I don't remember my father eating his beef well well done so I don't know why he treated his roasts that way. Oh well, I know better now.

The inspiration for this traditional meal came from two places: 1) my discovery of an organic beef farmer at the Dieppe Farmer's market who raises his cattle in pastures where they are free to graze and live a chemical free life, and 2) yet another recipe in Jamie Oliver's infinitely useful cookbook, Cook with Jamie. I also took out a meat thermometre, something I don't even think my father knows exists.

Mr. Oliver's recipe calls for roasted beets alongside the beef but seeing as we're past the season of variety at my local farmers markets I made due with root vegetables. I chopped up some ruttabegga, small potatoes, organic carrots (that actually taste like carrots) and the sweetest little onions you've ever tasted. I pressed some of the onions and garlic into the beef, topped these with a handful of thyme sprigs, wrapped the whole thing in bacon, and then slathered it with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Propping my beef contraption on some carrots - for a roast mustn't boil - I cooked the whole thing, excluding vegetables, for an hour in a 400 degree oven. I then added the vegetables and cooked the whole thing for another hour, making sure to baste the whole thing from time to time. I also stuck the meat thermometre in at this point. I wanted my meat medium well. Not dry.

Once the meat was cooked, I put it in a bowl, covered it in aluminum foil and let it rest for 20 minutes. In the meantime, I drained the juice from the pan, reduced it and kept roasting the vegetables.

Thin slices of beef with sweet roasted vegetables (the onions were the best since I only peeled them and left them whole) and all deliciously swimming in reduced jus. Very good, very well cooked and very different from what my childhood memories.

My girlfriend even said that this was one of the best things I've ever made. Now that's an accomplishment!

Homemade Pasta At Last!!!

They say that third time's a charm. Well this is the third time that I tried making homemade pasta and I refused to fail. Thankfully, Jamie Oliver's recipe in Cook with Jamie is much more helpful than his recipe in his first ever cookbook where only egg yolks were required. Plus it also helped that I scored some "tipo 00" flour at an Italian deli on a recent trip to Halifax.

The simple recipe calls for 5 cups of tipo 00 or pasta flour with 6 large free-range eggs. The flour should be the finest and silkiest one you can find...apparently, silky flour = silky dough = silky pasta. As for the free-range eggs, I think that if you know that food is unethically raised or pumped full of chemicals then you should stay away. So free-range is common sense.

You must first make a well in the centre of the flour, break the eggs into the well and start working the whole thing together. If you're lucky, you should end up with a nice lump of dough that you could just knead for about 10 minutes making it all soft and smooth. This was the exciting part for me because I knew that I'd finally made pasta dough. When you've got so few ingredients, it's all about texture. So then I just had to wrap it up in plastic wrap and let it sit in the fridge for half an hour. Half an hour with a smile on my face.

One thing that I would consider as an absolute must is a pasta machine. It's either that or rolling the whole thing out by hand. Not something I'd enjoy doing. Even when the dough was so smooth and easily worked. So with my huge ball of dough, I divided it up, pressed it flat and then ran it through the largest setting of the pasta machine for a about 6 runs, folding it over every time to work the dough.

Trying to keep the sheet of pasta's edges square (fold the rough edges into the middle and pass it through the machine) all I had to do then was roll the pasta progressively thinner in the machine. Once I had that, I had a few options. The first I tried was cutting it with a sharp knife but this mostly just pressed the dough together thus making it a bitch to seperate every individual strand.

Fortunately, I have an attachement on my pasta machine to cut fettuccini or spaghetti. Fettuccini was on the menu the first day. On the second day of pasta gluttony, we went out and bought a mould to make ravioli. It was so simple. Just press one sheet into the dimples, drop a bit of ricotta or other filling, lay another sheet on top and press. They all come apart beautifully and make a really nice little meal.

I really love the fact that I can make my own pasta. Next time, I'm trying it with semolina since I find the smooth white flour lacked texture. But I really can't complain too much. Making things from scratch is a pleasure in itself. Eating it is only half the fun. Ok, maybe four sixth of the fun. Anywho...

Jamie Oliver's Amazing Potato and Horseradish Salad

So far, Cook with Jamie is a cookbook that has not only never dissapointed me, but constantly impresses me. At first this recipe might just seem like a fancy potato salad. But once you start to eat it...oh...it's beautiful! And this is even considering that I didn't have half the exact ingredients as the recipe called for.

The recipe called for boiling some new potatoes. I don't know what I had exactly, the bag just said mini potatoes...whatever that's supposed to mean. For the sauce, you need the juice of 2 lemons (I used the bottled stuff...major faux pas), the yellow heart of a celery, some chopped fresh parsley (I only had cilantro and a bit of thyme), a few heaping tablespoons of horseradish (I used what was left of the organic root I was given), and 3 heaping tablespoons of crème fraiche or sour cream (I only had the inferior sour cream). Season to taste with sea salt and fresh cracked black pepper. You then had to organize the coated potatoes on some bresaola which is basically cured beef. I had cold deli roast beef which wasn't quality nor cured but was the only thing available in my backwoods area. However, it did the trick. I also didn't bother sprinkling some tarragon leaves over the whole thing but I did pour some cold pressed olive oil over the whole thing which is something Mr. Oliver seems to be unable to go without...he pours olive oil on everything...see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bu90jsp6nkE.

This is undoubtedly the best potato salad ever. If you serve this at a dinner party or bring it along with you at a potluck, you will gain immortal fame amongst your friends and family. When you're dead and gone, they'll say "Do you remember that time Jenny brought that gorgeous potato salad? Wasn't that a wonderful salad!" It's true. That's what they'll be saying.

Eton Mess

I rarely make deserts. But with all of the egg whites I had left over from my failed attempts at making pasta (Mr. Oliver wanted a half a dozen egg yolks), a meringue was an obvious and delicious choice. Plus it allowed Mr. Oliver to redeem himself from his result-less pasta recipe.

To start, you have to make the meringue. Now this really isn't difficult. All you have to do is make sure that you whip the egg whites and sugar long enough so that the sugar is completely dissolved. You then have to decide if you prefer a spongy or a chewy meringue. By spongy I mean the stuff you find piled a mile high on top of lemon pie (look at me, I'm a poet). I prefer a chewy meringue so I make a flat meringue or many little meringues. Basically, I'm just trying to increase the amount of crust I'll have.

For the Eton Mess, yet another recipe from Mr. Oliver's Cook with Jamie, you need to bash or mush up the meringue (depending on whether you have a chewy or spongy meringue). You then whip some whipping cream up and mix it with fruit and a small bit of balsamic vinegar. You could put vanilla in your cream or in the meringue as well as alot of other flavours but I didn't have any vanilla and I thought that simple would be best. I wasn't wrong.

For the fruit, I had some yellow prunes, pears and grapes. I don't see why you can't make up your own mix. Mash up half of the fruit in with the balsamic vinegar and leave the other in chunks. Then just mix the fruit, fruit mixture and cream together and layer with the bashed up meringue. It's relatively light as far as deserts go but it's oh so delicious.

Cream, fruit and sugar. There's no way you can go wrong.

Roasted Pig's Feet with Wilted Kale and Mashed Veggies

Seeing as I didn't have my girlfriend with me at the market last week, I made a few purchases that I would only have made alone. The blood pudding was the first purchase. Pig's feet were the second.

Looking at the fatty pig's feet, I assumed there would be a fair amount of meat on them. They surely smelled delicious as they roasted for 9 hours. This was based on another of Jamie Oliver's recipes from Cook with Jamie. In the "overnight slow-roasted pork", a pork shoulder is called for. It is to be scroed and rubbed with olive oil, sea salt, and fennel seeds. Uncovered in a roasting pan atop halved onions, carrots, garlic and fennel bulbes (which I replaced with potatoes), the pork roasts at 250 degrees for 9 to 12 hours. Fat side up of course.

You then make a sauce by dumping a whole bottle of white wine and a pint of vegetable or chicken stock into the roasting pan for the last 30 minutes of cooking. The result is a very tender and sticky meat along with nicely roasted veggies and a sauce which, once reduced, makes a nice sharp gravy.

I mashed up the veggies and wilted some fresh organic kale to go along with the pork. The kale was nice and bitter, the veggies were rich and chewy, and the pork was tender, sticky and fennely like the recipe promised. The only problem was that there was little to no meat on the bony legs.

I would recommend this preparation for any roast but I would also recommend using a cut with a bit more meat. I mean, if you're going to cook something for 9 hours, it better be plentiful. Oh well, there's always next time. Maybe a leg of lamb. Or a whole duck. Mmmm...

Jamie's wife's favorite Saturday afternoon pasta

Yet another recipe from Cook with Jamie, this pasta dish is simple, quick and pretty good. It's not of the same oh-my-god-this-is-the-greatest-thing-ever caliber (see Sticky Finger Lobster) but it was pretty good. Jamie himself admits that he can't see what his wife sees in this dish but she loves it and so, being the good husband that he undoubtedly is, he added it to his cookbook.

As always, I'm not going to give you his exact recipe but I will tell you what the ingredients are. Basically you've got red onion, red chilli, cinnamon, fresh basil, canned tomatoes (or try fresh, they're in season right now up here in the North Hemisphere), canned tuna in olive oil (I bought some lovely line caught, selective fishing tuna which, fingers crossed, might have less mercury in them), penne, lemon zest, olive oil and the pasta cheese of cheeses parmigiano reggiano. Combine as your cook logic dictates and you should be fine. And maybe not providing amounts is actually a good thing. You're not following some Brit's scientific equation. You're actually going at it for yourself...more or less. Anyways, it's worth trying. Really simple and good.

Too Much Lobster

Yeah, that's right. I said too much lobster. Maybe I should say almost too much lobster. Over a dozen to myself alone in one week. A real Maritime experience and I had to wait for my father in law to come down from Northern Ontario to fish before I could experience it.

So anyways, my father in law's a real fishing nut plus he thought he'd kill two birds with one stone and come see us at the same time as he went lobster fishing. Now fishing lobster isn't open to anyone. You need a license to even put your hands on a lobster cage. But the friendly fishermen don't mind if you got out with them on there boat so long as you stand out of the way. Two men to a boat who are working on one side and you stay on your side trying to not get sea sick. We went up one day to go fishing - at 5 in the morning no less - and I found out that the trick to not being sea sick is to keep busy. So I chopped the frozen mackerel's in half or put the elastics on the lobsters's pincers or simple walked around. As soon as I sat down for an extended period of time I could feel my heart rising into my throat and my head getting a bit groggy. Not a very pleasant sensation.

Another thing I found out is that the lobster traps attract more than just the lobster. This being the end of the spring lobster season - the lobster getting "sick" as they say here in order to shed the shells - the traps were mostly empty. Not even enough in them to pay for the fisherman's gas which means that we came back to shore a good 4 hours ahead of schedule. But I did manage to swap a few crabs from the traps before we left. They don't charge for these. They're barely worth anything and they'd have thrown them back in the water anyways so we got a good little treat. And a few hours of taking these apart. You thought lobster was hard to dissect. Try a small crab. Now that's a real pain in the ass.

So true to North American fashion, we ate the majority of our lobster with garlic butter. It's the first time I ate my lobster cold and I think I prefer it this way. When you cook your lobster it tends to get tepid by the time you've started to eat it anyways. So being cold already, you just crack and dip. You don't have to rush. Unless you've got a cooler full of lobster you've got to get through. But I don't think that that's the case for most normal people. Plus our cold lobster had been cooked the same day it was taken out of the water and eaten no more than a few days after that. Fresh is an understatement.

Being a gourmand (or gourmet?) I couldn't be satisfied with eating my lobster just one way. So in the photo above you can see the cold cooked lobster, a ramekin full of fresh garlic butter and a mess of Jamie Oliver's Sticky Finger Lobster taken from Cook with Jamie. This recipe was simply amazing for someone whose never eaten their lobster any other way than whole. The sauce was a mixture of loads of pepper, honey, chopped green onions, garlic, ginger and lemon juice. Though the recipe calls for slicing a live lobster in half and then slathering the different sections with the sauce before baking them in the oven for 12 to 15 minutes till done, I only had cold cooked lobster available. But it worked beautifully anyways. The sauce caramelized and became sticky and delicious. Topped with fresh cilantro and chopped red chilies (or my Thai Hot Sauce which gave it a really delicious flavourful kick) I will certainly eat my lobster like this again. What the hell, eh! When you've got enough lobster to experiment you take the advantage. The results are pure deliciousness.

With the crab, so far, my girlfriend made a crab dip which can be found on almost all apetizer lists in restaurants across Canada. You can find a recipe anywhere on the net but it's basically just a creamy crab dip that I prefer serving with toasted pita slices rather than salty nacho chips. I broiled a good layer of parmesan cheese on top. It makes for a nice apetizer or rich lunch. Loaded with fresh crab meat, you can't go wrong.

I've also got a recipe for crab on toast that's simply dressed with lemon juice and a few other things but that's for another post. Plus that recipe calls for the brown meat inside the shell but cracking a lobster open I wasn't sure what was poop and what was meat. I'll have to go get a course from my local fish monger. I'm not putting anything in my mouth that's brown unless I know for sure that it's meat.

Blood Pudding in All Day Breakfast Salad

The fact that I was making a warm salad from the first chapter of Cook with Jamie was one thing. I mean, warm salad. Not even hot. Just warm. But the real kicker was that the recipe for "all day breakfast salad" asks for a major yuck factor ingredient, blood pudding. I thought to myself, what the hell, I'll try it. I'll get it from the French guy at the market who I know I can trust for quality and ignore all the stories I heard my parents relate where their parents had made them eat blood pudding. At least I could say that I ate it. I wasn't undaunted by a little blood.

To tell you the truth, I don't think it was the blood pudding that made this recipe kind of gross. You start off by cooking the blood pudding cut into rings with the bacon. Well the French guy at the market warned me that the blood pudding would come apart and that's the first thing that happened. But then you have to through some stale bread in. Now the recipe doesn't tell you to drain the fat. And it certainly doesn't mention anything about the bits of blood pudding that are floating around in the fat. So when you throw the bread in, all that happens is that a sort of greasy mush forms.

You then have to mix the mush with a handful of yellow endive leaves, an English mustard vinaigrette and top the whole with a poached egg. So I didn't mind the taste of blood pudding. Really. It's more of the grease factor and the fact that everyone I talked to made their ugliest face when I told them I had eaten blood pudding. Supposedly it's best when warmed up with apple slices. I unfortunately didn't have a chance to try this out. The blood pudding appeared in the trash before I could use the rest of it. It's a mystery how that happened. I swear.

Pâté au saumon with Funky Salad

I was sitting at my desk at work and suddenly I had a craving for pâté au saumon, a Québécois expat food I grew up on. What this meal is is basically just a meat pie whose protein is salmon. The only salmon that might be found in the middle of the Boreal forest where I'm from are those who are hopelessly lost or cans of this rich pink fish. So it's a Pacific sockeye salmon meat pie in a Québec recipe, made by a guy from Northern Ontario whose presently residing in New Brunswick. How's that for an all-Canadian meal?! (Sorry prairies...)

To offset things, I made a recipe from the best known British chef, Jamie Oliver. When it comes to greens, I would like to consider myself an amature. Truth be told, I think most of us cringe at the thought of paying for and eating something called "dandelion greens".

"Isn't that the crap that grows in my front yard that's full of ants I just can't seem to get rid of?" you ask.

"Why yes," answers the celebrity chef. "Would you like to pay me a ridiculous price to eat them?"

"I think I do Mr. Celebrity Chef. I think I do. Your popularity persuades me."

Ridicule aside, the salad was a bit too expensive for my tastes. Many of the ingredients in this salad recipe aren't readilly available unless you live in a metropolis. These ingredients include fennel, arugula, dandelion leaves, watercress, baby chard, asparagus, and fresh chervil. I found everything except the chard and watercress. They were out of chard so the only thing really not found was the watercress. And the only reason I found any of the other ingredients is because they opened a new grocery store in town and are making an effort to be cutting edge. After a while they'll have wasted so much produce that it'll be back to iceberg and romaine lettuce.

Pat's pâté au saumon

Dough...super flaky and rich...the best ever!!!

200ml shortening

2 1/2 cups all purpose flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp vinegar

1 egg

200ml water

1. Cut shortening into flour.

2. Add salt, vinegar, the egg and water. Mix well. The dough should be pretty sticky. Refrigerate till ready to use.

Filling

1/4 cup carrot, brunoise (cut julienne and then cut into small cubes)

1/4 cup celery, brunoise

1/3 cup onion, brunoise

1 tbsp olive oil

450g canned sockeye salmon (I just used two 213ml cans)

1 cup cooked and mashed potato flesh (it's good to use leftover baked potatoes)

2 tbsp sour cream

1 egg

1/2 tbsp lemon zest

1/2 tbsp fennel greens and chervil (or dill or parsley...I just happened to have these herbs on hand)

salt and pepper

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Sweat the carrot, celery and onion in olive oil till soft. It's best to keep the lid on for this since the goal is to keep the humidity in the pot with the vegetables.

2. Mix together the salmon, mashed potato flesh, sour cream and egg. Fold in sweated vegetables, lemon zest and herbs. Season to taste.

3. Take dough out of fridge, roll out and layer into a greased 8 1/2 inch (or 22cm) wide pie dish. Dump salmon mixture into the prepared pie bottom.

4. Place another sheet of dough on top of the pie and crimp edges. Poke or cut holes in top of pie.

5. Cook pie in 425 degree oven for 10 minutes then bring temperature down to 350 degrees and cook for 30 minutes.

6. Serve hot.

Sorry that my measurement systems are all over the place. That's what happens when you live in a non-metric system country beside the largest metric system country in the world. Maybe it's time for the US to join the rest of the world and convert.

Simple Salad with Lemon Oil and Lots of Snow

So like I said last time, there's a whole chapter in Cook with Jamie that's all about salads. I figure it's not a huge sin if I don't have all the ingredients for a salad so long as it's close. I mean a basic salad is a basic salad. I'm not talking about fancy salads with cured meats and fancy cheeses and dressings with 28 ingredients in them. But this particular salad was entitled "Simple Crunchy Salad". I was missing romaine lettuce, green beans which were supposed to be blanched and cucumber. The ingredients I did have were Boston lettuce, a carrot, celery heart, parsley and I added some grape tomatoes. This chapter also has a few recipes for dressings; because if you're going to make fresh salad, might as well make the little extra effort to make your own fresh, preservative-free dressing. And the dressing I chose couldn't be any simpler: 3 1/2 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice with 10 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil shaken together and seasoned to taste with sea salt and freshly ground pepper. Simple dressing, simple salad but really nice taste.

In the background you might recognise a generous slice of tourtière which also goes by the name of meat pie. Where I'm from a tourtière is made with ground beef but this one was made with ground pork. It was storebought so it wasn't the best I've ever eaten. I'm used to 3/4 meat and a thinner crust. All that was needed was a bit more ketchup yet it was still easily outshined by the simple salad. Some things are just better when your grandma makes it.

Oh and here's a photo of my front yard today. The office was closed so I'm snowed in :) Who says winter isn't a beautiful season?

Cook Tomato Salad with Jamie

At the top of my list of things I love are food and books. Therefore the natural combination of the two is a real treat. I like books that aren't only cookbooks but tell you a story for the recipes or are the recipes that a person gathered on a trip of some sort. Two books of this sort I'd been eyeing recently were given to me by my mother-in-law for Christmas. I got both Kylie Kwong's My China and Jamie Oliver's new book Cook with Jamie.

The basic principle of Jamie Oliver's book is that this celebrity chef's cooking program through his restaurant Fifteen is here presented to the general public as a sort of cooking textbook. I haven't seen recipes so far that are just slapped onto a page without any context or story or explanation. For example, the first recipe I prepared from this book was for a tomato salad. The introduction to the recipe is actually longer than the recipe itself and there are gorgeous photos to go along with all of them. And then you get to the recipe for the tomato salad and you're not just given steps to follow but little explanations that clarify why it is you're being asked to perform such and such an action. In the recipe in question, once you've cut you're fresh mixture of different tomatoes into odd sized pieces, you put them in a colander over a bowl and sprinkle them generously with sea salt. But the instructions don't just say do 1, then 2, then 3 and so on. They say that the reason why you're doing this is to draw out some liquid from the tomatoes to concentrate the flavour. It also explains that he's not expecting you to eat all of that salt...the salt will, for the most part, run off with the excess liquid of the tomatoes.

I've done basic tomato salads like this before. Tomatoes + olive oil + balsamic vinegar. All that's different here is the preparation of the tomatoes and the expected additions like garlic, fresh marjoram and basil and the not so usual addition of a hot red pepper. The recipe's additions were good. But it's the preparation and the learning that went along with the preparation that makes this book worthwile. Now I know that if I draw some water out of a vegetable that I'll be able to concentrate it's flavour. Simple in retrospect but it's one of those millions of little things that need to be learnt in the kitchen.

Cook with Jamie is a recipe book that reads like a cooking show. You get all the information that can be delivered in live action but in a format that allows you to move at your own pace. Isn't learning fun?!