Becca Jane St Clair

On our first trip to the library when I got my library card, I borrowed Jamie Oliver’s Ministry of Food. I had watched his Christmas cooking specials this past December and loved his recipes and his style of cooking, so I thought his cookbook(s) would be worth checking out. I decided to borrow this one from the library that way if I decided I didn’t like it, I wasn’t out any money.

And I love it.

I learned how to make poached eggs!

A few weeks ago, Tim asked me if I could make poached eggs for breakfast. I did a bit of umming and ahhinng, because the only way I knew how to make poached eggs involved a three-piece special pan. But as I was leafing through Jamie’s cookbook, he had a whole section devoted to cooking eggs, and I learned that poaching was pretty easy –

Bring water to a boil, and gently drop the egg into the water (Jamie recommends putting the egg in a cup first). Boil for 2 minutes for a runny yolk, 4 for solid. Remove with a slotted spoon and boom – you have your poached eggs.

Jamie also taught me how to make a British staple – Yorkshire Pudding.

Again, this was one of those recipes that to read it, you’d have thought the author was insane and you’d write it off as something a bit too complicated, but it really wasn’t bad at all. See?

Jamie’s recipe:

Set oven to it’s hottest temperature possible and pre-heat your muffin tray in the oven. Whisk together: 285ml milk, 115g flour, eggs, and a pinch of salt. Set aside for 30 minutes. Spoon vegetable oil (his original recipe called for 1tbs/cup, but I plan on reducing it in the future to 1/2 tbs) into the hot muffin tray and place it back in the oven for 10 minutes to heat the oil. Quickly spoon batter into hot oiled cups (best to do this while the tray is still in the oven). Bake 15 minutes. Don’t open the oven door to check on them or they won’t get puffy. I then removed the puddings from the trays and placed them on a wire cooling rack with a paper towel underneath to drain off some of the oil (since I really think I used too much!). I even checked other recipes online to see if I really had to do the pre-heating thing, and you do. The only difference between this recipe and others out there are the amounts of flour/eggs/milk.

I also learned how to make roasted potatoes that are crispy. This is something that is a staple for Tim’s family instead of serving potatoes mashed, so I wanted to learn how to do them (though I probably can’t do them with a roast until I get a double oven or bigger oven) – boil potatoes for 10 minutes, drain and shake colander. Bake in a roasting pan drizzled with olive oil for 1 hour. Pretty straight forward and the potatoes were good. Not as crunchy as I had hoped to make them, but it was still good for my first try!

And of course, my recipe last week for cranberry muffins also came from Jamie Oliver.

My beloved Betty Crocker might have to share some limelight with Jamie Oliver.

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