A night in with Jamie.

After a long working week there is nothing better than downing - yes I know I should be savouring not downing but ho-hum - a quiet vino or three on a Friday night. Well, actually there is and that’s a quiet vino or three partnered with Jamie and a bit of cooking! If only it was Jamie in the flesh and not just book cover Jamie.

After sitting on the deck and enjoying the usually non-existent peace and quiet (‘house sharers’ downstairs), I decided to venture in and make use of the four black bananas sitting in my fruit bowl. I think I subconsciously buy bananas and don’t eat them so I can make banana bread or banana cake or anything that requires very ripe bananas. The lovely Joy supplied this recipe. The recipe says to use three bananas but I used four and instead of canola or walnut oil, I used organic coconut oil as that’s what was in the cupboard.

[ Low Fat Oatmeal Banana Bread }

1 1/4 cup flour
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 tsp salt 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
3 tsp canola or walnut oil
1 large egg, beaten
2 medium egg whites, beaten
3 large bananas, ripe
1 cup uncooked oats

Preheat oven to 180C. Grease and flour a loaf tin and set aside. In a large bowl, stir together dry ingredients including the oats and cinnamon. In a smaller bowl, mash bananas with a potato masher or fork. Add oil and whole egg and mix thoroughly. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix well. Batter will be fairly thick. In a medium sized bowl, with an electric hand mixer, beat the egg whites until medium stiff peaks form. Fold the egg whites into the batter in three additions. Pour batter into tin and bake until top of loaf is firm to touch, 45 to 50 minutes. Remove from oven and allow to cool in the tin for 5 minutes. Flip out and cool on a wire rack for another 10 minutes.

PS. I served this toasted with butter and honey – does that defeat the purpose of low fat?

With Saturday brekkie sorted, Jamie and I decided it was time to put something in my pinot-lined tummy for dinner. It had to be something quick, easy and absorbent ... pizza. My lovely housemate and I usually have this pizza for Sunday lunch or dinner, depending on our energy levels. And, without fail, it’s made and eaten whilst watching Sex and The City episodes and discussing the previous evening’s adventures which is usually broken down into a minute by minute account so the pizza takes a while to get through.

Anyway, this pizza is all about what’s in your fridge. The must-have ingredients I suppose are the base, the tomato paste/pesto and the cheese. The rest is whatever you want or have. Tonight I have chicken, onion, capsicum, zucchini, mushroom and sweet potato. Excellent.

Preheat oven to 200C. We always use Lebanese bread as our ready made base. On that we spread a bit of tomato paste or pesto or a bit of both. Sprinkle with a little cheese. Set aside. Chop up whatever meat and vegetables you have. In a frying pan, heat about 1tsp of oil. If you have meat, cook that first and then set aside.

Do the same again with your vegetables but don’t cook till soft. Leave them a little hard. While the vegetables are cooking, season with salt and pepper and herbs you prefer, if any. I added some pine nuts into the mix. Turn off the heat and add your meat to the vegetables and mix. Leave mixture to cool for 5 minutes before putting on the base – this stops the base becoming soggy later down the track. Sprinkle a bit of cheese over the top and put in the oven for about 5-10mins or until cheese has melted and the base crispy. Once done, drizzle with sweet chilli sauce, cut, serve and devour.

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YOGURT

Market-fresh coffee and walnut yogurt straight from the tub - heaven!



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Jamie Oliver Opinion

Opinion on Jamie Oliver in the UK is as divided as opinion on Jennifer Aniston in Who Magazine. According to a piece in the London Times:



If Britain has a problem with Jamie Oliver, it is because we can’t decide what he is: campaigning saint transforming troubled kids into chefs with his Fifteen restaurant or steely businessman, churning out Jamie brand pasta sauces or merchandise for his Jamie At Home direct-sales outfit, Tupperware parties for the Cath Kidston generation? How could he campaign against battery chickens, and accept £1.2 million a year to endorse Sainsbury’s supermarket, when they were selling them? Jamie Oliver the aw-right-mate, dress-down geezer can seem at odds with the owner of Jamie Oliver Holdings, 2008 pre-tax profits £6.8 million, employer these days of around 4,000 people, who made the Sunday Times rich list well before he was 30.

This is a valid point - you either love Jamie, or hate him. You look at him as a genuine, hard-working family man whose commitment to youth education, empowerment and health is something special, or you see a cashed up celeb pocketing more pennies by interfering in people’s lives, telling them that knowing the difference between a tomato and a potato is indeed something worth knowing while the cameras are rolling. To my mind, why shouldn’t someone whose focus, enthusiasm and passion revolutionised the way British school children eat, got kids off drugs and into kitchens and uses his fame to raise awareness about the food industry reap the financial rewards?

In the same article, Jamie talks about his campaign to tackle obesity in America. Journalist Janice Turner writes:

I interviewed Oliver five years ago, just after his British school dinner project, and found him unexpectedly thin-skinned, even at a mildly put suggestion that he might – with relentless waves of books, TV shows and product ranges – be in danger of overexposure. But meeting him again, I sense an epidermal thickening, an inurement to criticism born of battles fought, confidence that his cause is righteous, his allies – including the new White House, Oprah Winfrey and politicians of all hues in Britain – are mighty, that no one can take away his victories, his hard-earned stripes.

“Look,” he says when I mention his critics. “I’m Jamie Oliver, I’m 34, I’m an Essex boy and I love food. If I have an opportunity to tell the story, in the biggest slot, in the biggest country in the world with the biggest problem, at the age of 60 should I be saying, I tried and failed. Or even I succeeded! Or do I say I was too busy f***ing around in England?”

After 11 years trying to break America, “on the a***-end of the Food Network”, Oliver says he’d been about to scale down his US ventures when ABC offered the show. “Why me? Because I’m the only f***** who’s stupid enough to do it. I’ve done it and smelt it and felt it before. The time’s right. I’ve been trying to get someone to tell this story here, ever since I found out America was the worst of pretty much everything I was learning about, doing research [for School Dinners] in England.”

Nonetheless, Huntington was a tough gig. America, he says, is five years ahead of Britain in its food degeneracy and obesity levels. At least the kids in Greenwich, South London, where he launched School Dinners, could identify a tomato, and when Jamie showed them what chicken nuggets were made of, by grinding beaks and carcasses, were suitably repelled: American kids watched this and still elected to eat them over roasted meat. And what with the boot-faced dinner ladies serving pizza for breakfast, milk adulterated with sugar, teachers believing it dangerous for kids to have cutlery – so children literally did not know how to eat anything but hand-held fast food – local shock-jocks asking him how he got to be crowned king, it ended with Jamie sobbing on camera. I ask what finally broke him and ignite one of his looping, sweary, heartfelt spiels.

“My role here is a very strange one because I am a foreigner. The town didn’t like me. Every aspect of media was f***ing slagging me off on a daily basis. I didn’t have friends or family and it was f***ing hard. But if you don’t just talk the talk and really do and get your hands dirty and stay and live with different people and understand they’re not just obese because they’re f***ing stupid, it is… f***ing hard.”

Such was the negative press, he says, that White House aides and senators who had agreed to meet him – as a prequel to presenting his research to Michelle Obama, who is also campaigning on obesity – pulled out in alarm. “I was all suited and booted,” he says. “I’d flown over to Washington and it was cancelled.”

So why do this at all? Why not consolidate work in British school kitchens or roll out more of the Ministry of Food centres which began in Rotherham and have expanded to three other Northern towns, teaching families to cook? Why open such a huge, unwinnable new front when it would take you so long and often from home, especially when your wife Jools is pregnant with your fourth child?

“I don’t think I have any choice,” he says. “I’m not saying I’m on a calling. Although the local pastor in Huntington said, ‘You have been sent from God, we’ve been praying for you and now you’re here.’ But it’s my job to sow a seed of change.”

Following the story are pages and pages of comments.

Amid much bickering between Brits and Americans about which nation has the greater girth, there are many along these lines:

Rather than pick on America I would like to see a photograph and the statistics of the entire Jamie Oliver family tree, nephews, cousins, uncles
and aunts.... I bet they are not all skinny!

and:

I think that Jamie Oliver should take a good look at himself first before spouting off about obesity.

Since when did Jamie Oliver become a poster boy for body image? Is he really telling people they should be ‘skinny’? Is he only allowed to campaign against obesity and promote healthy cooking and eating if he (and apparently his entire family tree) looks like James Bond? I don’t think so.

Eating junk vs eating real food shouldn’t - doesn’t - translate to fat vs thin. It’s about feeling awful or feeling well. It’s about eating chemicals, preservatives and trans fats because it’s easy, because you’re tired or bored or lonely, or eating because you care about yourself, your health and the planet. No one ever said you can never have your (homemade) cake with double cream on the side again. No one ever said you should have the same measurements as the Victoria’s Secret angels or you don’t deserve to live. And if they did? Well, fuck ‘em.

Although we’re bombarded with messages about thinness and can barely open our eyes in the morning without news of a celebrity’s ‘Body After Baby’ pinging back to where it was before, Jamie Oliver is not the Anna Wintour of the food industry. He’s not asking people to ditch Happy Meals for green salad with no dressing, to bid adieu to sugar, diary, eggs, carbs, red meat and anything else that might, you know, BE TASTY, so we all fit some insane Hollywood ideal and can swap our trackies for skinny jeans.

He is asking you to consider what you put in your gob. And to enjoy every last lick of it.

What do you think of Jamie’s new American project and the reaction to it?



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The Markets

Fluorescent lighting, bad music and apathetic teenage staff - no I'm not talking about a new nightclub, but multinational supermarket chains.

No one looks good in lighting that harsh, but that's not the point, it's what they're doing to our wallets that's the real issue and, even worse, what they're doing to the livelihoods of our farmers. Not only have the two majors marked up their prices by more than 41% in the last 10 years, they've made billions of dollars in profits in the process including more than $100 billion dollars in 2009 alone.

The ABC's Hungry Beast program did a great piece about these "friendly giants" a couple of weeks back. Check out the clip.



As well as the consumer, farmers are getting a pretty raw deal. There are reports they're not being paid enough for their produce, that 'imperfect' fruit and veggies are being rejected and that the ones which do make it through are being kept for a questionable length of time in cold rooms.

We decided to ditch the superstores and headed to a nearby farmer's market in West End in search of local fare, a hot breakfast and some seriously cute puppies.

So next time you're contemplating that quick trip down to the shops, why not wait until your local farmer's market rolls around. Read more...

Dinner

We skipped work drinks. It’s happened before. Here’s what happens when you mix three girls, a bottle of white wine (or was it two?), tinned plums and a few other things together:

1. Boy wish lists. Gerard Butler and Alexander Skarsgard might have been named once or twice, folks. And a celebrity chef who will remain anonymous.

2. Talking, listening, laughing and a small amount of singing. Aren’t girlfriends the best?

3. Tipsy cooking. It happens.

tad uneven and some will be three times the size of their friends. Then you’ll be coating them in flour, dipping them in egg and milk and smothering them in breadcrumbs. Eventually, your hands will feel like they’re covered in wet cement, and look like this:

{ Roast Pumpkin Feta Patties }

1/2 butternut pumpkin
400g can brown lentils
50g feta cheese
1 cup flat leaf parsley, coarsely chopped
2 eggs, beaten
2 tbs milk
Plain flour, for coating
Breadcrumbs, for coating
Vegetable oil, for frying
Olive oil, for coating
Salt and Pepper

Preheat oven to 180C. Peel skin off pumpkin and chop into cubes. Place in roasting pan. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast for about 30min or till golden. Set aside to cool.

Drain lentils; squeeze firmly to remove all excess water. Place in a large bowl with feta, parsley, salt and pepper. Mash pumpkin and add to lentil mixture. Mix well. Shape into small patties and place on a tray. Set up 3 bowls: one with flour, one with the egg and milk (mix together) and the other with breadcrumbs. Lightly dust each patty with flour, dip in the egg/milk mixture and then coat in breadcrumbs. Place patties back on tray and once done put into the fridge to set.

Heat 1cm vegetable oil in large non-stick pan and fry patties till golden. Keep the heat low and cook slowly.

Serve with salad.

{ Plum Clafouti }

1 ½ cups (375ml) low fat custard
¼ cup (35g) self-raising flour
1 egg yolk
2 egg whites
825g can whole plums; drained, halved & seeded
2 tsp icing sugar

Preheat oven to 180C.

Combine custard, flour and egg yolk in a medium size bowl. Stir until smooth. Beat egg whites in a small bowl with electric beaters on highest speed until soft peaks form. Fold into custard mixture. Pour into 24cm round oven dish. Pat plums dry with absorbent paper. Arrange plums, cut side down over custard.

Bake, uncovered, for about 40 minutes or until firm. Just before serving dust with icing sugar. Serve with vanilla ice cream.


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Banana bread and healthy cookies

So we're a couple of weeks into things now and all we seem to do at work, even more than before, is talk FOOD! Seriously, if you could gain weight by talking food I’d be the size of my house and then some. We have an impromptu dinner thing happening tonight which could be interesting as it’s happening after work drinks.

Roast Pumpkin Feta Patties, all thanks to this week’s Who magazine which we were gawking at over lunch yesterday. We didn’t think much of their 25 Most Beautiful People 2010 but we were definitely drooling over the patties!

On Saturday morning we’re off to our first group excursion in search of Jamie-inspired things and, of course, breakfast. Fresh fruit, veg, fish, meat, cheese, bread, pastries, small goods, all at Davies Park Market West End or as I thought it was called, The West End Markets. Can’t wait!

I’ve been doing a little baking. No exciting reasons why. I had 3 overly ripe bananas and found the rest of the ingredients in the cupboard/fridge. Oh, and I was hungry. P.S - I have no idea where I got this recipe from, but obviously off the net as it’s on a very messy piece of printed A4 paper. Mega easy, can’t go wrong.

{ Banana Bread }

155g (2/3 cup) caster sugar
60g butter, softened
2 eggs
3 tbs water
3 very ripe bananas, mashed
220g (1 ¾ cups) plain flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
½ tsp salt
¼ tsp baking powder

Preheat oven to 180C. Grease loaf tin.

In a medium bowl, beat the sugar and butter together until smooth. Beat in the eggs, water and bananas until well blended.

Mix in the flour, bicarbonate of soda, salt and baking powder until the mixture is just moistened. Be sure to scrape the sides of the bowl to blend all the ingredients.

Pour into prepared tin. Bake in preheated oven for about 1 hour. Time will vary depending on oven and tin size. Check at 45min. Bread is done when the top is firm to touch and a golden brown colour.

Allow to cool on its side for 10 minutes, then remove from tin and let cool on a wire rack.

101 Cookbooks. We are really really in love with this blog. That’s why I wanted to whip up these delicious little delights. They are also super easy and, even better, they're healthy. Well, healthy for cookies anyway. I certainly didn’t feel guilty eating them. Though I did hand most of them over to Mum as her Easter pressie. I didn’t stray much from the recipe which I usually tend to do. I used organic coconut oil and dark chocolate drops.

{ Nikki's Healthy Cookies }

3 large, ripe bananas, well mashed (about 1 1/2 cups)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup coconut oil, barely warm - so it isn't solid (or alternately, olive oil)
2 cups rolled oats
2/3 cup almond meal
1/3 cup coconut, finely shredded & unsweetened
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon fine grain sea salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
6 - 7 ounces chocolate chips or dark chocolate bar chopped

Preheat oven to 350 degrees, racks in the top third.

In a large bowl combine the bananas, vanilla extract, and coconut oil. Set aside. In another bowl whisk together the oats, almond meal, shredded coconut, cinnamon, salt, and baking powder. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and stir until combined. Fold in the chocolate chunks/chips.The dough is a bit looser than a standard cookie dough, don't worry about it. Drop dollops of the dough, each about 2 teaspoons in size, an inch apart, onto a parchment (or Silpat) lined baking sheet. Bake for 12 - 14 minutes. I baked these as long as possible without burning the bottoms and they were perfect - just shy of 15 minutes seems to be about right in my oven.

Makes about 3 dozen bite-sized cookies.

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Jamie's Food Revolution

Even Queen O loves Jamie. After an appearance on the Oprah show to discuss his new show Jamie’s Food Revolution, a must-have list of Jamie’s pantry essentials popped up on Oprah.com. Check it out here.

Jamie’s Food Revolution, which is produced by Ryan Seacrest, follows in the footsteps of his landmark British School Dinners series, which saw former Prime Minister Tony Blair fork out £280 million to improve food in British schools.



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