Today I Ate...: Jamie's 30(ish) Minute Meals

I got this book at the weekend as people had been saying it was good and the food looked amazing on the series. There have been a lot of haters saying it's impossible to complete any of the meals in 30 minutes and it does look tricky but we watch him with our own eyes doing it on the telly. He doesn't really do anything too cheffy and he's not crazily rushing round trying to get things done. So it's achievable right?

Kind of...

Today I attempted the Cypriot chicken meal from the book. It was supposed to include an orangey drink and an ice cream float for pud but I didn't want these so I just did the savouries. Does anyone bother to make the desserts I wonder? I wasn't intending to time myself because I thought it would stress me out and it was my first time, but once I'd got the ingredients out my competitive nature got the better of me and I set the stopwatch. I think this was encouraged because my friend's been timing hers and doing well (perhaps we should set up some kind of spreadsheet to compare times). I was right anyway; the stopwatch couldn't have stressed me out more. Things that would normally take a few seconds seemed to take hours and my kitchen looked like a bomb had hit it. I got some help from the boyfriend once I'd torn him away from the TV with squeals of desperation but finally, after 32 minutes of chaos, we produced:

Stuffed Cypriot Chicken with Pan Fried Asparagus & Cherry Tomatoes and Cabbage Salad

...and Herby Pitta

After all that fuss and stress the final product was extremely tasty and now that I know what needs to be done I'm sure I could do it in well under 30 minutes. Practise makes perfect and all that (perhaps I'll turn on the right hob next time and save at least 5 minutes of panic pan heating).

The other things I ate today were:

Jerk salad but I forgot to take a picture. You've seen it before; it looked the same. I've got it tomorrow with leftover cabbage salad so I'll try to remember to take a photo before hoovering it up.