Jamie Oliver

duchy

The OS attitude to JO reminds me of the Baby !!!!! when I was pregnant .
All these "experts" - be they Jamie or Weezle or anyone in between all have points but none are always going to be 100% right all the time as their audience is diverse.

Like the baby books-I read a cross section be it JO or the OS Forum , Jack - whatever -use the ideas that I think will work for me - and ignore the ones that don't........... Doesn't make me a bad person but hopefully the ideas will make my budgeting and cooking better

EDIT why the heck is M A F I A a banned word ????????

CH27

duchy wrote: »

The OS attitude to JO reminds me of the Baby !!!!! when I was pregnant .
All these "experts" - be they Jamie or Weezle or anyone in between all have points but none are always going to be 100% right all the time as their audience is diverse.

Like the baby books-I read a cross section be it JO or the OS Forum , Jack - whatever -use the ideas that I think will work for me - and ignore the ones that don't........... Doesn't make me a bad person but hopefully the ideas will make my budgeting and cooking better

EDIT why the heck is M A F I A a banned word ????????

That is what I do too.

Teg-Rem

am slowly coming round to some of his ideas after just watching the second prog toaday. I have started to use my OS newly acquired head and think about how I could adapt his recipes to suit ourselves and our pocket because some of his LO recipes really are inspiring. So thinks I may be going out to buy his book after all.

freyasmum

I think his new programme is brilliant - but it was never going to be for OSers.

I have the book and there isn't one single recipe that I wouldn't cook - and it's so much the better that it isn't 50 portions from a chicken! He's cooking delicious food and there is nothing wrong with spending a decent amount on that.

They're using Sainsburys costings, and I'm sure they are using branded ingredients - s buy the most basic ingredients available and you've saved yourself a good bit there. You can substitute some ingredients, you don't have to follow the recipes verbatim - they are there for inspiration and guidance.

I also recently bought his 15 minute meals, which is fantastic.

To those saying he's spending far too much, he might've spent more than your 20p pizza - but if he's weaned a guy off a £12.50 pizza to one that cost £1.50, is it really a bad thing!? :undecided

PasturesNew wrote: »

He also didn't say what you can do with the remainder of the poaching milk. Where do you throw that away? Can you freeze it? How would you re-use it. I'd hate to be looking at half a pan of poaching milk and wondering "!!!!!! do I do with that?"

And, with the size of houses these days, I'd want to know how smelly cooking that was.

Dip buttered, plain bread into it? :drool:

My grany always use to make us fish in milk and the poaching liquor and buttered bread was my favourite bit :A

kboss2010

lostinrates wrote: »

Why not post the ingredients on old style next time and get some uses for them?

The one meal isn't costing that much, if most of the ingredients are being binned, and if you like the food, then the ingredients cook be used another way you might also like.

Fantastic suggestion, thanks! Not sure my OH will play ball tho, he's incredibly fussy with food to the point where I want to scream sometimes!

lostinrates

kboss2010 wrote: »

Fantastic suggestion, thanks! Not sure my OH will play ball tho, he's incredibly fussy with food to the point where I want to scream sometimes!

That's the cost of your cooking then I guess. But this is food he likes and has chosen. Just worked in a Different way.
' darling, that x you liked, look I've made it again but this time with chicken' or whatever......'

fallen121

Not sure if I am JO's "Target Audience". Work long hours full time, as does DH. One daughter. Do meal plan, but not using basics/smart price ingredients. For example, prefer M&S salmon, but only buy it when on offer and freeze what we don't use.

I make my own pizza bases naan bread and loaf bread/rolls at weekends using a breadmaker (can't stand those ready made mixes and don't really understand why it is beyond the wit of some people to measure out flour, salt and olive oil) but use supermarket bread through the week. My recommendation for pizza /naan would be to use a pizza stone. They really aren't all that expensive (mine was £14.50) and it is possible to save up.

I watched one of the Jamie programmes which was the one where he made curry. But didn't really agree with how he made it. The basis of a good curry IMHO is finely chopped (and in some recipes even pureed) onion with which you combine with herbs and spices to make a "gravy" base [I generally throw in leftover apple, potato, peppers, mushroom and carrot at this point], and he roughly chopped about half a small red onion which wasn't nearly enough, added some chillies and then I'll be blowed if he didn't empty a jar of what looked like Patak's sauce into the mix. And this is cooking from scratch, Jamie???

Just a bit more onion and a few spices and he wouldn't have needed that sauce and the curry would have been cheaper - Patak's sauces can cost as much as £2 a jar!

I'd sat there specifically to find out what secret combination of herbs and spices Jamie was going to use - and he used a Patak's sauce. Sheesh!

As a guide, I generally keep jars of Asda easy ginger and easy garlic in the fridge [unless I am making bolognaise or chilli or a casserole through the week, when I will use fresh] and then from my store cupboard chilli powder, turmeric, ground cumin, ground coriander [or fresh, if making soup that week] garam masala, cardamon pods, vinegar [if vindaloo] and dried almonds and dessicated cococonut [if korma].

I absolutely take the point that people who don't cook from scratch regularly won't have anything like this in their store cupboard and it costs money to build something like this up, but if you love curry and intend on making it a lot it will work out a heck of a lot cheaper than buying a Patak's sauce every week.

On a personal note, I think Jamie uses too much oil which I think was a point made by a previous poster. I started making my own curries because I was fed up with jar mixes swimming in oil. You don't need it.

What I DID like was the notion of finely chopped and microwaved cauliflower instead of rice, but putting the cauliflower leaves and stalks into the curry was taking the 5 a day concept a bit too far I thought!!

Just my 2c.

MrsE_2

Fallen - he doesn't use pataks sauces he uses a portion of pataks paste its just spices blended in oil. You get lots of portions out of one jar.

fallen121

MrsE wrote: »

Fallen - he doesn't use pataks sauces he uses a portion of pataks paste its just spices blended in oil. You get lots of portions out of one jar.

Mrs E - so that's more oil to add to the oil he already used then? **sigh**

Sorry to sound like a bit of a Jamie basher, but whilst I appreciate that a paste like this might be cheaper for someone who doesn't cook all the time and doesn't have a store cupboard full of spices, let's say it is a Korma paste then if you bung that in the fridge and get say 5 or 6 portions out of it that means that your next 5 or 6 curries are all going to be Korma - bit boring, init? I can see DH rebelling if I offered up the same type of curry week after week - at least if you use your own spices they work for ANY type of curry!!

If you want my honest opinion, most of the people this show is aimed at will probably cook the curry once and the remains of that Patak paste will go in the bin.

Just as a guide, I bought enough spices to last me 6 months for less than a fiver, that was by searching out supermarket bargain bins and looking in places like Aldi and Poundland and then the more unusual ones in small quantities at an Asian supermarket (I don't live near one but my work often sends me to Leeds, where there are plenty).

gayleygoo

When I bought curry paste it often went to waste! One meal and then it'd sit in the fridge until furry stuff started to grow on top :eek: although this does take a long time due to the high oil content. So last time I froze the rest of the paste in an ice-cube tray and I can use a couple as needed. Although I haven't made a curry in ages as it's only me who enjoys it, it could be varied by adding tinned tomatoes or coconut milk, or cream, chopped corriander, different veg etc, so it doesn't have to be the same each time. I now have most of the spices needed to make a curry so the paste is still in the freezer... a cube of it can be added to a soup or even pasta so I might try to use it up that way.

From Home Bargains recently I bought a sachet of korma curry paste, it was 20p and is supposed to serve 2 people, I thought that was good value even if you were only making a curry for yourself! I'm in the mood for a curry now, good thing it was on my meal plan