Macaroni Cheese - Jamie Oliver

Once a week I like to whip up a vegetarian dinner. However the meal still needs to be hearty and filling. Therefore, I made Macaroni Cheese based on Jamie Oliver’s recipe.

I adapted his recipe since I was shopping at a nearby supermarket which had neither cheddar nor parmesan. As cooking isn’t set in stone, I used mozzarella and emmentaler. Also, I blended 3 slices of bread to get fresh breadcrumbs.
Here’s how it looked before it went into the oven for 30mins.

And tadahhhhh!!!! Golden brown and crispy top!

I halved the recipe to serve 4-5 but the two of us managed to eat about 3 people’s worth of it. Shows you more morish this simple but delightful dish can be.

Once again, this is another fuss-free and successful Jamie Oliver recipe.

How about making some in your kitchen this weekend? Here’s the recipe!

Ingredients (Serves 8 - 10)

• sea salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• 45 g butter
• 3 heaped tablespoons plain flour
• 10 cloves garlic, peeled and finely sliced
• 6 bay leaves
• 1 litre semi-skimmed milk
• 600 g dried macaroni
• 8 tomatoes, roughly chopped
• 150 g Cheddar cheese, freshly grated
• 100 g Parmesan cheese, freshly grated
• a few sprigs fresh thyme, leaves picked
• 2 splashes Worcestershire sauce, optional
• 1 grating nutmeg, optional
• 3 big handfuls fresh breadcrumbs
• olive oil  

Instructions

1. Boil a pot of salted water.

2. In a pan, melt the butter over low heat, add the flour and turn the heat up to medium. Mix well till you get a paste.

3. Add all the sliced garlic to the paste and mix well. The garlic will caramelise and become golden brown and sticky. 

4. Next, add bay leaves and milk slowly to ensure you get a smooth sauce. Bring the mixture to boil and then leave it to simmer.

5. Preheat your oven to 220 degress Cels.

6. Add pasta to the boiling pot of water and cook according to the instructions on the packaging.

7. Season chopped tomatoes with salt and pepper.

8. Drained cooked pasta and add to the sauce. Stir in the cheese, chopped tomatoes, thyme leaves and a couple of dashes of Worchestershire sauce. A little nutmeg would be nice too but this is optional.

9. Transfer the pasta mixture into an ovenproof dish, srpinkle fresh breadcrumbs all over it and bake for 30 minutes. (This step is different to the original recipe!)

10. Serve while it's hot.

BBC Good Food Vegetable Ragu

Do you have days when you just don’t feel like touching and eating any meat? Yesterday was one of those days for me. While I do love poultry and meat, I do occasionally feel like a good vegetarian meal such as Vegetable Ragu.

This year I started learning to make my own pasta sauce. Not only are they surprisingly easy, they also taste fresher and healthier. This vegetable ragu recipe from good old BBC Good Food is a gem as it is so cheap and easy to make.

Since recipes aren’t set in stone, I omitted celery and red lentils in my version. I added dried basil and cayenne pepper to spice it up a little. And I’m currently in love with balsamic vinegar so I was rather generous with it too. As it cooked on the stove, the ragu was bursting with sweet smelling vegetables – the perfect healthy comfort food on a cold day.

This is to me the fun part about cooking – not restricting yourself to whatever the recipe calls for and taking initiative to tweak it to your preference.

Salmon Linguine with Lemon Juice

Salmon tastes so good when seasoned with black pepper and chilli flakes. I baked them at 190 degrees Celsius for 15-20 minutes. To give it a refreshing taste, I squeezed half a lemon over the fillets before baking.

Before watching tutorials by Jamie Oliver, I never put salt in boiling water when cooking pasta. It makes such a difference! However I only do so if I’m NOT making a sauce based pasta. Very seldom do you find me adding salt in my cooking for health reasons. After boiling the pasta, I stir fried it (briefly) in a pan with olive oil, basil, chilli flakes, juice from half a lemon and seasoned with black pepper.

It’s a really simple dish that I’ve made for dinner a few times and we really like it. Fish… I want to eat more fish! Guess what? We’ll be visiting family in the UK soon so we’re looking forward to fish & chips! FIIIIISSSSSH!

Aglio Olio

It has been really hot lately and I can’t bring myself to have anything too hearty – like stews, or anything too heavy and creamy. And so here’s a recipe for aglio olio which is a little zesty – perfect in the summer!

Ingredients (serves 2)
160g spaghetti
1 tbsp salt (for boiling spaghetti)
8 cloves of garlic chopped (I love them!)
1 lemon (for zest and juice)
8 – 10 fresh basil leaves, chopped
8 fresh mint leaves, chopped
1 tbsp mixed dried chilli & black pepper seasoning
2 tbsp olive oil

Instructions
1. Cook spaghetti in salted boiling water (follow packet instructions).
2. Drain spaghetti but keep about 3 tablespoons of the liquid.
3. Stir fry garlic in olive oil till golden brown but do not let it burn.
4. Add basil and mint and mix well for a couple of minutes. Turn the heat down to low.
5. Add cooked spaghetti, dried chilli & black pepper mixture and lemon zest. Mix it well.
6. Add lemon juice and the reserved pasta water to spaghetti.
7. Turn off heat. Stir well to ensure that spaghetti is evenly coated. Serve while it’s hot.

I love the zesty taste of the pasta. I’ve never had lemon zest in my aglio olio before (not even in restaurants) until I chanced upon Jamie Oliver’s recipe.

I bought pots of basil and mint yesterday as I really want to try to use more fresh ingredients in my cooking. It’s amazing how the kitchen just smells so much more refreshing with these herbs sitting beautifully by the window sill.

And here’s the chopped mint.

Unfortunately I couldn’t get fresh chilli from the supermarket so I used dried chilli which is just as good, I reckon. Probably not as spicy which is fine by me.

If you have a special aglio olio recipe too please do share with me in the comments section below.