Ministry of Food

Last week I picked up Jamie Oliver's new Ministry of Food Book at a booksale for tenner, rather than the list price of 25 quid.

Understandably Novelist Supermum has made me remove the paper sleeve, leaving a rather forties/fifties plain style hard cover underneath, rather than having to put up with the photo of the chubby smirking mockney.

I've decided to get into this learn to cook decent food lark, being particularly impressed with the recipes for busy people.

The book opens with a list of basic ingredients that you should have to hand in your cupboards and freezer, the sort of things that keep for months (herbs, spices, oils, flour, vinegar, syrups, tinned stuff etc) and suggests that you should just go out and buy the lot so that you know that you're likely to have these things to hand when you need them.

I thought that I'd go along with this theory, and went out to buy everything off the list. I came back from Tesco's on Saturday with all but three items. The only problem being that since I'd spent about 3 hours down the shops I'd ran out of time to spend cooking a decent meal, since the kids had to be quickly fed and put to bed.
(so much for cookery for busy people - thanks Jamie!).

To be fair, we had a decent Sunday Roast Chicken today. I made the gravy using a vegetable trivet, which I've never done before, and the result was delicious.

It was also great following the different recipes, and at the points where they say, "season with", "thicken with", "for extra flavour add" etc just reaching into the cupboard and retrieving the appropriate ingredient, rather than thinking "what can I use instead?".