jamie oliver rocks

I have had a terrible crush on Jamie Oliver for years.  He is (was) kind of a young guy, a drummer, a skater, a sort of devil may care hippy and not least, a chef.  One of his latest shows is Jamie at Home.  Z says it could be called Jamie in his shed.  Jamie cooks either out in the garden next to a brick oven or in a sort of lean to kitchen filled with chipped pudding basins and hanging dried herbs.  I have seen most of the episodes about five times.  One of them is entitled pastry.  Jamie flies through cooking a super-rich beef brisket, Guinness and Cheddar pie encased in puff pastry.

I’m here to tell you it took us like four hours-about 3 to make the stew and another 45 minutes to bake inside the pastry.  The end result – a pot pie filled with luscious mushrooms, beef, thick sauce and cheese.  We served it with the requisite peas, although not mushy to Z’s parents and grandparents with a bananas foster bread pudding with home-made caramel.  Pretty amazing for a Monday night or any night.

potato and asparagus tart

I don’t know where I come up with this stuff.  Well, actually I do but I wonder what drives me to do complicated dishes on weeknights when I have been out all day.  Ever since the Cooking Channel, self proclaimed edgy child of the Food Network went live, I have unwound briefly in the evening watching my favorite chef, Jamie Oliver.    When I first embarked on the cooking hobby I watched him for various reasons including, but not limited to…

  • he is a drummer in a band
  • he skates, drives a scooter and VW van
  • he had a great accent
  • his perpetual bedhead
  • he brought semi stodgy cookery back to hip with his Naked Chef series.  (He wasn’t naked, just his food was)

He has stood the test of time, evolving and changing.  Now he touts the Food Revolution, home grown veg and lately, flogs jam at Williams Sonoma.  I still have a bit of a crush really.
The other night he was pulling asparagus out of his veg patch and made a potato and asparagus tart.  Basically creamy, eggy mash with cheese and asparagus laid on top all nested in layers of phyllo.  Nice.