If you have followed me on Instagram over the past couple of weeks, you’ll have noticed I’ve been cooking up a storm from Jamie Oliver’s latest book, Quick and Easy Food.
(it’s not out in Canada until October but I ordered the UK version because 1. I’m impatient and 2. It’s metric. ‘Nuff said)
A wonderful concept to encourage people to cook, breaking recipes down to five simple ingredients (supplemented with five pantry staples), really simplifying a range of wonderful dishes but not compromising on flavour. The best part? Most of them are able to be made in well under an hour (yes, really!). Which brings me to this post.
We’re back! Les Petits Chefs and Cooking Basics clubs have resumed for the year with a record number of boys interested! Sadly due to space constraints, I can’t take them all but I’m hoping to cycle through most of the boys in the very long term (it’s a good problem to have, right?). As you’ll know, I only have an hour to work with the boys each session so finding recipes that work is always a bit of a challenge. This book is the perfect curriculum for my younger boys so we’ll be using that all term! For my older boys, it was the perfect way to ease into what promises to be a fun term of guest chefs and field trips and a couple of surprises here and there!
This week, I wanted to start with something very simple, so I can get my bearings again (cooking with 15 boys in a crowded science lab with only a certain number of working power outlets poses some special challenges!) so I chose a dish that I fell in love with when I made it a couple of weeks ago – Jamie’s Lemony Courgette Linguine – a simple pasta dish with zucchini, mint, lemon and parmesan. I knew we could definitely get this done in an hour (the recipe says it takes 18 minutes. The older boys laughed when I told them this and said “This means an hour for cooking club”) and it’s a nice introduction to precise knife skills as the zucchini needs to be “matchsticked”.
The recipe teaches a bunch of useful techniques like, well, how to julienne vegetables, how to grate Parmesan…
And really, once all the mise en place has been completed (zucchini chopped, lemons zested and juiced, cheese grated, mint finely chopped), it does come together really quickly…
A resounding hit, if I do say so myself – the lab smelled AMAZING (lots of people commented on the wonderful smells coming from the club!) and all the boys seemed very enthusiastic to try this.
Quick and Easy Food: 1
Time and space constraints: 0
Get the recipe for Jamie Oliver’s Lemony Courgette Linguine here.
Purchase Quick and Easy Food for yourselves on Amazon (this link should bring you to the Amazon store closest to you). Or for free worldwide shipping, buy from The Book Depository.
Please note: The product links from Amazon and The Book Depository are affiliate links, meaning if you click over and purchase something, I will receive a very small percentage of the purchase price (at no extra cost to you) which goes towards maintaining eat. live. travel. write. Thank you in advance!
Disclosure: I am a sometime contributor to JamieOliver.Com, and a Food Revolution “Super Ambassador” for Canada, though I was supporting Jamie’s cause well before I was doing any of those things. If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you’ll know how much of a Jamie fan I am and how strongly I believe in his message. I was not asked to write about this book, I purchased it myself.
Fantastic set of photographs.
Good to see the LPCs back in business.
Thanks – we had a fun session!