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Jamie Oliver’s BBQ Baked Beans with Smashed Sweet Potatoes

Posted on February 13, 2016 by The quirk and the cool

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I’ve cooked a few dishes from Save with Jamie, Jamie Oliver‘s great book full of interesting, tasty and cost saving recipes. This one has really taken my fancy, as I love sweet potato, and I really love beans, and it’s vegetarian too!

This is my version with a few small tweaks, but I have included the link to Jamie’s original recipe so that you cook the original if that’s what you’re after.

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/vegetables-recipes/bbq-baked-beans/#g3sjMR7LQpSdCpxs.97

I halved the quantities for my version, and this would still easily serve 4 people for a meal or 6 or so as a side. I omitted the carrots – I was out of them  – plus I thought the recipe would be fine sans carrot. Jamie suggests serving with cheesy ciabatta and yoghurt  which would be excellent, but I just wanted great tasting beans and potato on their own. I used sambal oelek (a chilli paste) instead of fresh chilli and chilli flakes. This is just personal choice, but in trying to be authentic in my post, I am writing exactly what I did in my version.

Ingredients

1 red onion

1 clove of garlic

olive oil

1/2 heaped teaspoon sweet smoked paprika

1/2 level teaspoon cumin seeds

1/2 level teaspoon sambal oelek or chilli paste

3 medium sweet potatoes

1/2 (350ml) 700 ml jar of passata

1 x 400g tin of mixed beans – or 1 x 400g tin of  butter, kidney or cannellini beans

50ml BBQ sauce*

a few sprigs of fresh rosemary

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees C.  Peel the onions and garlic, then finely slice. Put into a large baking dish that can be used on the stove top. Place on a medium heat with a lug of oil, the paprika, cumin and chilli paste and cook for 20 minutes, or until softened, stirring regularly. Meanwhile, scrub the sweet potatoes clean, then rub them with a little oil, salt and pepper, place in another baking dish and put aside.When the 20 minutes is up, stir the passata into the baking dish, add a splash of water and pour in the beans (juice and all). Drizzle over the BBQ sauce, season lightly with salt and pepper and stir well. Pick and roughly chop the rosemary leaves, toss in a little oil and sprinkle over the top, then place in the oven for around 1 hour, or until bubbling and baked.  Add a splash or two of water to loosen, if needed.

You should place the sweet potatoes into the oven at the same time as you put the beans and passata etc into the oven. Cook the sweet potatoes for 1 hour too, or until soft and cooked through.

Remove the two dishes from the oven, tear up or squidge open the potatoes, and serve with the beansy mix. And I do think the dish would be enhanced by some yoghurt and crusty bread  – next time that’s a must for me.

* I used a bought BBQ sauce – I thought it made the dish too sweet. Try to get a smoky, savoury BBQ sauce or make your own. That’s next time for me too!

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Jamie Oliver’s Salmon Tacos with Avocado and a Quick Cucumber Pickle

Posted on October 4, 2015 by The quirk and the cool

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A quick and easy recipe from Jamie Oliver’s Save with Jamie. It’s a recipe to use up left over roast salmon, but like me, you can easily cook a salmon fillet or two if you don’t happen to have any left over salmon on hand.

The basic flatbread recipe for the tacos is excellent. I make a lot of breads, and this non-yeast ie”flat” bread is the best recipe I’ve found. And it takes a only few minutes to make the dough and a few minutes more to cook the tacos. Easy and quick!

Ingredients

 

Tacos (Flatbread)

250 g plain flour, plus extra for dusting

2 tbs olive oil

150 ml water

 

Quick Pickle

½ a red onion

¼ of a cucumber

2 tablespoons white wine vinegar

Avocado Salsa

2 ripe avocados

6 tablespoons fat-free natural yoghurt

2 limes

30 g fresh mint

Cooked Salmon

375 g leftover cooked salmon

Optional: salmon skin

Method

Put the flour and a pinch of salt in a bowl. Make a well in the centre and add the olive oil and water. Mix with a fork, and when the mixture comes together, lightly knead on a floured board until the dough is smooth. Divide into 12 portions for small (15cm diameter) tacos, or 6 for larger ones. I went for the bigger as they were easier to fill. Cover with a damp tea towel until you are ready to cook. The tacos are best left to be cooked last so they stay soft and warm.

Peel the onion and slice very finely. Cut the cucumber into matchsticks – but not too thin. Put both into a bowl with a grind of sea salt and mix. Leave till the last minute to develop a “pickly” flavour.

Chop the avocados in half, peel and scoop out the flesh, chop roughly and put into a bowl with the yoghurt and the juice of 1 lime. Add half the mint, chopped. Mash all of this together, or pulse a few times in the food processor. You want the texture to be still a bit chunky.

At this stage, you will need to cook the salmon if you’re not using left overs.  I cooked a salmon fillet over a medium heat in a frying pan in a little olive oil. Skin side down for 4 minutes, skin side up for  2 minutes, or until you can see that the fillet is cooked through on the sides. Remove from the pan, and if you want crispy skin on your tacos, remove the skin and crisp up on both sides in the frying pan for a minute or two.

For the flatbread tacos, roll out a dough ball on a floured board, dusting with more flour if it’s sticking. Roll out to a 15cm circle for small tacos or 30cm for larger tacos. Heat a frying pan over medium heat (it should be quite hot) and cook the taco for about a minute on each side or until the taco has a few specks of charring. Don’t overcook – you want the taco to be soft and pliable. Repeat with the other dough balls, stacking them in foil as you go so they stay warm.

Squeeze the excess liquid from the pickle and put into a little bowl. Put the avocado salsa in a bowl too, and put the salmon and its crispy skin if using, on a plate.

Put these onto a board or serving platter. Pile up the tacos. Put the extra lime, mint and optional crispy skin onto the board or serving platter and you are ready for “build  your own tacos”.

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Jamie Oliver’s Mexican Chilli

Posted on April 10, 2015 by The quirk and the cool

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I first cooked this delicious, simple and cost-saving recipe from Jamie Oliver in 2014. The recipe has certainly been popular on my blog! I guess everyone is looking for hearty, slow cooked casseroles and stews that can be quietly cooking away for a few hours. The original post can be found here.

The recipe comes from Jamie’s book Save with Jamie. I absolutely love it because it’s cooked with beef shin, bone in! Beef shin is so rich in flavour and gets better and better the longer you cook it.

The recipe needs to be cooked for a long time – 5 hours – and you end up with a lovely, unctous stew with plenty of liquid. The meat just falls apart, it is so tender.

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So here is Jamie’s recipe.IMG_8801

Ingredients

Chilli

Olive oil

2 red onions

4 cloves of garlic

2 fresh red chillies ( the large, not so hot ones – or more if you want more heat)

30 g fresh coriander

2 teaspoons ground cumin

2 teaspoons smoked paprika

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

2 x 400 g tins of chopped tomatoes

2 tomato tins of water

1 kg beef shin, bone in, sinew removed

2 fresh bay leaves

1 x 400 g tin of cannellini beans

Rock salt and freshly ground pepper.

Fluffy basmati rice and yoghurt or sour cream to serve

Method

Preheat your oven to 170 degrees C.

Heat a large heavy bottomed casserole on the stove top on a medium heat. Add swig of olive oil to the pan. Add chopped red onions and minced garlic and fry for a couple of minutes. Add chopped chillis and the roots and stalks of the coriander, leaving the tops for the garnish. Add the spices and a good grind of salt and pepper. Fry till the mixture is caramelized and gnarly, but not burnt.

Pour in the chopped tomatoes, fill each tin with water and add these to the casserole. Stir to mix, making sure you gather up all the goodness at the bottom of the casserole.

Roll the shin of beef in salt and pepper to coat, then place gently in the centre of the casserole. Turn to coat in the liquid. Pop the bay leaves into the mixture.

Place the lid on the casserole and move to the pre-heated oven. Cook for 5 hours. I suggest checking after a couple of hours, and then each hour, to make sure the liquid is not drying up. Top up with water, to loosen if needed.

20 minutes before the end, drain the tin of cannellini beans and stir through. Add a splash of the bean juices if the chilli looks dry.

When the meat is falling apart and the chilli is thick, shake the marrow out of the bone and stir it back into the chilli.

Serve the Mexican chilli with fluffy rice and yoghurt or sour cream, and coriander leaves to garnish.

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Save with Jamie: Mexican Chilli Beef

Posted on August 23, 2014 by The quirk and the cool

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*For an updated version of this dish please see my 2015 post.

This is a great recipe for lovers of slow cooked food! it’s from Jamie Oliver’s book Save with Jamie:

http://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/category/books/save-with-jamie

It’s a Mexican chilli dish made with slow cooked shin of beef rather than minced steak.

I’m a HUGE fan of shin beef, and cook with this cut regularly. It’s perfect for casseroles and stews, any dish that needs long slow cooking.

In this recipe Jamie cooks the beef bone in, in one piece. This creates a real depth of flavour. At the end, when removing the bone, you scrape out the bone marrow into the dish for that extra burst of flavour.

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It’s a really easy dish to prepare – nothing complicated – but it takes time. 5 hours cooking. Perfect for a wet weekend when you are staying indoors anyway.

My comments are that I lowered Jamie’s original oven temperature of 170 degrees C to 150 degrees C. If you are cooking for 5 hours you want the temperature nice and low.

Also, my casserole was not as “liquidy” as Jamie’s. Next time I will add a little more water or some more tinned tomatoes to the mix, or cook for slightly less time.

Ingredients

Chilli

Olive oil

2 red onions

4 cloves of garlic

2 fresh red chillies ( the large, not so hot ones – or more if you want more heat)

30 g fresh coriander

2 teaspoons ground cumin

2 teaspoons smoked paprika

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

2 x 400 g tins of chopped tomatoes

2 tomato tins of water

1 kg beef shin, bone in, sinew removed

2 fresh bay leaves

1 x 400 g tin of cannellini beans

Rock salt and freshly ground pepper.

Salsa

1 green pepper

4 spring onions

150 g cherry tomatoes

Splash of extra virgin olive oil

Splash of white wine vinegar

Fluffy basmati rice and fat free yoghurt (to serve)

 

Method

Preheat your oven to 150 degrees C.

Heat a large heavy bottomed casserole on the stove top on a medium heat. Add swig of olive oil to the pan. Add chopped red onions and minced garlic and fry for a couple of minutes. Add chopped chillis and the roots and stalks of the coriander, leaving the tops for the salsa and garnish. Add the spices and a good grind of salt and pepper. Fry till the mixture is caramelized and gnarly, but not burnt.

Pour in the chopped tomatoes, fill each tin with water and add these to the casserole. Stir to mix, making sure you gather up all the goodness at the bottom of the casserole.

Roll the shin of beef in salt and pepper to coat, then place gently in the centre of the casserole. Turn to coat in the liquid. Pop the bay leaves into the mixture.

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Place the lid on the casserole and move to the pre-heated oven. Cook for 5 hours. I suggest checking after a couple of hours, and then each hour, to make sure the liquid is not drying up. As I mentioned, my chilli could have done initially with more liquid, or half an hour’s less cooking time to retain more moisture.

Meanwhile, empty the tin of cannellini beans into a frying pan with a swig of olive oil, and fry for a couple of minutes until some of the beans split.

Remove the casserole from the oven, and add the cannellini beans.

To make the salsa,  blitz the green pepper, spring onions, cherry tomatoes and most of the coriander tops in a food processor. Put into a bowl with a splash of extra virgin olive oil and white wine vinegar.

Serve the Mexican chilli with the salsa, fluffy rice and yoghurt, and coriander leaves to garnish.

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