This week we enjoyed Chicken Pie, French-Style Peas, Sweet Carrot Smash and a dessert of Berries, Shortbread and Chantilly Cream. While the dishes sound absolutely delicious (and -spoiler alert!- they are, it seems like this was a week that was doomed to fail, as plenty had been going wrong outside of the Jamie challenge. Cancelled appointments, illness and a strangely forebodeing case of poor cognitive ability (pretty much entirely on my part for all three points) left us wondering if we'd be able to get away with this weeks meal.
The guest list changed for this week a few times, because although many had expressed a deep desire to taste the almight chicken pie, few remembered to keep it in their schedules. So we were graced with the presence of my mother and my sister, both of whom I believe (or should hope) were delighted by what Dear Housemate and I had managed to whip up, despite all bad omens and experiences in the lead up to the big night. I would rate the meal itself as one of the healthier ones we have seen so far - theres a good presence of vegies and fruit, very little sugar and far less oils/fats than we have become accustomed to throughout Jamie Challenges. All of Jamie's meals focus on using a lot of whole foods and fresh ingredients - which I love - but this meal in particular made the health nut in me happy.
Let's start with the pie - it was delicious. I had asked Dear Housemate to take the lead on cooking this week as I have been fairly under the weather (about five and a half feet under, if you were judging by my general appearance and physical ability about this time yesterday). I hovered a bit and offered my ever-so-helpful suggestions but Dear Housemate was the one driving the bus. And once again, despite being nervous about contributing to a food poisoning crisis (or a 'salmon moose' situation, for all of you Python fans out there) she pulled off a totally scrummy chicken pie! In terms of ingredients, it is not a particularly expensive complicated dish to get together, although I would recommend anyone out there without a pastry brush to invest in one soon. Probably a lot more effective than trying to smear egg over a pie case with a fork... I imagine. Egg-smearing issues aside, this one came up great. It was filling and warming and delicious.
The veg was interesting. For starters, cooking lettuce is not something that would have ever occurred to me. Yes, you can cook cabbage and spinach and other leafy type foods so it shouldn't be all that suprising to me. But it is. Lettuce is the lovely crunch in your caesar salad, or the ingredient that makes your steak sandwich 'healthy', or the bit that most people ignore on the corner of their plate when they eat at a restaurant. It just isn't the ingredient you find cooked, floating in amongst your peas (delicious as it happened to be with all that yummy stock and butter binding them together). And the carrots last night suffered a little bit of performance anxiety, refusing to soften to a mashable state. But the good news is that we have actually cheated and made them before, and I can tell you now that the mash is delicious!
Dessert was interesting also - out of all the individual dishes last night it was the most troublesome. For starters, Elderflower Cordial is not readily available here. I don't know about the UK or Europe, but in Australia you have to source such ingredients out at a deli or fancy market and unfortunately we had neither the time, nor the inclination to do so. We decided to soldier on without it and hit our next road block with the berries - they're basically out of season now and if you do manage to find a decent punnet they tend to be in the $10+ range. So we went with frozen berries that thawed out while we cooked. The final road block was the cream - I don't even really know what went wrong with it, but it turned to butter before we could figure it out. Thankfully we had plenty of Creme Frache left from the chicken pie recipe and just used that on the side of the berries with some shortbread bikkies.
So at the end of another week, we find ourselves well-fed and contented. Next week looks like a real winner - Mustard Chicken, Quick Dauphinoise, Greens and Black Forrest Affogato. (Affogato!! Yum!!!). I aim to be fighting fit again by next week and take that one on so it looks even better than the photos!
Til then - Bon Appetit!
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