… to my minute of fame!  Tonight I was cooking Christmas in July, an Australian tradition whereby you cook a full Christmas dinner, in July, because it’s cold.  By complete coincidence, Delia Smith was being interviewed on Radio 2 by Graham Norton and he was asking for requests for questions for Delia, so as I was cooking Delia’s Cumberland Sauce I emailed in a question. It obviously caught their eye, as my Christmas in July got a mention, albeit if it did provide Graham Norton with some material – he implied I’m not a very good cook! How dare he!!!!!

If you’re quick you can listen to my 1 minute of fame on the BBC website. Listen again to Tuesday’s episode and fast forward to 1:42:48 ish it’s there in all its glory! And Delia, I’m sorry, I didn’t follow your recipe to the letter, I merged it with one from Simon Rimmer but it was definitely too orangey…

Here are some pictures from the evening. It wasn’t turkey, but it was all good! And the Aussies loved it!

My trusty food photographer has let me down this week, and I’m not sure you’re going to believe I’ve cooked lamb.  So far this week, I had a day off Jamie on Monday, because Monday is left-over night, and I’m running low on recipes, so there was nothing I could do with my left-over roast. However, on Tuesday I had the afternoon off work, so I put it to good use and cooked lamb shanks, which need many hours of slow cooking time.  But I have no evidence! It just looks like stew, which I can assure you it wasn’t! Where is the bone sticking out of a succulent piece of meat?!?!?  My feedback for Jamie this time is the lamb was nice, but it didn’t fall off the bone quite like it does with other recipes I’ve tried, and I think that was because the sauce was quite thick and it could’ve done with a little longer cooking time. Personally (and I can’t believe I’m writing this) I prefer the Gary Rhodes recipe in his seasonal cook book.

Having spent hours cooking on Tuesday, Wednesday had to be a bit quicker so it was back to the vegetable dishes – a pleasing but not astounding roast asparagus dish. And tonight’s dish was even quicker. Back to pasta, I didn’t make the pasta tonight , but I did make the very tasty mushroom sauce to go with it. Altohough, again, I have some constructive critism for Mr. Oliver – The mushrooms were good, but the dish was a little dry. I think if this recipe were in one of his later books he would be recomending that you put some of the pasta cooking liquid with the mushrooms to give it a bit of a sauce. I also have to confess I did the quantity of mushrooms for four people, for two! And it still wasn’t quite enough…

Faggots were my worst nightmare as a child, but as an adult, wanting Great British comfort food on a cold winter’s day, I can’t think of anything better! Courtesy of Gordon Ramsay’s Great British Pub Food I have made possibly the best comfort food I have ever made in my life. And it was a good job they were worth is as it took visits to five supermarkets before I found the key ingredient – liver, although it was meant to be pig’s liver, but when you’re at your fifth supermarket of the day lamb will just have to do.

For my Australian readers, faggots are a kind of meatball on steroids, that is primarily made of liver, with a little bit of minced meat mixed in. You then roast them in the oven with a rich, sticky gravy – in this case made with Toohey’s Old. The other key ingredient is caul fat to hold them all together, but Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall kindly informed me that bacon was a good replacement, and sure enough it did the trick.

So as not to stray too far from my Jamie challenge we served the faggots with asparagus and blue cheese (p142) and I found a recipe online for parsnip mash which made for a match made in heaven!

This recipe was a bit messy to make, and as I was mincing the liver then squashing the resulting sticky mixture into balls, I did say to Graham “never again!” but thankfully there are enough left overs for two more dinners and by next winter I will have forgotten how messy it actually is!

Here is a link to Hugh’s recipe but for the real deal I would seek out a copy of Gordon Ramsay’s Great British Pub Food – Go on, I dare you!

Sometimes it takes a bit of persuasion to make Graham eat fish, unless it is raw and very expensive! This is due to his childhood trauma of mackerel sandwiches and fish pie. But over the years, particularly since moving to Sydney, I have gradually managed to slip more and more into our diet, and this challenge seems to be a winner! In order to complete all the fish dishes we have to have it at least once a week, so Friday night has become fish and chip night. Not your average greasy, chippy takeout, but Jamie fish with home made chips.

This week was Quick Roast Cod with Parsley, chilli and oregano. The only slight problem is that we can’t get cod here, so a fitting equivalent was Barramundi. The only thing that didn’t work for this recipe was the roasted lime, but I’ll blame it on our limes that had been in the fruit bowl for a couple of weeks rather than Jamie’s recipe. The last time we roasted a lemon with the fish it was delicious, but the lime was very bitter this time.

Now all I need to do is work out which other fish we can and can’t buy here and what their equivalents would be.

I’m nearly 5 weeks in, but I’m starting to get twitchy. I’m determined to complete this challenge but I’m also keen to move onto the next book, so in order to help me along I thought I’d do a progress chart, so I can see the recipes counting down!

Soups and Broths 4/6 complete 3 new recipes tried, 1 that will definitely be cooked again.

Salads and dressings 3/18 complete Its not Salad weather, I tried to do one last night, but it was just too cold so I had to turn the spinach salad into wilted spinach from another book. We’ll have to wait until September to cook most of these, although there are a couple of warm salads that may be ok…

Pasta 9/22 complete Pasta is one of Jamie’s specialities so there are plenty to keep me going… Highlights so far have been perfecting the art of ravioli and tortellini.

Fish and Shellfish 3/14 complete This chapter has provided the stand out recipe for me, the tuna was definitely something we’ll be cooking time and time again. I don’t want to make excuses, but this one might be the hardest chapter to complete as we don’t get some of the fish down her, but I’ll keep trying.

Meat, Poultry and Game 5/12 complete This is probably the easy section to complete, and even though I’ve decided that where there are more than one variation of the recipe I’m only going to do one, I think we’ll be trying all variations of the lamb!

Vegetables 5/12 complete This chapter has provided us with a fitting way to cook our home grown squash, but apart from that nothing outstanding but equally nothing terrible. The only problem I can for see is working out the globe artichoke season, we could be waiting some tome to tick this one off as veg is very seasonal here ad that’s definitely one you don’t see all year round.

Pulses 2/9 complete Interesting chapter, it’s opening my eyes to pulses, but Jamie, you can’t convince me to buy dry and soak over night, why do you think tins were invented?!?! Risotto and Cous Cous  4/9 correct All I have to say about this chapter is that they taste much better than they look on camera!

Bread 3/9 complete Not my favourite kind of cooking. Dare I say it’s one of the few things that often tastes better than shop bought unless you are really, really good at it, and I’m obviously not! These will probably hang around until the end, by which time it will be too hot to put the oven on, so they’ll probably be skipped over!

Desserts 3/12 I’m even less of a fan of desserts than I am baking bread. The reason, I realised last week, is that I don’t like the reward enough to warrant the effort. I have the patience required for tortellini because I love to eat it at the end of it, but there are so many things I don’t like about dessert it makes it a bit tricky! So far the steamed pudding was a winner, and I will be doing them again, but under no circumstances will I be doing the lemon and lime tart!




Bits and Bobs 4/17 This is the chapter of random bits like stock and sauces. WOW! I’ve just managed to make the challenge more difficult! The first count of recipes led me to believe there were about 128 recipes in the book, but I’ve just managed to count 140. I think I must have left out the bits and bobs last time! Oh well, 44 down, another 96 to go so ten weeks worth of coking left, that should take me into more warmer weather so at least I will get to try some of these salads!