Simply Jamie (2024)
I just had the most phenomenon leftover lunch - two days marinated bolognese pasta with a sunny side up followed by crusty nutella banana bread pudding and coffee. YUM?!
The cherry on top was that these leftovers were cooked from scratch by me, kudos to the motivation coming from Jamie Oliver youtube videos and me having to cook fresh food for my dog over the last two months.
These few days, I have become even more mindful on the food that I put in my body. More than ever before. I noticed that the instagrammable cooked food that was easily purchased outside tended towards being more oily, heavier seasoning and sometimes I wondered if the quality of the produces that went in was any good?
Did the sauce came frozen and from a factory bag? Were there chemicals?
Were the meats fresh? Could I tell if it was rotten?
Were the veggies washed properly to remove pesticides?
I mean, these are the questions I always asked myself when I cooked for myself or when I shopped for my grocery, meticulously selecting each item in my basket. So why didn't I exert the same high standards on the restaurant/take out food that also goes into my body?
It's with this realization that motivated to me be more conscious on my food choices and I sure am feeling the results of my careful selection.
Other than the obvious external image where I looked leaner, I am feeling physically stronger and lighter. I feel confident of all the nutrients that goes into my body and so I can manage taking the extra vitamins accordingly. If the weather wasn't great and I couldn't get too much sunlight, I'd take some vitamin D. I take some magnesium when I'm feeling stressed and the ultimate good-for-all is vitamin C+collagen when I just needed that mega boost. These along with lots of fiber from a variety of vegetables and occasional beef for iron felt enough for now. I took accountability of my health and I feel good about it.
And so, I'd like to share some of the recipes that I have made recently so I can remember in the future how good this present day felt. Enjoy!
(Nutella) Banana Bread Pudding
- Preheat the oven to 175 degrees C.
- Mix together 2 cups milk, 4 large eggs, 2 cup sugar, and vanilla extract/bean to taste in a large bowl. Stir in chopped bread and 2 large bananas. Let mixture rest until bread soaks up liquid, about 5 minutes. (Stale 4-5 days old toast bread is good for this as it'd suck up more moisture, plus it'd be a good way to finish using up the loaf!)
- I mixed it all in an oven safe bowl so I can just pop the bowl into the oven straight after.
- Place an empty roasting pan into the oven and filled it half up with water. Place the mixture in the roasting pan filled with water. Meaning, the mixture stays in the bowl and the water is touching the outside of the bowl. DO NOT POUR MIXTURE INTO THE WATER.
- Bake for 1 hour.
- Serve with a generous dollop of nutella on top of the pudding while warm. (Optional but you'd be mad to skip this step.)
- You're in heaven. You're welcome.
Jamie Oliver's Better Bolognese (Tina v1)
I have to say, it didn't hit the spot as much as I expected it to be. It's highly because I haven't been a good student and did not follow instructions closely. ;D so, this is just version 1 with notes for next time.
Food processor ingredients:
Roughly chop into size that can be tossed into the food processor and break everything down into baby bite size veggies.
- 1 large onion
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 2 bell peppers (yellow and red)
- 2 eggplants
- a box of fresh mushroom
- a sprig of fresh rosemary (remove stalk if possible)
I use an all-in-one pressure cooker and it allows for in cooker lid open cooking. Because I have a tiny kitchen, I just cooked everything in one pot.
- Finely slice a packet of bacon and stir in the cooker pot with generous pour of olive oil over high heat. Stir regularly until golden.
- Add in one packet of minced beef and one packet of minced pork, breaking it up with the spatula and let it brown. Stir regularly.
- Add in all of food processor ingredients. Cook for roughly 15 minutes, stir regularly. While you're stirring, you can prepare the tomatoes separately.
- Score the bottom of two large tomato with the knife (meaning roughly slice the top of the skin of the tomato with the knife to create a "X" mark), put the scored tomatoes in a pot of boiling water for 30 seconds - 1 min until you can visible see the marked "X" skin kinda remove itself from the tomato flesh. Remove the tomatoes from the boiling water, peel the skin off from the marked "X" spot and toss away the skin. Roughly chop the naked tomatoes into cubes.
- Once you've finished cutting the tomatoes, put all the chopped tomatoes into the cooker pot and add a bottle of tomato puree. Fill the empty tomato bottle with water and add the water into the cooker pot. Add 2 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar. Mix mix mix!
- Close the lid, set it on slow cook for two hours. Wash up everything!
- Once the two hours is up, I'd be so exhausted so I'd salt and pepper to taste and pack everything up to let it marinate overnight in the fridge in airtight glass containers.
- When I'm ready to cook, I'd simply boil some pasta, drain the pasta and retain some pasta water (pasta water should be heavily seasoned with salt while cooking). Reheat the cold bolognese from the fridge, add the drained pasta and mix in pasta water as needed. Mix in chopped fresh parsley, cut one firehot chili and add more salt, pepper and olive oil to taste. Serve with a generous topping of shaved parmesan cheese.
- When I ate the leftovers, I added a healthy serving of siracha and it honestly elevated everything. I'd be adding that in next time while cooking the pasta!