One Soup! and Another Soup!

In my quest to cook more, I've discovered that once you have one of those hand blendery things, that soups are actually the easiest thing in the world to make. So much so that to tackle one of my off work tasks, I've decided to start wading through the Delia Smith 'Soup' book which has been happily sitting on my shelf never to be touched for about oooh, 5 years now.

So far I've made the following, all of which have been delicious:

Carrot & Coriander (using coriander from my balcony baskets, how fresh it tasted!)
Spinach
Potato
Mushroom
Tomato
Butternut Squash

Ok, so I know these are all the easy ones, but they turned out well, so I'm going to attempt some of those with more ingredients over the coming weeks. But I'm pretty happy with myself so far that I'm getting on and trying new things.

Cooking up a storm

I've been watching the Jamie Oliver 30 minute meals program every night. Rob caught the one where he was making Chicken Satay skewers. I've never really been that keen on Peanut butter, but Rob loves it so I thought I would give it a try.

The recipe is here.

I'll admit, I didn't quite manage it in 30 minutes, but this was the weekend and there was no hurry. We were not bothered about the fruity pudding, but I did manage to make the satay sauce, the chicken skewers and I thought the noodles were absolutely amazing, I think I ate about 3 portions.

Overall, very happy, I'd definitely make this meal again. The flavours were really tasty, it had a lot of zing, but not uncomfortably spicy. Rob gave it an 8/10. Yum Yum!

Jamie's Italian, Canary Wharf

It's been a while now since my favourite restaurant in London shut down. That was Passione, owned by Gennaro Contaldo, who just so happened to be one of the mentors Jamie learned from when he was working on his series in Italy. What upset me most when Passione shut down was that I thought I'd never again taste olives so amazing. I was wrong, and when I saw them on the menu last night, I think I got a bit over-excited.

This was the second time that we had tried to get into Jamie's Italian. The first, it was packed out and the wait time was too long. This time we got straight in, and the staff were kind enough to give us a lovely big table by the window. We arrived at 7pm on a Saturday evening, and there were quite a lot of families with young children. It's quite a big restaurant though, and in the course of the evening, there were hen parties, families, couples...basically, it's good for anyone. We were able to take our time with the food, never felt pressured to eat quickly or give the table back, and the staff were really friendly.

The food itself was delicious. I had the World's Best Olives on ice - and they aren't lying. Haven't tasted olives this amazing since I used to eat them in Passione, and I've been looking for them ever since. Hooray that I've found them again! I also had the Mozzarella Di Bufala (creamy and delicious!) as a starter, followed by the Feather Steak for my main (yummy!), with a side of the Posh Chips (crunchy!)... and then I just about managed some of my pudding - Ultimate Chocolate, Raspberry and Amaretto Brownie (rich and melty!) - although I did need help to finish it.

Overall then, I really enjoyed the food, and the restaurant itself was pretty lovely, although there's quite a bit of hustle and bustle because of the size and the number of families in there. Well worth trying out though! 8/10