Jamie's Italian, Cambridge, UK

Image from Jamie's Italian website

I was a bit unsure about reviewing Jamie's Italian as it is essentially a chain, though currently only a small one. But it's my blog so I've decided to go ahead anyway, especially because the opening of this venue was quite a big deal in a little place like Cambridge. The excitement of a new Jamie Oliver branded outlet (and it's no bookings policy) has led to long queues ever since it opened in February, and on a previous attempt to go and eat there we were given a waiting time of around two hours. We ate elsewhere.

But I was still keen to sample some of the Oliver magic, so me and the male companion person (MCP) returned a couple of weeks later. It was still packed on a week night, but at least there was no queue round the block so we were into the bar area pretty promptly with a predicted wait of forty five minutes. The Jamie's Italian in Cambridge is divided into two sections- a bar and small eating area at the front, and a much larger and rather grand dining room at the back. Somewhat randomly this is separated from the entrance by a long black curtain, giving the impression that it contains 'first class' diners who need to be hidden from the economy hordes of those merely waiting to eat.

Anyway, our wait was quite pleasant as I managed to bag us a couple of bar stools and we had some drinks and snacked on some huge green olives that were incredibly nice (as to why they were served on ice I have no idea). We'd been given a buzzer on arrival and when this went off we were escorted into the main dining room. The restaurant is located in part of Cambridge's Guildhall which used to be the tourist information centre. Jamie Oliver's team have done a great job in uncovering the large marble pillars and domed ceiling, adding some subtle lighting and turning it all into an impressive space.

And so the food. We ordered a lot and everything was acceptable if unremarkable. An antipasti dish of crispy squid and garlic aoli was disturbingly small and quite bland. My pasta starter of wild mushroom ravioli was nice enough, but probably would have been much better if it had simply arrived with fried sage leaves and parmesan (as described on the menu), rather than an attempt at a sauce with more mushrooms, chilli and tomato. The MCP's spaghetti bolognese was declared a success though, and to be honest both pasta dishes disappeared pretty rapidly.

I had the fritto misto and a green salad for my main, and the MCP went for the steamed sea bass jauntily called 'fish in bag'. My huge plate (covered in brown paper- reason unknown) contained a selection of sprats, squid, red mullet (I think), a (single) prawn, and a giant deep-fried spaghetti garnish.

The fish was all quite nicely cooked, but I do think the batter could have been lighter and seasoned more. The green salad was entirely comprised of little gem lettuce, and covered with yoghurt and parmesan cheese, and though perfectly fine I really would have preferred a simple oil and vinegar dressing. The MCP enjoyed his fish but did comment on the parsimonious quantity of the other ingredients. Two mussels and a single potato didn't seem particularly pukka. The MCP treated me to this dinner, but you can work out from the menu that the cost of our food, a couple of alcoholic drinks and a couple of non-alcoholic ones was reasonable but certainly not cheap.
But criticisms aside there are a lot of positives about Jamie's Italian. It's a fab venue, little things like the olives, and tap water on the table demonstrated some good thinking, and all the staff we encountered seemed genuinely enthusiastic about their work. But would I be prepared to wait for two hours to eat there? No.

Jamie's Italian
The Old Library
Wheeler Street
Cambridge CB2 3QJ

Salmon salad nicoise

I was intending to write this post a couple of weeks ago. I was wearing sandals, wandering around in a floaty skirt, and keen on moving on from hearty winter fare to something a little lighter for my dinners. However summer seems to finished now, and I am back to being wrapped in a scarf. Humph.
Anyway, this is one of my favourite quick summer meals. A traditional tuna nicoise salad combines tinned tuna with boiled potatoes, salad leaves, tomato, green beans, boiled egg, anchovies and olives. This version replaces the tinned fish with some freshly grilled salmon fillets, and I've previously used fresh tuna steaks too. I omitted the tomato (realised I didn't have any) and olives (thought the anchovy would add enough saltiness), and added in some finely sliced red onion (for a bit of extra sharpness). This is not one of those recipes that requires precise amounts of ingredients so the below are really only guidelines, and you can also add in the components that I left out if you like them.

Recipe (enough for two):
2 salmon fillets, grilled, skin removed
Around 12 small new potatoes, boiled
2 eggs, boiled until hard or soft, quartered
6 anchovy fillets
1 small red onion, finely sliced
2 generous handfuls of green beans, boiled or steamed until tender
1 bag of mixed salad leaves

Dressing:
Around 6tbsp olive oil
Around 2tbsp lemon juice
Salt and pepper to taste

So simply whisk together the dressing, assemble all the above ingredients, and pour over. I like to eat this while it's still warm with the dressing being absorbed by the potatoes, and their residual heat also slightly softening the onion. But it's perfectly nice at room temperature too. Ideally serve when it's a lovely summer day.

Sainsbury's fresh taglionini with rocket pesto

Shop bought pasta parcels in all shapes and sizes are often my fallback option for a quick dinner. But I think this is pretty much my only experience of fresh non-filled pasta, and I've never thought to buy a fresh alternative to my long lasting packets of dried spaghetti and linguine.
But in the spirit of trying something a bit new I picked up a bag of tagliolini from the refrigerated shelves of Sainsbury the other week. As the name seems to indicate these ribbons are a bit thinner than tagliatelle, and are enriched with egg giving the pasta a lovely yellow tinge. It's also made in Italy which probably helps those concerned with authenticity (surely our Italian brethren wouldn't send over duff pasta?).

It just needs a couple of minutes in boiling water to cook, and I served it with a simple rocket pesto. The pesto was made with this recipe, but substituting two big handfuls of rocket (around 50g) for the basil and also adding in a small chunk of grana padano or Parmesan cheese. The mellow richness of the pasta was a lovely match to the sharper flavours of the pesto. In fact I think I could have made things even simpler, and could quite easily have eaten this pasta with just a little butter or olive oil and salt and pepper.
I've never made my own pasta from scratch, and until I do I think this version from Sainsbury makes a seriously good substitute.

Sainsbury's fresh tagliolini
I rate it 8.5/10
Cost: Around £1.55 for a 500g bag

Sweet treats- Chocolate refridgerator cake and mini carrot cake

I've always thought that tiffin was something very occasionally mentioned by older relatives when they meant a packed lunch, or alternatively a term to elicit sniggers in a Carry On film. It was only quite recently that I've learnt it's also used as a synonym for refridgerator cake. And it was as I gazed on a box of Gu tiffin in the supermarket that I thought I could actually make this myself.
I used this recipe from the BBC Food site, with a couple of minor variations. I swapped the dried apricots for glace cherries (as I prefer them) and used 100g of plain and 200g of milk chocolate (as there was an offer on in Tesco). I don't know anyone who weighs golden syrup so I put in around 4 generous tablespoons and tasted. This was sweet enough for me but you may want to add more if you are using dark chocolate. Once everything was pressed into my tin I left it in the fridge to set for a couple of hours. The recipe states this makes 12 squares, but once turned out I obviously cut mine much smaller as I had around 20 little squares. I think these were the perfect size though as anything bigger would probably have resulted in an immediate sugar coma.

So to balance out all the chocolate in the above I thought I'd better eat some vegetables, ideally in cake form too. A quick bit of searching threw up this excellent recipe on Jules' Butcher, Baker blog. My only variations were omitting the mixed spice (as I didn't have any) and using my own version of the cream cheese icing. This simply combines half a pack of cream cheese (around 125g) with a teaspoon of vanilla extract and enough icing sugar to sweeten (around 3 tablespoons).

The little carrot cupcakes were incredibly moist and fruity but not too sweet. And the topping added just a little bit of richness. I was very taken by how something that was chocolate-free could be so moreish.
Either of these cakes are ideal with a cup of tea while enjoying some spring sunshine.

Falafel with canellini bean humous

I seem to have had a box of Al Fez falafel mix sitting in my cupboard for the past year or so now. And as spring finally seems to have arrived I thought I'd try move on from hearty winter fare to something (a little) lighter. So falafel and humous with salad it was. The mix just needed cold water adding to it, and shaping into around six small-ish balls before frying (the instructions said to deep fry but I defied them and shallow fried the falafel). This is definitely a quick and easy way to make falafel and is not bad on the taste front either, with a good hit of cumin against an otherwise mild background. I did find the texture a little dense and stodgy though- but this may have been down to my frying choices. I think I'd like to try making my own falafel from scratch to really compare flavours but until then this Al Fez mix is not a bad shortcut.

I was fully intending to make a regular chickpea humous to go with the falafel but due to a previous shopping error found I only had a tin of canellini beans available. This seemed to be an acceptable substitute though, so I tipped the contents of the tin into my trusty Kenwood mini-chopper along with a fat clove of garlic, a heaped teaspoon of tahini, salt and pepper to taste, and a squeeze of lemon juice. The texture of this humous was a lot smoother than one made with chickpeas (and didn't need any olive oil adding to it). And although it lacked the slight nutty taste of regular humous it was still pretty good. A red onion, tomato, and cucumber salad and some warmed pitta bread completed my meal- and it did feel like I had taken a small step towards summer (of course it poured down with rain the next day).

Al Fez Falafel Mix
I rate it 7/10
Cost: Around £1.00

Paneer tikka (skewers optional)

I do like paneer. However it wasn't until I went to a couple of weddings in India a few years ago that I first ate paneer tikka. These are basically pieces of marinated paneer threaded onto skewers with some other vegetables, and grilled over charcoal. The combination of spicy heat and a light singeing from the hot coals was hard to beat, and I remember scoffing a lot of these with my cousins while trying not to trip over my sari and avoiding various groups of gossiping aunties.
However wasn't until the other day when I stumbled across this post on the Foodlyrics blog that it occurred to me that I could try making paneer tikka at home. I had to adapt the recipe (enough for two greedy people as a main course) a little bit due to a lack of ingredients so my tikka didn't feature any tomatoes. I also boosted the spicing and used about two fat cloves of garlic and a half inch wodge of ginger to go with my 272g block of ready-made paneer (see previous post for brand information). For 'plain curds' I used natural yoghurt, and though I was a bit concerned about it splitting it was all fine.
I left the paneer and vegetables to sit in the marinade for a couple of hours and then fried it all off as described in the recipe. I think this is the genius bit of it all as it ensures the vegetables are nicely cooked through before the grilling part, and I think I'd do this even if I was cooking this dish on a barbeque. I was then ready to commence skewering- at which point I realised I didn't have any skewers. Damn. But on the basis that skewers don't actually add any flavour and the food is removed from them before eating anyway, I just lined everything up on a foil covered baking try and placed under a hot grill for around 8-10mins until a nice bit of blistering developed on the peppers and the paneer and onions charred a little.

I'm not normally a massive fan of green peppers and find them a bit acrid tasting but here they perfectly offset the sweetness of the onion, and the spicing peps up the otherwise bland paneer.
The tikkas were carefully dished up with some vegetable pilau rice and salad, and rapidly eaten.

Cannellini bean mash

I think I have come across the non-potato mash rather late in life, (but am now in the process of catching up) and am definitely a fan. For a very quick and simple mash, which involves no peeling, chopping or boiling, tinned cannellini beans are absolutely brilliant. You can add any of the flavours that you normally would to mashed potato such as garlic or herbs, or just keep it simple with butter and salt and pepper.
I like to gently sweat a clove or two of crushed garlic in a couple of table spoons of olive oil and once softened add in two tins of cannellini beans (makes enough for two hungry people). These will also start to soften as they warm through, and you can then fully squish them with a regular potato masher or stick blender. When smooth, return to a gentle heat to make sure they're piping hot and then add lots of salt and pepper and maybe a knob of butter. And that's it- a lovely, creamy mash that happily fills the place of mashed potato when you feel like a bit of a change or if time is of the essence.
NB The picture below does not really do it justice.



Tesco cannellini beans (410g)
I rate them 9/10
Cost: Around £0.45 depending on your supermarket