Save with Jamie and cook like Bridget Jones

The most used cookery book in out house is Jamie Olivers 30 minute meals. We have made so many of them and carried techniques over. I then took the 15 minute meal book quite seriously armed with stopwatch and desperate to get in the "zone". It therefore made sense to give the Save with Jamie book a go. We don't tend to waste food and try to plan meals to use leftovers. Roast Chicken followed by risotto the next day etc. I do love a tip about freezing whole chillis though.

We bought the book to come up with extra recipes and to see if it was as useful as the books before. I purchased a massive piece of pork at a good price, roasted it and divided it into the amounts needed. I froze some of the bits for later in the month and planned this weekend. I decided to start with the Chinese pork buns. The pace was slower and with other things going on and without the pressure of the stop watch. It required more precision than the 30 and 15 minute meals recipes but this is not necessarily a bad thing.

The recipe was clear and well set out. I normally leave dough and pastry to my husband as its tends to involve too much intuition and not enough science. I did however find that the dough was so basic that even I managed it. The flavours worked well and I love the little garnishes as it makes it feel like more of a platter. I made one mistake and that was to think that blue muffin cases would be okay as they are designed for cooking. Seemingly they are not okay for steaming which resulted in the edges of my buns being blue! It was not a big issue as they had expanded a lot and we just took the blue bits off. It did however make me giggle and think of Bridget Jones with the blue string in her soup. I should also add that I used a metal steamer not a bamboo one and they worked fine. I am sure we will eat it again; next time I will shred the pork when it is warm, use white muffin cases, have lots and lots of flour for the worktop and my hands and maybe add some cucumber batons.

Pork Buns with yummy garnish