I find Jamie Oliver’s books and TV shows great for inspiration mainly because his food is always so colourful and tasty! But, I’ve often heard people say that his ‘quick’ 30 minute meals aren’t actually that quick. So – putting that complaint to the test, I decided to give the ‘Jamie’s 30 minute meals’ series a run for its money with this Asian style salmon dish. So here we go… did it work?
Asian style salmon and noodle broth serves 2 (cut down from original by Jamie Oliver)
Ingredients:
Salmon
- 2 boneless, skin on salmon fillets
- 2cm piece ginger
- 2 cloves garlic
- Small red onion, peeled and roughly chopped
- ½ red chilli
- 1 tbs soy sauce
- Juice of 1 lime
Noodle Broth
- 4 spring onions, sliced
- 1 red chilli, chopped
- 1 large clove garlic
- 2cm grated ginger
- ½ tsp Chinese five spice powder
- ½ tsp cornflour
- 450ml chicken or vegetable stock
- 150g sugar snap peas
- 200g egg noodles (or 2 nests)
- Soy sauce
Method (adapted from Jamie’s 30 minute meals recipe)
- Start by getting all your ingredients together! Boil the kettle, get your oven on (250c/480f/gas9) and get your pans out! I’m sure this is the key to getting it on the table within 30 minutes.
- Salmon first – chop the onion, ginger and chilli and whizz in the blender with the soy sauce and lime juice. It needs to be a lumpy paste. Pour into a shallow ovenproof dish with a drizzle of olive oil (I used pyrex) and place the salmon on top skin side up. Sprinkle with five spice powder and black pepper. Cook for 18 minutes.
- Next whilst the salmon is in the oven, stick your saucepan on a medium heat. Add the chopped spring onions and chilli stirring quickly -then add the garlic and ginger (careful it doesn’t burn!) Add the five spice and cornflour and stir before adding the stock. Stir again and then add the sugar snap peas and noodles. Stick the lid on and within about 5 mins it’ll be ready.
Here we go! On your marks..
The results are in:
Wahey! We were eating within 30 minutes (just…) although I’m sure the only reason is that I prepped it all the veg in advance, had the pans, blender etc.. everything set up ready to go. This takes time but once you get going, it all flows well.
There was too much broth in my opinion – probably because I didn’t do a very good job of cutting down the recipe. But, that said, the salmon was delicious – the ginger and chilli had really infused into it making it taste delicious. A new way for me to cook salmon too (and I’ll be doing it again!). For a midweek meal, this was a keeper and will be trying another recipe from this Jamie Oliver book soon.
Yes, really good info but what about the salad which looked yummy and the simple desert?