Given my new status as an unemployed person, I decided to use the time for something fun & came down to London on Saturday morning with the intention of just ‘being here’ for a while. Saturday night was spent with my good friend Bruce (Springsteen) in Hyde Park with 74,999 other people. Then I slept at my sisters house and enjoyed midnight popcorn and tea in bed. So good to see her!
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| Jamie’s Italian – HOW CUTE |
On Saturday I met up with my fave house mates from uni at Westfield Shepherds Bush and we went to Jamie’s Italian for lunch. This was my first visit to one of Jamie’s Italians so I was quite looking forward to it. To start we shared Queen Olives over ice with tapenade and crispy risotto balls with a spicy tomato and basil sauce. The starters were quick to the table and tasty. To be honest, it’d be difficult to mess up the olives as no skill required but the risotto balls were very tasty and the dip freshly made (I think) with baby basil leaves as garnish.
For main I had the prawn linguine. It was a mountain of a bowl, I couldn’t finish it all! The linguine was a little bit too al dente, I think another minute would have helped. The sauce was a very simple tomato, garlic and chilli mixture with plump, tasty prawns and fennel shavings running through it. The fennel was quite tough in places, perhaps shaved too close to the stalk?! But, overall, a nice pasta dish served by friendly faces in a lovely environment, what more can you ask for when catching up with best friends?
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| WORLD’S BEST OLIVES ON ICE £3.75 & CRISPY STUFFED RISOTTO BALLS £4.95. Large green olives, black olive tapenade & crispy “music bread”/ Smoked mozzarella & porcini arancini |
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| PRAWN LINGUINE £12.50 Fried garlicky prawns with shaved fennel, tomatoes, chilli & rocket |
Last night was my third and final night away on my London adventure, I stayed with one of my best friends and she cooked up a storm. Another one to thank Jamie Oliver for! She made us a delicious fish tray bake from his first series 30 minutes cook book. Salmon & prawns nestled in with chilli, anchovies, garlic and tender stem broccoli (in place of asparagus) served with minted new potatoes and an incredibly zesty Salsa Verde. Anna, it was a fab meal! All this was topped off with one of her famous pear tarts, served simply with a dollop of natural frozen yoghurt. DELICIOUS!
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| Anna’s fab fish bake TUT TUT I didn’t even move the TV remote for the shot! |
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| Followed by an incredible Pear Tart (famous in our circles!) |
This week I’ll post the recipe for Lamb Gushtaba, tweeted and Facebooked last week… and with fingers crossed, my Twitter will have reached 100 followers! Now that would put a huge smile on my face!
Over and out.
looks very good!!