Sunday 11 November 2007

V-con x Jamie Oliver plus spaghetti trees


I'm prepared for getting a lot of comments telling me how Jamie O. sucks and is so NOT VEGAN, just another profane celebrity chef etc etc etc.

But honestly, I don't care. I love Jamie Oliver. I like the way he talks like my friend Phil, cooks like my friend Dan (or does Dan cook like Jamie? hard to tell), uses lots of olive oil and chillies for practically every dish, does amazing Italian food and saved me that one summer five years ago when I spent the summer holidays in the middle of nowhere (East Anglia, precisely) and it kept raining for an entire week.

Anyhow, today is Sunday and I got up at 8:30 am and started my Sunday cooking marathon. I just love the anarchistic feel of getting the kitchen dirty while still in my PJs!

And I got to make stuff from Veganomicon. As I had supposed, there's no need to be sceptic about the layout and the overwhelming abundance of recipes because they all kick ass!

Today I made the chili-cranberry sauce, the 5-minute-mango chutney because I had an overripe mango to use, the rosemary foccacia and the white bean aioli (MUST TRY THE AIOLI! It's heaven!)

I also had to find a place for v-con in my kitchen. It's the first book, apart from my Jamie O. books, that didn't fit into my yellow kitchen shelf, so now, it's hanging out with it's British mates:



Then, I had an idea... I still had some pesto after a JO recipe sitting in the fridge and thought "why not make foccacia pizza?"

And so I did, using Jamie's recipe for fried pizza and his pesto as well as V-cons foccacia dough and aioli. Plus mushrooms and olives by the Italian grocery store round the corner.

While preparing the dough, I was roasting some garlic and dreamed of moving to Italy to become a garlic and spaghetti tree farmer... what, you don't know spaghetti trees?







5 comments:

SaraJane said...

You know what? I got super excited when I saw Jamie Oliver's name pop up. He's my very favorite celebrity chef, I veganize his stuff all of the time. I especially love this Jamie at Home show. He's got such great respect for growing your own food, eating locally and with the seasons. It's fantastic.

Kyle said...

Wow! That looks amazing! I haven't made foccacia in ages but you've inspired me to make one soon. What kind of "cheese" did you use? I can never get it to melt like that. :( :)

Steffi said...

no cheese for v-con foccacia... in fact, I've never had foccacia with cheese on/in it.

Veggie said...

I absolutely LOVE Jamie Oliver too, I even have some of his cooking shows on dvd. I just take what I can from his recipes, he's just so interesting to watch.

Carlota said...

I also love Jamie O.
I have two books form him: Jamie's Italy and Jamie at home..I love to read his book and try t veganize some food..the only bad thing, is that there are a lot of things that you can't find in Brazil. I'm going to London and Germany in december with a big vegan supermarket list, so I'll have everything for my recipes!