“Pasta Bolognese” from “The Family Meal”

Miles: I love this pasta mummy!

Tom: Wow. You ate the pasta, and a lot of the sauce!

Ella: That piece of tomato looks like an eyeball. So I’m not going to eat it.

Kirstin: Oh, Ella!

Georgia: It was yummy.

“Crunchy Pork Chops with Garlicky Spinach and Tomato Salad” from Feast

Tom: Ooo, this is just like tonkatsu. It IS tonkatsu.

Miles: Is this chicken? It’s just like the chicken I have at Wagamama.

Tom: Ah, but this is pork, Miles.

Kirstin: This was so easy to make, I would gladly make it again.

Tom: And it’s so yummy. I would love to eat it again.

Miles: Me too! It’s all crunchy.

Kirstin: It’s the first time I have deep fried anything in that pan and it worked really well. Not that I plan to make a habit of deep frying things. I spend rather a lot of time at work advising people on how they can reduce their cholesterol intake and deep frying is top of the list!

Tom: But once in a while, is OK, surely.

Kirstin: Of course! Another success from Nigella!

“Fresh Tomato Soup” from “Jamie’s Great Britain”

Andrew (12): Is this a Jamie Oliver recipe?

Maureen: Yes. We’re still eating from the delights of Great Britain’s kitchens. Why do you ask?

Andrew: Because it looks… interesting.

Maureen: Good interesting or bad interesting?

Andrew: In the middle interesting.

Maureen: Hmm. So what do you think?

Andrew: It’s a bit too tomatoey. All I can taste is tomato and nothing else. So that decreases its grade slightly.

Maureen: Jamie says that it “pays respect to that iconic Heinz tinned soup that we’ve all grown up loving.” But if I wanted Heinz tomato soup, I would just buy some. It would save me a lot of trouble.

“Grilled Salmon with Courgette and Tomato Salad” from “Taste of Home”

Kirstin: This was fab. She says the salmon has to be in season, but ours was defrosted.

Tom: Well, I had thirds of the salad. Yum!

“Rigatoni with fennel and sausage” from “A Taste of Home”

Tom: I thought this was very nice. A bit lighter than our usual Friday night sausage sauce. Was that because there was no red wine in it?

Kirstin: Possibly. I cooked the sausages for more time than she said so they became a little browned. And I liked the addition of a small amount of flat leaf parsley to add to the green. That and the fennel were two interesting additions!

“Chicken with Olives and Tomatoes” from “A Taste of Home”

Toby: Yum!

Tom: Yum!

Kirstin: I cooked chicken thighs instead of chicken legs and forgot to cut them in half. So the timings were all wrong and I had to stick the chicken into the oven to cook it more. Thank you Viv for helping me with that one. I think using Italian tomatoes also made all the difference too, but don’t get me started on how rubbish British tomatoes are…

“Summer Vegetable Broth with Pesto” from “Good Things to Eat”

Nicholas (8): I’ve got one thing to say. In the event of an earthquake, if you had these vegetables, it would be the only thing that survived.

Maureen: I don’t understand what you’re talking about. It’s delicious. I love it.

Andrew (11): It seems to be missing something. I’ve got another comment about the Jamie Oliver prunes dessert.

Maureen: But we’re talking about the soup!

Andrew (undeterred): The prunes were good for only one thing and that was to clean out the sewers.

Maureen: Back to the soup. This is really nice. There’s nothing weird in it. It’s not spicy. It’s just yummy vegetables made into a soup. I’m not asking you to love it. I’m asking you to eat it. (The boys begin to eat it) Is it growing on you?

Andrew: Yes, actually.

“Roast tomatoes and mozzarella”, Slow roast lamb shoulder with garlic, vermouth and rosemary”, “Roast potatoes”, “Courgette and pine nut salad” and “Little chocolate pots with cardamom” from “”Good Things to Eat”.

Katherine:So how do you pick the recipe you are going to try?

Kirstin: There are only a few dinner menu recipes. It wasn’t hard.

Katherine: My problem is I’d want to do too many different things that don’t go together. Mussels with leeks, why didn’t you choose that?

Kirstin: I just chose things that go together. I don’t cook mussels. But you know, I should. I should definitely try and cook mussels sometime.

Tom: So what did we think?

Katherine: The tomatoes were the perfect temperature.

Kirstin: I was supposed to use a big piece of mozzarella and break it up, but I used small ones. And I forgot the lemon juice. They looked good, though.

“Spaghetti all Crudaiola” from Two Greedy Italians

Tom: Hmmm….this is kind of like a salad. It’s really nice. It’s very fresh and feels very healthy.

Kirstin: Exactly my feelings too. It was super easy to make. I prepared all the vegetables beforehand and then tossed with the pasta. I like the crunchiness of the pepper with the pasta.

Tom: There’s raw garlic in this too, right?

Kirstin: Oh yes! Of course.

Tom: Well, I can see us eating this on Summer evenings in Italy.

Kirstin: Too right. I keep finding capers in the tomatoes. I don’t even like capers, but with tomatoes they taste just great.

Tom: Yes, I don’t normally like capers either. But they add salt in this recipe.

Kirstin: So I’ll be making this one again then. Salad and pasta in one bowl.

“Turkey Bolognese” from “Leon 2″

Peter: This tastes of childhood.

Anna: What do you mean by that?

Peter: Well it’s a fairly innocuous base from which you can build any dish.

Anna: Sorry? Is that a metaphor for your childhood?

Peter: No.

Anna: But you’re saying that your mum used to make one thing and then dress it up lots of different ways during the week?

Peter: Yes. So you could put potato on top and you’d have shepherds pie. You could have it with boiled potatoes. Or, as here, in a spag bol.

Anna: Sounds delicious.  Well, I liked this as it was a healthy bolognese, but gutsy thanks to the wine and the mushrooms.  And it was very easy to throw together. So another tick.  But I have one gripe.

Peter: What’s that then?

Anna: It was way too runny. There’s just too many liquid components to the recipe. Lots of tinned tomatoes, lots of stock, lots of wine. Someone has got the proportions very wrong. You could easily cut the amount of liquid by a third.

Peter: There are lots of leftovers.

Anna: I’m not making a pie tomorrow, if that’s what you have in mind. But we will have it in a baked potato. So I guess I’m more like your mum than I thought.