The woes of a pretty mediocre cook

I have found myself, like so many others, cooking the same handful of recipes time… after time…. after time. Luckily, living in a flat and sharing cooking duties it meant that no one had really noticed. Or so I thought.

A while ago my flatmate made the rule that we needed to cook a new meal each out of our (large collection of) cookbooks every week. This lasted about month before I had four and five new recipes to cook week… after week… after week.

A few weeks ago, I was lying (Ok well, half napping) on the couch watching Jamie Oliver whip up a delicious looking lamb roast I asked myself, firstly, “How am I 25 years old and NEVER attempted to cook a lamb roast?” Secondly, “Why couldn’t MY cooking life be more like his?” I work in a building with hundreds if not thousands of cookbooks on any type of food I could imagine. I told myself to get out there and check out these recipes!

I vowed that I would undertake to cook a new recipe every most times I don my apron.

Confession time: So far they have all been Jamie Oliver recipes (and there have only been two this year). 

Recipe 1: Roast Pork Leg

I had two good friends who were visiting from Wellington, they were coming over to play board games and for dinner. Obviously I thought, “What a perfect time to cook that Roast Lamb that I saw Jamie Oliver cook on TV!” Naturally, I didn’t take into account that on a public holiday all butchers are closed and actually the supermarket doesn’t have EVERY cut of meat you could imagine. Cue the quick panicked Google search, while cursing myself for being stupid enough to invite people over that I actually needed to cook for, and I found THIS cracker roast pork recipe that I attempted instead.

Cooked for 4hours 40minutes, I produced an absolute masterpiece and I am not ashamed to yell that from the rooftops. Firstly, it made my house smell AMAZING. Secondly, it had everyone taking a detour to the kitchen to check out the progress. Thirdly, it made me look like a domestic goddess. The crackling was crunchy and delicious, the meat just fell off the bone and the gravy was out of this world.

Although I swore I would only cook new recipes for a while, I will be recreating this one as I talked it up to my parents and now I need to follow through. Also, everyone in my flat is still talking about it.

Recipe 2: Perfect Roast Beef

Once again, cooking on a public holiday. Knowing that the supermarket would not have the lamb shoulder I was after I set my sights on Lamb Shanks. Jamie has a pretty good-looking recipe and I was just picturing the roaring success it would be. After another panicked Google session in the meat department I settled on Jamie’s Perfect Roast Beef.

Confession time: As well as never cooking a lamb roast, I had never cooked beef.

Like the pork, this smelt AMAZING in the oven. I didn’t quite believe that 1 hour cooking time though and so my mum was on the receiving end of quiet a few messages gathering advice on how to tell if beef is cooked. My laptop was almost on the receiving end of a spontaneous meat thermometer purchase.

After deciding that my flatmates would just have to live with blue beef if that’s what happened, I needed to make the gravy. Who knew you could make gravy with vegetables as well? After pouring it into the blender I made a slight mess of the kitchen.

The beef was pretty good in the end, although our meat carving skills leave a lot to be desired.

If anyone has a great recipe or cookbook to share with me, please do! We all need to start somewhere.