This was our 36th cooking/blogging experiment from Jamie’s 30 Minute Meals, and I’ve now got a backlog of THREE meals, so get ready for a flood of posts! The weather has finally gotten appropriately “summery” here in Sydney, so we chose to make the “British Picnic” for this one: Sausage Rolls, Mackerel Pate, Lovely Asparagus, Crunch Salad, and Pimm’s Eton Mess. That’s a lot of different dishes! We watched the TV episode to prepare. The Snook was on chef’s duty, and he managed it in a respectable 38:54.
Substitutions: We couldn’t find real Lancashire cheese, so we used cheddar instead. We also couldn’t find prewashed watercress (and couldn’t be arsed picking it off ourselves), so we used rocket for that. We had a plain orange instead of a blood orange in the dessert, as well as little meringues instead of big ones. Other than that, everything was as written in the recipe.
Quick verdict: How lovely! We might have been sitting in the stands at Wimbledon, I tell you. The sausage rolls were excellent, and for once Jamie’s use of fennel seeds was appropriate. The cheese went a bit ick on the asparagus, but it was still tasty. I had been worried about the mackerel pate, but it was very nice! Strongly fishy, but nothing I couldn’t handle. The pickled onions and pear worked surprisingly well together in the salad. And you can’t really go wrong with Eton mess, can you? We washed it all down with a big glass of Pimm’s Cup. Summertime bliss in only 38:54…
