To think that when you make a spag bol

[HelloCanYouHearMe]

You fry the mince off first?!

DP rarely cooks & tonight has decided to do spag bol and is following a Jamie Oliver recipe (which in itself is U afaic)

The recipe has him frying off onion, celery, carrot, garlic... so far, so good. Then it goes on to say to throw in the minced beef & 2 cans to tomatoes, water from 2 cans and simmer for an hour.

The hour is up & DP asked me to taste - the casserole dish is swimming in liquid & tbh all i can taste is powdery boiled mince

Not to mention, it's not like pasta is exceptionally healthy, is it? I mean, I do love pasta, but still...?

He is a liar as well. On his going-round-Italy-being-smug-and-slagging-Brits-off programme he visited a "state primary school" "canteen" and waggled some turkey twizzlers at the horrified dinner ladies. He spat (literally) at the camera that in Italy, "all food in school canteens has to be organic, by law".

Does it bollocks.

We have just started being able to get a decent-ish range of organic food in our supermarket which is not a million miles from his "state primary" (which was, I believe, a private nursery) It was all just done to show how crap the UK is, how fab Italy is, and how fucking righteous and smug he is.

I emailed him asking for clarification on the rather erroneous twaddle he had said, and unsurprisingly, never got an answer.

Organic by law....? Wait, what?! Where my family is from many are happy if their house is dry.

And there were the Two Greedy Italians lamenting the lack of proper cooking, or indeed, a kitchen in many schools in Italy. The kids get their food from a machine.

In general people seem to believe a lot of nonsense about how everyone in Italy eats nothing but organic food lovingly made by nonna. Multiple people (mostly, to be fair, Italians) have told me that no one in Italy eats ready meals. Bit unclear why supermarkets still sell a wide range of ready meals, then, including some treats I have not encountered in the UK (I am always really tempted to buy the ready-made cake mix sold mixed up in a sort of tetra pak so that you don't even have to crack an egg into it)...

My MIL wouldn't allow any of that "organic rubbish" in the house

Have just checked JO's propaganda site and he has slightly modified it to "Italian government law states that all pasta and olive oil must be organic" which I would place euros on still being bollocks.

Dd was at nursery at the time, and her food wasn't organic.

Ok, TBH, neither my nonna or my mother have ever eaten ready meals.

I have. ;)

I've seen people make it by boiling the mince, but I definitely brown the mince first. It's a lot quicker as well.

Vintageperfumista- if he loves Italy so much he should stay there!!!

Even hearing his name is enough to make me rage!

Ugh, hate him!

My ex-MIL used to make an ama img slag Bol and the mince went straight into the sauce in its raw state.

my Italian friend told me a funny story about how they had visitors from Germany over, with their ideas about the Italian mumma and food.
Well her mother hated cooking with a vengeance, so went and bought some Dolmio and cooked with that...cue the German guests gasping over her food, and demanding the recipe, which must have come from Nonna...:)

It would have been a great ad for Dolmio, the erstwhile cook going into the kitchen and kicking the bin to make sure the jar was well hidden.....

Nooooo.... Jamie should NOT go to stay in Italy. Italy doesn't need to borrow problems!

Wonder what Italians think of JO.

at slag Bol - that doesn't sound too appetising....

1horatio's recipe is closest to my Italian MILs which I use and have converted my Scottish heathen Dolmio using family to. Yes to celery, carrots and onion and frying your mince. No to mushrooms, courgettes, red peppers and heaven forfend, parsnips!

massi

Thanks ;)

Maybe they're from the same Italian region. It was so nice on this thread to see where the people holidayed/are from based on the food they mentioned :)!

It's probably just a badly written recipe rather than an intentional instruction to add the mince and tomatoes at the same time.

Tell DH to stick to Nigella. She writes much more user friendly instructions.

Italian ready meals are generally fairly dire, and very expensive. But they nom down a lot of takeaway meals - on a Sunday we always go to the "asporto" for our lasagne. (MIL would obvs die dead on the spot if we told her)

There is a hell of a lot of crap on the supermarket shelves as well- particularly in the biscuit/cake department. My biggest local supermarket has 4 aisles (get me, cosmopolitan or what) and 2 are biscuits and cakes and 1 is detergent. The rest is shoved into 1 aisle.

Always tickles me how McVities digestives are in the health food section. Even the chocolate ones. And the adverts telling me that a certain brand of biscuit has "only natural ingredients" which would be sugar and fat in.

The world's a hanky really, as the Spanish would say.

Or Delia "take a small tomato. Hold a knife. Turn the small tomato on its side and slice it into 3 slices each about 3.5mm thick. Put the knife down. before you slit your wrists with boredom and patronising bollockry pick up the slices of tomato and place them in a line on top of your lasagne which, because I am Delia, I will have mispronounced to the point that no-one not yet in a coma will understand what the bloody fuck I'm on about"

Vintage that is exactly how Delia writes and precisely why I don't follow any of her recipes!

Boiling an egg takes about a week. 😄

I'll never forgive him for getting rid of Turkey twizzlers. The absolute outrage at our school the week they stopped selling them was the worst I've ever experienced.

I tried following a recipe of his once. He's useless, no bloody measurements or anything, it's always "a splash" of this and "a pinch" of that. HOW MUCH IS A FUCKING SPLASH OF RED WINE?!

I don't eat pasta very often but by coincidence that's what I cooked tonight. Probably not authentic at all. It was lovely but then I am on my second large glass of red wine (mcguigans black red label slurp slurp lovely🍷) so perhaps that's why it was so tasty. I wonder if your problem was the quality of the mince. Chuck it and have beans on toast tonight with a bottle of red wine 🍷 don't blame him just tell to try again. Life to short hiccup hiccup.

I watched some of his cookery episodes over chrimbo... I have never wanted to do a Hannibal on anyone so much in my life.

"Just smash the garlic... bung it all in..." "Give it a bish..."

How much bloody garlic and rosemary does that man put in things??

No Jamie.. I will not "bash" my veg up or "slosh" something in... fuck off before I cook your buttocks slow cooked in a "splosh" of red wine with "bashed" garlic and fucking rosemary and serve it to your smug family with some "bashed" spuds.

Who the fuck is Delia? 😂

I used to say if Delia was telling you how to make a ham sandwich, she'd have you raising and butchering the pig first, growing the wheat then grinding it to make the bread. Then she went from that to using timned ham, margarine and Tesco value bread.