Cookery book club - June - Mexican Food Made Easy (Thomasina Miers) and Thirty Minute Meals (Jamie Oliver)

[Curioustiger]

Come join the Mumsnet cookery bookclub! Each month we choose two cookery books - one popular, like Nigella / Jamie / Delia, so you probably already have it / can borrow it and one a bit more unusual. We cook a minimum of two recipes each - you choose the recipe, they just have to be ones you have never cooked before- which works out at four new recipes each month.Then we chat about them!

For May, our books were:

• Jerusalem by Ottolenghi
• Kitchen Diaries

And we posted here

For June our books are:

• Mexican Food Made Easy by Thomasina Miers
• Thirty Minute Meals by Jamie Oliver

For July our books will be:

• Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall Veg Every Day
• Madhur Jaffrey Ultimate Curry Bible

We will always try to pick at least one book with recipes available on the Internet, and local libraries are great for cookbooks if you can order in advance. We pick books three months ahead so will be choosing August's books this month.

Made the JO sea bass meal tonight. The whole meal was delicious (didn't do the ice cream). Highly recommend it. Even the sweet potato dish was delicious and I didn't think it would be, with all the strange flavour concoctions, but it was.

Does that mean I have to do the carrots too now?! Dd1 only eats carrots raw so I may end up doing carrots three ways to try to please everyone. Have bought stuff to do the peas, but decided against the pudding. I have loads of berries in the fridge which everyone will eat very happily so can't bear the thought of spending time making something with them that they will probably reject. Will be doing the pie tomorrow so will report back then.

Fasting today so drooling over my books instead of eating :)

Hello, literally just caught up with the thread! I am sorry I've been gone so long... I was on holiday for three lovely weeks and then a keeping in touch week at work which was really hectic. obviously on holiday there were a lot of meals out and last week i was getting home very late, so I have cooked nothing more inspiring than jacket potato and cheese all month... Bar last night where I made Nigel slater's spag Bol again, it's just so good and is now clearly on rotation!

So I need to catch up very quickly as tomorrow will make a start with pregnant jools' pasta and the chicory salad. I have to say I don't love the JO so far... although the recipes sound good, I am just not a huge fan of the format. I do see though that if you're perhaps a bit less confident it would work well.

On another note we need to confirm books for next month and choose for August. I have hfw veg and mj ultimate curry bible for next month. From this thread I think there are some doubters... I've never tried either author so have no view at present. Is there a consensus? Any alternatives?

For August I think we'd concluded a baking book and a Chinese one which I am mad keen on personally, as I've never tried to cook Chinese food. Did we decide on specific books?

Hi tiger welcome back! I too have hardly cooked from the books this month as been super busy.
I think some people were uncertain about hfw, I have the book and have cooked a little from it but not much. As all the pictures look lovely was happy to try to cook more but equally happy if people wanted to try something different.
The second book by mj people were finding it hard to get hold of I think so suggestions were made to cook from curry bible and curry easy both by mj and hairy bikers curry book.
For August I'm dying to try every grain of rice by fuchsia Dunlop which I think a few if us have got. Then I think it was a baking book and short and sweet by dan Lepard was mentioned.
I'm still mad on Jerusalem and have 5 friends for dinner tomorrow and I'm doing a full menu from there!
Happly cooking everyone!
And yes green we are awaiting your verdict.....

Welcome back tigerlily. Wow, a whole week of kit, very brave . I'm on mat leave atm and work seems very remote.

I have no strong feelings on next month. I've got the veg book which I like and the curry book's on order.

I love Fuschia Dunlop and Every Grain is probably the most approachable of her books. Plus I've just got Short and Sweet and it's amazing.

Fuchsia rather

I got Madhur Jaffrey's Curry Bible out of the library, and nothing really grabbed me. Spurred on by talk on this thread, and rave Amazon reviews, I got the Hairy Bikers' curry book, and love it. Made one curry already, another planned for tomorrow! :)

Also through reading this thread I got Every Grain of Rice by Fuchsia Dunlop, and would wholeheartedly recommend it as the Chinese book, I am completely in love. So many lovely sounding recipes (and for veggies too!). In fact, I am going to have a nice big shop at our local asian grocers tomorrow, yay!

And despite having cooked loads from Short and Sweet, there are still a hundred things I want to make from it; Dan Lepard's recipes rarely let me down. A really good baking book for a novice, as it gives all the background info/theory to the processes. But lots of exciting flavour combos to please old hands :)
The chocolate custard muffins are the best choc muffins I have ever eaten and I have tried a few in my time!

I made Green Chili from JO America tonight with the Pink Pickled Onions and Roasted Chili Salsa from Thomasina 's book - delicious! I usually make an onion, coriander and lime relish alongside a stew but this recipe calls for the red onion to be steeped in boiling water for 10 minutes which slightly cooks them and removes some acidity. Really nice,sshould be served with all meals from that book.

The Salsa was good, but i overcooked the garlic. The recipe also recommends mashing the veg in a pestle and mortar, which i didn't have time for so blitzed it in a blender. Sloppier than it is supposed to be, still nice but I will make a different Salsa next time.

Ok so to confirm for next month:

• stick with Hugh fw veg (should be easy to get recipes on internet so no huge commitment / effort required
• as the curry book, go for mj curry bible and curry easy plus the hairy bikers curry book.

That sounds like it should be easy for everyone to find at least four recipes so that's good.

Then for August fuschia Dunlop every grain of rice (I am really excited about that, it looks so pretty and I do love s pretty book, definitely buying that one) and dan lepard short and sweet. What a lovely month! I confess to looking forward more to August than to July. But the point of the thread is to try new things so will give July a fair shot.

Glorious a week of kit days is great for the pay packet and also, while busy, kind of easy as I was just in the office for one particular task! It was like working in the last month of mat leave... No one really expects you to do too much so when you do, they're really pleased!

Nice to see you back Tiger. I'm happy with any books but agree August sounds great.

Made JO's chicken pie tonight but just with mash and spinach. I thought it was ok but I had mine reheated. DH and DC really enjoyed it. I might put more mustard and Creme fraiche in next time.

Welcome back tiger!

Did the chicken and corn humble pie from TM last night. Although I have made it before I used some roast tomato sauce from the freezer so it was easy to do and it tastes fab.

Hey Tiger, welcome back. Looking forward to August too, I got Dan Lepard on the kindle deal and Fuschia Dunlop on the Book People one so I don't feel so bad buying new books when they're a bargain :) Hairy Bikers Curries is on deal at BP too at the moment.
As an aside I popped into Aldi yesterday and they appear to have American food in, tinned pumpkin, marshmallow fluff?? Huge marshmallows, giant pretzels, etc.. Just in case anyone wants pumpkin pie making ingredients and no Waitrose nearby.

You lot are a bad influence! I have just bought HB curries and fuchsia Dunlop from the book people too

Have wanted to try dan Lepard for a while, so looking forward to August!

That sounds good tigerlily , perhaps I should do some around Christmas. Off topic but I'm hopefully going to be going in for a promotion interview, it'd be cheeky to call that a kit day wouldn't it?!

I agree August sounds fab. Healthy veg in July will balance out the baking

Great, looking forward to August too and agree veg in July will balance out the baking in August!

Oh oh oh! My chipotles are here! Thanks HuevosRancheros

Glorious arrange a coffee with a colleague to catch up after interview and then you can definitely call it a kit day! I have no shame!

Wow, the book people are cheap, aren't they? Fuschia Dunlop is £16 on amazon (who may be tax dodgers, but are normally reliably inexpensive, or at least so I thought) and only £8.99 on book people. Plus p&p but I see that's free if I spend more than £25. Another great tip I've got from this thread!

Tiger, enter afocean at the book people checkout and you'll get another 5 per cent off!

(I have just made the most amazing curry from the Hairy Bikers' book, but I won't tell you which one til 1st July)

That could be all of them, huevos The chipotles arrived safe and sound, thank you again

Glad the postal system is working, happy cooking! :)

Ooh good idea tigerlily grin

I mean

HV I bet it's the butter chicken If not, make that one next as it is gorgeous

Sorry that was supposed to be to HuevosRacheros