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.

Mmm just had the red rice from tm. I deviated from the book somewhat by cooking the rice, and carrots in the rice cooker, and making the rest alongside, halving the chicken stock. I also adder fried jalapenos at the end as DC don't like spice without the chilli it was rather bland, full of veg, and loved by DC. With the chilli and some coriander it was full of spice and very satisfying. This will be a regular accompaniment of meat, it was easy and healthy, and is made of standard house ingredients. I'm very happy with it

That sounds great pregnantpause, I'd been thinking of trying the red rice and green rice as my children love rice. Will give it a go and add chilli to just mine.

Hello all, I'm back! And my MN windowsill is bursting with flowers! Thank you all very much indeed. it's been so lovely to read the thread and catch up!

I am so glad you like the TM book (although maniac one of us must be doing something weird as my chipotles in adobo don't come out that hot! I do rinse out the chilli seeds though....) I can't wait to have a flick through and find some new recipes to try (also to open my JO which I haven't even touched yet). I will be pushed for time next week though as an doing some keeping in touch days as part of mat leave. However am going to plan for my four recipes the week after that.

In terms of the next lot of cookbooks, I too have never really attempted Chinese so that would be awesome. I will go trough the threads and look for our list of reccs with a focus on baking. Back in a sec...

Hi tiger hope you had a fab time. Glad everyone is enjoying lots of cooking, have to admit I haven't cooked anything yes from either book unless you count a very loose version of the chicken soup in the TM book, and i did do a jamie recipe but it was From Jamies dinners
I'm still too hooked on Jerusalem, I called up the library and renewed it for the second time!
Everyone is raving about the mustard chicken so I will give that a go sometime this week I think and also the killer jerk one sounds good too.
It's just hard to find recipes I haven't done yet.
tiger slightly off thread but only a touch! I plan to make gnocchi and profiteroles this week two things I have never made before.

elr homemade gnocchi is amazing - the texture is light and soft and will possibly put you off shop bought for life! There's a great recipe in river cafe green for a sage and chorizo sauce to accompany gnocchi, it comes highly recommended!

I am attempting some huevos rancheros for brunch.

Trills, I had it for breakfast

Though I must admit, I didn't follow TM's recipe.
I always add a few peppers to the sauce, as well as chipotle paste, neither of which she uses.
Was lush :)

Hi all just to let you know it's free delivery on book people use sing code 99del before midnight tonight. I ordered Every Grain of Rice for £8.99 they also had The Hummingbird bakery Cake Days for £4.99 it's a good book.

We had a mezze type lunch all from tm, the smoky asparagus salad, grilled corn on the cob, with chipitle butter, green rice, and leftover red rice. It was delicious, particularly the corn, and chipotle vinaigrette. Green rice isn't half as nice as the red, but still added to the meal, and DC loved it after I christened it monster rice.

Dammit ELR, I ordered Every Grain from Amazon for £16ish after you mentioned it, the reviews certainly seemed good.
About to dispatch, can't cancel and get it cheaper at the Book People :(

snow what page is it on? I had a quick flick through river cafe green but can't see it.

huevous oh no that's a shame! I nearly ordered from amazon too the other day but got distracted by ds who had spilt his drink and then I forgot until today.
The reviews do look good so although you may have paid more I'm sure it will be worth it!

Always happy for an excuse to buy more cookbooks! Have ordered Jerusalem and Madhur's Curry Bible through the library, so am saving money by not buying them straight away!

Sciencerocks - thanks . . . I'm going to start with the soup then and use tortilla chips too.

I've looked for the madhur j book and it seems a bit £££. Her easy curry one was approx £7 at the book people so I'm cheating next month and using that instead (rebellious) I bet some of the recipes are the same anyway. Hugh FW has arrived and looks very delicious - the food obviously, not him. I'd prefer him not to be on the cover - the easy curry cover is much prettier. I do like a nicely designed cook book. I definitely judge a book by its cover - shallow I know.

Just seen that you are looking for a baking book for next time?
Can thoroughly recommend Short and Sweet by Dan Lepard. Not just sweet , savoury too, and breads et

If we're looking for Chinese books, does anyone know anything about Ching He Huan? I was looking on Amazon and she has good reviews.

'Every Grain of Rice' looks good for a Chinese book, I think huevos would agree!
Have short and sweet and its good. Other baking books I can recommend are Leon Baking & Puddings and also the hummingbird bakery Cake days is good too.

Feathered- I am using curry easy next month as well, I already have it, and I can't spend 25pound on curry Bible when only 2 of the 4 in my family will eat curry. The dhals are lovely, and yes, it's pretty pretty.

I've asked for every grain of rice as a birthday present, after a review in good food a few months back, so that bodes well for me

Ooh ELR thank you very much for the tip! Just ordered.

tigerlily interesting... I think it must be the seeds. I rinsed a few out, but left most of them in. Might use my remaining chillies to try and make a slightly milder version next time.

We had the tortilla soup and chicken adobado today. Soup was delicious, will definitely be doing that again. I particularly liked the presentation, all the extra toppings; marinade for the chicken tasted delicious beforehand, but DH absolutely cremated it on the BBQ so was hard to taste afterwards.

Feathered I would have preferred the Jamie book without him striking a pose on the front too!

Need to catch up with the thread but I made TM's chilli today and it was lovely. I did it in the slow cooker though.

Am going to do JO's beef hash at some point this week and probably Jools pregnant pasta next week.

Has anyone done a dessert from TM?

kneedeep try the churros hey are divine it makes loads more than it says. The cheese cake is good too.

I've only got one JO book, and I stuck a sticker over his big daft face on the front. :)

Just bought Ching-he Huang Chinese food made easy - loos fairly straight forward. A bit of everything in it really.

Knee deep, I have done the cheesecake, pancakes and truffles from TM (my thoughts are near the beginning of this thread). I would love to do the churros (and find it almost impossible to not order them when in wahaca) but have a strange aversion to deep frying.

I have done the frijoles from TM this evening. Took a long time to cook the beans, but then it was quite quick. Tasted great too I am planning to freeze the leftovers without the toppings (I used natural Greek yogurt instead of sour cream, and didn't have any crumbly cheese - why? I usually have Cheshire or Wensleydale in the fridge, very odd - so used cheddar). Pic on my twitter (@TodayICooked) linked to the cook book club twitter feed (@ReadCookEat) if anyone wants to look, ditto for many of the other dishes.

I have a TM week lined up. Exciting!

I also made the squash and chorizo salad last night for Dh and i. I used a hot red chilli as don't have an arbol, but it was delicious. I cheated a bit by roasting the chorizo along with the rest and omitting olive oil, thinking the chorizo oil would suffice. It did, me and dh loved it, I will make it again. More than the sum of it's parts, and wonderful on a cooling down evening after a hot day.

I'm making the mustard chicken and dauohiniuse(sp sorry) tonight, looking forward to it. Do you think it'll be okay without skin? I only have skinless chicken breasts in.

I have the kinda cassoulet planned for this week, and might revisit the corn and chicken pie that I didn't make last week. What's everyone planning to do?