Stupid Broiler

Have I mentioned before how much I hate my broiler? It is what caused my first and only kitchen fire during Revolution #1. It wasn't my fault, of course. So when I saw that I'd be using the broiler for meal #10 I rolled my eyes and thought, "Well, here we go."

Here's the menu:

Chicken Skewers

Amazing Satay Sauce

Fiery Noodle Salad

Fruit & Mint Sugar

I've never had much success at kebobs or skewers, I can never get all of the pieces cut so everything cooks evenly, it just never works out for me. But, when I saw how Jamie prepares them my grumpy thoughts about broilers and skewers floated away and I was super excited about this one! 

Now, I don't think I mentioned yet that throughout Meals in Minutes there are little icons scattered about that tell you when a useful "how to" video is on his website to help with certain techniques. There is one of these for the chicken skewers under the "how to" section on the bottom right at:

http://www.jamieoliver.com/tv-books/jamies-30-minute-meals/

Be sure to check it out and you'll get just as excited as I did! After lining the chicken breasts up on a cutting board he puts the skewers through and THEN cuts. Brilliant! No more chopping and trying to get all the bits just right so they cook evenly. This was so incredibly simple. Now, before hand I had soaked the wooden sticks for about an hour and now, with just a couple minutes of work, I had my chicken skewers. 

Now, before getting the skewers together I had made the super easy satay sauce in the food processor so it was all ready to coat the skewers and then they just went right into the oven. At this point I'm feeling rather confident and while they cook I move on to the noodles and getting all of the garnishes ready. Now, at the end of this, you will have some yummy noodles, a super easy satay sauce and the chicken. The garnishes include some more toppings and leaves of lettuce so that everyone at the table will be assembling their own lettuce wraps. So next time you are craving those restaurant lettuce wraps try making this instead, it will cure that craving and you won't believe how much better it tastes.

The noodles are medium chinese egg noodles (chow mein noodles). I cannot even tell you how much this amazed me too. I boiled water in the electric kettle while I was working on the chicken. I put a pot on the stove, put the noodles in and then just poured the boiling water over the noodles and covered them for 6 minutes. No cooking, no heat, nothing. So simple! I felt like I had just done some real magic.

About this time is when I started to notice the smoke billowing out of my oven and faster than I could open the back door the smoke alarms were going off. Now, we renovated our house a few years back and that required the installation of eight smoke detectors and they are all wired together so that when one goes off, they all go off. Safe and appreciated, yes. Loud as hell, double yes. Husband is not happy. And he's hungry. He's trying to get the things to shut up while I go around and open windows and fan the back door. Not my finest moment. I'm sure that the fire department is on their way because despite the fact that they are over a mile away, I'm sure they can hear my house beeping and are going to pull into the driveway at any minute.

Now I have uncooked chicken and charred skewers. I needed to finish cooking the chicken but there was no way I was going to try the oven again. With the sweetest, most angelic look I could pull off I asked husband, "Could you go outside and start the grill for me, please? Pretty please?"

And the next day, I went out and got myself some metal skewers.

Meals cooked: 10

Meals left: 40

Weeks left: 35

To try this menu, check out Nate Burkus' website:

http://www.thenateshow.com/howto/detail/meals-in-minutes-with-jamie-oliver