Jamie Oliver’s “Asian Style Salmon Noodle Broth”

For my birthday gift last year, a few friends pool together and bought me Jamie Oliver’s 30 minutes Meals Cookbook. They know, I am a fan of Jamie Oliver’s no fuss, quick and easy cooking. I am also aware of previous reviews on the book states that these meals do not take 30 minutes but can take more than 1 hr to prepare.

I love cookbooks. I adore them. I”m addicted to them. I like flicking pages, visualizing how I can make a dish, brainstorming meal ideas- but I rarely use the recipes as it is. I dare say that the only recipes that I follow to the tee would be baking recipes. For most cooking recipes, unless it is something that I have absolute no idea what it looks or tastes like, there would be same changes. Usually, it’s due to practical reasons- like it is more expensive to purchase limes than lemons in Perth. Sometimes, it’s personal taste- I cannot justify putting 1/2 cup of sugar in a cooking dish or 3 tsp of salt in any dish for that matter (Unless it’s a brine and I can rinse it off). Otherwise, I view recipes as a playground really. A guide for me to start cooking something AND to minimise kitchen disasters.

At first, this cookbook makes my head spin. You see, it’s a book of meal planners. Hence it’s not your typical one dish per page cookbook. Jamie (oooo..should i be on first name basis with this awesome chef now?) presents 3 recipes per menu and guides us through how to multitask in preparing all 3 dishes at once. Therefore, even if you just want to make one dish out of 3, you still have to read through the whole menu planner. Unless of course, you want to make all 3 dishes.

In our household, we rarely have 3 courses. It’s one, and perhaps some fruits or ice-cream for dessert. Nothing fancy just quiet simple food. Other than the slight inconvenience of needing to read the whole planner, it’s actually quite good.

I picked this noodle broth to try first. At first, I’m sceptical of its ginger/chili garlic paste. I did a taste test after blizing it in the food processor and to me, it was slightly weird. However, when paired with salmon and the soup, it matched really well!

How long did it take me to prepare one dish?

Funny you asked. In estimation, 30 minutes.

But it doesn’t matter at the end of the day does it? It’s good food that matters.  😉

Asian Style Salmon Noodle Broth (serves 2-3)
2 cm piece of fresh ginger
1 clove of garlic
1 fresh red chili
1/2 small red onion
1 tablespoon of soy
1 huge lime

2 pieces of salmon fillets
180 grams of egg noodles
1 cup of snow peas
2 cups of bean sprouts
few sprigs of spring onion chopped
1 red chili sliced
chinese five spice
1 ltre of vegetable stock

Garnish
Spring onion sliced left overs
quarter of lime.

Blitz ginger, garlic, red onion and chili in food processor. Squeeze in lime. In an oven proof dish, place mixture at the bottom of dish. Place fish on top of mixture. Rub some five spice powder on it. Cook in oven preheated 180C for around 20 mins or so.

Meanwhile, boil vegetable stock. Add chili and soy sauce when it begin to boil. Taste test. Add all vegetables and finally noodles. Spoon noodle broth into bowls. Top it with salmon and spring onion. Squeeze lime juice over it.