The Jamie Oliver Experiment

I'm not sure how I feel about Jamie Oliver. I mean, I hardly ever watch him, and I don't know much about him...Being British indisputably gives him that pompous air, which is bad, yet funny (you know this is true)…but he's got that laid-back vibe going on, which is good...so far, the worst thing I can find about him is that his children are named Poppy Honey Rosie, Daisy Boo Pamela, Petal Blossom Rainbow and Buddy Bear Maurice. Though, really. That's, well...siiiigh. I can't talk crap about people's kids. Even if it's just their names. But come. on. Even for a big hippie-fan like myself, that's kinda much.

Anyway. Hubby bought me one of his cookbooks for Christmas, and thumbing through it, we both saw tons that looked great. So, as a heads-up, we'll be adding a lot of his recipes in the next few months.

This particular recipe came from his website; I was at work when I made my shopping list, so the first couple we're going to try are basically our 'intro to Jamie' recipes. Starting with Linguine with Tomatoes and Capers.

At the beginning, I was a little worried. A) I had never heard of tomato passata, and even me, the Google Queen, couldn't find any definitive explanations for it. Instead, it was a bunch of generic, "it's sorta tomato paste but not tomato paste and sometimes it's cooked and sometimes it's not and it's not really sauce but it's kinda sauce...and so I was forced to wing it. And B) This is basically red clam linguine, sans clam. And since I think the clam is the best part of red clam linguine, I was worried it would be pretty much blah.


All was fine. For my passata, I chopped a brown onion and about 6 garlic cloves, sauteed them in a bit of olive oil about 5 minutes, then added about half a can of tomato puree (the big can). Cooked a few minutes and then proceeded with the recipe. Easy, especially with my chopper. And I do love easy.

Final results? We both give thumbs up. Simple, fast, and tasty. Make sure and use the lemon, btw, I think it brightens it up quite a bit.