Beef with Yorkies and Roast Potatoes Meal by Jamie Oliver

Jamie's 30 minutes meal sounds like a good idea for Londoners but does it really take 30 minutes to prepare stunning meal? Well, my boyfriend decided to try.. This time he was a chef, I was only chef's assistant. After debating what we should cook, we finally decided to go with classic English option - beef with Yorkshire puddings, roasted potatoes, glazed carrots, mushroom gravy and simple green salad. Original recipe here.

Potatoes
- 1 lemon
- fresh thyme and rosemary
- 1 bulb of garlic

Yorkies
- 1 mug of plain flour
- 1 mug of milk
- 1 egg

Carrots
- 500 g small carrots
- fresh thyme
- fresh bay leaves
- 1 tbsp caster sugar or honey
- knob of butter

Gravy

- half of red onion

- 12 baby button mushrooms

- 1 tbsp plain flour

- 1 small glass of red wine

- 300ml chicken stock

Beef

- fresh rosemary, sage and thyme

- 700g fillet of beef

Seasoning

- olive oil

- sea salt and black pepper

Salad

- 2 tbs red wine vinegar

- 1 tbsp golden caster sugar

- bag of watercress

To serve

- creamed horseradish sauce

- English mustard

- A bottle of red wine

We stared as Jamie suggested- all ingredients ready, pots ready, oven turned on to 220ºC.

First chop potatoes, leaving the skin on, into big chunks and boil with salt in a large frying pan. Next time I am going to use normal pot as boiling things in a frying pan is not a good idea, unless you have a really big pan!

Chop rosemary, sage and thyme and spread them around chopping board, add slat and pepper. Cut the beef onto medium size pieces and roll until covered in herbs. Fry on medium hear and turn it every few minutes.

Meanwhile prepare the carrots. Tip into the saucepan and cover with water. Add thyme, bay leaves, salt, a splash of olive oil and sugar. Cook until tender.

To make Yorkies put the flour, milk , egg and pinch of salt into the liquidiser - I don't have one so just used my blender to mix everything. Drizzle a little olive oil in each compartment of preheated muffin tin, do the same with the batter until each one is half full. Place in the oven.
If the potatoes are cooked, drain them and return to the same frying pan. Drizzle over olive oil, season, add lemon zest, thyme and rosemary and garlic (just squash it, do not dice etc.). Toss everything together and fry until golden.
To make a gravy slice red onion and mushrooms. Fry until soft then add flour, red wine and turn the heat up. Boil down, then stir chicken stock and simmer until thick.
Mix watercress with dressing. All done. Don't forget to take out the Yorkies from the oven!
Now just arrange everything nicely on plates and bowls. To serve meat smear horseradish and English mustard on the plate and pile sliced beef on top. Decorate with some fresh herbs.

So what do I think? It definitely takes longer than 30 minutes. An hour is more realistic. There was also a lot of washing and cleaning but not than much as The Guardian suggested. But the result was stunning, not only visually! That was the best meal I had this week...