Jamie Oliver's Meals in Minutes: Pregnant Jooles's Pasta, Crunchy Red Endive and Watercress Salad

Last night was the second of my Jamie Oliver's Meals in Minutes cookbook test.

On the menu:

• Pregnant Jools's Pasta (essentially pasta with meat sauce)
• Crunchy Red Endive and Watercress Salad (I used baby arugula which the book gave as an option)

I pretty much followed the recipe exactly except for a few simple swap outs. I changed the type of pasta from penne to farfalle (bowties) and instead of using sausages in the sauce I used ground veal. The recipe in the book included a dessert (little frangipan tarts) but since we try to eat somewhat healthy during the week I decided to skip it. The tarts looked and sounded delicious so I will probably test the recipe out on the weekend and bring them to a friend's house.

Here are my thoughts:

Ingredients: Just like last time all the ingredients were easy to find in my local supermarket. Besides being incredibly easy to find the ingredients were also very reasonable. My whole bill for this meal cost just over $20.

Method: This time around, the method was a little tougher than last time. This was partly my fault since I skipped the dessert. Because of this, I had to skip the steps based around the tarts and often found myself losing my spot on the page. Other than that, this recipe was easy to follow. My only other complaint was that the recipe called for the meat to be cooked on a high heat, I found for the time given to cook the meat I had to turn the temperature down a bit about halfway through the cooking time as my sauce was starting to burn but like any recipe you have to pay attention and adjust accordingly.

Cook Time: This meal was even quicker than the last one. I had dinner on the table in just under 30 minutes! In fact, when I called Jordan to the table his response was "What??? Already???"! Granted, I skipped the whole dessert section of the recipe but if you included it it would probably only add about 10-15 minutes to the cook time.

The Food: Once again, DELICIOUS! The meat sauce tasted like it had  been cooked all day and was the perfect comfort food for a cold winter's night. The salad was fresh and crunchy and was the perfect accompaniment for the pasta. Another satisfying meal from Mr. Jamie Oliver!

Tonight I am cooking my own recipe so make sure to check back tomorrow for a post on:

• Roasted Herb Chicken
• Caramelized Shallot Gravy and
• Shaved, Roasted Brussel Sprouts