London,

Recipease

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Cuisine: British
A typical dish, such as fish pie for two with a bottle of wine, about £19.

48-50 St John’s Road, SW11 1PR

Nearest Tube: Clapham Junction

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Phone: 020 3006 0001

Open: Open Mon-Sat 9am-7pm, Sun 10am-6pm

 

 

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DIY dinner with Jamie at Recipease

Expert eye: Jasmine Gardner knocks up a fish pie under the guidance of Jamie Oliver

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When dining out at one of Jamie Oliver’s venues you don’t expect to be handed an apron and told to make dinner yourself. But this is Oliver — and he likes getting the common man to do the cooking. His latest project, Recipease, is designed to get a city of non-cooks to connect with food by making their own Jamie-O quality takeaway dinners in store, under the guidance of experts.

On this occasion I was to play the role of non-cook, and he the role of expert. The fastest and least engaging option at Recipease is to pick up a pre-made “To Go” meal from the chiller-cabinets, while “Easy to Cook” lessons in making meals from scratch are for those who really wish to learn. Most affordable, and the real focus of the venture, are the “Easy to Make” sessions where you follow simple instructions and assemble a dish using a mixture of prepared ingredients, and then take it home to stick in the oven. A single serving costs as little as £3.75.

There is also a pizza and curry area where, without booking, you can turn up and throw together a theoretically quick supper — the queues out of the door mean you probably shouldn’t plan your evening around it.

Jamie likens the concept to weaning an addict off drugs. “Let’s call processed food crack,” he says. “Over there (he points to the ‘To Go’ meals) you get really good quality crack. Here, in the ‘Make’ sessions you get methadone, you’re getting off the old ways and starting the new ways. When you do a ‘To Learn’ session, you’re clean.”

And so, the mission is first to draw people through the doors of Recipease to pick up what is essentially a posh ready-meal on their way home and then slowly coax them into putting their fingers in new pies (although Jamie won’t usually be around to do the coaxing).

Of course, the masses ringing pre-packaged carbonara through the tills a few doors down in M&S could be at risk of not even noticing, let alone stepping inside — which is probably why Jamie decided to have the exterior doused in bacon-pink paint while the beautiful windows display bait in the form of sticky Chelsea buns, olive breads and focaccia. Even the wine is trendy — I’m sent away with a bottle of Rosé Côtes de Provence, from Château Miraval, currently home to Brad and Angelina.

The Recipease menu is stocked with what Jamie calls “mother-ship recipes”: cottage pie, meatballs, roast chicken with stuffing. It’s suitably unfussy food for learners but risks leaving more experienced cooks feeling a little uninspired.

I opted to assemble a fish pie. “One of the best fish pies,” says Jamie, “that you will ever eat.” Lining the bottom of my dish with a tomato sauce and mushrooms and spinach cooked in olive oil and garlic came as a surprise, but a happy digression from the traditional fish pie. The hard-boiled eggs were only just that — soft enough so that the subsequent baking didn’t turn them to rubber.

At home, I discovered Jamie was right. Cooked to perfection — if I do say so myself — according to the instructions, the tomato and spinach twist added a welcome new dimension without compromising any of the richness. Pizzas, too, are good, although aiming for a slightly browned top meant the super-thin base was a little over crisped. I would have preferred a stiffer mash on the cottage pie that I grabbed “To Go” but the meat sauce with some large pieces of onion felt appropriately home-made.

And home-made is the key at Recipease — both its up- and its downside. The food tastes good, it’s inexpensive, it’s easy. But those of us who fancy food a little more advanced than papa Oliver’s pasta bake will just have to face it: we’re not the target market. For the novice, however, it’s pukka.

Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.

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