It's fair to say that I love food, one of my favourite things to do after a busy day is unwind in the kitchen by preparing and enjoying delicious home cooked meals with my family and friends. However, it's not always practical, particularly after a long day at work, to come home and spend hours cooking up a culinary masterpiece and then find the time to do all the clearing up afterwards as well as actually enjoy the meal. It's mainly for the reason of lack of time that I am always on the look out for recipes which will make my life easier and still allow me to enjoy the things I love and have lots of time left at the end of the day to unwind. I purchased Jamie Oliver's 30 minute meals after catching a couple of episodes of the show on Channel 4 last year and thinking that everything looked so simple and easy.

This book is available from many different sources and the one that I purchased it from was instore while shopping in Sainsburys. I believe I paid £9 for this book when a special offer was running, however, this can be purchased from Amazon, at present (May 2011) for £13.99 which is still a reasonable price for a recipe book providing 50 wonderful recipes.

This book is not laid out in your usual recipe book style and is therefore not split in to different sections, instead, each recipe is set over three pages. One page shows you the finished meal, one shows you the meal as it's being made and one page has the layout of the actual ingredients required and the instructions for cooking the meal. This is rather different to the standard layout which will tell you the ingredients, the cooking instructions and usually be accompanied by a photograph of the finished work.

The idea behind this book is that you can cook a complete meal, from scratch, in 30 minutes and this usually includes at least a main, side dish and a dessert and sometimes a starter too. The style in which the cooking instructions is laid out is quite different to what I'm used to just because it talks you through making the whole meal at the same time, for example, it will tell you to cook your pasta and then it will be talking about making your sauce and then go back to finishing the pasta, draining etc. This is a rather unusual style for me and it feels quite rushed and a little haphazard in places, however, this is the style of how Jamie is cooking on the 30 minute meals television show and is naturally designed to make you maximise your time by having everything going on at the same time and therefore serve your dishes as fast as possible and with minimal use of time.

I must say that once I adjusted to the cooking guidelines in this book I became used to it quite fast. I even found myself appreciating the fact that I was not wasting lots of time on just one thing before moving on to preparing the next dish and with the right amount of calm I was able to produce meals in around 45-50 minutes. However, if I attempted to make my 30 minute meals in 30 minutes I just found that I ended up demolishing the kitchen and feeling extremely stressed by the time I was ready to enjoy my meal.

I do love the concept of the book and I like the book itself quite a lot, however, the book almost feels like it's just a picture book of all of Jamie's amazing recipes and a little more space could've been dedicated to breaking down the cooking a little bit further just to prevent some of the stress that I feel when trying to rush through these recipes.

Some of the recipes in this book are absolutely delicious and have been a firm hit in my household, also, when having friends over on days off my partner and I have enjoyed making the meals together and not having to rush as much. While the book is called 30 minute meals I'd firmly recommend setting aside an hour to prepare anything and that's without your cleaning time afterwards. If I have known I'm going to want to rush a little when I get home then I try and do as much of the preparation before I go to work just to lighten the load a little bit. I have found myself vastly increasing the amount of 'store cupboard' items that I keep including a vast array of herbs and spices but there is nothing wrong with a little bit of variety in life, it is the spice of it after all!

My particular favourite recipe is the sea bass & crispy pancetta. The recipe is absolutely delicious and when I have a calm head on me I've managed to make this in 30 minutes with no problems at all.

If you are in the market for a cookbook with a difference then why not try something new today? This cook book has given me countless hours of fun in the kitchen and providing you don't take the 30 minute part too serious you won't be disappointed.