According to some cricket folklore, it's extremely bad luck to be on 111 not out. The score is known as The Nelson (after Lord Nelson, for some reason) and supposedly bad things happen on this score - mostly people tend to get out. I'm not too sure of the background to this (Wikipedia, my primary source of knowledge, is rather vague on the subject) and I am of course cooking 15 minute meals rather than playing cricket, but after my successful Asian Fish last night, I am on 111 not out. You just know how this is going to go...
I actually really like granola - a typical breakfast for me will involve either muesli or granola and I like the idea of making it myself, plus the name Jamie has given to the dish suggests it will be quick and easy - the kind of thing you can still do when you wake up on a weekday and realise you have to be at work in an hour.
Now as I said before, I did the shopping for all five 15 minute meals I'm doing this weekend on Saturday morning (and that shop also included vast amounts of booze), so the cost of individual meals kind of went unnoticed. Looking into it more closely though reveals this is actually a rather expensive thing to make - the individual ingredients, mostly nuts, seeds and dried fruit, actually cost well over £10. On the plus side though, I'd be making far more than one meals worth - hopefully this would last for a while.
I started by combining all the nuts and seeds in a bowl - this really highlighted the volume of granola there would be. The book then says that you can either toast the whole lot in one go in the oven, or you can toast it in the frying pan on a "when you need it" basis. I opted for the former, thinking that it would be a right faff to have to fry my breakfast every morning. I spread it over several baking trays and put them in the oven as instructed. Unfortunately though they weren't really toasting very effectively - the nuts were definitely getting toasted but not the oats. I tried transferring it to a frying pan, but this didn't really help matters. Everything was toasting except the bloody oats! I persevered for about half an hour, trying different temperatures and different quantities on the baking tray and nothing worked. I gave up. I hoped that the "teaspoon" of maple syrup might hide any imperfections in my toasting.
I'll cut to the chase - this is an utter waste of time. I could quite happily have spent two quid on a kilo bag of granola at Sainsburys yesterday and had a perfectly nice breakfast but no I wasted 45 minutes of my life on something which is neither fantastic, quick or easy - it's like the anti 15 minute meal. I'm just hoping I can salvage the rest by drenching it in golden syrup and turning it into flapjack.
Lolz gave the dish 2/10. Difficulty rating 10/10. Avoid >:( (angry face)
Wow, I'm surprised you had such trouble. I have been making Jamie's granola recipe for a couple of years now. The only difference with this one is he doesn't list any oil, and I find that oil is a necessary ingredient in making your oats toast. So if you decide to try this again, try using a couple of tablespoons of olive oil (or coconut oil) per tray, mix it around well, then toast, stirring every 5 minutes or so to avoid burning.
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