Cook with Jamie: My Guide to Making You a Better Cook

I had a dinner party a couple of nights ago & cooked 3 recipes from this book, & it was fabulous! Jamie is really genuine in his love of food & writes so passionately about it. His simple, friendly (not too 'chef-fy') tone makes his book a pleasure to have & read.

Jamie hits the nail on the head when he says he is worried about the state of mass food production. The amount of toxins we put into our bodies due to eating fast and over processed food is staggering. Oliver wants us to keep personal cooking traditions alive and purchasing this book is a step in the right direction. His never pretentious approach to the kitchen makes everything seem simple and relaxed. Recipes like Honeycomb Cannelloni, Fifteen Chocolate Brownies and Pork Chops with Apple and Sage are inventive without demanding ridiculous ingredients. A fantastic addition to any kitchen library!

`Cook with Jamie, My Guide to Making You a Better Cook' by the British culinary wunderkind, Jamie Oliver, is a long drink of cool water for fans of Oliver, and a joy to read for any dedicated foodie, who enjoys reading cookbooks. It is a special treat to read two manuals on `how to cook' in the same month from such distinguished practitioners such as Oliver and Alice Waters. At 447 pages, plus fabric bookmark sewn into the spine, this is obviously a serious book, especially since it lacks some of the graphical razzle dazzle and cutie pictures which have cluttered some of Oliver's books in the past. As Jamie himself says, this almost seems like it should be his first book instead of his seventh. Oliver even goes so far as to hope he has created `a timeless, modern-day classic' manual on how to cook. The book has much which would qualify it for consideration as a `timeless classic'. Unfortunately, the bar for `timeless culinary classics' is pretty high, set, among others, by Oliver's compatriots, Elizabeth David, Jane Grigson, Claudia Roden, and Nigel Slater. So, while I don't believe it achieves those Olympian goals, it is still a very, very good cookbook, especially for younger readers and students. The thing which sets Oliver apart from practically everyone else who chants the `fresh, seasonal, organic, local' mantra is that Oliver is committed to these principals in his heart and soul. He is not just repeating a party line. And, that commitment jumps off of almost every page in this book. This and his overall `joie de vivre' are simply infectious, and they bring his cookbooks alive with enthusiasm. Like many of his other books, especially `jamie's Italy' and `jamie's kitchen', one is almost surprised at how many original culinary insights one encounters on his pages. Given the pedagogical objectives of this book, they are more common (and certainly more highly expected) in this book than in his others. My five favorite sections in this book are: The Salads chapter. I would line this up with the comparable chapter from salad specialist, Alice Waters in `The Art of Simple Food', and I believe Jamie would match her point for point. Oliver and Waters both arrive at roughly the same place, but Oliver has the skill of getting points across just a bit more dramatically than Miss Alice. The Fresh Egg Pasta section. Oliver here does things which are missing from even the best pasta instructions from Marcella Hazan. Hazan may demonstrate the basic technique more effectively, but Oliver gives excellent pictorial instructions on making six (6) classic fresh pasta shapes. The Selection of Dried Pasta Recipes. This, of course, is Oliver's real forte. With his apprenticeships with Gennaro Contaldo and London's River Café, I believe his selection of pasta dishes is second to none in tastiness and originality. The Diagrams on Cuts of Meat. Almost all other diagrams of this sort you see are more complicated, and the diagram of the chicken cuts is a bit misleadin

I just bought this book over the weekend on a whim. Holy moly - out of the 40 or so cookbooks I own, this is the first that I have decided that I *must* cook every single recipe within, a la Julie and Julia. This is a great reference manual (not for the absolute-beginner cook, however), but the recipes contained within promise excellent meals, and probably a 75 pound weight gain over the next year.