Jamie's Kitchen

I now have all of Jamie Oliver's books and DVDs. I am eagerly awaiting his book on Italy to be released. B. Marold says it best, so anything I say will be redundant. What I like (love really) about his cookbooks, including this one, is that all of the recipes are cook-able. The meat, fish, salad, and dessert recipes are simple, but incredibly tasty. I own numerous cookbooks, but few are as easy to manouver as Jame Oliver's. The photographs are wonderful and he is adorable. Perhaps he makes it look too easy, but it is once you read the recipe and get down to business in your kitchen. I love this cookbook. It has everything you need to cook and serve a delicious and healthy meal. I would also recommend both his DVDs. His energy is infectious. If you love London (and England) as I do, you get colorful glimpses of restaurants and markets in each episode. His friends are deightful. Especially Gennaro his Italian 'father' and mentor. I wish I had recorded all of his earlier programs (The Naked Chef) when they were on the Food Network. These tapes are not available now. He deserves all of the success he has garnered for himself. Go out and buy this book and all his other books. And don't forget the DVDs.

Not being a television observer of cooking shows or even one who keeps up with 'celebrity chefs', JAMIE'S KITCHEN came as a fresh surprise as a book that just happens to have excellent, reproducible recipes for some fine dishes! Jamie Oliver deserves his fame, if this book is any indication. Young and spunky, with a real talent for witty explanations that keep a recipe book palatable (!), Oliver offers not only some well-chosen delicious treats not found in other cookbooks, outlined in the most easy to read and follow fashion, but he also pays attention to other details. Like marketing, for example. In a very short space wholly free of pretension, Oliver supplies tips on how to buy foods, when to buy them, when to tell if the produce is the best (and tips on keeping the grocer informed as to the occasional lapse in quality control!), informing the reader that fresh fish should never smell fishy and should have clear eyes , smooth scales etc. Little bits of info like this make the reader bond with the chef, ready to accept his advice on preparing apparently simple yet unique and elegant fare. There are so many cookbooks out on the shelves these days, but few match the quality of photography of the chef at work, the dishes prepared, the lightness of the written words, and the honest and informed commentary that this book does. Makes you want to read his other books - like getting to know a new friend better! Grady Harp, July 05

When I got the cookbook as a Christmas present I was a little skeptical. Okay maybe alot skeptical. The recipes looked a little too vague; not enough precise measurements; "add a glass of wine" (big glass? small glass? 'what's up with that?')Quite frankly, it made me nervous. Cookbooks aren't supposed to be like that.But I gave the recipes a whirl and lo and behold, they turned out! The recipes were different yet familar. A nice twist on things (sorry, no pun intended). Jamie creates recipes with layers of flavor and texture; recipes with color and style. And what is more, they were relatively simple to make. I've received rave reviews from friends and family.But the real surprise and joy was that Jamie's approximate portions and measurements allowed me to become more of my own chef, so to speak. I guess I always felt compelled to stick to the rigidity of a receipe. What I discovered is that I was more or less forced to I play with the amounts and I did not feel that I was somehow making a mistake when doing so. It was okay to toy with this ingredient or that. This gave me confidence to explore variations. In short, it made cooking even more fun.This is how I think the great chefs really cook: they have a game plan but they have intuition, gut instinct. When you watch the great chefs on TV rarely do you see them haul out a measuring spoon or a cup. They go by eye, by experience and by gut. And I think this is what Jamie Oliver's book has done for the reader.Buy it, experiment with it, have fun with it.

It is difficult to evaluate this book without opinions' being colored by seeing Jamie Oliver's experiences in nurturing fifteen (15) young needful men and women to become professional cooks and, in the process, succeeding in creating London's most highly sought dining venue. I confess that this background makes it almost impossible for me to give the book less than five (5) stars, although I will cite some weaknesses in a generally very worthy book.`jamie's kitchen' is primarily a celebrity chef cookbook where the celebrity is a practicing chef like Mario Batali and Bobby Flay, however there is no distinct connection between the recipes in the book and Jamie's restaurant `15'. Rather, I've seen many dishes done on his Food Network show `Oliver's Twist' appearing in this book. There is also no systematic connection between the contents of the book and the Food Network special of the same name; however, there are some recipes and demonstrations of techniques, which appear in both. Note that unlike Jamie's various TV presentations, all units are in Imperial units (pounds and ounces and Fahrenheit and so on) however one does have to translate teaspoon from the term dessert spoon.Overlaid on the typical celebrity chef content is a outline of a cooking course covering common cooking methods such as salads, `cooking without heat', poaching, boiling, steaming, en papillote, stewing, braising, frying (pan and deep), roasting (pot and pan), broiling, grilling, and baking (bread and pastry). As an outline and presentation of exemplars for major culinary methods, this book is very good; however, it should not be accepted as a complete cooking textbook. (I would not rule out a talented instructor's using this book as a supplementary text, but it is still not in the same league as excellent texts by Madeline Kamen, Anne Willen, or the Culinary Institute of America). Another clue that this is CANNOT be taken as a textbook is Jamie's aversion to exact measurements. A text could never be as imprecise. That said, I give high marks to the photographic demonstrations of several basic cooking techniques such as filleting a flatfish, making a basic bread dough, chopping and slicing, pasta making, and blanching tomatoes.Thus, the primary value of the book lies with the quality of the recipes and the usefulness of the recipes to the buyer. I believe the overall quality of the recipes is very high, and, personally, I found the choice of recipes to be very, very good. There is the expected influence of Italian cuisine in many of the recipes; however, there are also distinctly oriental overtones in many of the recipes, especially in the salads. I was especially delighted to find a relatively simple recipe for Chinese steamed pork dumplings. The recipe for this dish presented by a Martha Stewart guest took three pages (I am not so naïve to believe that the results of the simple version will have all the virtues of the more truly ethnic recipe, but the point is that the simp

Jamie Oliver is quite rightly famous for liking his food unpretentious, fresh and delicious. he is quite quirky and funny as well, and this good humour shines through his recipes.There are all sorts of delicious things in here, including a fabulous basic bread recipe that can be manipulated into all sorts of good things, but the beauty of the recipes are that they can all be whipped up in fairly short periods of time if friends and family drop in. There are the usual quick and easies, as well as a number of far more spectacular dishes.If you have a reasonaly well stocked pantry and this cook book, who knows what miracles can happen in the kitchen. This is not just a book for people who love cooking, it is also for people who like the eating as well!