Overview

Cook With Jamie, released by British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver in 2007, is a bestseller and was awarded the 2008 IACP award for best cookbook under the General category. While the photographs are breathtaking and Oliver works his magic and makes simple food beautiful and inspired, it still has it flaws—but it may very well still be one of the best Jamie Oliver cookbooks around, and worthy of an award even.

Full review

While Oliver’s other books have been tied to a television program (The Naked Chef, Jamie’s Dinners, Jamie’s Kitchen, Jamie’s Italy, Jamie at Home, and Jamie’s Ministry of Food), this book isn’t. It’s probably what I would consider the “Fifteen Cookbook”, though only a handful of recipes are from the restaurant. All profits from the book benefit Fifteen, which takes disadvantaged youths a chance to work in a restaurant kitchen and hopefully make something of their lives. As a bonus, you get a good, solid cookbook.

As always, Oliver begins his book with essential tools you must have in your kitchen, somewhat implying that this is a book for absolute beginners. However, he skips the grocery list and goes straight to the recipe chapters. In 447 pages he talks about salads, pasta, gnocchi and risotto, meat, fish, vegetables, desserts, as well as “some bits and bobs” about food safety, freezing, knife sharpening, knife skills, and herbs and spices. It’s a heavy book, but not unnecessarily so (unlike his earlier work, Jamie’s Kitchen). He begins each chapter with a few tips on how to prepare the raw ingredients and each pair of facing pages has a full-page picture of the dish and the recipe opposite; no recipe exceeds these boundaries.

It’s in these facing pages where the book really shines. Apart from the big roasts and baked pastas (such as the Honeycomb Canneloni, which impressed me enough upon browsing to buy the book), none of the recipes are too intimidating, involved or require a litany of ingredients. These are mostly recipes that would make home dinners worthy of applause for not a lot of fuss. His flavors are spot-on and the recipes give a chance for the individual ingredients to shine through. Though the recipes are simple, they are neither generic nor tired. Some of Oliver’s objectives were to get people inspired about fresh produce, shopping, and trying new flavors in the kitchen using the same amount of effort (or less than) you would for your usual meals, and he accomplishes these all with flying colors. Even those more experienced in the kitchen will appreciate the simple but interesting recipes.

Oliver owes a lot to David Loftus, the photographer for this book. He does a fantastic job of translating Oliver’s natural approach to cooking into breathtaking photographs that appear to be styled to a minimum. Also, unlike his previous books, Cook With Jamie doesn’t suffer from randomly placed pictures of Oliver and his friends with useless bits of information; they are all confined to a short Introduction and Thanks.

Though the subtitle is “my guide to making you a better cook” and the book comes with a handy bookmark, this isn’t really a cooking reference like The Joy of Cooking. He begins each chapter with how to prepare the ingredient in focus (fresh pasta, meat, fish, shrimp, crab, lobster, squid, desserts), but he doesn’t always do a good job at it. The text is sparse and the information is basic, but since it’s supposed to appeal to beginners, it doesn’t hurt to mention it. Sometimes the collage of photographs accompanying the instructive text, beautiful as they are, don’t really help. The close-ups tend to confuse the overall picture.

I bought the US edition of the book, and there were very glaring losses in the translation. At the beginning of the desserts chapter, Oliver talks about the importance of accurate scales—a very good point. But once you turn the page, the measurements have been converted into “American-friendly” volume measurements which aren’t the best practice, and at times annoyingly complicated (one recipe calls for 1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons superfine (!) sugar and 10 tablespoons flour—the same volume, never mind that measuring ten tablespoons of flour is clumsy). Some recipes call for self-raising flour, which is rarely available in the US.

The recipes aren’t free from errors and omissions, either. Though results may obviously vary, I find that the baking times indicated tend to be too short in my kitchen, and 1 and 3/4 pints of chicken stock is far too scant for 22 ounces of risotto rice. The recipe for the Fifteen Chocolate Tart calls for baking the tart shell blind, an important process not described at all anywhere in the text.

While Cook With Jamie isn’t perfect, it still is a gorgeous cookbook which will keep you inspired when you’re up at night figuring out what to make for tomorrow. Did this deserve to win the IACP award for general cookbooks? I can say yes with a fair bit of confidence (since I don’t know what it was up against). It’s a general cookbook that isn’t generic, exemplifying simplicity and ease while keeping your taste buds excited with fresh flavors. On top of all that, you get to support a good cause.