The message in Cook With Jamie is simple. Anybody can be a great cook. It’s not a question of trying to recreate fancy dishes from five-star restaurants, packed with obscure ingredients you’ll never be able to find in your local shops. Just get back to basics, with simple, fresh ingredients available anywhere. Balancing flavours and textures is crucial, and smart shopping for seasonal fare means you don’t need to be a multi-millionaire chef to give your family quality food.
A Man On a Mission
Anyone who has seen the TV series “Jamie’s School Dinners” will be familiar with the British chef’s crusade to take junk food out of the school cafeteria and replace it with healthier options. Fewer and fewer children are being taught to cook at school, so the home is the only place left to learn. But with busy lifestyles and easy convenience foods, how many people have time or the inclination to make a home-cooked meal every night? This, then, is the lynchpin of Cook With Jamie – home cooking is slowly becoming a dying art, and this is the guide to help you get to grips with it.
For those who might be wondering about kitchen essentials, as opposed to the latest gizmo which will be gathering dust in the cupboard after four months, Jamie provides a useful list of equipment he uses on a regular basis. For items such as frying pans, chopping boards and graters, quality is key – they will last longer, and provide better results.
Top Tips and Techniques
Whether it’s cooking meat or baking cakes, Cook With Jamie provides a glossary of cooking terms, from poaching and braising to whisking and creaming. There are tips on preparing just about everything, from different types of meat and fish to salads, desserts and cakes. The sections on homemade pasta and salads are particularly comprehensive. Different cuts of pork, beef, lamb and chicken are included, as well as “Is it cooked yet?” guides for beef and fish fillets.
A bit of missionary zeal is noticeable in the chapter on meat, as Jamie continues his crusade against intensive farming methods. He does realize that not everyone can afford free-range or organic products, but is simply stressing the “you get what you pay for” philosophy when it comes to quality. The “How to be a better meat/fish shopper” guides are helpful for those wishing to look beyond the pre-packed offerings in supermarkets.
With clear, step-by-step instructions and large colour photographs of each dish, Cook With Jamie (Penguin Books, 2006, ISBN 0-718-14771-5) is a cookery course which takes away the fear of the new and unknown, and positively wills you to succeed.
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