Rating: 
Summary: WONDERFUL FOOD!
Review: For some reason cookery shows have stopped being simply about good food and useful recipes and have started being used as a platform for peddling lifestyles and self-absorbed smug personalities (Think of Nigella Lawson and Tamasin Day-Lewis with their irritatingly upper-middle class attitudes to contemporary family life, where all the ingredients come from organic farms in the midlands and the 'local shop' is Harrod's food hall - 'I don't have much time in the evenings so it'll just be duck magrets in pomegranate molasses and saffron crab tartlets'). Jamie Oliver's manifesto is to make cookery hip and accessible in a sanitized way. Supposedly he's the boy every mother would want as their son, the guy the girls find cute and the lad the blokes can relate to enough to kindle an interest in the kitchen. In fact he's pretty much nothing more than an annoying pratt with a line in pseudo-cockney banter that grates rather than endeares. The recipes are fine, with his pedigree in restaraunt work I'd expect nothing less, but it's almost impossible to sit through the programmes due to the sheer embarrassment of being a member of the same species. Another negative aspect of the show is the directors prediliction for oh-so-fashionable wonky camera angles and shot's straight out of 'Sam Raimi's guide to aspiring film school students'. Instant migraine, just add aggravating background music and bits about his friends and family. WHO CARES ABOUT THESE PEOPLE?
Incidentally, he writes the books in exactly the same way that he talks. I never thought I'd read a recipe that referred to a chicken as 'a great blooming geezer of a bird'.
Rating: 
Summary: Good cooking, Infuriatingly presented
Review: For some reason cookery shows have stopped being simply about good food and useful recipes and have started being used as a platform for peddling lifestyles and self-absorbed smug personalities (Think of Nigella Lawson and Tamasin Day-Lewis with their irritatingly upper-middle class attitudes to contemporary family life, where all the ingredients come from organic farms in the midlands and the 'local shop' is Harrod's food hall - 'I don't have much time in the evenings so it'll just be duck magrets in pomegranate molasses and saffron crab tartlets'). Jamie Oliver's manifesto is to make cookery hip and accessible in a sanitized way. Supposedly he's the boy every mother would want as their son, the guy the girls find cute and the lad the blokes can relate to enough to kindle an interest in the kitchen. In fact he's pretty much nothing more than an annoying pratt with a line in pseudo-cockney banter that grates rather than endeares. The recipes are fine, with his pedigree in restaraunt work I'd expect nothing less, but it's almost impossible to sit through the programmes due to the sheer embarrassment of being a member of the same species. Another negative aspect of the show is the directors prediliction for oh-so-fashionable wonky camera angles and shot's straight out of 'Sam Raimi's guide to aspiring film school students'. Instant migraine, just add aggravating background music and bits about his friends and family. WHO CARES ABOUT THESE PEOPLE?
Incidentally, he writes the books in exactly the same way that he talks. I never thought I'd read a recipe that referred to a chicken as 'a great blooming geezer of a bird'.
Rating:
Summary: A "Guaranteed to be Appreciated" Gift
Review: I do a lot of cooking. I'm not very good, but I love it- and every once in a while I get things right. I have all of Jamie Oliver's books, as well as loads of other cookbooks. Jamie Oliver's books are the best launchpads for the home chef- he never assumes you know the terminology, or that you watch every episode of Martha Stewart. All of his books are colorful, engaging and fun. "Happy Days with the Naked Chef" is by far the simpliest to follow, the quickest and his recipies are great confidence builders. The dishes are fun to make, easy, and turn out great- even at the hands of a novice like me. The books are also great for the expert chef, as I've found out by the amount of times I've given this book, and his others, as gifts to my friends and family. It is one of those great books that anyone that has even an inkling towards cooking will be able to use and appreciate. I gave it to a non-cooking co-worker who made recipies out of it for a girl he was dating- they're married now. It must've been the food.
Rating:
Summary: A "Guaranteed to be Appreciated" Gift
Review: I do a lot of cooking. I'm not very good, but I love it- and every once in a while I get things right. I have all of Jamie Oliver's books, as well as loads of other cookbooks. Jamie Oliver's books are the best launchpads for the home chef- he never assumes you know the terminology, or that you watch every episode of Martha Stewart. All of his books are colorful, engaging and fun. "Happy Days with the Naked Chef" is by far the simpliest to follow, the quickest and his recipies are great confidence builders. The dishes are fun to make, easy, and turn out great- even at the hands of a novice like me. The books are also great for the expert chef, as I've found out by the amount of times I've given this book, and his others, as gifts to my friends and family. It is one of those great books that anyone that has even an inkling towards cooking will be able to use and appreciate. I gave it to a non-cooking co-worker who made recipies out of it for a girl he was dating- they're married now. It must've been the food.
Rating:
Summary: The recipes don't turn out right
Review: I don't know why the recipes in this book don't turn out right. Every recipe I tried has been a disaster, not to mention required an extremely expensive list of ingredients (porcini mushrooms and arugula anyone?). Jamie Oliver puts on a great show, but the food just doesn't seem to live up to the "easy peasy" hype. His "My favorite curry" with "Lemon rice" took almost 3 hours from prep to finish and tasted horrible. I won't be buying another Jamie Oliver book.
Rating:
Summary: The recipes don't turn out right
Review: I don't know why the recipes in this book don't turn out right. Every recipe I tried has been a disaster, not to mention required an extremely expensive list of ingredients (porcini mushrooms and arugula anyone?). Jamie Oliver puts on a great show, but the food just doesn't seem to live up to the "easy peasy" hype. His "My favorite curry" with "Lemon rice" took almost 3 hours from prep to finish and tasted horrible. I won't be buying another Jamie Oliver book.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful cookbook for cooks at any level of skill...
Review: I love to cook and eat, and can make very complex things that take a couple of days or longer to put together, but I also have a small child and a lot of other things to do, and I love this guy's food!! Getting an excellent dinner on the table without too much effort (or even extreme expense) is his whole focus.I have gotten more useful ideas from him on making fast heavenly healthy dishes with not too many ingredients. His food is heavy on fresh ingredients, olive oil, and fresh herbs. If you love to cook fine food and want more quick food ideas, or if you have no clue how to cook and want to start, this is a wonderful book. The first two recipes I tried from this (a roast of lamb, and a beef stew, both with plenty of vegetables) were simple to understand and prepare, had longer cooking times than prep times, and were the best recipes of their kind that I had ever tried, and I have a very large and very good cookbook collection! I look forward to cooking my way through the rest of it. I also love the pictures - usually a book with such beautiful food photography has turned out to either have mediocre or ridiculously complicated recipes! Neither is the case here. I must also say that the dishes I turned out looked wonderful as well as tasting wonderful, with no special effort on my part. I also have to praise him for his ongoing support and promotion of organic meat and vegetables!
Rating:
Summary: Big Improvement
Review: I really love Jamie Oliver's style of cooking; simple, easy, and food that anyone can create...
Rating:
Summary: Jamie Does Cooking with the Family. Highly Recommended
Review: In every way imaginable, this third Jamie Oliver cookbook proclaims that he has arrived as a celebrity chef, husband, father, and all around swell lad made good. His name on the cover is about three times the size of the book's title, `Happy Days with the Naked Chef', the book is dedicated to his two children, Little Henners and Jakey Bakey, and photos his nibs with his wife, Jools appear throughout the book. On top of all this, there is a much broader representation of international flavors in these recipes based on trips to the Orient, echoing the influence of Japan on the culinary thinking of Joel Robuchon.
At the risk of laying it on just a little too thick, I really believe Oliver shows the kind of passion about good food and cooking which I have seen in very few other TV culinary personalities. Stopping short of a comparison with Julia Child, as Saint Julia did say she couldn't quite understand him most of the time, I would compare his enthusiasm with that of Mario Batali and Jacques Pepin, although he does not have the depth of technique of Jaques or the extensive knowledge of local Italian cuisines as Mario.
Oliver does not simply dedicate to his children for schmaltz value as he devotes a sizable section of the book on the value and attitudes to use when cooking with your kids. These few pages alone are worth the price of the book. Emeril just published a whole book on techniques for cooking with your kids, and as good a job as he did in telling you how to do it, Jamie does a much better job of telling you why you do it and what benefits will arise from the effort. Jamie also gives a few insights into his cooking with Jools as well when he says that once upon a time, every little suggestion on Jools' cooking from world famous chef Jamie was taken as a criticism and tended to dampen her enthusiasm for doing something she did not especially enjoy anyway. The whole picture changed when Jamie simply praised everything Jools did in the kitchen. The quality of her cooking and her attitude improved dramatically. I can think of a few of my relatives I would love to feed the wisdom in this book.
In reviews of Oliver's other books, I have warned that while Jamie preaches simplicity, this is not the same as quick or easy. Jamie does lean a bit toward quicker and easier in some chapters in this book, keeping to the cooking with the kids theme. He has a chapter on `Quick Fixes' and `Comfort Grub' plus `More Simple Salads'. And, he leaves out any recipes for homemade pasta, with all pasta dishes being based on dried pasta, which he always says is not inferior to fresh, just different. There is also a very short chapter just after the introduction on using fresh herbs, which for the entire world sounds like a sermon from Pastor Oliver exhorting you to use fresh herbs. This homily is understandable if you recall that Jamie Oliver's writing and televising about food is all about lifestyle, not just how to cook. His lesson is that fresh herbs are necessary to good cooking.
As always, Oliver's most appealing recipes are for salads, pasta dishes, and seafood. I sometimes wish that all of his books would be reissued collecting all like chapters into individual volumes and I would buy the salad and pasta volumes simply to have all these recipes together. They are by far the most original of his dishes, although there is one pasta dish Jamie attributes to Mario Batali and there are a few in his books that are attributed to his experiences at the River Café.
Bread is one of my favorite culinary subjects and Jamie is one of the very few superstar chefs who gives special emphasis to bread baking. His basic bread recipe is a classic fast method he probably got from Gennaro, as Contaldo uses a very similar recipe in his book `Passione'. The recipe violates the recommendation from experts like Peter Reinhart who promote little yeast and long rise times, but I have made Jamie's bread and I find it just fine, especially as a medium for rolling in savory additions such as onions and salami. To atone for his fast yeast bread, Jamie adds a recipe for artisinal sourdough bread with natural yeast and a classic Italian bega. Read this recipe very carefully before starting, as it takes a FULL WEEK to complete. If you are serious about bread, check out books by Reinhart, Joe Ortiz, or Nancy Silverton, but you could do a lot worse than getting your first taste of bread baking from Sir Jamie.
When someone has an engaging TV personality, I fear their enthusiasm may not transfer to a skill with the written word, especially with Jamie, as I have heard him say he dictates all his books into a tape recorder, as he never really learned to write properly in school. Let me assure you here that even his chapters with low culinary interest such as his chapters on mixed drinks are a joy to read.
Jamie has a habit of labeling certain recipes as `the best ever'. Well, I have made his `best ever' recipes and I agree with him. They have all become standards in my repertoire. He continues to match or exceed the very high quality of recipes you will find from the River Café or even from Signoir Batali himself.
On the remote chance that Hyperion editors read this review for constructive criticism, I will point out that the layout of ingredient lists makes reading the recipes a bit annoying, as does the absence of ingredient lists from some of the simpler recipes.
If one wishes to get more out of their cooking, they could not do much better than to work their way through Jamie Oliver's cookbooks.
Rating:
Summary: they get better and better
Review: Jamie Oliver is a cooking sensation. Believe it or not, despite all of the amazing press that he has had in Canada and the USA, he is still nowhere near the level that he has reached in his native Britain. It's really incredible to watch his star rise. It's especially incredible to see him rise and continue to release such wonderful cookbooks. Happy Days With the Naked Chef is Jamie's third book. In the new book, Jamie explores much of the same territory he has introduced us to in the first two. The food is easy to prepare, not too cheffy (as he likes to say) and super tasty. but what sets Happy Days apart from the other two is the section for kids. It's great to see Jamie's Kids Club incorporated into a book. The section isn't so much recipes for kids as it is a handbook of sorts (as only Jamie could write) to help parents get kids interested in cooking. It's a really great chapter. But really, we all come to Jamie for the recipes...which, as usual, are amazing. They're easy to make, fun to serve and cover all varieties of diet (even the salads are amazing). For a good, basic cookbook that is high on attitude and low on pretention, Happy Days is it.
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