Jamie Oliver - Jamie At Home (DVD)

Straightforward wholesome cookery. Tasty! Jamie Oliver is always a watchable TV chef, and this series is one of his best. It abandons trendy fashion cookery and concentrates on easy to make, wholesome food. Some of it is the best of traditional British but Jamie often uses homegrown ingredients in international recipes, or spices up old fashioned recipes with an unusual flavour from overseas. It's a little strange at time, seeing the urban scooter dude leave behind the big city and instead take to the country life in a big way. Although I'm informed (thanks!) that Jamie grew up as a country lad, it's still a bit weird to see him on a shooting party, wearing a Barbour jacket and blazing away at game birds... Some people may well feel unsettled at a couple of programmes which feature country sports and show animals being killed and then cooked and eaten -- but that's part of the point of the series, to show people where food actually comes from. Jamie tries very hard to make unusual foodstuffs appealing, and it works to an extent. You might consider eating more than just chicken after watching this! The recipes are very easy to follow and there's no difficult cooking techniques. The series concentrates on finding good food and then preparing it simply. I was confident I could prepare any of the meals shown (although I wouldn't use an outdoor oven, which is just a tiny bit pretentious!). And Jamie doesn't go too overboard on the salt / butter / alchohol content of each dish, unlike many TV chefs. It's easy to make meals that tase good if you drown them in fat and salt... most of Jamie's recipes taste good by using clever combinations of herbs and flavours. Of course, not all of us have the time to grow so many of the veg that Jamie uses (he has a proper gardener: I barely have time to mow the lawn!), but I appreciate being shown what is possible, even if I don't have time to do it myself. The same is true of many of the cookery techniques -- I'm probably not going to make a pizza base from scratch but am inspired after seeing how easy it is to make the dough. Even if you don't want to cook any of the dishes, this is an entertaining series. Half-hour programmes are easily watched and digested. Plus, there is an air of realism, no matter how well prepped everything is for the TV crew. You get the feeling that disasters can happen in Jamie's kitchen, which is reassuring! I'd be happy to receive this DVD as a gift, and it would suit any cook who wants some inspiration for easily-prepared wholesome food.